First Impressions: A City Between East and West

Day one of the trip is done, and to say that it was quite an experience would be an understatement.  Because of the hellish trip from Baltimore to Istanbul (48 hours of riding in cars, flying on planes, and waiting in airport terminals), I decided to try to keep today fairly light on the history and focus more on exploring Istanbul to get a feel for the city.  I'm also trying to pick up little bits of the language, but I don't expect I'll move beyond a basic understanding of pronunciation.  At least they use the Latin alphabet--I'm scowling at you, Russia--so some things look pretty familiar, even if they sound alien.  Actually, I think the Turkish language provides a pretty good analogy for the city itself: Western on the outside, but Eastern at its core.

Save for the minarets dotting the skyline, Istanbul looks much like one would expect a Western European city to look, at least a Western city with a medieval past.  Narrow, winding streets; cobblestones basically everywhere; the ubiquity of English on the streets, especially the ones near the major tourist sites.  But there is a decidedly Eastern flavor to the city, and it goes beyond the ratio of mosques to churches and burqas to bikinis.  It's a hard thing to put your finger on or to quantify, but I think it has to do with the ways in which you interact with the locals.

I've never been anywhere else where the locals are simultaneously extremely friendly and disturbingly pushy. Kyle--my OSU travelling buddy while in Istanbul--and I were approached by locals several times today, being offered help in finding something without our even having to ask.  But, afterwards, these apparent good Samaritans would try to shuffle us along into their shop, where we were always promised an excellent price on whatever they happened to be selling.  It was all harmless enough; to be sure they didn't like to be told no, but we never felt unsafe or overly pressured to peruse their wares.  And they were genuinely helpful; by no means am I trying to suggest that this friendliness was just a ploy to get customers.  But, I'm not exaggerating when I say that the entire city feels like a bazaar.  This can be a positive and negative, but it is unquestionably a new experience for me.  To call this sort of behavior "Eastern" might be unfair on my part; I've never been to the Eastern Mediterranean before, and so I'm relying on hearsay and stereotypes for my conception of the Near East.  But Istanbul certainly fits in with my ideas about the East, so I've gone ahead and made the comparison.  Feel free to disagree; I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

Now, to get to what I actually did today.  Like I mentioned, I planned on keeping the day pretty light.  That didn't exactly play out, although I didn't go to any of the really major sites like Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, etc.  To start with, here's a picture of the hostel:

It's a great place; free breakfast, free wifi, showers and bathroom ensuite, and it couldn't be much closer to the center of the old city.

Kyle and I started the day with a stroll along the Bosporus and the sea walls, which originally went all the way down to the water but are now ringed by a major road.

A section of the sea walls.  On the left a walled-in gate, and farther down the wall a tower

The Bosporus.  The land on the left is Europe, and on the right is Asia

Quite a nice walk, except for the traffic.  The weather is absolutely gorgeous.  Not a cloud in the sky, low 80's with no humidity, and a lovely breeze off the water.

From here we decided to check out the actual bazaar.  But, to get there, we walked through the courtyards to Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, as well as the Hippodrome.  One of the Hagia Sophia (I couldn't get a good one of the Blue Mosque)...

Hagia Sophia, built by Justinian in the early 6th century.  Lots more about this will come tomorrow, when I go inside.

..one of Kyle and myself...

Taken by one of the friendliest and least pushy Turks we met today

...and three of the different obelisks/columns in the Hippodrome (now a large public area, this was once where the chariot races were held, and also where Justinian had Belisarios slaughter 30,000 riotous Romans to maintain his hold on the throne.  See Procopius Wars 1.24 if you want more details).

Egyptian obelisk originally from the 15th century BC, brought to Constantinople in the 4th century AD, and put in the Hippodrome by Theodosius I in the 390's.

The base of the obelisk

The so-called walled obelisk, erected in the Hippodrome by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos  in the 10th century AD.  It was originally covered in bronze, which was stripped by the crusaders in 1204.

The serpent column, originally built to commemorate the defeat of Xerxes in the 5th century BC and dedicated to Apollo at Delphi.  Constantine brought it to the Hippodrome in the 4th century AD.

After walking through this area we made it to the Grand Bazaar.  Built in 1461, it's one of the oldest closed-roof markets in the world, and it's a complete maze inside.  The wares range from chintzy to quite nice, with prices to match.

One of the numerous entrance gates

Inside

Next up was the Basilica Cistern.  Built by Justinian, this vast underground structure was made to store water for the city, in the event of a hardship such as a siege.  The columns were scavenged from older buildings, and have a mix of Doric (plain) and Corinthian (highly decorated) capitals.  This was really, really impressive (sorry for the blurriness; I wanted to abstain from using the flash, but without a tripod...):

Way in the back of the cistern, there are 2 columns with medusa heads for bases:

These are especially interesting because of their placement: they're way in the back of the cistern, and one is upside down, the other sideways.  No one is exactly sure of the significance, but it seems to me that there must have been some sort of method to the madness (these are the only things in the whole place that aren't just your basic columns, they're put way out of the way, both are of medusa, and they're oriented differently), but I have no idea what significance that might be.

We were planing to call it a day after this, but we decided to see what else was close by first.  Much to our surprise, we found some really excellent stuff that we probably would have missed entirely otherwise.  The first was a church-turned-mosque, formerly called Sts. Sergius and Bacchus.  It's believed to be the church the Hagia Sophia was modeled off of, and dates to the early 6th century.  Although the interior is almost entirely redone, the architecture itself is original (notably, the columns and the Greek inscriptions that circles the interior.

Exterior

Original Roman capitals 

Close-up of the Greek inscription

After this, we one again decided to head back, but we decided to take a different route and walk along a different stretch of the water.  On the way, we stumbled across what's left of the Boukoleon, a Byzantine palace built in the 5th century by Theodosius II.  There's not too much left, but it's pretty impressive nonetheless.  It was originally built directly into the sea walls of Constantinople:

Hard to make out, but there is a tiny cross on the lintel of this door

We once again decided to head back to the hostel, but ran into yet another Byzantine imperial palace before we could get there.  This one is called the Palatium Magnum, and was built by Constantine when he founded Constantinople.  We happened upon a section of the palace while walking back...

But we circled around and discovered we could go inside!  We quite literally had the place to ourselves; this was beyond awesome (at least if you're into Byzantine history):

Some roof tiles 

Detail of the underside of a dome

After this, we actually made it back to the hostel and have been vegging out ever since.  I'm currently sitting in the common area smoking a hookah as I type this, and thinking about everything to see tomorrow.  Considering today was supposed to be a light day, tomorrow should really be busy!   I hope to do another post tomorrow evening, but the internet is painfully slow.  Even if they don't happen particularly quickly, I promise I will keep posting about everything I'm up to.  Please post comments/questions about what I've written here!