Yesterday was pretty rad. I got to pee out of a hole 20 meters in the air!

We got wind of an old fort built into the city walls on the city’s Marmara coast. It is supposed to have spectacular views and it’s a commuter train ride away so we decided to check it out. First mission: get on the train. Well I suppose the first mission is get to the train, but we’re pretty good at getting to the old city by now. Although we are still evolving a better and better route through the windey streets.

We knew right where the train station is becuase it was the terminus of the Orient Exppress and kind of sticks out. We didn’t realise that the old entrance is no longer in use so we wandered up to it only to find a crowd of men busting and talking to eachother and their cell phones. It looked a lot like the bazaar currency market. But I can’t find it them on google so the mystery will live forever.

We eventually did find the entrance, figured out how to pay, and hopped on a train to Yedikule. The train ride was so nice, zipping past Marmara, the green ruins of the old city wall and old neighbourhoods of decrepit buildings. It’s the 3rd mode of public transportation we’ve taken here. it’s always fun to try new modes of public transportatoin. When we arrived at Yedikule I was amazed to find so many disused buildings and such a calmness. This is a neighbourhood well inside the outskirts of one of the biggest, denesest, cities in the world and it was calm and slowly reveling in the fresh sea air. We breathed deep, enjoying the change of pace, and strolled the few blocks to the old fort. Which was soo coool.

Embracing the relaxed atmosphere there was less a ticketing system as a sign politely asking you to find someone to pay 5 lira to. Inside there was almost noone. We had this giant fort all to ourselves. The only thing better was that they had decided to skip making the fort tourist friendly and just open the sucker up. It was like we were archeologists who had found it in the desert.

The entire inside had been gutted. You could tell there were buildings inside but they had all burned down. Only part of the Mosque’s minarette still existed so the fort consisted of the seven walls and three big bastions. The oldest wall has quite a story. Around 500ad a huge marble triumphal arch was erected by… I forget, you could look it up if you want to know. Some emperor. Then his son built the arch into the city walls as a major entrance to Istanbul and later Mehmet II (the Ottoman who took and restored the luster of Istanbul) built the inner walls and bastions, making it into a fort. The Ottoman’s continued to use it for victorious parades into the city.

The point is, there is a giant marble triumphal arch built into this fort and holy god is it giant and marble. You can’t really see it from the inside but when you walk outside you realise you just walked through it and, turning around, your head explodes. The fort is mostly unfinished red stone. The arch stands out like a Frank Gehry building in the middle of the suburbs. You can walk around inside the walls to get on top of the wall that contains the arch. The top is also marble and at this point you’re 30 meters in the air with a view unobstructed by railings or saftey features. It’s so easy to imagine the procession of an Ottoman king, rich with looted spoils, marching through the gate underneath you.

The lack of safety features was a wonderful plus. We got to walk around everywhere. On top of crumbling stone walls, up and down 30 meter stone staircases built into the walls that had no railings, even up some rickety wooden scaffolding. It was just great being able to see the buildings as they were and experience them as a soldier might.

The bastions were also very very cool. They had stairs running up the inside with the occasional dank room and poorly appointed toilet. Yes the toilets were still there and in working order. I mean it would be hard to break them as they were just a hole with a short sluice leading to outside the walls. Although I lied. I didn’t actually make use of one (even though one of them had a supply of toilet paper on the ground). I posed for a few pictures as if I was using them but that’s it. Still very cool.

At the very top Sarah and I had an amazing view of the ruined city walls receding back into the city on one side and ending at the Marmara sea at the other. It was certainly the most fun I’ve ever had visiting a fort before. I wish there was more of an effort to just give you the run of a place.

On the way back we finally used the old Funicular pulling people up from the Galata bridge to Istiklal street. It is the 2nd oldest underground people mover in Europe. Second only to the london underground.

Leah and Pete headed back to Seattle a few days ago, so now it is just Colin and I for the rest of the month in Turkey. Before they left, we got in more of old city, starting with Topkapı palace.

We had walked through the gardens surrounding Topkapı palace before, filled with tulips, herons and large green parrots (yes, parrots!), but that was just a drop in the bucket. Inside the pay-wall is an expanse of buildings including multiple mosques and an iconic tower which I can see from the window in our new apartment. We paid the extra lira to see the harem, but I warn you it is overrated – you see one spectacularly painted ceiling dome, you’ve seen them all. However, it was neat to imagine life there as a chosen concubine, with a dozen eunuchs at your beck and call and the powerful queen mother to fear and flatter. We also saw some ridiculously large jewels in the imperial treasury, including the Spoonmaker’s Diamond which legend says was once sold for three spoons by a poor man who found it in a garbage heap.

Next day we visited the archeology museum, which had a very impressive collection of statues and plunder from Egypt, Rome, and what is now Turkey. I have never seen so much marble in one place. I learned that most of it was originally painted in bright colors, as they had a partial full-color reproduction of the beautiful Alexander Sarcophagus. My favorite were the sarcophagi covered in drunken, frolicking cherubs who were engaged in such activities as spanking goats with sticks, riding other cherubs like horses, and amorously kissing cherub-sized but anatomically adult women. Whoever was buried in those must have known how to throw a party.

We finished that day by a quick peek inside the active Blue Mosque, then a quiet beer underneath Galata bridge where we watched the above sunset. There are a few places to get cheap beer in the city, but mostly we pay tourist prices and drink in touristy (and scenic) places like this. Many Turkish people don’t drink, so you can tell that you’re at one of the better restaurants in Istanbul if it doesn’t have a liquor license. For beer Efes is pretty much what you get. Colin is out on the deck right now with a can of Efes Extra (“strong beer”) which I think tastes like they spiked it with Raki, but he’s making do.

Now that it’s just the two of us, Colin and I are taking it easy for a few days. We moved into a new apartment up the street from the old one, which is a little smaller but has a spectacular view of the old city including the palace and Hagia Sophia. Yesterday we spent half the day on the deck, but went out to buy groceries and check out the May Day rally in Taksim Square. They hadn’t allowed a rally there since 1977 when some right wing nutballs fired guns into the crowd and killed a bunch of people. This year the police force was impressive, and they blocked off all the side streets of İstiklal as well as two major roads on either side. We didn’t go inside the fence but hung out with the water cannon / tear gas launching tanks, whose guns kept moving unnervingly back and forth across the crowds. Then we got Dürüm wraps with chicken and french fries inside. I’d call it the equivalent of the fast food burger except there was also a Burger King next door.

It’s the 4:57 call to prayer. I now know they vary the time because they are going by the sun’s position instead of by timezone, and each city does their own calculations (we got a pamphlet from the Blue Mosque). With the facing of our new apartment we get an impressive cacophony of songs from a dozen different mosques in the old city. Today we checked out the financial district and a modern mall shaped like the death star. Tomorrow we’re planning to take the tram way to the end and check out an old fort and the old city walls.

Stuff and People!

We’ve been doing stuff and meeting people. I was lucky enough to meet up with Ali a couple days ago and yesterday the local indie game devs organised an indie dinner! It was greeeat! The food and the company were both outstanding. I couldn’t believe the meal. Certainly the best we’ve had in Turkey. There were many courses of delicious food and they flew by way to quickly to eat it all. Not that there was any chance I could eat that much food. Good thing the Istanbul guys were there to put away all that food!

It was great to talk about games and how the industry works in Turkey and how we all hope it will work in the future. We were talking about how valuable local meetups are for indie crews to get together and share knowledge and enthusiasm. In fact it looks like the First Istanbul GameJam might be happening in the near future which will be rad!

The Indie dinner was definitely the hi-light of the last couple of days. Aside from that we seem to be striking out on our tourist missions. Topkapi Palace and the Whirling Dervishes were both way overpriced.

Wandering the streets just seems to get better and better though! We had another great meal in the fish market. And the maze of streets around our new apartment really rewards exploration. Overall we’re having a blast. Although hopefully we’ll get a little work done at some point in here ;)

Colin has been doing the talking until now, so let me give you my view on the chaotic and huge (5th largest city in the world) city of Istanbul. First: our neighborhood of Cihangir (Jee-han-yeer), Beyoğlu district. It’s on a hill overlooking the Bosphorus, about 30 minutes walk north of the start of the old city, and 10 minutes southeast of a major shopping district. Filled with artists and expats, winding roads, quaint cafes, and LOTS of stray cats. Let’s take a walk! :D

Up the quiet winding cobblestone street, past the Cihangir mosque is the local SOK! convenience store and a little fruit and veggie stand that may be overcharging us (but the strawberries are SO good). Turn left and you’ll reach the cafe where we had our first breakfast; a delicious array of bread, cream, honey, jam, olives, tomatoes, cucumber, feta, and other cheeses. I hope we go back soon. Continue past it for a few blocks and you’ll get to Sıraselviler street with banks and major grocery stores and such. Wind your way north to İstiklal Avenue, an absolutely mad busy shopping area (3 million people a day!). It’s pedestrian only except for a historic trolley car, so watching taxis try to cross this street in the evening is hilarious. At night it’s still decorated with snowmen and snowflake lights, very festive. Vendors sell rice-stuffed muscles and roasted chestnuts, and every alley is lined with bars and restaurants serving meze (tappas) and an anise flavored liqueur called raki. At the northeast end of İstiklal is Taksim square and the metro, which we took today for the first time.

Today we were on a quest to find modern Istanbul, since we’ve seen so much of ancient old city already. We found it in Şişli at the largest mall in Europe… which didn’t really seem that big to us, although it did have a roller coaster and bowling alley. There was a definite lack of headscarves, and except for the security guys xraying bags and checking for bombs under cars, it was pretty much the same as any mall. Colin bought some “Colin’s” brand pants, and I finally found sunscreen for less than 30 bucks. Next we explored the Şişli area and checked out the construction on the Trump Towers Istanbul. There are very few skyscrapers in Istanbul so these stuck out to us when we saw them from the Galata tower yesterday. Not far north was the start of a decidedly different neighborhood, ramshackle and poor and foreign (Roma). Last night after days of trying I finally got my phone’s data plan working, so we weren’t afraid of getting lost – which you really could if you ended up down in a valley of these tiny twisty streets where everything looks the same. We wandered around, had lunch after a certain amount of translation difficulty, took some surreptitious photos (this was one of the better maintained streets) then skedaddled back home.

Now I’m staring out at our amazing view, watching the ships go past. I’m eating unripe plums and drinking fragrant orange tea we bought from the spice market. The bitter taste of the plums was surprising and took some getting used to; they usually dip them in salt but I think that just makes them worse. Our local mosques just started the 5pm call to prayer. 4:52 today.. it always seems to be give-or-take ten minutes. The stormy winds from last night have subsided and the sun has broken out over the Asian side. We’ll probably stay in again and have homemade meze and çiğ köfte (spiced raw meat). The garbage guy should be ringing our doorbell soon, then Pete and Leah get back from Cappadocia late tonight. Hopefully there will be enough water pressure for a shower before bed (my only complaint about this beautiful apartment and ideal location).

Then tomorrow, who knows!

Another quite good day in Istanbul yesterday.

We could have our first propper self-prepared Turkish breakfast since we got some kaymak to go with our bread and honey. Then decided to wander up the Bosphorus, which turned out to be harder than I expected. most cities on a body of water have a walking trail along that body of water so you can stroll lazily past the city enjoying both the water and the city. Not so with Istanbul. The walk is constantly being interrupted by dead ends, ferry terminals, and palaces. The ferry terminals I get. But the dead ends shouldn’t exist and the palaces should open their seaside walk to the public. So we did manage to walk noth, if not on the Bosphorus. And we walked past a lot of palaces and ferry terminals. One of the palaces, Çırağan Palace, was turned into a hotel in the late 80’s after a fire gutted it.

It looks pretty amazing from the outside. The palace was constructed in the late 1800s and is all baroque and impressive. I’ve never seen a hotel that used to be a state palace. It feels quite wrong and aparently the city took a lot of flack for letting it happen. But there are _so many_ palaces that I can see it being hard to keep up all of them. In fact we took a walk in the nice park behind the palace which also contains another palace.

The park is really nice. It used to be the royal hunting grounds until the city krept its way out there at which point they put a wall around all 25 acres of it. When the palace went up across the street they built a bridge over the road so the Sultan and guests could get back and forth without having to deal with any lowly mortals. The park contains fountains and cafes, views of the Bosforus, a whole big ass palace, and a few excerise areas. The excercise areas were the most amusing! They were full of these crazy machines, most of which seemed to have little to do with excercise.

One of them let you swing your legs back and forth. But it was on a nicely oiled joint so it took no effort to swing your legs back and forth. There were these dinner-plate-like-things with handles on them so you could spin them in circles… but it took no effort to spin them in circles so you just looked like a crazy person spinning dinner plates in circles. We saw a few head-scarf-trench-coat clad women “excercising” on one of the… I don’t even know… “walking simulators”? So mabey if you are dressed in such an impractical manner this is about as close to exercise as you can get.

From there we had to hot-foot it to get lunch because we met Ali Bati, a turkish game author, for lunch. How cool is that? The indie game scene has made me friends in countries I haven’t even been yet! Lunch was great except for the food. Ali is in his last year of University and has released two flash games: Screw Effect and Legend of Kupapa. Both of which I suggest you play. We talked about Turkey and Canada and a lot about games. Which is always fun. Hopefully we’re going to make a dinner happen in a few days with some more local authors and I also want to do a work-day sometime. I also discovered how hard it is to buy your own lunch when you go out with a local here. I owe you one Ali!

We lunched in Galata tower which has a crazy amazing view. The tower was built by the Genoese for… I’m not actually sure what reason. But I’m glad they did. It’s the highest point in the old city and you can see everything from up there. It’s an even more impressive view after you’ve been wandering the cramped maze of streets surrounding it. Ali gave us some history of the tower and we talked about Istanbul architecture while we had a good view of so much architecture. I decided that Istanbul is the opposite of Vancouver. Cramped, storied in history, chaotic, and located on almost exactly the other side of the world. van = 128 W longitude, Ist = 23 E, 128 + 23 = 151. 180 would be exactly on the other side of the world.

So it was another pretty excelent day. Today, I’m not sure what our plans are. I wrote a little but of code already, which I’m quite pleased with. We’ll see where the day takes us.