Pink Houses

All the pink houses are not in Bermuda... here are some pictures from around town...

And even a pink police station!

A Japanese Day

The weather cooled down for a day, so I was off for a Japanese themed day. New exhibits opened at the Pera Museum as part of the 2010 year of cultural exchange between Japan and Turkey. My first stop was at the Japanese Cultural Center to see what diversions they offered. The center is a small office, and language lessons the only offer. To study ikebana or oragami, you need to go to Japan... There is a nearby Japanese cafe, which looked to be a good lunch idea. I took no pictures of the center, but did take a couple of the church across the street, which had a prretty stained glass window. No signage in Turkish or English gave away the name or type of church.
At the Pera Museum, there was as exhibit by the Japanese artist Ikuo Hirayama, who passed away this past December at the age of 79. He was an accomplished Nihonga painter, painting in the old style, where natural color pigments were mixed with glue and applied to paper. This contrasts to the western world mixing the color pigments with oils, resulting in the oil painting standard. Hirayama's painting surfaces have a granular look when you get up close. This exhibit featured paintings inspired by his over 100 trips to locations along the Silk Road. The one shown below is of the Cappadocia area in Turkey. Hirayama's interest inthe Silk Road stems from his interest in the path Buddism took to arrive in Japan.

Hirayama also painted in water colors, with several of Turish people and locations in the exhibit. A painting of the Blue Mosque was reproduced on a elevator door of the museum

On two other floors of the museum, Japanese inventions as well as animation, manga and gaming classics. A film festival will run for the next month or so at the Pera Museum featuring animated movies. They will show two features, Spirited Away and Tokyo Godfathers, which I have already seen. For the others, I will keep note of the titles, as all will be shown in Japanese with Turkish subtitles.

After my museum visit, my intent was to head back to the Japanese cafe, but a new restaurant, SaladStation, pulled me in. Their logo looks similar to the one for the London Underground, so I do believe there may be a western connection to this franchise. You choose your salad base (mine arugula) and then choose your base toppings (5 included) and any additional toppings (went for the hard to find blue cheese) and a dressing - here I chose the wasabi dressing, to keep with my Japanese dressing.

The green kerchiefed salad chefs mix it up for you. Very fresh and tasty. Return visits will be made.

I had a great day touring in spite of the fact I left my compact Totes umbrella on the return ferry... I was too absorbed in the new issue of Time Out Istanbul to notice my mistake.

Have a good day!

Amy

Fused Glass

Train and metro stations often have some beautiful murals on their walls. Most often, they are of ceramic tiles. But, in the Taxim station, where the funicular from Kabatas arrives, there is a great mural in fused glass. The scene is of the Bosphorus. A closeup of some houses, a ferry boat and a mosque...

The fused glass artist is Ebru Susamcioglu and she did the work at The Glass Furnace in Istanbul. "Cam" is the Turkish word for glass. The red motif for CAM is very clever.

The Glass Furnace has a website located at http://glassfurnace.org They have classes in various glass working methods on their campus, out from the city in the district of Beykoz.

A Day in Kuzguncuk

My goal for an excursion to Kuzguncuk, was to find the quilt shop of Istanbul and to see this village on the Bosphorus. As it was a hot day, I called for a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the Kuzguncuk ferry terminal, as the ferry terminals are always in the heart of the village. The driver asked if he could drop me off at the small park with an opening to the Bosphorus. Lovely! It was later I realized why he questioned my request to be taken to the ferry terminal. It seems to be closed for renovation!

Kuzguncuk's main street goes inland from the Bosphorus and has beautiful old trees. It is very unusual to see a shady street with such nice trees. Other streets have no trees or very small trees and limited shade.

Just off the main drag, is the street that houses the quilt shop. The shop is owned by Selma Kenter and she also started a quilting organization. Every few years, the members of the quilting organization hold an exhibit of their quilts. I missed the most recent exhibit in May of this year.

Inside is a display of the quilt exhibit posters from previous years. In addition, catalogs of the quilts exhibited are produced. This year's catalog is not yet available, but I did pick up a copy of the 2000 exhibit catalog. I will pass this along to Louise if anyone wants to take a look at it.

Above the shop is a large workroom, for classes, which will start in September. Here is the link to the website for the quilting organization http://tsdpatchwork.org/

My map of Kuzguncuk showed three churches in a small area. I found 2 of them. Both were locked up tight, but in good repair, so probably still in use.

A large green patch on the map noted a minority cemetery. The cemetery is fenced in and I climbed a steep hill and found a doorway into a small part of the cemetery. There was a cross on the entrance, so the minorities would be Christians. Most of the cemetery appears jungle like in vegetation.

The cemetery is still being used. There were several burials marked from the last decade. Most burial sites had simple crosses, but some had detailed stone carvings.

On my way back down the hill, I walked past an old building with very weathered wood. Traditional building material for the homes along the Bosphorus is wood.

Have a good day where ever you might be!

Amy

Turkish Tea

Turkey is one of the largest tea drinking countries in the world. Tea is offered at restaurants and cafes and is also made in the home. Traditionally, it is served in small glasses with a saucer and sugar on the side. Never is milk or lemon used in tea. A glass of tea is often just 50 cents. This one had a view of the Bosphorus, right by the ferry terminal, so it cost $2.The process of making Turkish tea is an art I have yet to acquire. It takes about a half an hour and a double boiler type tea pot is needed. Initially, you boil water in the bottom kettle and just have the loose tea leaves in the top kettle. After the water boils, some water from the bottom kettle is poured into the top kettle to wet the tea leaves. Then the steeping process starts. More boiling water is added to the top as needed. After 30 minutes, you have some very strong (and I find bitter) tea in the top kettle. The server then pours tea from the top kettle into a glass and adds water from the bottom kettle to get the right color and strength. In the food stores, there are many brands of tea and the most popular packaging is the one kilo (2.2045 pounds) size. That's a lot of tea! And a great bargain...prices for a kilo of tea range from $6 to $8. Tea is grown in the north of Turkey, near the Black Sea.

So when two workers arrived at my apartment with our two night tables each in a box containing 17 convenient pieces, I felt I needed to offer drinks. Coffee, tea or water? One chose water and the other tea. I turned on the electric kettle, boiled up some water and poured it over a Dilmah Ceylon Supreme Tea bag, imported in one of my three suitcases and purchased at the Giant in Nazareth, PA. Well, what could the worker expect from a foreigner? As it turns out, he thought it was an excellent cup of tea and inquired as to the type of tea. Maybe he does not care for the traditional tea's bitterness either. Or maybe it was the packet of Equal I gave him that made it special, as I did not have any sugar in the house.

Enjoy your next cup of tea!

Amy

Laundry Day

While walking in the Fener area, it was evident that it was laundry day... And nice to see such teamwork with the neighbors across the street!

Rest assured, my laundry is being dried in the dryer, so my underwear is not flying around Istanbul...

Amy

Pammakaristos or Fethiye Museum

Yesterday's adventure was to find the Fethiye Museum, originally one of two churches named Pammakaristos. The location required me to take a ferry down the Golden Horn to the Fener stop. The Golden Horn is one of the bays off of the Bosphorus and it is very long and skinny. This was my first time on such a fancy ferry... The inside was luxurious with monitors for live TV.

Upon arriving in Fener, the roads were cobbled and in good shape.

Old Istanbul is built on 7 hills. I climbed about 13 of them to get to the Fethiye Museum. The day was overcast and cool with fairly strong winds, so that helped quite a bit.

The original Pammakaristos church is now a mosque. But back in the 14th century, the wife of the patron who had the church built, had a second smaller funerary chapel built adjacent to the original structure. This smaller structure is now a museum and houses some of the better Byzantine mosaics in Istanbul.

The brickwork inside is as pretty as the brickwork outside.

Here is the central dome with a beautiful mosaic of Jesus and 12 old testament prophets.
Yes, I can hear Bill saying that he wished I had a better camera... I will go back and try to take better pictures.

Inside, there is also a fresco of the three wise men.

I had the place to myself, except for the two attendants who took my $3 admission outside and one attendant inside who tracked me. I think I drove him crazy, as I kept going back and forth between the sign noting the mosaics, frescoes, markings, etc. and the actual item. He got his workout following me around.

There were no candles lit in the church, but as you can see, they are prepared in the event of a fire, albeit a very small contained one.

After my visit, I walked down the hill and walked along the Golden Horn to the Kadir Has University. They have a small museum down one level from the street entrance to the building. They have excavated some of the old brick walls below this part of the city and house their archaeological collections around the walls. It was a very impressive display, of which they allow no photos..., so we end on the fire remediation system.