Tantalising Turkey

Grand Bazaar. Hookah. Lanterns. Spice Market. Kebabs. Mosques. Carpets. Ataturk. Turkish coffee. Turkish tea. Turkish Delights. Baklava. All of these words burst into mind when thinking of the vibrantly chaotic and captivating city that is Istanbul.

The iconic Blue Mosque

Home to more than 13 million people, Istanbul is the only city in the world expanding across the continents of both Europe and Asia. It is a city so historically and culturally fertile that each cell in my body was immediately intoxicated by the buzzing excitement emanating from the streets. Turkish flags adorned the façades of many buildings across the cityscape, along with images of the beloved late Ataturk. Every few hours the adhān (Islamic call-to-prayer) was heard from speakers dispersed throughout the entire city. It felt like hundreds, if not thousands, of people were bustling around us constantly, which surprisingly only added to the charm of the city. 

Jay being a true local, smoking a hookah after being a Turkish soccer hooligan!

Few people visit Istanbul without passing through the renowned Grand Bazaar. The Sultan of markets, the Grand Bazaar is one of world's oldest and largest covered markets, home to over 3000 shops. This labyrinth of market stalls is home to everything from scarves to crockery to antique clocks to glittery jewellery – you name it, it can be found! Tea sellers weave in and out of stalls carrying trayfuls of hot beverages to fellow vendors, whilst the vendors themselves are busy convincing potential customers that their products are the best quality and price going around. 

How bizarre!?

And the food – the food! Everyday was an absolute culinary delight, whether the matter was sweet, savoury or a tasty combination of the two. I'll start off with the world renowned kebab. Just about everyday, without fail, we purchased and thoroughly enjoyed this classic meal-in-a-pita delectation. Any previous misconceptions I admittedly had about the doner kebab – that it's simply a greasy food left to late-night, intoxicated binging – were quickly expelled. Instead, I was gob-smacked by how mouth-watering these slabs of meat, riddled with flavoursome chunks of paprika and spices, tasted. Particularly as I'm not normally someone who considers such large amounts of meat appetising. Add to this combination some tomatoes, onions, lettuce and......wait for it.....even fries (which we soon found out was a surprisingly common-place addition to kebabs), the doner kebab quickly became our favourite lunch-time meal!

But the highlight of our (savoury) culinary escapades in Istanbul occurred on our second last night. Having had to book two days in advance to secure a seat in this 4-storey establishment, we very quickly learnt why this restaurant was so greatly revered. Walking out onto the top floor, we were greeted with a stunning, dusk-lit view of the giant, glowing domes of Istanbul's nearby mosques and the Bosphorus River. We were soon distracted by the tasty variety of appetisers laid out on our table. Unfortunately we were too excited to try it all so we forgot to take any pictures as evidence of them, but instead have the following photos to share with you.

Flat pizza topped with spiced meat - mmm yum!

Juicy and soft koftas

And now onto the sweets. You would merely have to step inside a sweet store before being promptly greeted by a cheery staff member offering a handful of sliced-up sugar-filled goodies. Benches were piled high with fresh, tubular rolls of Turkish delights (lokum). Trayfuls of baklava and kadayıf dripping in molten sugar covered the benches, tempting us to taste them. Needless to say we didn't need very much convincing to purchase these treats, and we left with a tasty selection after every visit!

Rolls upon rolls of Turkish Delights filled with pistachios or hazlenuts!

 

Our main purpose of visiting Turkey in the first place was to attend the Anzac Day dawn service ceremony at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli. Having booked a tour, we hopped onto a bus along with 40-odd other Aussies and farewelled Istanbul to make our way to the commemorative site. Despite the solemn nature of the trip, the following events ensued quite a few laughs:

• Our 'tour guide' for the trip was really anything but. Dressed in a Canadian tuxedo (for those of you playing at home this is a denim jacket worn concurrently with denim jeans), obnoxiously reflective sunglasses which never came off, and a bandana tied around his neck, he resembled someone ready to go clubbing. This suited his frequent tendency to raise his arms in the air and loudly declare, 'Whoooooooh,' before addressing the tour group. A Turkish version of Corey 'Party Boy' Worthington if you like. If that wasn't bad enough, it didn't take Mr Canadian Tuxedo long to develop a liking for our popular Aussie chant of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi oi oi!”, and he consistently felt compelled to shout it at us at irregular and inappropriate intervals. It became clearer and clearer to us that Mr Canadian Tuxedo had obviously missed the debrief regarding Gallipoli and the nature of this particular tour.
  
  
  
  
  
• If we weren't already questioning the professionalism of our tour, our concerns were definitely confounded when our bus driver missed an important exit on the freeway. An honest and common-place mistake, I hear you say? Well, instead of simply taking the next exit, our bus driver decided it would be more efficient to stop and REVERSE the entire 1 kilometre back to the previous exit. Despite the fact that the rest of the tour group was rightfully freaking out at the sight of the trucks and cars blazing along around us, our bus driver remained unphased. And so we chugged along backwards until we reached the correct exit, and continued on our way to Gallipoli.
  
  

• One attraction of the tour group we booked with was that it was the only one with a 'ferry cruise' along the Dardanelles, the passage of water the Anzac soldiers travelled across to reach Gallipoli. So despite the solemn nature of our journey, we couldn't help but get excited about this ferry trip. That was until we were led to our 'ferry' docked along the wharf. No, it wasn't any of the gleaming white, 3-storey vessels which we passed along the way, but rather a humble, uncovered cargo barge with a few plastic chairs sprinkled across the deck. Which, I'll just add, didn't add much protection from the gusty winds sweeping across the waterway for the duration of our 2 hour journey.

Aside from the unexpectedly comical nature of our journey to Anzac Cove, the service itself was deeply moving. Looking out onto the inlet where the Anzacs landed, it was incredibly eerie to see what little chance our diggers had of succeeding against the Turks. There was literally no where for them to escape the onslaught of gunfire aimed at them, with the looming sand dunes above obliterating any chance they had of success. As each name of a deceased soldier was read out during the Dawn Service, along with their epitaphs, the devastating severity of the events that took place in 1915 hit home, as well as thinking of the pain their families would have faced learning the fates of their loved ones. Private Raymond Stanley Ellis', aged 18, reads “To Have, To Love And Then To Part, Is The Saddest Thing To A Human Heart”. Sergeant Frank Albert Rawlings' is simply “My only darling son”. To then share such a moment with fellow Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and Turks, who all made their way out to Gallipoli to pay their respects, was truly memorable. 

Lone Pine

I was equally grateful to learn and appreciate how special and unique Australia's relationship with Turkey is, and how respectful the Turkish people were (and are) of the bond Australians have with this piece of Turkish land. To help encapsulate this point, I will conclude with a quote from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first President of Turkey, in a beautiful and deeply moving tribute he wrote to the Anzacs killed at Gallipoli:

'Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land. They have become our sons as well.' 

The Hon. Julia Gillard even requested a photo with me!

We had a great time meeting Nell and Cathy too!

 

Two and a Half Cities and Dubrovnik

Julia and I were talking about Austria being the closest country to Australia in terms of number of letters per word that we would experience during our trip. I proudly declared that I would start some banter with the Austrian locals and declare that, 'I'm only one letter away from being Austrian!' Julia quickly corrected me, two letters. Not as impressive and hence the gag was prematurely culled. Nevertheless, differences or similarities aside, we really hit the ground running in Vienna. Acutely aware of the near obnoxious amount of significant and historical buildings elegantly strewn across Vienna's verdant streets. The architecture, both contemporary and historical, blend with seamless ease and the final product is without question the most aesthetically appealing city I've ever visited.

When people hear, 'Vienna,' they most commonly think Mozart, Beethoven and Sigmund Freud to name a few. Luminaries among the avant-garde of the 19^th & 20^th centuries. However, arguably just as important in terms of sheer pervasion and universal appeal/adoption are Vienna's humble yet vaunted coffee houses. Vienna boasts one of the best coffee cultures in the world. A fact well known and supported by the aforementioned vanguard. A Viennese coffee is generally regarded as an espresso shot topped with whipped cream. A yin and yang combination both in term of taste and alleged health benefits.

Typical Viennese coffee.

Aside from being the greatest place in the world to consume the ambrosial drop, Vienna, justifiably, also claims to be the classical music capital of the world. With Wiener Staatsoper often considered the 'mecca' of opera theatres. We didn’t let the fact that neither of us had ever been to the opera hold us back and we purchased tickets to attend. If you will, akin to an L-plater buying a Ferrari. The tickets themselves constituted about 3 days of travel on our shoestring backpacker budget. So, we took the fiscally responsible measure of eating dinner at Subway to balance the books. A cheap and bland meal. Quite the contrast to our thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening experience at the opera. Making our way through the entrance of the Staatsoper, past men in tuxedos, women with botox injected lips and enough animal fur to put Melbourne zoo out of business, we felt slightly out of place as we left the elite behind and made our way to the top floor where we were ushered to our seats. The show itself, L'elisir d'amore, was a comedy and therefore an entertaining introduction to opera for two novices. Regardless, the show must have been one of the best the audience had ever witnessed as we took their cue, joining them in a standing ovation, clapping for nearly 10 minutes. Cursing under my breath at having not paid to inflict paresthesia on my poor hands, I was frankly stunned to see the cast return for a second and then third round of applause. On their fourth return, frankly I'd had enough and forcibly ushered my dearest Julia out of the door. 

Arriving in Kotor, Montenegro Julia and I were unsure what to think. Our decision for being in Montenegro centred around opting for the cheapest flight from eastern Europe to Turkey, which was from Montenegro's capital Podgorica. After reading up on Podgorica, described in lonely planet as a place '...elsewhere that your attention should lie,' we decided to visit their famous and picturesque town of Kotor. Admittedly completely naive we figured we should at the least familiarise ourselves with the local currency. Conveniently I’ve got a handy app on my iphone that lists almost all currencies in modern circulation. Seriously, have you ever heard of the Rufiyaa? Surely you’ve heard of the Tughrik? The Ngultrum? Hence our shock not to find Montenegro’s currency on the exhaustive list. Genuinely alarmed at the omission of this far away, young and former Yugoslavian country, we began to question our decision to save some money. Alas, the question of currency was finally answered as, rushing from the bus to find a toilet, I was stopped in my tracks by a sign that stated, 50 EURO cents, to use the toilet. What a relief. Literally. And metaphorically too.

We stumbled upon these fresh and locally produced goods!Needless to say we obliged when coaxed to try them.

I can earnestly tell you that Julia and I are not demanding travellers. However it's safe to say that there are a few things that even the most care-free traveller would expect. Amongst others things, standing up in your own bedroom would surely feature fairly close to the top of the list. The roof of our room in Montenegro was slanted to such an extent that it brought back childhood memories of watching Willy Wonka and the shrinking hallway.

We travelled via train from Vienna to Budapest, Hungary. During the train journey, I managed to consume a smattering of Austro-Hungarian history. Much was my surprise when I learnt that until the recent date of 1918, Austria and Hungary were in fact part of a once dominate empire consisting of other now independent European countries. With some new found Austro-Hungarian history under my belt, it was very intersting to witness some of the similarities between Budapest and Vienna. Budapest is a city of two suburbs, Buda and Pest, which are separated by the Danube river. Ostensibly and culturally quite similar to Vienna. Budapest also boasts coffee houses, a love of classical music & theatre and rich and hearty cuisine. Economically the differences could barely be more profound. The poorer sibling of Vienna, Budapest still has visible scars of a repressive communist regime that until 1989 stymied growth, freedom of speech and many basic rights. For us, it spelt an interesting contrast and frankly cheaper few days than Vienna. At least this what we had imagined until we encountered our first Hungarian ATM. At 223.8 Hungarian Forint to the Aussie dollar, even those with the most astute mathematical minds would struggle to quickly and accurately convert the currency. After a sedentary train journey, hunger pangs and a 20kg backpack weighing you down, converting 223.8 HUF to AUD became all too hard and I unknowingly left the atm with $500 or the equivalent of $1000 AUD when considering the GDP (ppp) of Australia and Hungary respectively. $1000 is quite a lot of money for a 2 day stopover. Anyway, after checking into our hostel, I advised the receptionist that I would only be able to pay for half of our stay. $20 for the time being as I only withdrew a small amount of money. As I grappled with my unusually plump wallet and opened it up, my incredulity must have been obvious as Julia asked what was wrong? I showed her the thick wad of notes in my wallet and explained to the receptionist that I would infact pay to whole amount. 

The infamous Hungarian goulash!

Oops I forgot to write about Dubrovnik, Croatia! Here is what I remember from our relaxing 5 days; Sun, Rain, Rain, Rain, Sun and subsequently island hopping, a smidgen of sea sickness, a snapped mooring rope and fresh delectable seafood. 

Due to 3 days of house arrest on account of incessant rain, we actually began to ration our food!

Fresh, fresh seafood!

The stunning view from our restaurant.

Island exploring.

HTFU! Rough seas indeed. I've never been sea sick but even I got a tad squirmish.