an open letter

Dear Kripoe,

Your work intrigues me. I'll admit, at first I overlooked it. The simplicity of your design isn't shocking. So I kept walking by. What's another fist on the wall? But the same simplicity made me realize that you're onto something big. Your work is recognizable. You've become legend in your own right. You own the streets in Eminonu and Karakoy. It looks like the area around the Galata Tower is yours, too. I appreciate your art, I do. I just have one question: what does it mean?

Sincerely yours,
Cait

a little design for everyone (most everyone)

Like most big cities, Istanbul is no stranger to the odd, the occult, the radical, or the inspiring. Walk down any street in Taksim and you'll find vendors selling not hot dogs, not pretzels, but corn (boiled or grilled to your liking). Venture through the side streets in Besiktas and you'll find several (if not countless) street people missing body parts - eyes, feet, legs, arms. Look down any street, anywhere in the city and you'll see how the homeless dogs and cats look both ways before they cross the streets. None of this is surprising in itself, though. These are the particular unique elements that comprise any big city. You don't have to go out of your way to find them.

No collar? No problem.

Oh, hey.

When I am in the mood to look for something of a particular strangess, however, a museum of modern art is generally where I turn. I'm not saying that I find modern art less credible or important than other types of art, I'm saying that I don't always understand it, and it's in my lack of knowledge that I find myself adventuring into some of the most thought-provoking pieces.

This was the case when I recently went to the aptly named Istanbul Modern. The temporary exhibition featured clothing designer and film director Hussein Chalayan. The individual pieces of clothing were intriguing - they looked soft and delicate, yet durable and structural at the same time.  His films, however, were admittedly over my head. Shots of a woman dressing another, or of a man blotting a woman's face, or a girl posing with a gun. There's context there, there has to be, right? So I'm sure the difficulty I find in trying to understand these pieces has more to do with my lack of knowledge than with the art itself.

Either way, it was weird and I liked it.

Also on temporary exhibit was a piece called "Discover Manga!" (I've never seen an exclamation point more accurately placed). Let's be honest here, I've never gotten into the whole Japanese cartoon thing. I understand there's a huge following, but I'm just not that intrigued to delve any deeper into it. Maybe I'm missing something. I'm willing to deal with that potential loss, though. At any rate, the employees dressed in Manga-inspired clothing were the quirky icing on top of my odd day.

Those kids from high school. Remember them?

while the city sleeps

There's something beautiful about a Sunday morning. Sunday mornings are the one time during the week when, in the majority of places I've visited and lived, the city takes a deep breath and doesn't feel rushed to release it. Car horns are silenced, music is softened, and the crowds of people normally found rushing through the streets are abated. The rule is that Sundays are peace; Sundays are quiet. Istanbul doesn't stray from this rule.

It rained this Sunday morning, but it was unlike the rain experienced in the Northeastern part of the United States. The rain dropped almost soundlessly while the sun was shining just beyond the clouds into the Bosphorus Straits. As a cloud would pass, there would be a period of sunshine, and then another cloud would come with the same soundless falling apart. Off and on throughout the morning.

Hopeful that this weather pattern in combination with the day of the week might teach me something the normal pattern of the city might not expose, I took to the streets to experience the shell of my neighborhood. This is what I learned: Istanbul is intentionally and unintentionally layered. Streets are constructed where roads once where, where paths once were, but still lead you to the local grocery, nonetheless. Buildings of stucco and brick are crammed together on the same plots of land where structures of stone and earth once stood (still might stand) and these buildings house the bank clerk, the taxi driver, and the professors at this university. These are layers that are unintentionally complex, but yet intentionally simple.

I learned this morning, as I walked down Cengiz Topel Caddesi, that no matter how many layers a city has, they all serve the same purpose. We have created these centers to interact with each other, be it for economic means, to exchange ideas, or just to chew the grass. This is what I learned this rainy, Sunday morning. Istanbul isn't, but could be home.

Fish market in Kabatas

Clothing 'store' in Kabatas

Hello Kitty

Homeless man

when in rome

I've never been a "touristy" person. No part of battling other foreigners for a chance to get your point-and-shoot in front of theirs has ever appealed to me. I'm not a fan of crowds and am very serious about my personal space. Despite trying to hold true to myself, however, I realized last week that being in Istanbul isn't like traveling in the United States. One, I can't say when the next time I'll be back will be once I've left, and two, we're talking ancient history here. Seriously. This is the stuff you see on the History Channel. So I gave into the fanny-pack wearing map-wielding mentality and made a conscious decision to make a list of the sights I want to see here and decided to attempt to check them off.

The problem with this, I've realized, is that there are two types of tourists. Group A conducts extensive research. Frommer's Travel Guide? Check. Lonely Planet Travel Guide? Duh. Any other book/pamphlet/review/blog/publication related to your area/sight of interest? Done and done. Group B, on the other hand, assumes that things will be presented upon arrival. Perhaps a tour guide will be available or, even better if you're cheap, maybe everything you thought you wanted to know will be explained in pictures plastered somewhere.

I belong to Group B. The reasons are complicated but suffice to say, I'm lazy and still too stubborn to give in entirely to the tourist thing. What I've realized quickly is that there's a big difference between perception and reality when talking about history. So, what follows is a quick list of the few places I've seen in the past four days, my original perception of them, and the reality.

Grand Bazaar.
Perception: Picture the movie Aladdin when he's singing about bread or something and dancing through the streets. I'm imagining stands supported by cardboard or a few random bricks with friendly, yet ripe, shop keepers hustling their goods as best they can.
Reality: A mall-like atmosphere. Clean floors, clean walls, clean shops, clean shop keepers. Beautiful architecture based on what appears to be pretty sound engineering. Shop keepers who can speak key phrases in at least three different languages. These phrases include: "Are you an angel?", "A beautiful day for a scarf, no?", and "For you, I have a special price." And these are not ripe shop keepers. In fact, they all smelled pretty good to me.

Grand Bazaar

Clean space, clean people. Boring.

Basilica Cistern.
Perception: Massive underground system of tunnels, pipes, and other dark and inherently creepy vestibules seemingly leading nowhere but inevitably leading to some room of doom with skeletons still shackled to the wall (Ok, maybe my hopes were a little high on this one, but a girl can dream, right?).
Reality: None of the above. No secret tunnels or passageways. Points, though, were earned for the Medusa heads (I would tell you more about them, but because I belong to tourist Group B, I really have nothing to tell you).

This place was as beautiful as it was difficult to capture on film. 

Medusa I.

Medusa II.

Sultanahmet Camii (Blue Mosque for my unworldly friends).
Perception: I'm picturing a multi-level room with small doors and smaller windows. Ornate details. Roped off areas. Stone floors. Oh. And it should be blue.
Reality: Perhaps the most touristy of the above-mentioned sights. Outside the mosque, there are vendors preying on the tourists waiting to get in. Inside, cheesy hotel carpet lines the floors. The detail is great - much of the ceiling is covered in mosaics, and the windows are colorful. But the one-room mosque leaves little to be explored independently and even less to be observed by oneself. Oh. But it is blue.

Another place that cameras can't really capture.

Sultanahmet Camii

istanbul...worth the wait

What a difference 15ish hours makes. 

I started in Detroit at 10:15. Next was Norfolk, next was JFK, and next (finally) was Istanbul. The waiting sucked. I'm not going to lie about it. Once I got to JFK, my flight was first switched to another terminal and then delayed an hour and a half. Once we boarded the plane, we waited another hour and a half until we pushed back from the gate. 

I always wonder how these things happen. I don't mean why planes are delayed. I get that. Arrivals can be late (bad head winds?) and maintenance problems can crop up (um, I'd prefer you take the time to fix that before we depart), so I get that part. What I don't understand is how grown adults turn into impatient preteens when a trip is delayed - myself included. While still at JFK I looked like your friend's restless kid sister, sitting on the ground, continuously fiddling with the zippers on my backpack. 

It would have been much worse on the plane had I not been seated by my neighbor. I'll call her Linda. Linda, a divorcee, was traveling to Istanbul to begin a three week vacation with her friend (although I can't be sure, I imagined her name was Debbie). In her mid-60s, Linda has a 35 year old son she was attempting to hawk to me even after I told her I was 24. 

"He's a hard working, high earning young man. Well, young at heart. How old are you again?"

At any rate, Linda was four star entertainment. The woman has been everywhere - Dubai, Indonesia, Tunisia, etc. Despite her wide travels, though, she still seemed awed by my trip. She kept telling me how "brave" I was, going to Istanbul by myself not knowing anyone. For the first time, I began to realize that this trip could go horribly wrong. 

Thankfully, Linda's worries were ill-founded. I arrived in Istanbul around noon, got a cab, got to campus, and officially started this trip.

Istanbul. Cok, cok guzel. It's amazing here. Bogazici Universitesi overlooks the yacht and freighter-specked Bosphorus Straits. Beyond the beauty, the people are extremely accommodating. The town's people I've interacted with speak broken or no English and yet they have been more than willing to attempt to understand what I'm saying. 

I have a feeling this is going to be an amazing few months.

Bosphorus Straits

Bosphorus Straits

Bosphorus Straits

Sunset

The amount of stray cats and dogs here is really mind blowing.

Petting stray cats. Probably not a good idea.

Really petting stray cats. Really not a good idea.

The view from my window.

pre flight fright

There are events and then there is that time before events. Before the thing you're waiting for even begins to arrive something happens with time. It slows to a creep. You're seven years old again and Christmas is tomorrow but it could just as well be months away. And then it happens and then it's over before you realize it.

I'm still in that pre-event time and as time slithers by, I can't help but think about what could go wrong in the next 24 hours. I had a dream a few nights ago that didn't really help my anxiety, either. I dreamt that  I couldn't get back to my place in New York because I left without my wallet. I was waiting at the subway wondering how I would get through the turn-style without a Metrocard. I woke up nervous that I might be forgetting something that common sensical for this trip. I've been reassured by the few people I've told about this dream that so long as I have my Passport, I should be fine. Everything else can be reconciled as long as I have that. I guess they're right, but I'm still hoping that sometime during those few hours before I leave that I miraculously remember what I'm forgetting or at least feel sure that I'm not forgetting anything.

I leave tomorrow morning for Istanbul with a few stops along the way. I haven't spent too much time thinking about what it might be like. At this point, I'd prefer to be surprised.

So here's to America: I'll miss you. You've done me well. I shall return.

Nothing more American than the lights over a baseball game.

from new york with love

New York is a city of many parts. The Lower East Side is where the best brunch deals exist...in the world. Chinatown is where you can get an obscene amount of wontons for mere pennies (you might be left wondering what the sauce on them is, though). Midtown is to be avoided lest you're willing to risk being improperly identified as a slowly walking, subway-map-ignorant tourist. And Queens is as "New York" as Jersey City.

At any rate, no matter who you are or where you come from, there is a place somewhere within these five boroughs that makes you smile. Williamsburg has been that place for me. Wburg is equal parts trendy and ironic. Young people wearing Tom's shoes and glasses they stole from their grandmother's boudoir dine on fried chicken and macaroni and cheese in what looks like someone's converted kitchen while they discuss the most recent photography exhibition at the local gallery. In another way, it's a celebration of Americana and a defiant push for intellectually-led progress all at the same time.

I haven't been in Williamsburg long, but I already know that it will be missed. I won't be back to this lovely city for who knows how long and am just coming to the realization that it's likely I might actually miss the Latina ladies fighting (or are they just chatting?) in the beauty shop and the Hasidic Jews making me feel like a dirty, modesty-lacking show boat every time my knees are exposed. Hell, I'll even miss my peers with their jean cut offs and Patrick Bateman hair cuts.

Until another time, goodbye Williamsburg. Adios New York.

Sweet, sweet Williamsburg