Istanbul not Constantınople

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Istanbul: Ok , so Istanbul would be a fascinating city even if you were just looking at its history: inhabited since 3000 B.C., capital of the Roman empire, capital of the Byzantine empire, capital of the Ottoman empire. It was once the capital of the Eastern Orthodox church, and now is famous for the mosques and minarets which puncture its skyline and for the calls to prayer which emanate over the entire city 5 times a day. It is stunning geographically. It is the only city in the world to straddle two continents, a city divided by rivers, rivers which ultimately connect the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea, rivers which in the time before airplanes signified wealth and power, power, power. Istanbul is enormous- currently there are 11 million people living in it, which is more than the populations of New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts combined. When we took a boat cruise down the Bosporus (and incidentally saw dolphins!), we kept going and going and going and we were STILL in Istanbul. So, when you take a city with that much history, that much religious significance, that much geography and related issues of power and add all those people, well that is a whole lot, to put it mildly, and that is before you add in the current modern Istanbul (and modern Turkey) with its faces looking both to the West, to the EU, to secularism, and to the East, to its Islamic sister nations, to a throbbing undercurrent of conservatism that is perceptible just below the surface. So to spend a few days in the midst of this complexity and this tension is in a word, nuts.

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On the second day, I went to the Hagia Sofia (also called the Aya Sofia or St. Sofia) which at the time it was built by Justinian was the largest church in the world, and remained so until Vatican City's St. Peters eclipsed it. When the Ottomans took over, it was turned into a mosque, and then in the 20s to a museum. It was really interesting to be in one space which has been extremely religiously significant to two faiths that have historically been at odds which each other. Inside, they have begun to reconstruct the Christian mosaics which were destroyed when it became a mosque, and on the walls hang giant medallions with verses from the Koran written in Arabic script.

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After two days in Istanbul, I was suffering from mosque fatigue (similar to cathedral or museum fatigue) but had been scrubbed back to life in an incredible Hammam , had wandered into the automotive parts souk (the area of the city, like the area of the market, that sells only one type of thing. My favorite of all time is still the used plumbing parts souk from Marrakesh), had cruised up and down the Bosporus while Turks danced on the roof of the ferry, had seen Muslim women with and without headscarves, had received a swizzle stick in my iced coffee in the shape of a naked man (see photo), had found the Starbucks, tasted Turkish Delight that didn't want to make me throw up, and all and all, felt much more comfortable walking around by myself here than I did in Morocco. But I knew that Istanbul represented Turkey's most European side, so I was curious to see what the rest of the country held.