Churches, Monasteries, and Cathedrals...Oh My!

I watched with fascination as the barren landscape unfolded around me. "Outdated" and "poverty" were the first words that sprung to mind. Visibly, Bulgaria is an incredibly poor country, and realistically that’s a fairly accurate description - the average pension for a retired person is 150 Leva ($105 USD) a month. Bulgarians are optimistic that since they joined the EU, the government will subsidize wages, agriculture, and it will give an overall boost to the economy. There are EU flags everywhere and signs congratulating the country on its achievement.

You know what Bulgaria looks like even before you see it.

Just close your eyes and think about the houses, the animals, the landscape.

And you are exactly right.

The hills are a patchwork of ragged crops littered with trash and circled by horse-drawn buggies. The cars are antique and painted in dust. Houses are collapsed red-tiled roofs with laundry flying off the clothesline. In the cities, people live in row upon row of Communist block apartments, stacked together by plaster like bathroom tiles. Every one of the apartments is occupied.

We arrived early Friday morning in Plovdiv and spent the next few hours wandering around town exploring the sites. Dig down a few feet anywhere in Plovdiv and you're bound to find something. History oozes from every corner of this town…with ruins dating back 7000 years to 5000 BC, the area has been continually inhabited, invaded, destroyed, rebuilt, re-invaded and so on since that time. Walking around Plovdiv you can see Roman Ruins, Thracian Ruins (from 5000 BC), Churches from the 13th Century through to the 17th Century and Mosques from the Turkish occupation.

After a quick lunch at a traditional Bulgarian restaurant we caught our bus to Sofya and settled in for the next 2 hours to watch the countryside fly by. When we stepped out of the bus station and flagged a cab to get us to our hostel, it finally hit me that we were definitely not in Istanbul anymore. The taxi drivers waited patiently in their cars until you picked one out, hopped in, and gave them a destination unlike in Turkey where no matter where you go you are bound to have no less than 10 drivers shouting buyrun, buyrun (in true Welcome Back, Kotter, ‘ooh, ooh, pick me, pick me!!’ fashion - 5 points to whoever can name the character reference). Much to my delight, the cab driver was talkative and we chatted in Russian all the way to the hostel about how I liked Bulgaria, where I was from, and how I liked studying in Istanbul. As we drove through town, he pointed out good places to eat and how to get to various sites that we just had to visit while we were there.

After checking in, we set out for the evening to explore Bulgaria’s capital city. Sofya is much like any Eastern European big city and can be summed up in very few words: small, dirty, and looks like Communism fell last year, not almost 2 decades ago. Despite the desolate atmosphere of the place, only made gloomier by the grey skies, cold temperatures (35 F) and rain, the city is dotted with stunning churches, monuments, and architecture. Our wanderings around town were cut short as the rain quickly turned to snow and we came upon a park. Here, we played in the snow for almost an hour as the remaining daylight disappeared and darkness set in.



Saturday morning was spent exploring the rest of the city that we skipped the night before. When we arrived at Saint Sofya, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in the city’s center known for being partly blow up in a terrorist attack in 1925 and later rebuilt, we wandered in only to find a wedding about the take place. We weren’t the only tourists there though, and after trying to slip out quietly before being noticed in the back a kind little old lady started pulling us towards seats. Attempting to explain that we were sorry and would just leave didn’t work so well seeing as she didn’t speak any English, only Bulgarian and limited Russian. Instead we were told to take a seat, enjoy the wedding, and get to see what a Bulgarian Orthodox service was like…why not? Although I was skeptical, the 20 minutes service was beautiful and Orthodox customs quite interesting. None of us understood a word of what was said, seeing as the entire service was chanted and sung in Old Bulgarian, but it was fascinating to watch none-the-less. From there, we wandered around town to see some monuments before ending up at the Aleksander Nevski Cathedral – an absolutely stunning golden domed building with the interior completely covered in gorgeous paintings, goldwork, thousands of candles, and almost 100 Orthodox icons.

Saturday afternoon we went up to Vitosha National Park, the mountain only a few kilometers from Sofia. The taxi ride there was crazy, with the driver making up lanes, muttering in Bulgarian and hitting the ceiling of the taxi at random times. We rode the smaller lift half-way up the mountain, the other lift, apparently, ne rabotayet (wasn't working) though. With the ground mushy, slippery, and still covered in snow, we didn’t make it all the way to the top like we had planned, but still had fun and enjoyed the view and the snowball fights.



My favorite memory of Bulgaria was the trip we made to Rila Monastery in the mountains of Bulgaria Sunday and Monday morning. The monastery was started by St. Ivan Rilski, a hermit who lived in a cave for 12 years, and today it is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. We spent Sunday morning and early afternoon doing some hiking in the Rila Mountains before finally taking the path down that would lead us to the monastery itself. The monastery is a place of inspiration for everyone: it is a place where you can escape from the hectic life of modern society, and get yourself back on track again by experiencing the beauty, mystique and simplicity of this place…enough time for contemplation about the meaning of life, since there is not much else to do then. We stayed Sunday night at the monastery (which to this day is still practicing) and once again I had some really neat conversations with a few of the monks over supper.





I woke early Monday morning around 6 am and sat outside in the cloisters until around 730 just to think and enjoy the silence. It was so quiet during this period, occasionally from behind a door a rustle of keys could be heard, a monk would walk out, walk a few meters bring out some keys and enter a new door. Then a few minutes later another door and another (or possibly the same) monk would repeat the process. This weekend trip, although a spur of the moment decision, was a chance for us to escape the daily hustle and bustle of Istanbul and big city life. This hour and a half of me-time was serene and the crisp mountain air and quiet, still surroundings was just what I needed.

We took a bus around 9:30 that morning and made the 2 hour trip back to Sofya to catch our bus to get back to Istanbul and real life. This trip, unlike the one we made Thursday night was completely in daylight so we got to see much more of the Bulgarian and Turkish countryside as we traveled the 9 hours to get back home to rejoin the hustle and bustle of Istanbul.

"şehitler ölmez, vatan bölünmez!"

So what does this Turkish phrase mean?

"Martyrs never die, you can never divide our country!"

Now, this probably doesn't mean anything to most of us, I realize, but it definitely got me thinking. Last night, I went to the Turkey-Greece game. It was a pretty boring affair, as far as football matches (soccer games) go; Greece 1 - Turkey 0. Turkey now probably won't go to the UEFA European Cup this summer. I'm not European, so while I'm a little dejected, I'm quite consolable.




Of course, Turkey and Greece have quite a history with each other. Only these two countries can fight their wars of independence against each other at different times (almost a century apart). And who can forget their shenanigans in the Aegean, Cyprus, etc. Things are pretty cool now, although horrifying earthquakes and massive forest fires can do quite a lot to bring folks together.

So if you haven't been paying attention to the news vis-a-vis Turkey right now, you're missing out on a lot. For starters, Turkey recalled its ambassador to the US for the past 10 days as the US Congress debated approval of a bill describing Turkey’s WWI-era mass killings of Armenians as genocide. Then, 13 soldiers were killed in Sirnak by the PKK (Kurdish Separtist Party) over the Bayram this weekend. Finally, the Turkish parliament approved military moves against [Kurdish Northern] Iraq Tuesday evening to try to put an end the problems.

And thus, "şehitler ölmez, vatan bölünmez!"

Football matches really aren't parallel to anything I can think of in the States. We don't have these massive outpourings of nationalism, at least not unless there is a Very Good Reason. The closest that I can come is any big event or gathering post-9/11, but even that doesn’t really touch on the atmosphere here. Nobody likes the John Mellencamp "This is Our Country" ads. We hardly ever rally around the flag, do we? And not to get political here, but does any other country ever have people running for Head of State on the idea that they are against a war that they are currently involved in?

It isn't like Turks are a monolithic ultranationalist people, but the crowd mentality kicks in, and football matches do matter tremendously, especially on a national scale. And since they matter, they are of course on every television in the country. And if they're on every television, then what better time to make a statement of national unity? A statement like "şehitler ölmez, vatan bölünmez!"? A crowd of 50,000 can make a tremendous difference – here in Turkey, one isn't going to find a protest that large anywhere except in a football stadium. It is pretty neat to say that I was present when the Turkish Nation demanded that something be done. This chant wasn't the only one sung. The most memorable one included the names of all 13 dead soldiers with the response, "We Remember!"

Another thing we Americans have a hard time understanding is Nationalism. We really don't have it, in the same way Europe does. Our ultra-conservatives still embrace the whole "America as melting-pot" idea. The best example I can think of to show how all-embracing we are is food: in no other country can you spend $60 on a Thai dinner, or at a Chilean or Ethiopian restaurant. We embrace having all of these different people here; we may not want our sons or daughters to marry them, but at least we recognize their right to exist. Even with the whole illegal-immigration issues recently. We don’t have a Le Pen situation, unlike France did in trying to force all the North Africans out of the country.

But Turkey? Turkey's funny. I couldn't even begin to explain it here. Basically, their laws say that if you are a Turkish citizen, if you have a Turkish passport, then you are a Turk. Period. Sounds great, hmm? Unfortunately, if you are a Turk, you aren't anything else. You aren't an Armenian, a Greek, a Laz, a Jew...and you most certainly aren't a Kurd. The word "Kurd" didn't exist in the Turkish government until recently. They just didn’t exist, even when groups like the PKK were demanding independence in their name and blowing stuff up. But Turkey has a history of a whole lot of folks nibbling away at their lands. The whole concept of "Nationalism" turned the Balkans from a peaceful mosaic community into, well, the Balkans. So when Mustafa Kemal [Ataturk] came into power and created the Turkish Republic, he basically created a Turkish Nation from scratch. New national history, new symbols, new everything. And he did a good job, because everything seems so old. Once again, it is all founded on the idea that Hepimiz Turkler, that we are all Turks.

But nationalism doesn't die, it just sleeps for a while. The folks in the Southeast, who didn't speak Turkish so well, wanted to start speaking Kurdish ;and eventually, because terror is nothing but negotiation by other means, the angrier of these folks started blowing things up. And now that there's a secure Kurdish base in Northern Iraq (the happy part of Iraq, for those of you following the War in Iraq from back at home), the angrier of these angrier folks have a lot more on their side of negotiations, including an American President who wants any sort of peace he can find.

So Turkey is friendless and alone and dealing with an internal enemy that just won't go away. What am I trying to say here? I guess that this is neither the end of the story nor the last time you'll hear about Kurds, Turkey, Iraq, and the rest between now and January. This This is just the beginning. And I get to be here for the opening scenes of post-Ocalan PKK.

For all of the books and all of the articles that I read about Turkey before I left the States, none of this really made sense until I heard (and was part of) the crowd last night. "şehitler ölmez, vatan bölünmez!"

Franklin Foer may have had something there when he said that 'Soccer explained the world', eh?

Ramazan in Sultanahmet

Wednesday night we celebrated the end of the day's Ramazan fast in Sultanahmet at the Hippodrome. Every night during the month of Ramazan, a month-long daily fast for the most pious of Muslims, a huge carnival breaks out in Istanbul's oldest part of the city, Sultanahmet. For more than 500 years, Muslims have celebrated Ramazan in the Hippodrome, a long park positioned between the most beautiful structures in the world, the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.

And let me tell you, this was a carnival like no other I have ever seen. To most Americans, any carnival or festival isn't complete without hotdogs and beer, but I can say easily that I have never had more fun than last night.

The best part of Ramazan is, of course, the iftar hour, the hour that breaks the fast and everyone eats like there's no tomorrow. Or, rather, eats like there is tomorrow but you won't be able to eat all day then either. The carnival is filled with every kind of food imaginable and you're just insane not to try and taste a little bit of everything. And believe me, I did my part very well.

I'm still not a huge fan of Turkish coffee, although it is starting to grow on me. I suppose my years of drinking coffee in America, especially the Starbucks kind, has not prepared me for the bitter, granular taste of Turkish coffee. But this stuff here is by far the best.


The coffee is made over an open fire, giving the coffee an almost oaky, woody taste.



The coffee is served in small cups because, obviously, you can't have too much of this stuff.


As if the coffee didn't get me wired up enough, I then ate some sugar on a stick. Seriously. This stuff is like salt water taffy, without the salt water taste. It's 100 percent pure sugar and it is utterly delicious.



There are, of course, other more traditional Turkish sweets, like baklava, sekerpara, sutlac, and these walnuts covered in some kind of syrupy sugar.



And it's not like there's nothing healthy at a Ramadan carnival. It's just that we chose not to eat most of it. Like all these healthy fruit and nuts.





I did have some fresh-squeezed pomegrantite juice. See, that's healthy!



After all that food, we really needed to walk around a bit, so we joined the thousands of other Turks walking the Hippodrome.



But, despite the food and the crowds, by far the coolest part of the night was seeing the Blue Mosque all lit up and aglow.

Day Trip to the Border

The region west of Istanbul, better known as Thrace, is the only province of Turkey that is entirely in Europe. It is less “Turkish,” less exotic than Asian Turkey, and in many ways, it reminds people of Greece or the Balkan countries. Sunday, 11 of us decided to venture out of Istanbul for the day and caught a bus heading northwest to the town of Edirne.

Edirne was the Ottoman capital prior to the liberation of Istanbul, and home to many mosques and other historical entities. The old palace, unfortunately, was blown up by the retreating Turks before they surrendered the city to the Bulgarians during the 1st Balkan war (1913). The city was later retaken when the Balkan nations fought each other for more land during the second Balkan war. Despite said destruction, the city is like an open-air museum, with mosques, covered bazaars, hamams, and old houses everywhere you turn. The ancient portion of the city which resided between the city walls doesn't contain a single mosque although it includes a synagogue, a Greek church, Armenian inscriptions, and multiple Greek-looking structures and at least one area which I believe was a Christian cemetery of sorts. Most of the non-Muslim population has since moved (voluntarily or involuntarily) elsewhere, and the churches as well as old houses are falling into disrepair.


When Atatürk established the Turkish Republic in 1922, a grand-scale population exchange between Greeks and Turks followed. This population transfer was used to resolve the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922). It was agreed that the Turkish inhabitants of Greece moved to Turkey and the Greek inhabitants of Turkey to Greece. This may be one of the reasons why Thrace feels less Turkish.

The highway from Istanbul to Edirne follows the Via Egnatia, the Roman road that connected Rome and Istanbul during the Roman and later Byzantine Empires. Rivers were spanned with extraordinary architecture and some Roman and Byzantine arched bridges still remain in use today.

Edirne is located 17 km from the Greek border and 22 from the Bulgarian, and as visitors cross the borders it is often visited as a rest stop before heading on to Istanbul, but nothing more. After a busy morning of traveling and visiting the famous Selimiye Mosque and the Bayezid Complex we considered flipping a coin and crossing whichever border resulted only to realize that we would have to stay 24 hours outside of Turkey to be allowed back in. As this was not an option due to Monday classes we decided to continue with our explorations and make plans for Bulgaria another weekend.

The Health Museum in the Sultan Bayezid II Complex was one of my favorites from the trip. Unappealing though the name ‘health museum’ sounds, it was fantastic. The museum makes up the hospital portion of the complex and shows what treatments were used in the Byzantine days. Later, the complex served as an insane asylum and patients were treated in domed cells with therapy such as the sound of water, occupational therapy, music, and the sweet aromas of flowers from the surrounding gardens. Currently, six rooms and a music hall have been beautifully restored. Water runs from a fountain in the central courtyard and wax dolls in the rooms represent patients and doctors to give visitors an impression of what daily life looked like.


If I haven't mentioned this before, Turkish paving is awful! Never again will I complain about bumpy roads that need to be repaved in the States. No matter where you are in Turkey, be it Istanbul, Cappadocia, or Edirne there are 4 easy steps for paving a road:
1. Knock down trees, villages, etc
2) Spread Tar
3) Find the biggest rocks in your regions and drop them on said tar
4) Open road to traffic