Istanbul part deux

Even when it's rainy, completely overcast, slightly foggy and more than a little cold, this city is incredible. Today I slept in an hour later than intended, as my ipod clock is still on Spain time. When I finally did get up and out, I headed to the Basilica Cistern. I don't think that this is the same underground waterway from the Bond flick, but it's pretty cool. Just like every other must-see tourist item in the historic district, it's a ten lira ticket for an unguided visit, and given that it only takes about a half-hour or forty minutes to see all there is to see I was a bit disappointed at the price. Nonetheless, glad I did it. Took a few good pictures, although I'm still not adept enough with the light metering on my camera to make them extraordinary. Incidentally, there'll be no pictures in this post as the computers in the hostel lounge are fossils and it would take forever to upload them. The wait for computers is bad enough without somebody clogging up the line with picture posting. Hopefully I'll be able to find a time up here when it's empty-ish to post some, but worst case scenario they'll be up when I get back to Spain. I think some of them are quite good, especially the handful I took of the Blue Mosque last night.
After the cistern I strolled about aimlessly for a time. It hadn't begun to rain yet, but there was no doubt that it would, so I put on my rain jacket. Decided to head across one of the footbridges to the other side of the Golden Horn (still Europe). I walked a winding route pretty much on purpose, eventually making my way to the Taksim district, a very polished shopping area with one wide main street that is home to several foreign embassies and also St. Anthony's church, a big impressive structure that is apparently not open to the public. In the mist and gloom and beginnings of a rainstorm, Taksim is quite magical despite its modern feel. It's also home to about a half-dozen Starbucks joints, so I stopped and had my first truly oversized cup of coffee since leaving the states. It was a real treat. I forgot my book at the hostel, so I had nothing to do but sit and write while sipping my coffee, and that was fun until my pen ran dry. At that point I headed back out into the street, taking pictures at many points on my walk down toward the Galata Tower. Another 10 lira ticket, a short elevator ride, two flights of spiral stairs and I was rewarded with a great view of the city. It is absolutely sprawling. The fog and greyness add to the effect, but I think the edges of the metropolis might still be invisible on a clear day. Took a few pictures, the quality of which I won't be able to evaluate until I see them on a bigger screen. Mostly I just stood and took in the height and the surrounding rooftops. It's a very cool spot. After descending I did a bit more winding, most of it on very steep inclines, before heading back to the hostel. I had decided it was time to get in touch with Dad's friend in Istanbul. This turned out to be a very frustrating project as Turkish pay phones don't take coins but claim to take credit cards. 30 minutes and many a curse later I gave up and bought a local phone card (a waste of a few lira since there's no way I'll make 50 minutes of local phone calls while here, but whatever). Couldn't get a hold of Dad's friend, however, so I decided to head back to the hostel and hang out in the terrace bar. The view from here is actually much more fun when the glass is covered with rivulets of rainwater. I've been up here since-- the cook makes a damn good Iskinder kebab (that's a local specialty, delicious tomato-based sauce over lamb garnished with yogurt...magnificent). I think I'm going to call it a night pretty soon, although I'll probably end up staying here for a few more beers with the couple of pals I've made. I love hostel travelling.

First day in Istanbul, by the numbers

Minutes waited in assorted lines in airport at 2 am: 47
Cost, in lira, of cab ride to hostel at 3 am: 35
Hours of sleep: 7
Jewels seen in Tokopi Palace (in karats): 4,000,000 (roughly. Now I know what the phrase 'jewel encrusted' means.)
86 Karat diamonds: 1
Swords: 23
Letters handwritten by Mohammed: 1
Carpet salesmen encountered: 2 (note: shockingly low. One of the two even took a solid 7 minutes of conversation before slipping in the question 'You like carpet?' And then he showed be to a delicious, cheap restaurant, despite my refusal to check out his shop)
Turks instructing me not to support Bush: 1 (seems low, but in terms of percentage of turks talked to, this jumps to 33.3333333)
Mosques seen (entered): 5 (1, but Sultanahmet/Blue Mosque should probably count triple. Astonishing.)
Calls to prayer heard: 1, but a tag-team operation of the 6 minarets of the Blue Mosque, the 4 of the Haya Sofia, and the 1 of the other mosque that was in view. Pretty impressive)
Kitties: 9
Puppies: 2, both sleeping
Moments of true awe: minimum 29
Pictures taken (kept): 200 (145)

Eve of Thrace/Anatolia

Sure enough, excitement is setting in. I was thinking about stopping at a Vodafone store to ask about using my cellphone while in Istanbul, and trying to put together the question in my head (I hate being stuttery and obviously foreign when dealing w/ sales personell). Train of thought went roughly así: "Me voy mañana a Estambul, y quiero saber-- wait. I´M GOING TO ISTANBUL TOMORROW!!!" So yeah, I´m increasingly stoked about all of this.
I´ve spent my spare moments today looking at various websites sporting information on the only metropolis in the world which bridges a continental gap. The best part of all of this is that I have a full week in the city-- I have absolutely nothing to keep me from seeing everything. Which is a lot-- most tourism sites list about a dozen mosques and cathedrals, and those are just the huge & historical ones. There´s an afternoon to spend taking a boat tour up the Bosphorus. There´s the Grand Bazaar, and then at least one or two other un-grand ones. There´s multiple huge business districts. There´s bellydancing and hookah bars and the best baklavah in the world and a system of tunnels beneath the city (according to the Bond franchise anyway) and castles and islands and a beautiful coast and two separate seas and millions upon millions of people. It´s all a bit overwhelming, and that´s before I´ve even gotten there. I cannot possibly overstate my excitement.

Sacromonte pics

This past week has been very relaxed. Not a whole lot to report-- I´ve got a hostel booked in Istanbul, Megan and I are approaching a plan of sorts for meeting up in Spain after I get back from Turkey. It really hasn´t hit me yet, but I´ll be in Turkey...practically in Asia...able to straddle two continents...in all of 5 days. More to come on this...I´m guessing that sometime Tuesday afternoon I´ll be freaking out about how cool that is.

We had a soccer game on Wednesday night. Fútsol. Not a typo-- that´s what they call soccer played on a much smaller, much more made-of-stone court with teams of six. It was fun, but frustrating. One consequence of having a group composed of 60-some girls and 18 guys is that the group sports teams can´t really compete with teams with the opposite gender proportions. We´re really a pretty decent team, all things considered, but the Iowa State boys we played were very competitive, very fast, and had far more people who actually play soccer than we do. Still fun, I guess, but we got whipped. Turns out I curse a lot, and at a high volume, when I play sports. Huh.

So that was Wednesday-- last night was pretty tranquilo. Went to one of the bars we frequent, played some pool (which made me miss playing daily), wrapped things up around 3. Eddie went to Camborrio, the club up on Sacromonte, and ended up getting home around 6. He´d be the first to tell you that that´s an early night at Camborrio. That place is wild. I didn´t have the energy.

Today Paula took about 25 of us up through Sacromonte to the Abbey. Long, steep walk that rewarded us with a terrific view.

After sitting around for about a half hour waiting for another group to move through the abbey, we took our tour. There´s a museum with a pretty great collection of paintings, a map of Granada from the 16th century along with the original silver printing plates, a letter from Francisco Pizarro to Charles V, and a whole bunch of other stuff. We toured the museum, the small church, and the caves where it is believed San Cecilio was martyred. Pretty cool stuff all around.

In other news, I finally figured out how to use the manual focus feature on my camera effectively:

Gibraltar & Sevilla pictures

That´s Africa back there, across the Mediterranean. No big deal.

This is one of I believe 3 mosques in Gibraltar, with the Rock in the background. This is approximately the opposite direction from the view of Africa, shot from almost the same exact spot.

This rock ape took my apple. I had brought the apple into the ape sanctuary fully intending to give it to an ape, but also hoping to coax said ape into some cool pictures. This intrepid dude jetted right up to me as I was taking a picture (I didn´t see him). Kinda freaked me out, but I kept a grip on the apple, and then gave it to him ´cause he gave me a reproachful look and I felt bad.
This rugged guy accosted our friend Stu and pulled a banana out of his pants pocket, eliciting (1) incredulous, high-pitched and non-stop yelling from Stu and (2) a bunch of dirty jokes involving bananas, pockets and monkeys.
First picture I took while walking into Gibraltar... Bird of Paradise. Killer.
And we´re into the Sevilla pictures. This is one of the towers at the Plaza de España. Lens flare provided free of charge.

Picture in the Real Alcazar in Sevilla. Part of this palace, originally built by the Moors, has been added onto by three separate Catholic rulers of Spain, and includes space still occupied by the royals when they travel to Sevilla.

By far the coolest thing in Sevilla, though, was the Catedral.

The Cathedral in Sevilla stands on the spot formerly occupied by the city´s Alhama, or main Mosque, during the 700 years of Moorish rule of al-Andalus. As in most such cases, the mosque was almost entirely razed and built over-- only the irrigated patio (with its orange trees and fountain for ritual pre-prayer ablutions) and Alminar (minaret) remain. The old Moorish Alminar has been built over in Christian style, and a bronze statue of a 4-meter-high woman holding a shield stands atop the tower. This one-ton woman, whose shield is designed to catch the breeze such that her other hand will always indicate the wind´s direction, is named Giralda and lends her name to the tower itself. These are some shots from the very top of the tower, which is scaled by way of 34 long slopes-- no stairs.

the bull ring of Sevilla, as seen from the Giralda belltower.

Sevilla & the Guadalquivir & some bridge -- Approximately the same stretch of the river on which we pedalboated later that day.

the aforementioned patio, from atop Giralda.

Torre de Oro-- kind of a deceptive name, since only the dome is actually Golden, but whatever. Shot from surface of the Guadalquivir, in a hidropedal. Sweet.

Monument on the banks of the Guadalquivir, next to a large plaque with a quotation from Elie Wiesel, which I will not try to translate in its entirety but which is about tolerance. Cool stuff.

Whirlwind Weekend (pictures later)

So this past weekend´s pre-paid AIFS trip was a friday-morning-to-sunday-night trip from Granada to Gibraltar to Sevilla to Cordoba to Granada. I don´t feel like going to Google maps and finding out how many miles that is, but trust me, it´s several. When you´re not riding a slightly-too-small bus for hours at a time, you´re strolling briskly along behind a well-rested tourguide who´s very nice but frustrated that you are so tired.
Don´t get me wrong, I enjoyed the weekend. Three very cool places that I would have been angry to have missed. If Mother Nature made a Best Of record, the Rock of Gibraltar would be the hard-to-find track that made you drop 15 bucks for the CD even though you already have a copy of everything else on the compilation. Seriously, it´s incredible. And the rock apes are very, very cute, especially when they hump each other on top of your tour bus.
I think the Ludicrous Speed of the tour was part of what got me sick in Sevilla. Friday night, after arriving from Gibraltar to our hotel in the city, I went to dinner with a few people and found I had developed a profound cough worthy of the Marlborough man. The next day I felt mostly fine, although still cough-y, as we wound our way through various tourist attractions in the city (very cool, more later w/ pictures). That night, after making a fucking delicious and completely improvised chicken stirfry with some friends in the hotel, I started feeling feverish, my cough started carrying stuff up, and my throat felt like it was made of pumice. After watching the exhilirating end of the Barcelona-Real Madrid match (Leo Messi, my personal favorite futbolista & Argentine, completed his hat trick in the final minute to tie the game and save a point for Barça, who was a man down and had been screwed by a lousy PK call in the first half), I was positive I had a fever, and decided to play it safe and not go out drinking. Trust me, it hurt, but it was the right decision.
Anyway-- I didn´t sleep for more than an hour straight the whole night, getting up constantly to spit foul-looking stuff into the sink, finally coughing so violently that my body quit and went to purge mode even though my stomach felt fine (bye-bye delicious, hand-made stirfry). Definitely high fever by this point. Trying to remind myself that you´re supposed to bundle up and sweat these things out. Trying not to get up and use all the spanish curses I´ve learned on the cabrones clapping and singing on the street outside our hotel WHERE THERE WERE NO GODDAMN BARS to facilitate such assholery. Trying to keep my up-and-down, bathroom-to-bed movements to minimum. Trying to keep my coughing below 50 decibels so as not to wake Eddie. What I´m getting at here, it was a miserable night. Except for the Messi hat trick, which was pretty freakin sweet.
Anyway-- I feel a hell of a lot better now. When we got back on Sunday night Sebi was very sweet and made me about a gallon and a half of mint tea before sending me to bed early. The next day I went to AIFS´s doctor, who gave me 4 separate prescriptions, which have me feeling near human again, although I sound like a zombie when I talk to people.


More on Leo Messi (youtube him, or google video search him....there´s good reason some people are heavily pushing the ´next Diego Maradona´ mantle onto this guy). As a kid, he received hormone treatments for dwarfism. Heavily scouted by the best teams in Argentina, but was bought by FC Barcelona when he was roughly 16, I believe. Started for Barcelona´s B side, and averaged over 1 goal per game. As a 17 year old, he made his first start for FC Barcelona in the Spanish Primera Liga, one of the best national soccer leagues in the world. Wears number 19 (I swear that´s not why I like him so much, but yeah, it helps) He is currently 19 years old. Nineteen. One-Nine. And he´s marking hat tricks against Real keeper Iker Casillas, the starter for the Spanish national side and possibly the best at his position in the world (definitely in the top 3). And he´s making Adidas commercials where he comes off as very personable. And he´s charming in post-game interviews. And he´s saucy as HELL. A couple weeks ago, in a Liga game, an opposing player was jawing with him and resting his forehead aggresively on Messi´s while jawing. RESTING his head, not headbutting. After listening to his trashtalk for a few seconds, Messi grabs his forehead and falls to the ground. Result: red card for the other guy. After the game, asked about the obvious (and successful) dive: "Somos Argentinos, y nos conocemos." That is, ´We´re both Argentinians, and we know each other.´ Next question. This actually makes me like him more. Go ahead and hate the diving in soccer if you want to, I won´t quarrel. But in a sport that rewards things like that, why not abuse the system? Spirit of the Game is fine for Ultimate, where nobody´s making any money or facing harassment for failure, but professional Futbol is a billion-Euro industry, and gaming the system is as much of a problem there as in any other major sport. Maybe you find Soccer´s way of gaming the rules to be less honorable or less manly than cheap zone-blocking schemes in American football that are designed to take out defenders´ knees to create holes for RBs, or steroids in the MLB, or easily-drawn touch fouls in the NBA. I say, get the hell over it. And in a sport where teams openly celebrate when they succeed in drawing a bullshit penalty kick, why shouldn´t a player use a daytime emmy-worthy performance to get a man advantage when the referee isn´t quite paying attention? And if he´s going to do it, shouldn´t he be saucy in saying, essentially, ´dems the breaks´ in a post-game press conference? Love it. Love Leo Messi. Each of his celebrations on Saturday outdid the previous one. First goal he lifts up his jersey to reveal a t-shirt with ´Fuerza Tio´ handwritten on it, apparently encouragement for a sick uncle at home. Second goal he runs around screaming and looking generally stoked. Then, after receiving a pass in traffic he elects not to stick a through pass to one of two partially-covered teammates inside the 18. When the pressure´s one, winners want the ball. He beats two men just enough to get some daylight, putting himself at a very difficult angle to goal in the process, and absolutely rips a ball past Casillas to the far corner, leaving the Spanish national keeper face down on the grass, not getting up. Sprints around screaming even louder, his eyes almost literally aflame, like he never doubted he would score. Brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant.

Pictures (read: Bribes)

So...two posts in a month...probably not what y´all had in mind. I apologize. Looky, pretty pictures!

FROM THE ALHAMBRA, over a month ago...a handful of the several hundred I took over 4 hours.

awww lookitdakitty... many many cats in the Generalife garden complex that connects the Alcazar (castle) to the summer palace.

"PRODUCERS LOVE LENS FLARE."-- M. Sanders... these were taken from...not the foot...sort of the shin of the Albaicin.

This is also from the Albaicin, a bit higher up...former Mosque/Alminar, now Church/Belltower.

That´s "A thousand machines could never make a flower." Albaicin graffiti.

From the Palacio Real in Madrid...12 string guitar made with Mother of Pearl...really proud of this picture ´cause I had to be clever to get it lit...looks way cooler in full resolution.

OF THE ALHAMBRA, at sunset, a couple weeks ago, from El Mirador de San Nicolas, possibly the best view of the city/palace/mountains. Would have many more pictures from that day but my batteries have figured out how to die at the least opportune possible moment.

Pan´s Labyrinth (no plot spoilers, maybe theme spoilers)

This past weekend was pleasant but pretty much unremarkable. One notable thing-- my friend Rachel from OC was in town from Alicante, and we hung out Friday and Saturday nights. Fun but not crazy.
Last night I saw El Laberinto del Fauno at the multiplex in the mall near my house. No subtitles, naturally, which made it a bit tricky at times to keep the thread. Mostly I was very pleased with myself as far as comprehension goes. I had felt very comfortable watching The Departed dubbed into Español (Infiltrados is the title here if you´re curious), but I had already seen that film in english. (Sidenote: surprisingly good dub job-- lips don´t synch of course but in general when an actor´s mouth isn´t moving neither are your eardrums. Very hard to do. Yeah, you lose the Boston accents, but it´s still very fun to watch Markie Mark say "Tu. No. Eres. Un. Puta. Poli." to Leo DiCaprio, and Jack Nicholson´s face is a universal language. End sidenote)
So I enjoyed the film a great deal. The CGI is well done, the young woman who stars as Ofelia is talented, and the direction is near masterful. I´m generally very wary of pictures that boast a "Written, Produced & Directed by X" credit (of course I also really want to be X at some point in my life). In this case, Guillermo del Toro has done right by his script, which itself has very few weaknesses. The interweaving of a fantasy plotline and a war plotline is a delicate thing. Stray too far to one side and the places in which the stories stitch together become painfully, hammeringly overwrought; too far to the other and the stories´ only cohesion is at the level of one character and a common endpoint.
El Laberinto del Fauno treads this narrow bridge over filmic hellfire with great tact and substantial brutality, both physical and emotional. At the script/character level, del Toro builds characters that are sparse but not archetypical, three-dimensional but simple, a choice which works well within the film´s simple presentation of the combat between a group of Maquis guerillas and a fascist cavalry unit tasked with their pursuit in the Spanish countryside in 1944. By contrast, the characters in Ofelia´s fantasy world are wholly, intentionally archetypical, with far less dimension than any of the non-CGI characters. Ofelia´s dedication to the realization of the series of tasks presented her by the titular Faun mirrors her stepfather´s devotion to the quashing of the Republican resistance in the mountains, although their emotional motivations are wildly divergent.
At the visual level, del Toro´s direction serves without distracting. The film has a definite, unified visual style primarily centered around cross-cutting rather than camera movement. Movie´s like this one remind me just how much skill it takes to create good mise-en-scene, and at the same time how much balls it takes to be able to say ¡Ya está!, enough, we´ve got it, Action! The inexorable visual contrast between a leafy, dappled world filled with seemingly hopeless brutality and a dark laberinto no less full of seemingly promising fantasy imagery is the fire in this film´s belly. As the choices of the central characters drive both plotlines forward through their respective worlds, the nature of those worlds leaves the characters increasingly confined by consequence. The stunning nature of the film´s resolution is particularly impressive given the use of a framing device which has cut the feet from under many a decent film. Granted, it is incredibly taxing to follow the dialogue in another language. Nonetheless, were I to watch the film subtitled (and thereby trade the free wandering of my eyes for that of my mind), I believe I would bear no hostility towards the framing structure. I want to elaborate more, but I don´t want to screw up the experience for anybody who hasn´t seen it yet. If you haven´t seen it yet, please do. Be warned, it´s quite bloody-- not so much that you need hipwaders, but know that if slick Scorsesi violence turns your stomach that Pan´s Labyrinth may well have you peeking through your fingers at times.
Overall it is one hell of a good film, and I very much want to see The Lives of Others to try to understand how something could have beaten El Laberinto del Fauno for Best Foreign Feature.