Gobble Gobble Gobble

Ben's in Turkey!

We arrived on the night train from Turnovo a few days ago and have found ourselves a lovely little hotel 5 minutes from the Haghia Sofia with a terrace that looks out over the Sea for only 10 Euros each per night (we're sharing a room but we each have our own bed). It's a pretty good deal in what has turned out to be a surprisingly expensive city. But enough blather... anecdotes:

Yesterday we got up early to go to Shul (synagog) which we identified, after a small amount of searching, by the many massive armed guards and blast shielded doors. The security didn't stop there... we had faxed copies of our passports the night before and now the hard copies were combed over in detail. Our bags were searched item by item even before they were scanned by the metal detector. While doing this they asked questions in a very friendly and bantering tone, but those questions amounted to a grilling about why we were interested in going to the Shul, how we had heard about it, where we had been traveling, how and where we were employed, etc... The reason for the intensity became clear immediately after the service: one of the old men pointed to a bomb scar on the wall behind the bima (dais) and told us about the several attacks that have been made in the past decade. I still felt safe inside, thanks to the security, but as soon as we left the premise I was eager to get a reasonable distance from the building.

Back to the service though: it was very interesting (my first synagog experience). Everyone was very loudly participatory - no reserved humming along to hymns (catholic style... at least by my experience) here... people were basically shouting them out competitively. Brent was shocked when a few prayers were sung in Ladino (the language that Sephardic Jews used to speak in Spain before the inquisition... 500 years ago!). Particularly interesting to me was that it was totally cool to have a regular conversation and wander around the sanctuary as the service was going on (again... quite different from the white-bread christian shame and reserve). I had a really good time thanks largely to Brent's ongoing interpretation of what was happening (pretty much everything but the Ladino bits were in Hebrew and there were no English prayer books), but the fun was only starting... as soon as we had tossed off our prayer shawls we found ourselves being herded upstairs for a veritable kosher feast! Loud toasts and conversation abounded and we met this very nice - and very Jewish - gay couple from San Francisco who had just gotten in the night before. Funnily enough, we've been running into them ever since (literally 3 times since leaving the compound, including in the middle of a tourist packed Topkapi palace).

So that was cool... with the rest of the day we walked around in the neighbourhood across the Golden Horn from where our hotel is (I forget what it's called but it's very cosmopolitan and bursting at the seems... apparently the hub of secular Turkish cultural life). I bought a Kaval (a traditional Turkish musical instrument known as "the instrument of the shepherds) for 20 Lira (16ish dollars) and have resolved to buy a new folk music instrument in each broad region I visit as my souvenir. I'm very excited by this notion even in writing it.

ON the topic of music... as soon as we got back to our neighbourhood that evening we found ourselves in the middle of a huge street based folk-festival with multiple stages as well as roving bands of people smacking drums, playing these awesome double read instruments, and a surprising number of brass instruments. We made our way to the main stage and spent an hour jumping around in circles, arms over each others' shoulders with these very fraternal Turkish men to this ethno-pop group that remarkably, we found out later, are sephardic Jewish and tend to blend Turkish with ladino in their music.

I need to go but, long story short, this continued until we shuffled out under fire works and collapsed into bed leaving the windows open so we could hear the music wafting up from the street, which apparently continued for hours more... though I was comatose in mere minutes.

Totally toasting you in tubular Turkey!