Istanbul - last days

Here we are at last, at the final posting of this humungous trip.  Looking back thereare so many posts and so many places we've been it's really been a blur, but a blur where I remember every detail.

The following is my ramblings...Dirk is not writing, - I am, so you will forgive my indulgence at the length of it and the subject.

 I don't know if Dirk and I will ever do a travel event of this size again, because it was something we had planned since I was young, 20 years old,  having linked up with this interesting travel worn  26 year old who had no intention of moving again for years.  I spent my twenties, thirties and forties listening to his accounts of his travels - some of them jaw droppers, many of them hilarious even after years of repetition.  He had undertaken a three year, life changing journey across Europe and Asia in the early 1970's, part of a wave of  young backpackers escaping  the claustrophobic Edna Everidge culture of urban Melbourne.  Readers who were in their 20's and a part of that era will know what the zeitgeist was like; mystical, magical, radical, chemically assisted, reformist, wonderfully rebellious, changing times.  For me...I was too young to go overseas then, was never in a position to go, and the time was not right for me to travel.  But I was still a part of the beat generation, an art student who lived in Melbourne and fully apprised of the momentous mood in the world.  We always planned to do this trip, as a way for Dirk to make it up to me for my years of having to just listen to his yarns of the good ole days.

They are well gone.  History has moved along and that generation is now the older one and the magic seems to have floated off into wistful, distant memory.  Dirk is now seen as a 'more mature' man, although to the young Turks a pretty cool old dude, with the thin whisker line running down his chin and his little Turkish hat.  Some people here ask him about what Turkey was like then, 40 years ago.  They themselves are in their 40's. and looking middle aged!  They weren't even born when he was there.  Dirk has very sketchy memories, but occasionally he will see something...a bridge across the Bosphorus where his photo was taken, his arm around the shoulders of the blond German girl he was travelling with,  minarettes and domes of a mosque filling the background.   He stands in the photo, with a bronze cast to his skin, shoulders back and square, and woolly uncombed hair. (He's cringing and protesting at my writing but I'm persisting).

This was a double exposure but you can see the mosque vaguely in the background.  

 He remembers a passenger ferry we saw that is still running, some other places.  There's a cafe near here that claims to have been the favourite meeting place for the hippie hoards through the 60's and 70's - called The Pudding Shop, and we went there for a coffee the other day, but the place rattles no memories for Dirk.  Perhaps it was the fault of the dens that he preferred to frequent. ..he maintains it was tea that the Turks drink instead of a beer.  It would certainly explain his lack of memories of the time.  We went for a long walk yesterday, over that aforementioned bridge, and got a fisherman to take the photo again, this time with a familiar red head under his arm.

So enough of the reminiscences and on to some more pictures.   Istanbul is in the throes of finishing  the month of Ramadan, which has effected life across the country for a month.  It means that the devout don't eat or drink between sunup and sundown, and no sex either.  They have to pray at least once a day, and it's hard to understand how the workers in the hot sun can go all day with out a drink of water.  There's a growing population of dissidents though, who don't go along with it.  A little  about the Turks later, but today, Tuesday, will be the beginning of the celebrations of the end of Ramadan, and the night life leading up to the celebrations here in the very heart of Istanbul is vibrant and joyful, and there's nary a drunken reveller to be seen. (Athough I've just been informed that two drunks have just been spotted in the square).  Times must be a 'changing.   But usually, it's all about decorum, happy picnics in between the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia for the families, craft and food stalls, icecream vendors, toffee winders, ever-opportunistic carpet sellers and street walking touts, flocks of young women with scarves and gabardine coats and ...everywhere cats.  Turkey is alive with them.  And some traditional entertainments like drumming and chanting, and some strange dance forms that I like a lot.

We have walked our legs into a state of fitness and our feet into a state of despair.
This is our last day, and we have seen as much as we want.  Here's a series of photos of Istanbul, beginning with the Blue Mosque.  We are in a place of residence between it and the Aya  Sofia, but towards the sea wall side, in a pensione recommended to us by Sara and Pat, thanks guys, great place.

The Blue Mosque

Bazaars

Istanbul Archaeological Museum

This is supposed to have been made for Alexander the Great's tomb, but in fact was never used for his body, with someone else found inside it, and artifacts unrelated to him.

These are burial caskets, or crypts, or shrines, what-have-you...similar to ones I've shown before.  This one has the highest relief of any of the ones I've seen over here.  It was carved for one of the 'satraps' of the area, during the Roman occupation, as they liked this kind of thing.  I'm impressed!

As it happened, while we were admiring this amazing piece of carving, my name was called and I turned around, and there was Tulin, the girl who I worked with back at the Guray pottery in Avanos.  We both marvelled at the coincidence of running into each other again, she with her child and husband, Ahmet Ozyurt.  She told me they had a visiting potter from Japan with them, a guest who had helped her make a smokeless kiln.  I pricked up my ears at that, as I had met the potter - Masakazu Kusakabe, who had just made one over in Jingdezhen, China, two years ago. There he was, hobbling along with a walking cane into one of the rooms nearby.  We all came together, had a great chat about meeting up again, and he told me that he had left Japan straight after the tsunami and nuclear melt down, as it all happened only 40 kilometres from his home and workshop.  He has been travelling ever since, staying with friends all over the place, doing workshops, building kilns and generally trying to fill in the time before he can go back to Japan.  It's likely that he will not be able to return to his workshop, but will build another somewhere safe.  I offered to put him up if he comes to Australia, but I think it's not on his agenda right now.  He's been out twice, but keeps talking about visiting New Zealand.  We had our photo taken anyway, and went our separate ways.  

This is supposed to be a fairly accurate portrait bust of Alexander..bit of a looker.

This one of Augustus.

These are famous images, which I have looked at only in art and history books.  It's amazing to see them in  real life.  This museum has an extensive collection of works found in and around Turkey....so the archaeology is world's best.

Sappho, poetess of Lesbos.  Only one poem of hers remains from antiquity.

This guy apparently - according to legend, challenged one of the Greek gods...possibly Zeus, to a contest of who was the better flute player.  Zeus made it impossible for him to win and skinned him.  But  - enough of the museum...

now onto the Topkapi Palace. 

We weren't allowed to photograph the inside of the treasury, or the costume buildings, so a lot of the attractions can't be shown to you.   The treasures are unbelievable, gold caskets full of emeralds the size of quails eggs, gold daggers encrusted with huge gems,  brooches smothered with diamonds, turban paraphernalia ludicrous with enormous rubies, gemstones of all kinds, etc. etc. etc.

Apart from the treasury though, we both thought the Topcapi Palace was a bit of a yawn.  The museum was much more interesting.

A little boat trip up the Bosphorus

Yonder is the Black Sea

The Galata Tower

We took a long walk over the river to Asia yesterday and visited this tower, that was first built in the 5th century AD by the Genoese.  It was the tallest building in Istanbul (nine stories), and was first used as a light house.  Over the years it had many uses, including a fire watching vantage point and a launching pad for the first hang glider or bird man, who managed to fly across the river to a distance of six kilometres.  This was way back in the medieval days, so what an amazing experience that must have been.  

And the views from the top were 360 degrees.

On the walk back we watched some kids jumping off the bridge and another selling bananas.  Happily too, we saw some fish mongers and yes, all the while, seagulls.  So all is not lost.

At last, I am going to round all of this off.  It has been a wonderful time as you can see.  We think Turkey is a country that, despite my slant on women being almost invisible sometimes, is a well adjusted society, devoid of the usual pitfalls of a less secular culture.  In other words, we have never seen anyone showing bad temper, drunk, or been given any occasion to feel uncomfortable.  Quite the reverse.

We leave Turkey tomorrow, with friends we've made left behind and looking forward to getting back home.   Australia is constantly being referred to as "Paradise" by all we have met.  We are so lucky.

Thanks for your interest, anyone who has looked at this blog.  It's been fun.

Inshallah

Guray Ceramics and Avanos

We had visited the Guray pottery on a Sunday after the balloon ride, not knowing it was going to be included in the Red Tour on the Monday.  We were shown around by one of the guides, and like a lot of places in this valley the underground has been utilized for a workshop space that just needs to be drilled out to make more rooms.  It really is like a warren, with specialist rooms for throwing, decorating, glazing, many galleries, and lots of passages.

I ventured an inquiry as to whether the management ever has visiting artists work with the potters there, and he was quite enthusiastic in saying that yes, they did.  I would be welcome to come to work with them.  So I met the manager, who is the grandson of the founding father of the Guray pottery and showed him my web site.
He told me I was 'hired' and I arranged to start with the potters on the Sunday.

This is what you see when you walk down the passageway from the front, down into the underground network of studios.

These are the showrooms, and only two of them .... there are much larger ones, full of ceramics.  Every one is hand painted by the artists in the previous photos.  And quite expensive.  Guray pottery has up to 20 tours per day going through in summer and 40 a day during spring and autumn, with people from all over the globe.  Quite a few buy there, and they say they don't sell anywhere else.

I had planned to do a figure of a Turkish woman in her sixties or seventies ...sitting on a throne, as I do.  I had the photos of the Turkish throne...something exotic and ornate, and the photo of the woman that I took in the caravanserai.  This was my take on the Turkish woman who - in my mind - is as worthy of veneration as the Sultan, the mother figure, the unappreciated essential person in Turkish life.   They are the ones who make the carpets, who work in the fields, in the homes, raising the babies, making the handicraft, etc. etc.  Yet they stay behind screens to pray in the mosques, they wear hot coats and scarves all the time out doors in public and are rarely seen out at night.  They are respected though, and don't appear to be in any way concerned that they may be repressed or even think that they are.  It's just my jaundiced western '60's womens liberation generation that I come from.

 I was shown the work place in one of the hand building rooms, with a helper who couldn't speak English, but we got on just fine.   Everyone there was very friendly and anything I needed was found and provide to me ..including hot drinks of apple tea.
About an hour after I had begun my project, I was visited by the manager Guray and the interpreter guide we met the first day we went there.   Through the interpreter, I was asked would I make  a sculpture of the founder of the pottery...(a couple of photos of him were provided.)..and the finished sculpture would be put into a new addition to the studio complex...a museum of Turkish ceramics! I could hardly believe my luck.  I was taken for a tour of the space, which is huge, the entrance and rooms already having been drilled out of the rock on the right hand side of the entry to the studio complex.   They expect the museum to be finished by April of 2012.

Work in progress.  The person in the picture with me is a potter named Tulin Ozyurt, who helped me with translation and getting organised.   A bit more about Tulin in the next post.

So I got stuck into the project and after three days it was done.  Guray was very happy with it and gave me pick of the gallery as a thank you present.   I chose a beautiful plate, later finding out it was worth over two thousand lire (about AUS $1300) and Dirk and I went off to catch a bus to Istanbul, lucky as a couple of ducks.

Now we are in Istanbul and only four days to go before we head off home.  Yee ha!