Day 80 - Kitty City to Dogtown

The Aussies had errands to run in the morning, so Cz and I decided to visit the Blue Mosque on our own. From the outside it is a smooth confection of white stone, each segment swelling smoothly into the next. Inside the arches are all covered in tile, mosaic, and paint depicting swirling floral and graphic patterns. It sits across the courtyard from Haggia Sophia. Yesterday Cz got a great photo of The Blue Mosque from the window of Haggia Sophia. Today it was a view of the Haggia Sophia framed by the arch to the courtyard of the Blue Mosque.

Inside the mosque is considered a holy place. Female visitors are requested to wear a headscarf and long skirt; male visitors to wear long pants. Everyone must remove their shoes before entering the space. I borrowed a scarf from Aussie Girl, and we tried to respect the rules to the best of our ability. We were shocked though at the behaviour of other Americans. They traipsed around as if they owned the place, scarfs tossed over their shoulders, men in shorts, almost all talking loudly as their cameras flashed away. I am not Muslim, but a place of worship is a place of worship whether it is your particular brand or not.

We were in the mosque between calls to prayer. Two workers were calmly vacuuming the carpet. A few worshipers were still praying, kneeling towards Mecca. The workers just pushed the vacuum around them. Haggia Sophia felt almost like a museum. The combination of maintenance men and worshipers gave the Blue Mosque - an architectural marvel to be sure - the feeling of being a real, functioning place.

At noon, we (the Aussies, Cz and I) met at the hostel to head down to the docks to have another go at taking a ferry ride. We arrived at the waterfront around 12:30, with an hour to kill before the next seabus would be heading out. As always, thinking with our stomachs, we stopped for another mackerel sandwich, and then strolled across the bridge the fishstalls, where a man was frying sardines fresh from the water. A group of rickety tables, even more rickety umbrellas, and the requisite cats clustered above the stall. We settled in for our second lunch of sardines with rocket salad and fresh apple tea.

After thoroughly stuffing ourselves, we hopped on the ship. The seabus is like a commuter ferry. We had heard that rather than taking one of the expensive tours, we could take the ferry out to a particular suburb (I have forgotten the name) and cover the same route for a fraction of the cost. The water of the Bosporus is somewhere between cerulean and windsor blue. It is surprisingly clean and clear, and loaded with fish visible just below the surface. On our boat ride we even saw some porpoises leaping near the shore.

On land, the shapes and skylines of Istanbul unfolded behind us. The silhouette is so different from US cities. Coastal cities int he US tend to be vertical geometric affairs - rectangles and cubes cutting up into the sky, with very little reference to shape of the land beneath. In Istanbul the buildings are generally more low-slung, punctuated by the domes and minarets of the mosques, and the occasional palace or tomb, but even these grander structures seem somehow frothy compared to the solid shapes of the west.

The town itself (we thought it was a suburb, but really it´s more like a bedroom community) was on the Asian side of the Bosporus. Even though it was only and hour and a half by water from central Istanbul, it had entirely different feel. For one thing, where Istanbul is ruled by packs of stray cats, this town is marshaled by stray dogs. Most are quite large, but seem to be predominantly shy and friendly - we were never growled at or otherwise threatened by them. The town itself was a riot of colour, sound and smell. It´s a smaller town, but somehow it seemed more full of people all honking their horns, gossiping in doorways, and selling anything from fruit to fishing gear. We stopped in a bakery so Aussie Boy could pick up some sweet cakes. The light coming through the window and the smell of fresh bread combined to make a sense of timelessness, despite the steady stream of cars and buses just outside.

From our shop, we went on to find some apple tea. We drifted toward a cafe near an excited looking crowd, the women all holding silk roses. Turns out there was a wedding next door! The waiters in the cafe spoke no english. Luckily another patron heard us trying to order, and translated. We sipped our tea (best apple tea yet) and craned our necks to watch the crowd just over the tea-shop´s hedge. We never got more than a glimpse of the wedding couple, but thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of celebration.

Then back to the docks for the return ferry to Istanbul. At one point the view was of the landmasses of Asia and Europe practically touching noses across the channel. It´s an almost surreal feeling being at such a cultural crossroads, and one with such deep roots. In Istanbul, one is aware of the Ancient, rather than the merely old. At first, I felt that in Istanbul, the now rubbed shoulders with the then. That may be so, but more accurately, I feel that the then permeates the city. Even the modern shops and ferryboats seem to remember their roots as ancient trading sites and shipping routes. And we, as modern tourists are only mimicking the path of other Europeans, other Asians, other people seeking out adventure, riches, exoticism, etc had trod for centuries.

Day 78 - (Mis) Adventures in Travel

But first, a beautiful view of the hostel terrace where we had our breakfast overlooking the Maramar Sea which connects to the Bosphorus. It was the only calm and relaxed time we had before undertaking the task at hand.

Now that we have this sorted out - sort of, knock wood, cross fingers, please don't jinx this - we can tell you about it. We were misinformed as to the visa requirements for India. According to our guise, we thought we could pay a small extra fee, and buy our Visa at the airport in Delhi. This is not so. The visa must be purchased ahead of time, preferably at the Indian Embassy in one's home country. The "travel arrangements" which took up all of Wednesday morning were us researching the best way to get an Indian Visa on the road. The Indian Embassy in Vienna, it seemed would be our best best bet, built neither e-mail address nor phone number we pulled from their website connected us to a real person.

We were stymied. We didn't want to make any further moves until we heard from Vienna. Wednesday night, in Istanbul, I remembered that I had the e-mail for American Citizens' Service, through the US Sate Department. The responded within hours with advice, website, and e-mail contact information for the Indian Embassy in Vienna.

This morning, we called Vienna. They felt that, through the wonder of e-mail and fax to the Indian Consulate in NY, they could get our visa approved within 2-4 days of our arrival in Vienna. Again cross fingers, knock wood, please no Jinx, etc. This was the good news. The bad news was that it meant we would need to change our flight out of Vienna. I called Expedia. I got disconnected. I called again. They said that because the itinerary was already en-route that they could not touch the reservation. I spent the rest of the morning and into the afternoon trying 1st just to get Turkish Airlines on the phone, and then trying to change the flight over the phone. Summary of the phone calls: Almost everyone I talked to was very pleasant but we kept getting disconnected. When I finally managed to get all the way through the process, it was discovered that because of regulations, I could NOT in fact change the flight over the phone, but would need to do so in person at the Taksim Sales Office, or at the airport.

We heard that Taksim Square was a nice place to go anyway, so we headed that way. It is a nice area but VERY confusing. We asked directions, and were universally told that it was near the McDonalds. Unfortunately, no one seemed to know WHICH McDonalds. After a solid half hour of searching, we finally found the office. We took a number. It was 208. The line was on number 143. We settled in for a long wait.

This is when our luck began to turn. Number 185 left, and we got her ticket. When we arrived at the desk, the lady was very friendly and helpful. Our tickets were changed with almost no hassle, only a 50 Euro charge each.

End result. We will be in Vienna for 8 days. At the end of it, we will have visas to India. We HOPE. Because we will be in Vienna for an extended time, we may be able to visit some friends from the Camino. Overall, it's not nearly as bad as we feared it might be. Just cross your fingers that the Visas process without a hitch.

It was nearly 7:30 by the time we finished dealing with the travel arrangements. The day felt a bit of a loss, though I took a slightly different route on each trip to the payphone, and living in the Old Quarter as we are, there were new treasures around every corner. 7:30, the squares are just waking up to evening activities, mostly centered around eating and drinking. We have heard that it is best to avoid seafood when sampling "street meat", but there was a man with a tray mussels and fresh lemons that proved too tempting. For 3 Lyra (2 US Dollars) we got 10 mussels stuffed with spicy rice pilaf and topped with freshly squeezed lemon. We also had roasted corn and Doner Kebabs (which taste entirely different than Doner in Europe, but very delicious). All told, our mobile feast cost us less than 7 US Dollars. Not only was it cheap and tasty (Street food is some of my favourite eats), we ate it while wandering the labrynthine streets and courtyards of Old Istanbul.

Upon returning to the hostel, we met and Australian girl who also happens to be...a SET DESIGNER! We spent rest of the evening finishing off the last of our apricot liquor and tasty treats left over from our visit to Germany. It was lovely meeting someone with such similar interest to our own, again proving just how small a world theatre really is.

In addition to Aussie Girl, we have met a host of interesting characters at this hostel, including a few young Americans living and teaching English abroad, and another Aussie by birth, who is now cycling from England all the way to his current home in Japan. As with the albergues on the Camino, one of the perks of hostel living is this conglomeration of like-minded people. In general, hostels will comprise a group of individuals who appear on the surface entirely dissimilar, but who share a similar sense of adventure, of living a little closer to the edge, of grabbing life and shaking out all the possibilities it has to offer.

In hostels, though we are far from blood relations, we still have family.