Futbol! Tonight in Cappadocia, we will be watching Turkey vs. Germany in the Euro League Championship

Click to enlarge the Brummet youth on the rocks

After a great & restorative dinner and some wine at our pensione, we are walking to the village to watch the Euro League Championship...Turkey vs.; Germany.
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Istanbul's Efes Pilsen One Love Festival,with Gogol Bordello by Del and Claire Brummet

Story By Del Brummet
All This Is That Contributing Music Reporter

Photographs by Claire Brummet
All This Is That Contributing Photographer


The Efes Pilsen One Love Festival was basically a small version of Seattle's Bumbershoot. Tons of hip 18-30 year 0lds were there plus, cool younger kids and older people grasping a hip life style. Keelin, our mom, was the first to become aware of this festival, and she was the one to get me and my sister to go, despite the fact that we thought it would cost 50 Turkish Lira. The bands to play at the festival were Shantel, Miss Platinum, Baba Zula, Kolektif Istanbul, and GOGOL BORDELLO!


Del relaxing between sets

Gogol Bordello was of course our first lure, but when we learned that the festival was near at hand and possible to go to we were all in. To start the long and fantastic day, we walked from our apartment to a big square, where we would supposedly get free shuttles to the concert. It turned out perfectly. We stepped onto the bus, and could already tell the day was going to be awesome. After a quick, rocky, and somewhat frightening bus ride to the concert, we stepped out into a part of Istanbul unknown to us, and followed the hipsters onto a college campus.


Partezani!

We bought our ticket at a student price of thirty lira which was awesome, and then went through two security checks (separated by gender), and finally came into the festival. It was totally cool looking, with a great lawn and beer stands perched left and right. People walked around and laid in the grass. We had stumbled on an exciting tradition of hip Turkish younguns, and we were stoked. The biggest difference between this festival and Bumbershoot (besides way less people) was that first of all there were waaaaaay more beer stands than food stands (there were four food stands) and also you could drink beer anywhere you wanted. This was a beer festival after all, sponsored by Efes Pilsen, a popular beer in Istanbul.

The first band (we are not actually sure of the name of the band) started and they were awesome, with a far different sound than music we normally hear, with occasional lyrics, and sporting a violin, electric guitar, bass, drums and a trombone. They turned out to be my favorite Turkish band of the night. After that the bands were still interesting, but not entirely notable until a band called Shantel & The Bucovina Club Orkestra appeared.




The Miller booth, where you could sing high after sucking down helium

Shantel & The Bucovina Club Orkestra wasn't notable due to talent, but more the fact that the Turkish people loved them. Their songs included such intelligible and fantastic lyrics as “Disko! Disko! Partizani!” or another classic “Parti! Parti! Partizani!” This was from what was obviously the Turks favorite song ,“Disko Partizani.” Figuring out which was the Turkish people’s favorite wasn’t too hard due to the fact that Shantel played it twice! A feat I had never seen in concert and believed only possible in part robot humans….which I would look into for this band. They weren’t incredibly good in the least bit, but people definitely loved them most of all.




Our favorite band Gogol Bordello came on last (eight hours after we arrived). They jumped on stage and started one of their usual raucous songs. The main singer had an awesome guitar that sounded like musical sword in a fight, and other than him there was a drummer, an old violinist man, an electric guitarist, a bassist, an accordionist, and two dancing women in tight pink outfits who were mildly hilarious. Their whole show was awesome. They played a few favorites, along with what sounded like new ones that I hadn’t heard. I have only seen them once before, and the biggest difference about this concert was that no one in the concert moshed, but it still ended up being fantasticalismatatic, as you can see in this maraudingly colorful and wondrous video. We went home on the same free shuttle, and back to the square, in happiness.
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Goodbye Istanbul, hello Cappadocia

Our fantastic week in Istanbul is over and this morning we fly off to Cappadocia in central Turkey, with its incredible physical features. They say it is the home of some of the most unique geology on the planet. I've heard that you see glimpses of it in the Star Wars movie.


I took the snapshot of our 'plane after we landed. It was the only 'plane at the airport!

Later note: we arrived a few hours ago after a one hour flight via the excellent Turkish Air. The caves and land forms are stunning, about which more later. Since I only slept two hours last night, I hung out for a nap while the family went on a hike to visit some caves and explore a church...
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Topkapi Palace and Mohammed's tooth, hair, sword, and footprint

Click to enlarge - one of the Sultan's elaborately decorated sitting rooms.

If you have to sit, this would be a fine place to do just that.

The gigantic cooking building - click to enlarge

Topkapi Palace and the Topkapi Palace Harem are where the Ottoman Sultans ruled their empire from this Istanbul, Turkey palace from the 15-19th centuries. And the Sultans lived large, believe me, along with their hundreds of servants, political aides and bureaucrats, and if you believe the various histories, somewhere between 4 and 300 wives and concubines. The palace was constructed to be self-contained, and insulate the Sultan from the riff-raff. And they did a pretty good job. It is really a self-contained city. One example is the cooking building. There were hundreds of cooks, bakers, dessert chefs, cheese and yoghurt makers. And they all lived in the multi-domed cooking building that even had its own mosque. They cooked for hundreds people each day and up to 10,000 people during feasts.

The palace is filled with all sorts of historical artifacts and the swag and booty of the Sultans. There is a vast collection of Ming and other dynasty china, cooking utensils, jewels, and swords and daggers. There is geometric hand made tile covering nearly every surface of the many buildings...at least the ones not covered in gold leaf and stained glass windows.

A view of the palace from our boat on the Bosphorus

Of greatest interest to me--and certainly to the many hundreds of Turks crowded into the rooms--are the holy relics from Mohammed's life. I can now say that I have seen Mohammed's hair, footprint, sword, and a tooth he broke in battle. The rooms containing these holy relics are filled with the sound of an imam constantly chanting the Quran. I thought it might be recorded, but on reflection, I believe there was an actual chanting Imam behind a curtain or in a booth somewhere.

A beautifully painted wall

Next to Mohammed's relics, the most notable goodies include the Topkapi Dagger, with a handle inlaid with three enormous emeralds, and the Spoonmaker's Diamond, which at 86 carats is actually the 5th largest diamond in the world. Ah, I've never been that impressed with diamonds, but this one is impressive in size at least.

Artifacts in the second courtyard of the palace

We probably only saw 1/4 of the palace and exhibits before we began achieving burnout from all the walking and the heat.

The street cats of Istanbul

After the churches, palaces, museums, and mosques, what I've loved most about Istanbul is the street life. The smells of food cooking, charcoal, oranges and cherries being squeezed; the sights of the thousands of people in all versions of dress, from extreme fundamental clothing to western dress, punk clothes, sports jerseys, and the more laic local clothing like beige trousers and vests, modest dresses and scarves; the cars inching their way along the cobblestone streets; and, of course, the sounds of prayers being called at the mosques, and the music of the many street musicians and groups in our musical neighborhood...it all rolls up to an incredible and powerful and breathtaking sweep of life. And life in the big city here, at least, is very good.

click the cats to enlarge

Somehow this enormous metropolis has managed to remain all too human. In all the time I've been here, I've yet to see an angry word or any contention of any kind on the streets. The only honking of cars is a quick beep to let the pedestrians know to move over. When the car passes, you go back on the street, since the sidewalks are always filled with cafes, people talking, cats, vendors, and merch. carts. You constantly shuffle between the streets and steps and the sidewalk.

The streets are amazing, vital and inspiring. And the people walking the streets are almost all talking and seem in great spirits.

And then, there are the cats. There are street cats everywhere here, and people treat them with great love. You see people feed them and there are bowls of water along almost any street. People (and us too) often bend down to pat a cat sleeping on a stoop or in a planter, or on the sidewalk. They range from well-cared for and well-fed to not quite feral; but even the lean scraggly ones seem collectively cared for. How sweet it is to see that.
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Poem: That Cold Island Far Across The Sea

Walking among the Turks on cobblestone streets
And seeing the kids rebel against The Moslem Way
Confirms they're people just like you and me

Working for what their hearts say is right.
Sending in the troops, fighting over oil
And throwing stones

Doesn't come from the people
But it ends there.
When I see them smile

As they listen to music
On the street
I get it.

They like ice cream just like you.
They like music just like me,
And if it were up to us

We'd all get along just fine.
As I walk the streets of Istanbul,
I almost get the feeling--

When I see their smiles
And hear their music
And even when I witness their indifference--

We're edging toward goodness,
And the time of mindless division
Is coming to an end.

We're edging toward the day
We throw the rifles down
And Moslem, Christian, Jew, atheist,

Infidel, Catholic and Baptist
Stand together as one,
And shuck the bonds of money, oil,

Lust, ambition, and madness,
And give each other bear hugs
As we watch the leaders

Who thrive on our divisions trundled off
Onto a boat that takes them away
To that cold island far across the sea.
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Istanbul: The Basilica Cistern

Click to enlarge the Basilica Cistern's forest of columns

After visiting the Blue Mosque, Keelin and I toured the Basilica Cistern. It is in very close proximity to the former Aya Sofya Basilica cum Mosque cum museum, and is the size of a very large church.

According to the handy pamphlet I picked up, this ancient reservoir is "is an underground chamber of 143 by 65 metres, capable of holding 80,000 cubic metres of water." The enormous space is divided by what looks like a forest of "336 marble columns each 9 metres high. The columns are arranged in 12 rows each consisting of 28 columns."

This entire cistern was completely submerged when it was filled with water. And yet every single one of those columns has a carved capital! There are Ionic and Corinthian styles, and a few Doric ones. Emperor Constantine had previously built a basilica and cistern on the same spot, according to some ancient historians. As Constantinople grew, the demand for water grew as well, and Emperor Justinian later enlarged the cistern.

Even though the columns were submerged, and hidden from the public eye, they had ornate capitals, as I mentioned, and some of the columns were even elaborately decorated (see my photo on the right of the "peacock eye" column). The cistern is surrounded by a brick wall 14 feet thick, coated with some sort of waterproof mortar. The water came from the Belgrade Woods—about 12 miles away—through aqueducts (parts of which still survive) built by the Emperor Justinian.


Click to enlarge the Medusa sideways at the bottom of a column

15 Centuries later, they repaired cracks in the wall, and the columns were restored. They reopened the cistern to the public and started charging a 10 YTL admission in 1987.

The bases of two columns at the tail end of the cistern rest on two ginormous sculptures of the head of a Medusa. No one one knows where the heads came from, but some people think they came from an ancient Roman building in Constantinople. Likewise, no one really knows why one of the heads is upside down, and the other tilted to the side. The Medusas are probably for good luck, or to ward off evil (ed's note: which I kind of think of as passive good luck).


click to enlarge Medusa upside down

Finally, at the bottom of the cistern there are about two or three feet of water, filled with well-fed carp. Once again, I am utterly blown away by the scale of the ancient public works and the stunning attention to detail--details no one except maintenance crews and archaeologists would see for 1600 years!


Click to enlarge the carp
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Türkiye ya! Türkiye surprises the Croatians

By Colum Brummet,
All This Is That Sports Editor

On our first night in Istanbul, there was a huge semi-final game in the Euro league soccer tournament—Turkey vs. Croatia. It was the best soccer game I have ever seen. Croatia scored the first goal of the game in the second overtime with 3 minutes left in the game. Turkey's team was on a mad scramble up the field to score a goal and force a shoot out. Once again, Turkey had scored a last second goal. It was amazing!





Turkey's penalty shootout victory over Croatia in the quarter-finals of Euro 2008 at Ernst Happel stadium, Vienna on Friday


The bar in Istanbul erupted and people were running around giving cheers and high-fives. I had never been so excited over a team I knew nothing about. I could not even name one player.


Now, Turkey still had to win the game! It went to a shoot out and Turkey pulled it out for the victory. As soon as the shoot out was over, a Turkish victory song started blasting in the bar and everyone was celebrating and dancing, shouting "Türkiye!"


We walked out to the street to see the celebration. There were thousands of people walking up the street waving flags chanting "Türkiye Türkiye Türkiye!" It was extremely crowded and almost felt like the beginning of a riot. Everyone was walking towards the main square.


When arrived at the main square, people were lighting flares, throwing beers through the air, and doing anything to express their happiness. Del and I hung out there for a while and realized that these people were going to be out all night going wild, so we decided to call it a night.
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The Blue Mosque in Istanbul

Click to enlarge the Blue Mosque




Keelin and Claire put their head scarves on for a visit to The Blue Mosque - click to enlarge

The Blue Mosque was built by a Sultan--Ahmet I. His architect began construction in 1609 it was finished by 1616! That's amazing to us because we have seen so many Basilicas and churches in England, Spain, Italy and elsewhere that took literally hundreds of years to build. Or Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia that is still unfinished.



Compared to Aya Sofya, The Blue Mosque is light and spacious and airy. Architecture had come a long way in those years and they learned to support a dome much more efficiently. There are hundreds of gorgeous stained glass windows, in the Blue Mosque, but very few in Aya Sofya.

It sounds like the Sultan and architect wanted to directly "compete" with the Aya Sofya (they are across the street from each other). They wanted to construct a bigger dome, but that was logistically not possible. However, if you read about Aya Sofya, the dome has collapsed numerous times and had to be rebuilt many times over the centuries.




click to enlarge the courtyard


Instead of competing with the mosque across the street, they created an elegant and beautifully proportioned mosque...with six amazing soaring minarets. Prior to that time, no sultan had a mosque with 6 minarets. According to a sign I read, six minarets put it in direct competition with the Mosque at Mecca, and the architect worried he would be punished.

In the courtyard, are many ablution fountains, where you wash your face, arms, neck, feet, mouth and nose before you pray. [Ed's note, there are ablution fountains all around the streets of Istanbul, just for general cleaning I guess]. The marble courtyard is serene and beautiful.

There is a door on the left hand side which is entrance for local people. The rest of us visitors and infidels go around to the other side to enter. You are inspected as you go in, and remove your shoes and put them in a plastic bag. Women are checked for head scarves, and men and women must wrap a scarf around their legs if their knees or shoulders show. Inside, you walk on a plush soft carpet and gaze at the worshippers, praying toward Mecca. The interior is completely covered in gorgeous blue tile, with abstract symbols and calligraphy. Mosques do not allow the depiction of living beings like Catholic churches do. A leader centuries ago decided living creatures distracted you from worship and prayer.

This was an amazing juxtaposition to the Aya Sofya, with its tumultuous and turbulent history, domes falling down, and its transition from Basilica to Mosque to museum. It was a soulful house of worship, and it radiated peace and devotion and surrender to a Higher Being. I was moved.
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Αγία Σοφία - A visit to Aya Sofya a/k/a Hagia Sophia

Del, Claire, and Keelin in the vestibule of Aya Sofya--click to enlarge


Click to enlarge - Keelin and Jack in front of some excavated columns,
pediments, and other marbe artifacts from an earlier church on the
same site that was later destroyed

We took the train to Aya Sofya this morning to see the one-time patriarchal basilica that became a mosque later in life, and is now a museum and archaeological exhibit. It is most, and justly famous for its unbelievably massive dome, now considered the height of Byzantine architecture. It was built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian and was the church of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the home of the Eastern Orthodox Church for almost 1000 years. It was built in the sixth century.

Later the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople and plastered over most of the Catholic imagery (like a Fresco of Jesus with Justinian and Constantine) and added typical Moslem features like minarets and a mihrab (an alcove that points toward Mecca and may be there to help prayers to pray in the right direction). So the church has had many lives and religions and is a most interesting polyglot. It was the main mosque of Istanbul/Constantinople for hundreds of years and served as the model for other, later mosques. Like the one across the street--The Blue Mosque, about which more later.




Click to enlarge. Claire and Keelin by the "Stele of St Gregory Thaumaturgus" that is said to have magical powers. You put your thumb in the hole, turn 360 degrees, and if a drop of water falls on your thumb--well, you're in luck, Friendo.


Click to enlarge - The mihrab--an alcove that points toward Mecca that may be there to help prayers pray in the right direction [ed's note: totally Jack's speculation]

The partly destroyed, but still stunning mosaic fresco of Jesus with Constantine and Justinian at his sides. It was uncovered after being plastered over for centuries. This was amazing.

Click to enlarge -- Aya Sofya from the steps of the Blue Mosque (about which more later). I'm going to bed.
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The Bazaar, the Spice Bazaar, and a boat ride on the Bosphorus Strait, separating Asia and Europe

...click photos to enlarge...

After a somewhat sleep-jangled start, we went out to breakfast at a restaurant four stories up, on a rooftop, with a view along both shores of the Bosphorus Strait. The food was good, and I especially liked the fresh French bread and fresh-squeezed sour cherry juice. Then, we went to visit the Spice Bazaar, the Grand Bazaar, and take a tourist boat, along with hundreds of Turks, around the Bosphorus Strait.

The spice bazaar, while still functioning as a local fulcrum for purchasing bulk goods, also clearly now caters to tourists, selling many goods no local could ever want, or need. The spices looked great!

On the whole, the merchants were no more aggressive than you see in any other market in Mexico, or even Seattle's public market. There were hundreds of spice merchants, but also many people selling soccer jerseys, chess sets, hookahs, fezes, etc.


The Spice Bazaar


Turkish Viagra for sale


Perfectly groomed mountains of spices

After our walk through the spice bazaar, we decided to take one of the many boat tours around the harbor and got on a boat the Turks were taking, avoiding the more expensive Euro-American tour. Shortly after boarding, Keelin read in her tour book that the boat ride was 8 hours long, and would involve a two hour captive stop at a restaurant! This boat did not even have a bathroom! After passing the bridge, and slowly turning around, we realized this would actually be a much shorter trip.

I could go on and on about this strait and its history of the strait, but if you're really interested, check out this footnote [1], a/k/a satellite data cluster.


Keelin on the tour boat


A view from the boat

A pasha's mansion on the Bosphorus

Twierdza Rumelli

The Bosphorus bridge between Asia and Europe

The strait in a satellite view


An old Pasha's mansion on the Strait

[1] From the Wikipedia: As the only passage between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, the Bosporus has always been of great commercial and strategic importance. The Greek city-state of Athens in the 5th century BC, which was dependent on grain imports from Scythia, therefore maintained critical alliances with cities which controlled the straits, such as the Megarian colony Byzantium.

The strategic significance of the strait was one of the factors in the decision of the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great to found there in 330 AD his new capital, Constantinople, which came to be known as the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. On May 29, 1453 it was conquered by the emerging Ottoman Empire. In fact, as the Ottoman Turks closed in on Constantinople, they constructed a fortification on each side of the strait, Anadoluhisarı (1393) and Rumelihisarı (1451). They later renamed the city Istanbul.

The strategic importance of the Bosporus remains high, and control over it has been an objective of a number of hostilities in modern history, notably the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-1878, as well as of the attack of the Allied Powers on the Dardanelles in 1915 in the course of the First World War. Several international treaties have governed vessels using the waters, including the Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Turkish Straits, signed in 1936. In the conferences during World War II, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin openly requested the concession of Soviet military bases on the Turkish Straits, even though Turkey was not involved in the war. This incident, coupled with Stalin's demands for the restitution of the Turkish provinces of Kars, Artvin and Ardahan to the Soviet Union (which were lost by Turkey with the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) but were regained with the Treaty of Kars in 1921) was one of the main reasons why Turkey decided to give up its principle of neutrality in foreign affairs and join NATO in 1952. In more recent years, the Turkish Straits have become particularly important for the oil industry. Russian oil, from ports such as Novorossyisk, is exported by tankers to western Europe and the U.S. via the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles straits.

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Istanbul: The Galata Tower

Our apartment in Istanbul (nee Constantinople) is just around the corner from the Galata Tower...

The tower was built as Christea Turris (Christ's Tower) in 1348 during the expansion of the Genoese colony in Constantinople. It was part of the fortifications around the citadel of Galata. The two hundred foot tower was the city's tallest structure...back in the 14th century.

The conical cap has changed over the years, but otherwise but the tower mostly stands as it was built. During the Ottoman empire it was used as an observation tower for spotting fires. An urban legend says that in 1638, Hezarfen Ahmet Çelebi flew from the tower with artificial wings over the Bosphorus.



For my part, the tower makes it easy to find our apartment, which is tucked away on the hill among the windy cobblestone streets. And even the most non-English speaking Turk can point out its direction when I ask in my bizarre half-Spanish half-English speech.
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