Scavenger Hunt!!!

Today we met with Prof. Shields at our usual teahouse for our SCAVENGER HUNT! In Istanbul. Way cooler than normal scavenger hunts. My team, aka TEAM AWESOME consisted of David, Kelly, Emily, and me. Our list had a bunch of things on it, but they were clues and not just directions, so we had to figure them out. For example, one of the clues was “Bring back photos of yourselves in front of three Sinan buildings.” To accomplish this task, we had to first figure out who Sinan was! Well, I did at least. My group already knew. Sinan (1490 – 1588) was a janissary and learned about construction to become one of the great Ottoman architects. Another one of the instructions was “photograph a vendor of fresh orange juice.” That’s the one we did first and I got a delicious glass of blood orange juice right outside of Galata Tower near our flat. After that we took pictures of vegetables and bread (all which were listed in Turkish as clues), greatly confusing the vegetable vendor who I’m sure was hoping we would actually buy some of his vegetables rather than just photograph them. Crazy Americans, he probably thought. Then we went over the Galata Bridge into the Sultanahamet district to photograph some of the historic sites on our list. We went through the tunnel that goes under the main road, which is another hopping marketplace. There we found the answer another one of our clues – the colors to all the football teams of Turkey. After getting to Sultanahmet our first stop was Topkapi Palace, home to Ottoman sultans. There were a bunch of school groups there, and all of the kids were shouting “Hello!” “Take a picture!” So we did. This girl on the right was posing like a supermodel! I wonder where she learned that from. After that we traveled up to the Sublime Port, which was the gateway that led to the Grand Vizier’s office during the Ottoman Empire. Cool, but a little underwhelming. Next we attempted to find Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Fountain which was a huge challenge. Apparently, Istanbullus do not know it very well, because we got several perplexed looks when we asked about it. David finally found it and was ecstatic. (see picture below). It was incredibly hot, so David and I splashed some water on ourselves. There, we met another school group, probably about 4^th or 5^th grade, and they started with the inevitable “Hello!” trying out their English on us. One boy asked us our names and I told him mine, he gave me his (which due to more than a little genetic inheritance from Mom, I promptly forgot) and then I decided to pull out some of my Turkish and said to him, “Memnun oldum,” which means “Nice to meet you.” He apparently was impressed, because then he began saying to me, “Beautiful, Kristina. I love you, Kristina!” and continued as he was walking away, his friends snapping pictures. And that is how I met my Turkish lover (sorry Thomas!).

Then we went to try to find an Ottoman palace, which actually turned out to be a Byzantine palace. As we were intensely discussing how to find it, one of the guys who tries to get you to eat at their restaurant approached us and told us that we could see the palace from the restaurant’s terrace! Perf! We went up there and located the palace, or what was left of it. Then we ran into a nice little market and photographed some artichokes. The Turkish word for artichoke is “enginar,” and I was saying to David when a Turk overhear dme. Apparently there is a Turkish word that means “hello” that is close to enginar because he tried to instruct me in its pronunciation and then said, “Or you can just say merhaba.” I told him I was actually looking for artichokes not trying to say hello.

After that we headed up to Suleymaniiye to check out Sinan’s skills on a grander scale than the two minarets and his smaller mosque. Suleymaniiye is having work done on the minarets, so we didn’t end up going inside but we did walk through the cemetery outside which was pretty neat. I’m not exactly sure who was buried there, but it was pretty and serene. We tried to go from there to Sinan’s other mosque near the Spice Bazaar and Yeni Camii, but we pretty much failed, getting fairly lost. This was our team’s low point. We were hot, hungry, and tired, and the hill we were climbing was never-ending. We finally asked some friendly Turks and they instructed us to take a tram. We did, found the mosque, and then hopped on the ferry to head over to Asia to finish up the hunt. The first port we stopped at housed the train station that we needed a train schedule for as part of the hunt, so we grabbed one and then decided to get on a train to get to Kadikoy. We thought it would be a tram-like thing, but it was a real honest to goodness train that I think would have taken us to Syria (36 hours away). As the train was pulling away, A simitci (simit seller) began running along the side, trying to hop on the train. A few of his simit crates slid off of the train, and a few fell onto the train. He picked up the ones that had fallen on the train floor and put them back on his selling table! One of the Turks on the train yelled at him for it. We arrived at what we thought was our stop and had NO IDEA WHERE WE WERE. We walked outside and felt very dejected because we were pretty sure we were completely lost in Asia. Then Kelly said, “Wait, isn’t that where the market was yesterday?” Sure enough, she was right! We walked up the street and immediately found a place for Efes. We REALLY needed it. There we saw the famous goose that lives on that street! I asked out waiter (who spoke no English) if the goose would bite (solely through body language) and he said no, so I decided to go try to pet it. There was another Turk watching the goose, and I also asked him through body language and he gave me an emphatic YES! So I decided not to pet the goose.

When we got back to our flat, it was time to go to Prof. Shield’s flat for dinner and stories from the day. Getting to her flat was a journey in and of itself but we arrived and were fed a delicious and well-deserved dinner with cake from Mado, a delectable dessert restaurant. Then we went back to our flat to hang out with our Turkish friends from the third floor, Murat, Ugur, and Eugel. We had our first taste of raki, which is the Turkish national liquor. It’s flavored with anise, so it tastes like black licorice which is gross. But it looks really cool – it’s a clear liquid that turns milky white when you add water to it, which is how it is served. A really interesting thing happened which sort of explains what Turkish culture is like. During the night call to prayer, the three Turks stopped drinking and said, “Heziz Allah.” Interesting, because drinking at all is forbidden according to the laws of Islam. I think religion is a sort of “pick and choose” thing here, because although the country is 97% Muslim, you can see things like a store displaying fashionable traditional Muslim clothing and see a store selling skimpy bikinis in the same block. I can’t figure it out – maybe I will be able to by the end of this program!