Is the world losing her mystique?

Today as I was taking my morning stroll through that voyeuristic land of Facebook notifications, I spotted a link from National Geographic  describing a new kind of virtual travel designed by Google which enables viewers the ability to visit sites internationally without actually visiting them. Basically it is a whole other level to ‘Street View’. And I got to thinking…what has happened to the traditional sense of exploration and adventure? Personally the thought of ‘virtually’ travelling to the Colosseum in Rome or the Musée d’ Orsay in Paris horrifies me. I couldn’t think of anything more damaging to the amazing feeling that awaits me when I do decide to travel to those places. Simultaneously I castigate myself for being so selfish, “what about all those poor souls who can’t afford to travel?”, the angel on my shoulder gently whispers and I agree with her. Technology has proven to be a great way to bridge the gap between rich and poor, the phenomenon of Globalisation bringing the world closer and closer together and enabling those with less to have a little more, to experience a little more. That is one argument anyway. Mine is that it is a double-edged sword. I could go into the issues with Multinational companies and all the other ensuing global problems but for now let’s stick to the subject matter!

The question is, will Globalisation and things like our rapidly developing technological achievements bring the world so close that we can no longer breathe? I’m picturing something along the lines of a hug from an overbearing and BO infested relative which continues for too long. And by breathing I’m referring to awe and wonder. Have you experienced it, those serendipitous events which occur when you make an unplanned decision in a place completely alien to you? Like that moment on a scooter in Bangkok, whizzing through traffic afraid of skinning your knee caps for the closeness of the neighbouring vehicles. Clinging desperately to the driver in front of you when you are supposed to be casually leaning back holding on to the seat, thinking you are going to die and yet feeling more alive than ever. Or what about the time when tired and exhausted from navigating your way through a strange city trying to find some popular touristic monument, you find the hospitality of friendly locals instead, feeding you and sharing their customs and friendship as openly as family. These moments, the ones where,  in the shadow and glory of a looming mountain, you feel simultaneously small and infinite, the soul expanding beyond the body, what about them? Are we losing them? As the worlds’ wonders become encased in swarms of tourists and each special place is slowly converted into a heaving mound of stampeding, clicking people, documenting everything to be uploaded safely to a website so that we might ‘know before we go’, is the world losing her mystique?

 

 

The haunting

 

The ghosts of Istanbul follow me, turning my dreams to turquoise edged in a vibrating gold , its amber droplets spreading effervescent light.  All the frustrations, doubts and fears have dried up and formed a brittle shell which with time is cracking up and dissipating. A discombobulated mass of fragments, discarded, forgotten like the streets in Tarlabaşi. Now there are only traces of awe filled minutes and the tantalising rippling of the Bosphorus; its inky colours swirl and change as it moves and beckons.

Seeking rituals, finding home.

24th June 2012

Journal entry

Seeking out rituals and a sense of place, a feeling of belonging is what upholds my ability to settle in new cities. I only realised this the other evening whilst watching the Bosphorous all glowing and shadowy from Istanbul’s reflections. Unless I am travelling from place to place at a quickened pace, I find myself floundering in a city’s depths, enjoying the new experience but feeling lost without some sort of routine or home. For a time this feeling is fun and exciting but after a while it is inevitably replaced by homesickness at which point the only thing I can do is create a new home, a new ritual!

Here in Istanbul, I decided to extend my stay from 9 days to 2 months, but like every new relationship I was aware of the gamble I was making.  Nevertheless it has paid off! I have found my ritual, and rituals within that ritual like visiting the Sunday Tarlabaşi Pazaari with Bridey.

At around ten in the morning I lean out my apartment window which is raised four stories above Kurdela street below. Usually I have already been reading in bed or laying there observing the commotion below with my ears. A cacophony of sounds rise up to meet me, typical market sounds of stall holders hawking their wares, clashes and bangs and clangs as everything is constructed in a matter of hours transforming what was once our long naked street into a white passage of seemingly endless sails. With the morning light casting shadows across the tent tops it is a magnificent site to witness  and no matter how many times I see it I feel the excitement of a newly arrived traveller.

I was lucky enough to secure a room that overlooks my street and is opposite to Bridey’s apartment, our windows are virtually adjacent, allowing us to shout and sign language some semblance of a meeting plan across the tent tops.

Descending my old slippery stone staircase is like a descent into a delicious pool of tantalising smells. Stalls are always crammed up against the entrance ways to apartment buildings and so their varied scents waft up the staircases. Our front door stall is one that sells herbs and so the bottom three levels transform into a mint hazed paradise. Bridey and I meet in the middle and wander off amongst crowds of mostly locals and scattered tourists, a crowd who on one of our more delicate days can soon become suffocating.

Like most markets the Kurdela street Pazari is strewn with colours, sounds and smells an exotic feast for the senses. The atmosphere is dense with these elements, almost oppressive, certainly not for the hung over individual to attempt. However it’s richness is intoxicating and I can’t get enough of those soft caramel dates I savour as I peruse each stall for the best, freshest eggplant, tastiest cheese or a new variety of olive. We try almost everything as the stall holders insist on showering us with testers. Unlike some parts of the world, here it is almost socially inconceivable not to try the produce on offer.

Later surrounded by the colour and ripe goodness of our selections we lounge languidly on Bridey’s terrace, feasting for hours. I have grown to love this particular routine, it acts like an anchor tying my wandering spirit to this place mimicking the feeling of belonging which, despite our nature, us traveller’s tend to covet.

Fehme’s apartment

11th June 2012

Journal entry

Today Fehme took me to the Adalar Islands aptly nick named the Prince’s islands, he let out his deep relaxed chuckle when I told him they must belong to me being named after my family name and all. It has not been a common exercise of mine to accept invitations from strange middle aged Turkish men to join them on a day trip to an island. In fact today was my first time undertaking such an excursion and I was a little apprehensive about it, a voice of doubt which sounded a lot like my parents kept telling me that my instincts about this seemingly good natured, good intentioned man could be incorrect. I had to keep banishing occasional dark visions of myself being mugged or worse as Fehme, oblivious to my train of thought, continued telling me various anecdotes regarding his life and our surroundings. Its hard to look interested and at ease when you are battling damning thoughts about your well being. Having the kind of face that betrays every internal thought process, I was struggling. I tried hard to suppress any look of dismay or stress from rising to my frozen smiling face, resulting in a somewhat painful smile reminiscent of a child who, reluctant to use the toilet, might be hiding the fact that they had already completed their task without it.

In the end my instincts won out and I began to relax. I met Fehme a few days ago when he startled me creaking down a staircase I hadn’t noticed in his antique shop. Upon taking a good look at this 40 something man with mis-happen curly black hair, coke bottle lenses and dressed in what appeared to be faded tangerine pyjamas I found him immediately likeable. He was odd and carried a sense of cool quirk in his wake. Everything about Fehme is relaxed, even the way he handles and smokes his multitudes of cigarettes between sips of sweet black tea. I have often wondered whether that drooping cigarette at the corner of his nonchalant mouth is permanently adhered there; despite the fact that every movement he makes is slow, I never seem to be able to catch the moment when he puts it there. Displaying the typical Turkish hospitality I have experienced around Istanbul, Fehme showed me around his eclectic little shop jammed full of treasures in that slap dash yet measured way of his. On a second visit he brusquely ordered tea for us with a somewhat dismissive hand signal at one of the tea house waiters on the street. Over tea we discussed our lives and he told me all about how his apartment lies above the shop, acting as a sort of private hostel for a small number of travellers and students. Noticing my interest he promptly invited me to look around upstairs…and lo and behold, there it was…

The mysterious terrace I had been wondering about for so long, covered in trash and treasure, pot plants which had dried out to strangely formed sculptures, an old mannequin of a woman split in two, a mattress, a guitar, half empty cocktail glasses, greasy traces of a vibrant party the previous night, an empty desk, a promise of new friends and adventures to be had.

Mission accomplished!

Fehme’s apartment pt I

8th June 2012

Journal entry

Sitting on the balcony each day (in my corner) I watch Beyoglu walk past. The scene has become more familiar to me now and I am comfortable in this strange and magical place. One thing, however, has eluded my understanding and is perplexing in its mystery. Across the street and a story or two lower than my perch, I can see a roof top terrace  populated by what some people may call junk. But from up here I am fascinated by it and my two feet are itching to wander over there and explore it. Old pots with spindly plants, weathered wooden tables, cracked easels, construction materials, stools and mannequins litter its surface. Often I see a girl sitting at a desk in the middle of this delightful chaos and I wonder whether she is the owner or a visitor. This is definitely a small mystery I’d like to solve!

Walking along the street below I can’t see any evidence of an entrance to the building that supports the mystery terrace. It could be any number of candidates such as the fruit stall with Pomegranates stacked high, their hot pink/red flesh beckoning. Or could it be one of the many music shops stocked full of strangely shaped exotic instruments, perhaps there is a secret door behind the wood oven in my favourite lentil soup restaurant that leads to this elusive terrace. Still I can not work it out even after scouring the walls and shops of the street several times over.

9th June

Journal entry

Today I wandered into an antique shop, a friend here recommended I visit. It is situated on my street, across and a few paces further down. The entrance is set back from the bustling narrow street behind a large pair of wrought iron gates which herald a small alley way shrouded in luscious looking vines. The doorway is on the right and there is an occasional fanciful vintage outfit hung from gateway to entrance as a teaser for passers by.

Inside, the shop is dimly lit and musty with the smell of things that have seen several moons, the smell is mixed with a faint whiff of cigarettes and incense, heady, like Istanbul. It is a shop full of every kind of oddity from old Istanbulu comic strips to Afghani rings to elaborate Chinese Cheong Sams. Everything is in a kind of organised disarray and arranged in discordant groups, an old tobacco tin next to a teddy bear with one dangling eye and misshapen fur who is flopped atop a folded leather jacket with studded collar. This shop absorbs me for about twenty minutes before I here a creak on a stairwell close to the back of the shop which I hadn’t noticed…

to be continued…

My heart surrenders

7th June 2012

Journal entry

I’m sitting in a big double decker bus right at the front, journal balanced haphazardly on the flimsy fold out table, giant windscreen in front displaying the long stretch to Istanbul, 12 hours to be exact. Its a little daunting and I’m feeling a little melancholy as I watch the final dribs and drabs of this fairytale place glide past, white peaks tinted pale gold in the dying embers of sunset. I have grown used to this particular type of melancholy, I almost feel it is a welcome friend who keeps me company from time to time on my long journey. It is a funny thing this melancholy, a strange mix of bitter sweetness which inevitably surfaces whenever I leave a place or person who I have grown fond of and in some instances who my heart has surrendered to.

In this case I believe Cappadocia to be one of those instances. Somehow in the span of five days my heart has surrendered itself to the little white cave dwellings, rocky peaks, the kilim rugs billowing high and the red and pink roses that permeate Göreme. All these things and so much more have shrouded me in such a glowing hue of belonging and wonder that I have fallen in love with this place and its magic.

What a familiar feeling this is, I’m wondering if it could be possible for me to fall in love with places in the same way I have fallen in love with men?

Yes, it is that same feeling! I am realising now that in past love lives my heart has always surrendered quickly and easily, gleeful and dizzy at the idea that the significant other loved me. Never did I stop to consider how suited to me that other was. Always, I was eager to please and adapt to their needs and desires, abandoning my own, and later, paying the price.

So, my dear Göreme, I leave you melancholy at the thought of our short romance ending, but simultaneously empowered and refreshed by the beauty of our brief rendezvous. A fleeting passion brings a certain freedom and imprints upon my heart an eternal memory of something perfect and young, forever beautiful, forever unspoiled. Most importantly I am still me and you are still you and I am glad I didn’t completely lose myself in the intoxicating scent of your roses.

Fairy chimneys, red roses and a big hot air balloon pt 2

6th June 2012

Journal entry

I am very much alone here in Göreme, far removed from the hustle of Istanbul and the faces which were becoming familiar to me. However there is something about this place which prevents me from feeling too lonely. As unsettling as it was to discover that I appear to be the only woman wandering the streets on this side of town, I have begun to like the quiet quality that this place exudes. Aside from that there is a level of homeliness, I feel at home here, comfortable, somehow it feels familiar to me as if I have been here before or like an old friend I have known it for years. My experiences travelling solo have led to the discovery of a tendency to either feel an affinity with a new place or not. I wonder/suspect if/this might be true for other travellers.

Aside from the homeliness, Göreme is simply beautiful, there are no exaggerations when people describe it as having fairy chimneys. The lifestyle is relaxed: lazy mornings spent in the courtyard garden at my temporary place of residence eating breakfasts of local honey, bread, soft cheese, olives, tomato and cucumber; afternoons spent stretched out atop multitudes of cushions in the little raised gazebo, book in hand with Lazy the resident tortoiseshell cat asleep at my feet.

My neighbours are a pair of exquisite volcanic rock formations, two giants sitting in a grassy field freckled with purple and yellow wild flowers. Leaning towards each other they whisper secrets that are ten million years old.

But most of all the roses, the roses really make me fall for this place. There is something wild about the way they simultaneously drape and tumble themselves languidly up and down the facades of powdery white houses and over low garden walls. They swish and nod at me in the gentle breeze, vibrant against the white and delicately scented they bring a sense of old romantic exoticism.

Fairy chimneys, red roses and a big hot air balloon pt 1

5th June 2012

Journal entry

 

Having taken ill with an inconveniently timed cold I have been limited in my zest for exploring Göreme’s nooks on foot. That said I managed to hop on a hot air balloon yesterday morning. At 4am I awoke telling myself I did not feel well enough to get up and go. The day marked the occasion of the one thing I had promised myself to do whilst away on this solo journey. Apart from the fact that my head was feeling like a swollen, throbbing useless lump, I was also concerned by rumours I had heard regarding the dangers of hot air ballooning. After the haze of sleepiness had worn off a little I managed to push these negatives aside and soon I was on my way to our take off point.

Gazing out the window, still hazy from the early hour I was suddenly met by a sight that cleared all mental fogginess. A moonscape stretched out before me, the ground, a powdery white, was littered with around 40 giant balloons slowly inflating. Some lay in shrivelled rivers of silky material, others took on the persona of some sort of expanding animal, whilst my favourite view was that of the ones almost ready to detach themselves from the Earth. Looking like giant bubbles they were soon to suddenly yet gently rise into the ether of dawn, fiery gas blasts glittering in the distance.

Whilst we waited for the moment of no return, butterflies stirred in my stomach, precipitating that feeling of slight panic, similar to when you are about to descend on the downward incline of a rollercoaster. Nevertheless, I leapt on with abandon and with a big blast reminiscent of a whale’s spout we had lift off.

Backed up against the central wall of the basket, İ may as well have been clinging to the pilot like a cat avoiding a bath. Yet upon absorbing the site before me, I soon found myself peering eagerly over the edge. Multitudes of colourful balloons floated across the pink skyline whilst surrounding white peaks of volcanic rock were highlighted in stripes of first light, throwing dramatic shadows here and there.

The air was pure and silent and awed into a dumbfounded state no one expelled an utterance, each consumed by his or her own dream reality. We rotated slowly, a giant globular compass spinning circles under the clouds, surveying 180 degrees of a landscape barely imaginable in its beauty. We sunk gently down into the valleys lying prostrate below, floating so close to the towering castles of rock that one could graze them with fingertips. Rising up again we cruised a little less silently over Love Valley, our group giggling at the phallic appearance of the rocky peaks below. The breeze played with my hair and I found myself wanting the ability to be suspended from the base of the basket. From there I would be tethered securely face down above the Earth, gliding in an echo of a childhood dream.

Landing was surprisingly gentle; in fact the pilot comfortably landed the basket within the boundaries of the waiting trailer.  We climbed out rather reluctantly to celebrate our maiden voyage with champagne, local cakes and a flight certificate. Heading back to my accommodation, sleepiness returning and closing my lids I was sad it was all over so soon. However, the memory, still so fresh, rejoiced on in my thoughts.

TRAVELLERS’ NOTES:

Ballooning companies in Cappadocia come in multitudes! If you want to fly whilst you’re there, excellent! But it is also highly advisable that you fork out a little extra to fly with a high quality well renowned company with accomplished pilots. I flew with Butterfly Balloons and it was a fantastic experience, we were well looked after, provided with breakfast, champagne and a flight certificate and more importantly they do not overcrowd their balloons. The pilot had about 30 years of experience  and I felt very safe in his hands, he was also entertaining and able to answer all our questions about the landscape over which we were flying. To go with a party of 15 for 1 hour I paid 160 Euros. This is pretty cheap compared to Australian ballooning prices and often the hotels/hostels/pensions around Göreme will offer special deals and discounts so keep your eyes open for those.

This corner…

1st June 2012

Journal entry

This corner is magical, when I step into it I become intoxicated and I know that I am perfectly free. At night the birds circling the pointed peak of Galata tower transform into fluttering golden shapes whilst, in the distance, rainbows of light radiate from magnificent Mosques and Minarets. As darkness descends the city pulses to life and the ever changing Bosphorous is streaked with dripping swirling colours, reverberations from the heart beat of Istanbul.

Galipdede Caddesi by night

In this corner I can hide out for a moment. Watching the street below I see myself walking the night before with Bariş, a Turkish Saxophone player whom I had met at a Jazz bar with some other travellers. We’d had good conversation but I was ready for bed, as I walked away he tried to grasp my hand and kiss me but I shied away with a very firm NO! Something I believed I had already explained had apparently gone unnoticed. One of my first lessons here has been that it is very difficult to form plutonic relationships with men, this is NOT Australia. I tramped up the stairs a little put out at how the night had ended, however a small smile crept on to my lips, it was nice to feel appreciated, to be seen again.

My neighbours including Galata Tower

This corner enables me to stop, slow down and observe. From up here I can hover above  the lively Galipdede Caddesi, popularly known as music street for its miriad music stores and stampedes of musicians making their way to various live music/Jazz bars and or to play publicly around the circular base of Galata Tower. The narrow street below is heavily trafficked after 10am until about 3am however still manages to maintain its charm and a certain level of ‘quiet and removed’. I ponder whether its the narrow quality of the street that does it or the odd mixture of old and new. Graffiti mixed with moss covered walls, the open fruit stalls with mounds of glowing produce, the men with their freshly squeezed juice stands and strange metal contraptions. The mouthwatering smell of kebab and the little lentil soup place I like to visit on a regular basis; each time ordering red lentil soup, always served with a lemon wedge and warm wood oven bread which I rip up with eager hands and dunk in my soup, lifting it dripping with deliciousness to my mouth.

This corner feels like my own and I don’t want to leave it. Nine days in Turkey may not be enough!

Sunset

Valentines Day Sunset over the Adelaide Hills.