Konya: Whirling, etc.

Without knowing what it was exactly, we went out of our way to catch the dervish festival in Konya. Here's what I learned when we got there: this year marks the 735th anniversary of the death of the mystic Sufi poet Mevlana (or Rumi, as he's referred to in the States). Every year his followers gather in Konya, where Mevlana worked and is buried. For decades this was the only dervish ceremony allowed all year by Atatürk's vehemently secular regime. The dervishes don't perform, there is no clapping, there is only prayer, and the music and the relationships between the dervish pupils and teachers, rather than the whirling, are the central features of the process. The experience was mesmerizing.

Apart from the festival, the Mevlana Museum has a noteworthy series of roofs,

and Konya is home to unique (and kind of gross) compacted powdered sugar candy:

In Konya, we also found some good examples of food items we've seen throughout Turkey. This churro-like pastry (generally served cold and without the benefit of cinnamon I'm sorry to report):

And the humongous döner skewer:

This year, the Mevlana festival fell the same week as Eid-ul-Adha or Kurban Bayramı. The first dozen or so people we asked about this holiday could only explain that it involved slaughtering a goat or sheep. Eventually we learned that this holiday commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son. It's something like the Turkish Thanksgiving: everyone spends time with family, eating ritually slaughtered goats, sheep, and cows, and donating the same to those less fortunate. The holiday lasted for eight days in Turkey. And each day's evening news was dominated by footage of escaping livestock. We left Konya on the last day of Bayramı. The bus station was full of hundreds of families seeing their (mandatorily) enlisted sons back off to military service.

xoxo Jessie

Antalya

We stopped for a day in Antalya in transit from the Mediterranean coast to central Turkey. Once again the reality far exceeded my guide book-based expectations (as I'm writing this - my second consecutive post on this theme - I'm realizing that perhaps I need to pay a bit more attention to my travel research ... hmm). Anyway this was the steep descent through a charming seaside town to the harbor I was expecting to find in Olympos.

We stayed in a charming pension with a breakfast patio full of peach trees. In town we found a great bookstore (an opportunity totally wasted on me since one of my two purchases was by P.J. O'Rourke, who I thought was supposed to be an "American humorist" but turned out to be little more than a classic jerk). The proprietor - middle-aged, loud, and curmudgeonly but incredibly well-read - was full of memorable pronouncements like, "Murakami? Yes, I read him. A hack! Boring!!" Classic.

Finally we ate our first Turkish tost (basically panini) while the sun set on this scene.



xoxo Jessie

The Expectations Game: Olympos

So we read through the Mediterranean coast section of our Lonely Planet and decided on Olympos as our next destination. By the time we actually got there, however, I had worked up a set of expectations based on the descriptions of at least three other places we'd reviewed and rejected. So there wasn't so much a lovely town as a lovely woods, and not so much a steep descent through town to the harbor as a muddy slop through underbrush to the pebble beach. But guess what? All the surprises were for the best. We were staying in a log cabin on a glorified campsite surrounded by pine forest and granite cliffs. And the beach was totally gorgeous.

I also managed to forget the main attraction, the ancient ruins. The city of Olympos is largely unexcavated, despite having been a relatively important religious and commercial center for the ancient Greeks. It was a surreal change of pace to hunt for columns, tombs, and ancient structures in the undergrowth and greenery. When or where else I will walk on millennia-old mosaic floors I don't know.



Finally, there was the Chimera - natural gas flames that "scientists" can neither explain nor extinguish, apparently - which wasn't in my guide-book for me to forget or confuse.

So Olympos, you surprised me. Thanks!

xoxo Jessie

Pamukkale & Hierapolis

Pamukkale is famous for it's cascading travertine pools. The natural hot springs that produced them have largely run dry, but they're still an astonishing sight.

Here's the detail that's missing from these photos: Turkish pop music. There is a time and a place for thumping dance music. It's well after my second drink, there's a dance floor, and it's lit with a strobe light. The appropriate soundtrack for this vista is not Womanizer, or worse, the club remix of Womanizer. And I'm actually a Britney fan. Imagine Aaron's thoughts on the subject...

Anyway, we hiked up through the disco cum travertines to the extensive ruins of the Roman resort town Hierapolis that sit above them. A necropolis lines the road out of town. We clambered among the sarcophagi for most of the afternoon.

Other remnants of the ancient cıty include an industrial oıl press, bath houses, an ancient (irrigated) latrine, and a well preserved theater. Nice stuff, huh?

xoxo Jessie

p.s. Happy Birthday to Jake (remember Democrats are sexy...)!

Selçuk & Ephesus

The ancient ruins at Ephesus are some of the most famous in the world. The city was home to one of the seven wonders of the ancient world: the Temple of Artemis of which only one gigantic column remains. In subsequent generations the Romans enjoyed baths, buried gladiators, and erected a magnificent library. Given all this, the best thing about Ephesus for us was that we were their almost by ourselves. Well except for these weirdos:


Seriusly though, the Celsus Library is something special.


We found still more to enjoy in the nearby town of Selçuk. First, for two weekdays we marveled at the number of men hanging out in the center of town all day doing little more than chatting and drinking çay.

Thanks to one restaurant in particular, Selçuk was also the site of a minor gastronomic miracle. Behold the Turkish pide (perfect pızza dough with minced meat and egg) and its brilliant peanut butter and sugar filled cousin:


Finally, Selçuk had some irresistible public exercise machines. Good thing because I went back for seconds of that peanut butter thingy.

xoxo Jessie

Istanbul Miscellany

So not surprisingly we saw things worth remembering in Istanbul that can neither be described as a food nor a site. For example, our favorite oddities in the Grand Bazaar were these pipes:

And this perplexing porcelain ensemble:

Pomegranites are grown throughout Turkey and you can buy fresh pomegranite juice on the street anywhere in Istanbul. I recognize this is food-related. So shoot me.


This shop had two traditional musicians, served nothing but pomegranite juice and was packed all day:

Next up: the fish market. All goods apparently caught nearby and no ice anywhere in sight.


Along with four hundred or so middle schoolers, we caught an historically accurate jannisary band performance at the military museum (this shot captures about half the action and none of the booming).

Finally, we spent an afternoon in the Islamic Art Museum (housing the most extensive collection in the world now that the Baghdad Museum's is gone and funded almost entirely by the San Francisco Bay Area Carpet Association, I kid you not). The calligraphy was really amazing - this scroll commemorated the Ottoman victory in the Cretan town of Hania, where we had been just a week earlier.

So that was Istanbul, take one. After five days we weren't ready to leave, so we'll be back for another half-week soon.

xoxo Jessie

Traveling to Istanbul? Pack your Sweettooth

My memories of Turkish cuisine were none too fond. Basically I had an enduring image of a steaming clay pot full of grease and lamb. Yuck. We sat down to our first meal in Sultanahmet and I ordered mousaka. We'd just come from Greece, where the mousaka was a highlight, and in my mind a non-Turkish cuisine was the safest bet. Guess what mousaka means in Turkisk? A steaming clay pot full of grease, lamb, and eggplant, that's what. Double Yuck.

But that turned out to be the worst of it. After that night we stuck to cafeteria-style venues in the less touristy neighborhoods, where we could visually inspect our options before choosing a meal. There's great rice here, cooked in chicken broth and mixed with chick peas and pinenuts. And the kebabs are a safe bet.

Better still, we quickly realized that what the local cusine lacked in savory options it more than made up for in sweets. First of all, the baklavas here are head and shoulders above anything we had in Bosnia and Greece. The selections at Güllüglou were the best.

Perhaps even better was my reintroduction to Turkish puddings. Our favorites were Muhallebici (rice pudding with chocolate sauce) and plain chocolate at Saray on Istikal Caddessi:

Other dietary discoveries that warrant mention (though not consumption): kokorec - rotisserie lamb intestines - so gross.

And these fish restaurants along the waterfront - the kitchen is on the boat and the tables are on shore. Better to watch than to eat though.



So that was the best and the worst of eating in Istanbul. Now we know the ropes, so hopefully our return trip will be more successful.

xoxo Jessie