Tesekkur ederim

We've found that, given how we've mostly been in larger cities, and had very simple needs (ice-cream, wine, coffee and occasionally directions to the nearest tourist attraction), and given how we keep encountering kindness and assistance, we've only needed one word of Greek, Italian, Croatian and Turkish to get by: efharisto; grazie; hvala; and tesekkur ederim. 


Everybody understands 'thank you' in English, of course -- but we felt the sentiment seemed a little more genuine if we made the effort to express it in the local tongue.


Tesekkur ederim (tea-se-cur eh-de-ray) is quite tricky – tricky enough that, apparently, most tourists don't take the trouble to learn it. People in cafes and hotels, on trams and in shops stared and smiled when we thanked them in Turkish for the small services they rendered us. Several asked me if I spoke Turkish -- at which point I had to admit sheepishly that I had now exhausted my full store.


Everywhere in Istanbul the question to a wandering blonde girl is the same – where are you from? Everyone knows New Zealand: 'kiwi, kiwi, kia ora' and one man in the Grand Bazaar even ventured on 'Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa'. He blushed when I said 'Kei te pehea koe?' and cried 'No more Maori, no more Maori!' - but he has more Maori than I have Turkish.

Metal goods shop in the Grand Bazaar

                                                             ***


Blonde women exert a distinct fascination for Turkish men – where are you from, was, in my case, usually followed up by 'are you married?' and a moue of exaggerated disappointment when I nodded my head and pointed at my ring. The next question, if I was still nearby, was 'how long?'. 'Nine years – too long!' said the man who sold me my second rug of the trip (beautiful, although who knows if I paid a good or bad price – either way, I am happy with it) - 'too long, nine years eat the same kebab, get bored!'.


'Oh well,' I said, 'sometimes I have a different sauce'.*


The (cute) receptionist in the hostel asked the series of questions about nationality and wedded status, and then asked: 'how many kids?'.


'None,' I said to him.


'No! Nine years and no kids? Why?' He was genuinely shocked. 'Why?' he said again. I'm not sure my answer ('it's called contraception') was either fully understood, or truly answered this imponderable mystery for him.


Later, as we left for Kiyikoy, he claimed a broken heart, and nearly dissolved with rueful laughter when, in answer to his protestations of devotion, I handed him an empty water bottle to throw away.**


In conclusion to this story – I found Turkish men optimistic and persistent, but not unpleasantly explicit. The younger men, in particular, seemed to have better boundaries – in the few instances that we encountered them, wandering hands belonged to older men. Still, while not unmanageable, life in Istanbul was a little... edgy.

Selection of Turkish men on an Istanbul street

                                                             ***
Istanbul sits on the shores of two continents. From Topkapi Palace, on the European side, the Ottoman Sultans ruled their Empire. In the deeper past, Emperor Constatine moved from Rome to Byzantium (renaming it Constantinople); before even him, 'Alexander the Big' (as Mehemet charmingly translated him) crossed here from Europe into Asia.

Fireplace in Topkapi Palace

Many of the beautiful religious buildings of Istanbul have seen varied service, shifting from churches to mosques, and occasionally back the other way. In the Ayia Sophia, the splendidly rising dome has taken up Christian and Muslim prayer. It is now a museum, no longer a true place of worship.

Ayia Sophia

Across the square from this jumbled but magnificent pink and golden building, the blue mosque is more perfect and ordered, the smooth rounded bulk of its domes set off by the needling minarets. It reminded me (respectfully) of a large and very carefully constructed ice-cream sundae.

Inside, the building had a very different feel to the cool and quiet sense of past glory in the Ayia Sophia. There was new carpet on the floor and most of the area under the dome itself was roped off for the use of worshippers. At the far side of the prayer space, a group of young men was sitting listening to an older man. The building is beautiful, and tourists are lucky to see it – but it is also clearly the centre of an active and energetic community, not, like almost every church we visited, designated as a museum, or kept by a lone elderly custodian, exchanging candles for small coins.


                                                          ***


As I understand, Turkish politics still reflect the multiple possible identities for a country that covers two continents. On the one hand, Turkey is striving to be part of the European union. On the other, as I understand, there are growing nationalist and islamist movements, which meet and mix at some points. The press, I understand, is not as entirely free as some may wish, and it is a crime to make light of the Turiskish flag, or to speak against Turkey.

As well as the buildings and the food, the partying and the charm, the pomegranates and the nargileh, Istanbul has beggars: some young women with children on their hips; some palsied and shaking older men, their shaking bodies folded in on themselves, a hand, clawed into a a begging bowl, protruding from the knot of flesh and bone. And there are other, more picturesque signs of poverty – the men fishing from the Galanta Bridge – yes they might enjoy it, but I was told most of them are there to try and feed their families – the men carrying great loads of rubbish on their backs through the streets, stopping to shift through other piles of refuse and find what might be re-cycled or resold; the laughter from the men in the bazaar at the idea of spending all that money when I ask them if they would like to go to New Zealand.


The Lonely Planet says Turkey is growing, that Istanbul is a city of young people, coming alive and enjoying themselves, newly confident – in parts, it certainly looked like this. On the other hand, Orhan Pamuk had this to say in 2005:


Flaubert, who visited Istanbul a hundred and two years before my birth,*** was struck by the variety of life in its teeming streets; in one of his letters he predicted that in a century's time it would be the capital of the world. The reverse came true: after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, the world almost forgot that Istanbul existed. The city into which I was born was poorer, shabbier, and more isolated than it has ever been in its two-thousand-year history. For me it has always been a city of ruins and end-of-empire melancholy. I've spent my life either battling this melancholy, or (like all Istanbullus) making it my own.


                                                                ***


Cemberlitas and Cagaloglu: Istanbul's two most famous hamam (turkish baths). The procedure for a Turkish bath differs slightly depending on the facilities of the building.


At Cemberlitas, which OT and I visited together on her last day, you get undressed in communal locker rooms, warp yourself in a red, orange and brown woven cotton towel, slip your feet into rubber slippers and are then directed through the foyer-like 'cool room' (sogukluk) and into the 'hot room' (hararet).****


The hot room is an octagonal, domed space, with a low marble platform in the centre, little set-back washing niches and stone basins at waist height around the walls. The temperature is enough to bring an instant sweat out over the body, but not enough to stifle the breath. 


We lay on the heated marble platform. After a time, one of the olive-skinned, loose-fleshed women came to wash us: first a thorough rub with a rough mitt, then an all over soaping, then we were taken to one of the basins (our attendant holding our arm to prevent us slipping), and rinsed, and our hair washed. Then back to the platform for a body-rub. Finally, into the deep hot pool and then out of the hot room for a western-style 'oil massage'.


Afterwards we were as limp as sleepy kittens.


Cagaloglu, where I went by myself on the evening of my last day in Istanbul, was perhaps even more beautiful, with traditional wooden clogs, a private dressing room with a little bed for relaxing on and after the bath, an open fire to sit beside and drink apple tea. 


At Cagaloglu, my attendant sang in Turkish as she soaped and rubbed me: low, sweet, undulating, and totally foreign.

And so home... this blog is now closed for business.

* This rug seller, and then his older brother, both complimented me on my eyes... This is a theme in rug sellers, starting with Theo in Athens. Although this time I did have my sunglasses in my bag rather than on, so there was a least the theoretical possibility they were actually responding to my eyes, as opposed to spinning a line... which, surely not?!


** We came back to the hostel two nights later and I bought him a pack of Marlboro Lights to make up for my callous behavior. I think he thought he did alright out of the deal.


*** Pamuk was born in 1952.


**** There is a tricky etiquette issue, which is not clear from any signs or instructions – whether to keep your underpants on under the towel or not. In Cemberlitas this seemed to be the done thing; in Cagaloglu, full nudity was the order of the day.

Food and Drink #5

There is a cheese maturing inside this goatskin - we tried some - pungent.

This neat machine peeled and sliced apples and quinces...

like so. I was surprised to find the quince sweet enough to eat raw.

Fried fish stall on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus.

Random appreciator of fried fish sandwich, found nearby.

Taksim area includes a lot of open air bars - you stand on the street, a waiter finds you and takes your order, some time later he re-appears with your drink (in this case, Turkish Raki, which I may have mentioned and which, in my humble opinion, is NOT GOOD. So much so that I distracted Bid for a moment and poured most of mine into her plastic cup... she waded through it, brave and stalwart mite), and then, some time later again, to get the money. Complicated but seems to work. Meanwhile, elderly men sell popcorn from barrows, popping the corn over a brazier of coals as they trundle. There is also a lot of smoking.*

The far-famed Turbot of Kiyikoy, in preparation in the kitchen at Hotel Edorfina.

And halfway through its destruction. Mehemet instructed us that with fish, one has "only a salad. Order fish and a salad, and then in the restaurant, they will know you are serious".

Turbot creates happiness (yes we were wildly spoiled at Hotel Endorfina - taken fishing, given the run of the kitchen AND allowed on the furniture (as with the ouzo of apology in Santorini, these things did eventually come with a price, but we managed to avoid paying it in quite the way our host may have optimistically imagined).

Ahh, fresh pomegranate juice. So wildly good, so disastrously stainy.

Cold cooked black mussels, put back inside their shells on a bed of delicious spicy rice and sold as a night snack all over Istanbul. This, my friends in aquaculture, is what we should be doing with mussels.

Bream, our last dinner together on this trip, eaten at the New Galata Restaurant, under the Galata Bridge, looking down the Golden Horn towards Asia.

Figs stuffed with walnuts - known for some reason as Turkish viagra....

I am in Changi airport as I write this, having eaten laksa (good) and durian puffs (not so good) in the city today, and finishing off my rambutans....but I seem to have lost my camera... so here endth the food and drink. But one more post under construction - the wonders of Istanbul. 

Keep watching, folks.

* Joke from Mehemet in in Kiyikoy: 

Q: who smokes more than a Turk?

A: two Turks.  

Food and Drink #4

For some of you these seem to be your favorite posts... others report finding them less than thrilling. For the non-food-photo obsessives, there will be a decent post about the (other) wonders of Istanbul... but first... the food and drink:

This Greek salad and baked beans were served to us in a station-side cafe (think Kenny's Wellingtonians) in Larisa - a staging post in our epic bus-train-train-train-ferry-bus-taxi-train-bus trip from Amalfi to Thessaloniki. There was no English menu at the cafe, so the waiter invited me into the kitchen to point at what I wanted.

In Thessaloniki we found a small restaurant with fine wines, run by three women. The menu was limited and in Greek, so we asked them to tell us what to eat. This salad, carefully made from scratch and including spinach and freshly toasted nuts, came with a round of very soft and mild goat cheese - more cream cheese than feta.

Potatoes and meatballs baked together, the potatoes were sticky with reduced meat juices.

We had started by ordering red wine. I saw a dish of small pickled fishes on the next table, and pointed, asking if I could have one of those please (a dish for myself, not one of the other guest's fishes). 

'No', said the waitress, looking at me sorrowfully with big dark eyes and shaking her head so that her plait - a dark rope to her waist - swung. 'Not with red wine. Never with red wine.'

'Afterwards?' I said hopefully.

'Maybe afterwards,' she said, still looking doubtful.

In the end I was allowed some fish (sour and salty and sharp - not good with red wine), but only after I had drunk my wine, and on the condition that I drink some raki with them. 

And it was good. 

The restaurant (name only in Greek). 

We followed the policy created in Hania, and went back for a second night. They were pleased to see us, and gave us a special type of raki, and slices of the most delicious marble cake, moist but crumbly... and madeira cake... on a par with cousin Liv's.

This octopus...

and this ENORMOUS lump of fried haloumi were highlights of our food experiences in Edessa.

We needed something substantial and calming for the nerves, having been shouted at by a large man in camo as we entered the taverna. The owner of the taverna laughed and took his arm, then quickly bought us the menu and flipped to the back page. 'Billy - Edessa's Mascot' - there he was, the same round blank face, but dressed in a town crier's uniform. Harmless, clearly, but slightly unnerving for the uninitiated.

Anastasia's prize pumpkin, Hotel Varosi, Edessa

The last of the Greek salads, Thessaloniki train station

Fresh figs for desert, Istanbul

Turkish coffee in a tea garden just outside the Spice Bazaar, Istanbul

Inside the Spice Bazaar

Dried aubergine skins (for stuffing), Spice Bazaar

Turkish delight mountains

Street food, Istanbul

Street vege stall, Istanbul

tbc...

It is raining in the Northern Hemisphere

time to go home...

We caught a Turbot

but only through the use of a cellphone and money... but the fishing trip was very pretty:

Mehemet's boat

Cricor (sp?), Mehemet's fisherman friend

Mehemet, owner of Hotel Endorfina

A much bigger fishing boat...

Cricor in port

View from the village pub, Kiyikoy

we catch the turbot

Kiyikoy

A small fishing and forestry village in Northern Greece. This morning, early, the view was mist and green hills above it. Then, later, the sun burned off the mist and we could see the golden sandspit and the Black Sea. 


Last night we ate grilled red mullet, fresh bread and salad by the open fire. Our hosts were indulgent enough to cover the low table by the fire with a table cloth and allow us to sit cross-legged in the warmth. Mehemet, who used to run an international import/export leather business, and is now 'retired' to run Hotel Endorfina, sat with us and talked, drinking his 'lion's milk' (raki*). For us he provided delicious organic red wine. 


Today we are going on a fishing trip - in his 'primitive' fishing boat, to see if we can catch a turbot. 


Brillat-Savarin has a story about being called in to consult on the proper way to deal with a turbot that was too large for any of the cooking vessels of his hosts - he advised that it be cooked in the washing tub, and claims that the result was superb. 


I am hoping to call to the end of my line just such a turbot.


* Turkish raki is like Greek Ouzo - aniseedy and very strong. Lion's milk is a good name for it - it certainly makes you roar.

Loose in Istanbul

Hubble

Bubble

Toil

(unable to find image to illustrate this. Have done no toil for over a month - not even dishes!)

and trouble!

...even worse trouble...

On Being Welcomed

In Thessaloniki we checked in to a five star hotel – the Electra Palace. It advertised itself as having a swimming pool, spa, Turkish bath, and the guide book recommended it as being 'as palatial inside as out'.


We caught a bus and then trundled down to the waterfront, where the big curving creamy bulk of the Electra Palace, its seven-storey facade studded with small balconies and stacked lines of pillars faces the main plaza. Along with imposing facades, golden automatic revolving doors, and staff with little jackets and caps are a cliché of classy hotels – and the Electra Palace does not neglect to provide.


Now, OT and I are not really five star people – not that we might not be in another life, but in this one, we don't have the necessary readies to stay in that kind of luxury. But, once in while, and especially following the “there is no cabin for you on this freezing cold boat” Bari to Igoumenitsa crossing of the night before, we can afford to splash out. And we were planning to spend three nights.


So it might have been a good idea for the staff to be slightly more pleasant – wheelie suitcase's feelings were hurt by the snooty look he received, and there was no such thing as a smile from the man at the desk, even for the fully animate among our party.


And the room was a disappointment. Smaller than almost every other room we've had, and lacking any element of the picturesque (or even the picaresque, which, for example, the adventure of the Lidomare steps in Amalfi provided). The bedding was not particularly luxurious. There was only one pillow each, rather than the hoped-for large and fluffy pile. There was a bath, and the pool was quite nice, but the rooftop bar served the worst approximation of a martini to ever pass my lips. 


The view of the water, the container ships sitting off the port and the lights of Thessaloniki stretching down the coast was spectacular – but not enough to make up for the waitress' clear lack of interest in what we wanted, or the squalor of the drinks that eventually arrived.

We checked out the next day, moving 200 metres down the street, 100 euro down the price scale and about 1000% upwards in the welcome stakes. The desk clerk at the Hotel Tourist hauled our bags up the steps for us, grimacing and giggling, carefully explained about the door keys, breakfast and laundry, held the lift door, smiled and was generally solicitous. We were happy.


And the room was bigger, with two king single beds, gold-painted plaster garlands swinging around the walls and a fascinatingly shiny faux chandelier - interesting, if not entirely... tasteful.


                                                               ***


After three days in Thessaloniki, we caught the local train out to Edessa. Edessa is a small town north and east of Thessaloniki. It is a little bit known for its waterfalls, but is mostly just a pretty town that serves as a base for various activities in northern Greece. OT had read about in the travel guide, and liked the sound of the damp mountain air. We both liked the sound of Hotel Varosi, a traditional hotel in an old inn, run, both our guide books assured us, by very friendly owners.


Edessa station – one small yellow building and two sets of train tracks – is too small to have a bridge or an underpass, so we followed the locals' example and dragged our bags across the tracks to the platform.*


The air in Edessa was sweet and autumnal with woodsmoke and the smell of drying leaves. The hill behind the station looked softer, more fertile than the standard rocky tumbles of the Grecian landscape. As we walked into town we heard the sound of rushing water and passed several small canels running under the road.


Neither of our guidebooks had a map of Edessa. Nor did they give directions for finding the hotel from the train station. Being the pair of abject ninnies that we are, we promptly got lost. We were looking for the charming old quarter of Edessa – we ended up in a deeply utilitarian precinct, with lawn-mower repair shops and medium rise housing. The story of our wanderings involves many side-streets and detours, and several encounters with bemused locals, who spoke more English than we speak Greek, but for whom our requests were still impenetrable and unanswerable.


We eventually found ourselves at the bus station, and telephoned the hotel to ask for directions from there. We had previously tried to have a phone conversation with Anastasia of Hotel Varosi, and discovered that she spoke little English. Again, this time, she understood that we were at the bus station, and assured me that the hotel was not far – 2 minutes. But she was not able to provide directions in English (and I was completely unable to understand her directions in Greek). I assured her I would ask someone, and hung up.
Inside the bus station, the ticket seller understood what I was asking and was able to direct me. And off we went.


We were most of the way there (200 metres up this road, turn left, there is a big church, turn right after the church...) and the road had changed from tarmac to cobbles, the buildings from square and concrete to crooked and stone with leaning wooden second storeys, when a woman hurried around the corner towards us.


“Ahhh”, she cried, rushing towards us, her arms open. She hugged first me, kissing me on both checks, then OT. “Anastasia,” she cried, pointing to herself.


“Anna,” I said, squeezing her arm. OT introduced herself, and Anastasia, beaming with pleasure at having found her wayward guests, took OT's suitcase handle in one hand, tried to take mine in the other (but I won the tussle), and strode off, twisting back to smile and nod at us over her shoulder.


Even if Hotel Varosi had not turned out to be a two-hundred year old traditional inn, with shining wooden floors, recessed windows, heavy beamed ceilings, sofas covered in woven rugs, an open fire, a pink rose in a green vase in our room, and wide, soft beds with crisp white linen, we would still have loved it. We had been welcomed, succored, our slightly grubby cheeks kissed and our burdens taken from us.

The inn

Autumn in Edessa

Dusk

* I have one recurring nightmare. This nightmare involves walking on train tracks carrying a backpack, which becomes strangely too heavy to move just as I hear the train's whistle signaling its approach. In the dream I do not think to, or cannot, let go of the bag. The train tracks are on a gravel embankment running across a paddock, scrubby with blackberry. I never see the train, only hear it coming. I think this dream has to do with watching Stand By Me and Fried Green Tomatoes too many times as a young teenage. However, it made Edessa station a little creepy. But I survived.