THE BEST OF EAST & WEST
The first time I visited this magnificent city I was 16 years old traveling with my family. I remember it being a magical adventure, somewhat fairy-tale like as we walked through the city with its beauty and rich history and ancient buildings with amazing architecture decorated with an unbelievable amount of gold and colorful jewels.
29 years later, here I am again with my two daughters exploring this exciting city and soaking up all of its scents and traditions. Of course I am excited to show my girls all the well known historic sites, the Blue Mosque, the Topkapi Palace, Galata Tower and the rest. But what I really would like them to experience is the everyday culture, to be part of the Istanbul day and night life with its crazy energy, traffic jams and ear piercing honking even late at night. To breath in the smell of Döner shops on every corner, to enjoy a late night dessert at the local confectionery store with their delicate sweets, sitting alongside the local families in their traditional attires. To observe the men and women, old fashioned and modern, to feel and understand the differences between our cultures. Adventure off the beaten path to find hidden places where only locals would go and of course adventurous and crazy tourists like ourselves.
So, why not visit a traditional Turkish bath? After standing in line for long hours in the scorching heat to visit the Topkapi Palace, walking through all of its beautiful courtyards, sumptuously decorated rooms, and the ever mysterious Harem and Imperial Treasury. Traveling around the city with public transportation pretending to be one of their 14 million locals, feeling dirty and tired at the end of the day including being lost few times, a trip to the local Turkish bath sounded like a splendid idea. After all, what better way to emerge ourselves deep into Istanbul's culture than to take a relaxing dip with the locals at a Hamam.
So, I asked our very helpful hotel manager to recommend a traditional, local bath avoiding all the tourists in town. He suggested to visit Gedikpasa Hamam, the oldest bath house in Istanbul built in 1475. It is not a luxurious experience but it is as traditional as you could ask for. Arriving at the bath, I quickly realized that I was not prepared. Even though I consider myself a seasoned traveler, somehow I forgot the fact that most places would not take credit cards but only cash, which of course I did not have enough of. A quick walk to a close-by ATM accompanied by our talkative host from the bath solved this minor problem. Suddenly feeling rich and adventurous, I decided to go all out and get the full treatment. Right away we were escorted to our private wooden cabin with towels and sheets to change or should I say, to shed all of our clothes. This, we only figured out by paying close attention to our lady attendants and their animated gestures because English was no longer an option. First, we relaxed in the hot sauna, then dipped into cold water in a small pool with carved windows above us revealing the star filled summer night sky. Next, we were sent into the main bath hall through a rather narrow pathway. In the middle of the hall stood an enormous, heated marble stone, along the walls were individual water sinks with brass fittings and wooden buckets with ladles.
When we sat down, we quickly realized we were not alone, another group of women were waiting for their treatments as well. We all smiled at each other with polite excitement of what was coming next. All of a sudden several women in black swimsuits emerged through a small door. One of them immediately came over to me seeing the locker key on my wrist indicating that I was the one in charge of my group. She asked me who I was with, or at least that is what I understood. Our Turkish was getting better by the minute. Or not. So, I point to my two girls and say in English: my daughters, my babies. Huge, colossal mistake! She started screaming something along the lines of OMG and went into excited rants while grabbing my arm and stripping me from my towel, my only privacy at that moment. Apparently, she could not believe I was the mother of my two girls, which under normal circumstances would have been a nice compliment but at that point all I wanted was for her to stop pointing at my nakedness and stop screaming because clearly everyone was starring at me! She laid me down on the middle of the stone with clearly no intentions of stopping this spectacle. She started scrubbing me down with a coarse loofah called a kese, lifting my arms and legs up, turning me around, leaving very little to the imagination. Still pointing and screeching: Momma Oh Oh! I wondered how she could possibly bring any more attention to me and wished that the marble stone would open up under my naked body so I could disappear. But no time to dwell on this, here comes my massage, which by the way felt absolutely amazing. At this point I stopped caring about being embarrassed and instead enjoyed this experience to the fullest. Next, my attendant lead me over to the water fountains and washed my body with soap, shampooed my hair while massaging my scalp, rinsing it all off with warm water. From the corner of my eye I could see my youngest daughter's mortified look realizing she was next, somebody was already taking care of her sister. I just gave her a nice smile and indicated to do the same and go along with the ritual without any complaints. At this point what could happen to top this experience, right?
After we were finished with our treatments and took our last dip in the pool, we felt all relaxed and rejuvenated lounging on comfortable couches with our hair and body wrapped in towels before putting our clothes back on, ready to reemerge back into the steaming hot summer night of Istanbul.
On our last day we visited the Grand Bazaar. An entirely different feeling, loud and crazy with its dim lights and seemingly never ending streets full of tiny stores; an entire city in itself. Entering the shopping mecca of Istanbul immediately brought back the fun memories of arguing with the merchants, the crazy excitement of a great deal, understanding the game, how it is supposed to be played, and feeling the satisfaction at the end. Even though the shop owners act like you robbed them of their lively hood in a rather theatrical fashion, and you of course are convinced you made an amazing bargain, yet they make great money and you probably paid more than you should have. However, we both walk away happy. I think that my girls were a bit shocked how much I was in my element. How much fun it was to heartlessly walk away from them pretending not to care and wait for the shop owner to run after us begging to conclude the transaction with a huge discount. How much it felt exactly like it did 29 years ago… #mommydearest
The meeting of East and West, the saturation of religions, the intense beauty that encompasses the sea that divides the enchanted city: this is Istanbul. Never having been to a partly “eastern” country before, I was flowing with anticipation of what to expect. I finally felt I was able to appreciate the never-ending art history lessons I took in high school where my teacher would have us copy and paste black and white images of large buildings and structures onto a note card for easier memorization. The real thing is so much better. Apart from the magnificent spear-like, Ottoman Empire inspired buildings, I could not keep my eyes off of the beautiful women that were all around me. Some were more modern, others dressed in traditional hijabs, but they had this less than obvious conservatism to them that was rather elegant and mesmerizing. While on the subject of fashion, I was desperate the visit the Grand Bazaar which I had only seen in movies and had great illusions about. I had already planned on buying four items and was determined to find them at any cost. This pungent idealism slowly drifted away after the initial intake of amazement as I entered the Bazaar. It was filled with hundreds of shops and colorful people all buying decadent items for themselves and to take back to where they came from. We started by walking around and bargaining with multiple merchants (which I thought would be easier than it was) and I found myself feeling frustrated and agitated that I was not getting what I wanted right away, as is typical of my Aries personality. At the brink of giving up and sitting on the dusty floor in a ball of depression, my mom stepped in and said she would bargain for me. After four long hours of strutting through the entire Bazaar multiple times and finding ourselves in more than one “secret shop” where the merchants took only the "special" customers to view their products not shown to the general public, I was able to purchase all of my items.
Although my determination was less than evident in this scene, the quest to find the sugary pastries that I saw on the first day in Istanbul on a food cart held a tad more perseverance. I spent the remainder of the trip searching diligently each evening for that man that had that specific sweet treat that I was so desperate to try. I decided I was not going to give up under any circumstances; a state of mind food often has me in. After 5 days of searching and on the eve of our last night, I finally realized as we walked back to our hotel on the sidewalk next to an array of cars that I had lost this battle. The wounds felt raw and painful and I was not sure I would be able to forgive myself for not having tried those succulent desserts when I first laid eyes on them. And then, running next to us on the street with a red and yellow cart with its see through windows I saw the sugary doughnut-like pastries I had been dreaming of! I thought I was hallucinating, but quickly snapped myself out of it long enough to yell over to the man to STOP! so that I could purchase my long lost pastry and die and go to food coma heaven. I asked my mom and sister if they wanted each one or to share, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to share mine. Beamingly, I walked back to our hotel with my pastry in hand, eating away with a rather large grin on my face that could have been mistaken for happiness, but it was more than that, the bliss of eating on the crowded streets of Istanbul in 90 degree weather on a summer evening with my mother and sister by my side was everything and more that I could have ever hoped for. #dianasays
