Ape Rifle

Istanbul is not a city designed for the automobile, to say the least. With its dense, old urban fabric and hilly geography, you could almost imagine the first settlers musing to themselves, “gee, this place is going to be a real scene after the invention of the combustion engine”. And what a scene it has become all these years later, like so many other massive urban beasts the world over, with millions of vehicles bursting the city’s seams.

Steep, narrow and winding roads become major thoroughfares with a predictable outcome- a performance of narrow misses, precarious turns, grinding brakes and puzzle-like gridlock. While attending an event with a rooftop terrace overlooking just such a street, I was treated to hours of vehicular contorsion.

5:35pm

When there is open road in Istanbul, only one option is available: go fast. Forget that there is most likely someone right around the corner.

5:55pm

Traffic starts to build up in both directions thanks to cars parked in a rather unfortunate place.

7:28pm

Things get dicey as cars coming in opposite directions start to block each other from turning. Cue blocked lanes up and down the road in both directions.

7:46pm

Lots of close calls and gear grinding gets the traffic flowing.

11:08pm

A big van gets involved and really starts causing trouble. At this point several people got out of their cars to direct traffic and walk further down the road to tell people to back up and make space.

11:14pm

The big van continues its attempts to escape this nefarious corner. Some people get out of their taxi for a breather while they wait.

Anamur

Istanbul

Looking out the window of my Turkish Airlines flight as it landed at Ataturk International, I distinctly remember three thoughts crossing my mind: 1) wow, there are a lot of ships in the Sea of Marmara, 2) wow, there are a lot of mosque minarets rising out of the hyper-dense urban settlements and 3) there is city everywhere. After clearing customs and immigration, I was greeted by my girlfriend and her father and promptly whisked off into the wonders of Istanbul rush hour traffic. Surveying my surroundings as the car jockeyed for space in a free-for-all expressway entrance,things at first seemed quite familiar: the cars, the roadway and the infrastructure all seemed very European. And yet, the scene that lay before me certainly wasn’t: sprawling away from the roadside was a haphazardly constructed urban density like I’d never seen.

After China, I thought I’d seen the gamut of overwhelming urban vistas. But this was something completely different. It’s just mountains of city. Heaps of city. Nothing but city. Looking out at my surroundings (which I had ample time to do given that we were in heavy traffic), I saw undulating waves of urbanity completely covering the vista to the extent that it was difficult to make out any space that was not covered by low-rise tenements,shacks,warehouses, satellite dishes, pulsating highways,tangled power lines or junk-crowded lots. I was pretty overwhelmed by this scene, urbanization and development buff that I am. My girlfriend’s father probably thought he’d just picked up a mute, because I was too awe-struck to say much.

Zoning is, obviously, not to popular in the great urban sprawl of Istanbul. Four-to-five floor buildings were built beneath, on top, beside and through each other, with windows facing in numerous directions. As we gradually made our way into the central area of the city, things only got more interesting. Huge and ancient walls suddenly sprung up beside the roadway, and soon I got a glimpse of the famous Bosporus as the road snaked along its shores. I remember it was around this point that I started thinking 1) what the f***, I’m in Istanbul! and 2) this city exudes the sort of exoticism that most other ‘exotic’ places could only dream of.

Istanbul was like all worlds crashed into one. Huge, sprawling, bustling, chaotic and dirty, but also beautiful, stunning and impeccably clean where you least expect it to be. I won’t even bother to describe the wealth of architectural gems: pick your major Islamo-Judeo-Christian religion,historical kingdom or Eurasian cultural group, and chances are you can find a material ode to it somewhere in this city. It has European cafe culture vibrancy smothered in Asian traffic sensibilities; a world-savvy middle-class swerving around beggars dancing between belching buses; wild bazaars and winding, quiet leafy streets. The infrastructure is as shiny and new as it is overwhelmed and crumbling. Watching the sun set behind the Golden Horn, silhouetting the mosques like a postcard couldn’t even manage, I watched the bridges pulsating with glistening traffic and pedestrians, the water rushing with ferries, and just soaked it all up. This is what I live for.

During my time in Istanbul, we were blessed with brilliant, smog-free blue sky and sunshine, perfect for the scenery-soaking I’m so fond of. We wandered through neighbourhoods, relaxed around Turkish coffee, took ferries across the Bosporus, chatted around tea, visited astounding historical relics, enjoyed some coffee on a rooftop terrace on a bustling pedestrian street. Hmm, did I mention that caffeine was a major part of my experience in Istanbul? So was the call to prayer, which, emitted from a number of mosques probably in the thousands, tends to make itself heard. We even took a decrepit motorboat ‘ferry’ across the Golden Horn, on which the operator encouraged me to stand up and take pictures of the surrounding sights. Given the rate at which the boat was rocking, if I had followed his advice he would likely have had to fish me out of the Golden Horn.

One thing that impressed me throughout my time in Istanbul was that it came across as bright, cheery and pretty damn clean considering the chaos that visits its streets daily. On our ferry tour of the Bosporus (which I’m told has been significantly cleaned up in the past few years), the beauty of the scenery would put most ‘developed’ world cities to complete fucking shame. Now, I don’t usually swear on this blog, but I feel the need to emphasize just how impressive this was. A city of untold millions in a ‘developing’ country managing, for the most part, not to live in its own filth. I know more than a few places that could benefit from that approach.

Needless to say, I was pretty impressed with Istanbul. I’m sure, like all gigantic cities, living there has its drawbacks, dangers and frustrations, particularly for the millions who are not as fortunate as I. But as a destination, the city does not disappoint. I’d nearly given up on the possibility of urban form originality, with so many ‘exotic’ cities revealing themselves to be nothing more than a few historic structures smothered in ugly highrises, shopping malls and general urban development that makes tacky look good. Yes, Istanbul has some ugly highrises and shopping malls. Yes, it has Starbucks (honestly, who cares?). Yes, it has about twenty times more cars than it knows what to do with. Yes, Istanbul is in the throes of ‘modernization’, like other major cities around the world desperate to build out of their perceived backwardness. Yet in Istanbul, thankfully, it would appear that this perceived ‘backwardness’ is not equated with its rich architectural and cultural heritage. The city is not ‘preserved’ because it is poor, but rather because it has a sense of style. The city’s timeless layers are something to be celebrated, to be proudly displayed to the world. For once, here is a city that knows where all the disposable, shoddy development belongs: the suburbs. In an age when urban development trends are of the sort to make anyone who isn’t blind recoil in disgust, Istanbul dares to be different. Standing on a bridge over the Golden Horn facing the minarets and domes of Sultanamet at dusk, it’s hard not to think that,despite all the nonsense, the world can still be a pretty wondrous place.

And now, after all that, here are the pictures.

Turkey is not the sort of place you would ever accuse of lacking history. And unlike certain other countries I won’t mention by name, it thankfully does not seem to have a penchant for bulldozing its historical built heritage and cultural relics.

Nope, Turkey is a country where history is all around you. Given its geographical position as a favoured crossroads of culture, and indeed civilization, throughout history, Turkey holds a veritable treasure trove of awe-inspiring mosques, old churches, crumbling fortresses and stunning Roman ruins. It is frankly amazing to be in a place that, while certainly getting on with life, traffic, modernity and all that jazz, manages to retain such a palatable sense of history.

The religious complexes in Istanbul are nothing short of stunning. The Roman ruins at Efes are beyond impressive. And yet, it was in the smaller, more unassuming locations that I truly found the history shining through. In Anamur, a small coastal town just north of Cyprus, one can swim in the warm waters of the Mediterranean and see old Roman columns lying quietly on the seabed, accompanying the ruins that dot the hill overlooking the isolated beach. On the other side of town, an unbelievably old fortress sits crumbling between the sea and the mountains (one which I got to visit thanks to the hospitality of my girlfriend’s grandfather).

However, it was in Selcuk that I was most impressed. The town is just beside the abandoned Greco-Roman city of Ephesus, and the aqueduct serving the latter apparently ran through the site of the modern-day Turkish town. So, you’d figure that, as the town expands and the aqueduct gradually falls into disrepair, the remains of the Roman structure would eventually be crowded out, demolished and forgotten. Well, not so in Selcuk. The supporting columns of the aqueduct, although crumbling, still trace the route of the original structure to a rather surreal effect since they stand randomly and untouched amidst the bustle of the town that rose up around them. Well, actually, I guess it would be erroneous to say completely untouched. At some point, about one hundred years ago as a friendly local restaurant owner informed my girlfriend, someone found these aqueduct columns to be in the way of their planned home. So, you’d think the natural thing to do would be to get rid of the columns and build your house (besides, it always seems that in the past, history never mattered as much). Well, not so in Selcuk as I said. Instead, the home was built between two of the Roman aqueduct columns, to produce what in my opinion is the coolest building in the world. How’s that for re-adaptive use?

Anyone who has traveled with me is well aware that I take a lot of pictures. Of everything. Not one to go home with a bunch of bad pictures of monuments with me in front of them, I prefer to document everyday urban scenes of street bustle, built landscapes and fun traffic chaos. I can call up thousands of images of famous structures at the click of my mouse, so for my personal collection I prefer to capture, as best I can, what it actually felt like to be in a particular place. In Istanbul, urban China and on occasion London, this entails trying to seize the energetic bustle that defines daily life in these massive metropolises and, somehow, make it shine through a still photograph. Alas, since my camera has an amazing video function I often catch myself cheating a bit and filming the amazing urban scenes I come across. In the end, though, I still prefer the crispness of still photography. Here are some examples of my attempts to capture the enthralling life of Istanbul’s streets. (note: of course, these pictures offer a very selective view of the city, as not ALL of Istanbul is like this. But these pictures are by far the most energetic, as they were taken during the central city’s rather insane rush hour.)

One thing I can’t bring myself to do so well, however, is take pictures of people. It’s not that I have difficulties with portrait photography; on the contrary, some of my best pictures have been close-ups of family and loved ones. What I’m talking about here, is the up close, in-your-face, National Geographic-style photography of ‘exotic locals’. I focus on buildings, landscapes and street scenes, because I honestly feel kind of bad objectifying people going about their daily lives as if they are some exotic cover for the Lonely Planet. I admit that I’ve tried, and occasionally succeeded, this type of shot, but I can’t help but feel extremely awkward in doing so. It’s not like I take close-up shots of investment bankers walking out of office buildings in Montreal at the end of the day, so why should I get up in the face of some street vendor in Beijing? Because he looks like the stereotypical image of what ‘China’ is supposed to be? This discomfort with objectifying people as exotic stereotypes means that when I do attempt these type of photos, they often suck because of the distance and/or hasty framing my unease necessitates.

What happened in Selcuk, Turkey, however, was a whole other story. After cruising through the Saturday morning market and purchasing some olive oil soap and a nice fake Nike cap to beat the sun, my girlfriend and I took a seat in a small park just behind some of the market stalls. Not far from us, a group of kids were playing on the jungle gym. At some point, they must have seen my camera pointing towards their general direction (I’m no longer sure if I was actually trying to take a picture of them or just fiddling with the settings on my camera), because they started saying loudly in Turkish that everyone takes pictures of them but they never get copies. Fair enough! So my girlfriend and I decided that it would be a nice gesture to take a picture or two of them, print out copies and send them in the mail to the kids. She proposed this to them and they energetically agreed.

Of course, being the smart kids they are, they weren’t going to settle for one or two pictures: they posed for at least twenty pictures divided between mine and my girlfriend’s cameras! And by posed, I mean POSED: we had group ‘gang on the jungle gym’ shots, each kid posing individually, a girl repeatedly pulling me aside to shoot a portrait of her with a flower in her hair and so on. As I got fed up shooting the jungle gym scene and trying to manage the kids into a decent shot like a fashion photographer, my girlfriend got dragged over to some flowerbed and bushes where the kids took turns doing all sorts of Kodak Moment poses. We got out of there eventually, thanks mostly to my girfriend’s assertiveness, and I decided that I should probably watch where I point my camera in the future.Once back in Istanbul, we went to a photo shop and had the pictures printed out. When I returned to London, my girlfriend sent them off to the kids with a nice note. In retrospect, I feel pretty good about what we did. The kids were certainly right: why shouldn’t they get nice pictures of themselves instead of merely fulfilling some stereotypical role as the ‘third world child’ in the eyes of countless foreign tourists?

As an added bonus, they will also gain international fame through a guest appearance here on Ape Rifle. So, ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you The Selcuk Crew. Let’s all hope they got their pictures.

When I look at the following picture after the fact, I have to wonder…Why is that kid on the left holding a knife??

I have so much to say about my trip to Turkey that I cannot hope to cram it all into this entry, or even the next several. Istanbul alone could easily dominate the next ten posts, and that was but a small part of my travels. I will therefore take the proper time to cover my Turkey travels on this blog, devoting posts to fun stories, observations and specific destinations in no particular chronological order.

A good place to start would be my experience with the Turkish intercity bus system. This service, at least in the western region of the country, puts most ‘developed’ countries to shame (I should warn here, however, that none of my observations take into account the huge eastern half of the country, which I’ve been told is a whole other story in terms of infrastructure and socio-economic development). Every long-distance bus I was on was fast, sleek, comfortable and impeccably clean. Perhaps this stems from the apparently fierce competition between a huge number of private companies; each station, rather than having a central ticket office, was a bonafide marketplace of bus companies hawking their routes.

Particularly overwhelming for me was the bus station in Izmir, the country’s third largest city. Imagine the largest sports stadium you’ve ever been to, and try to picture the cavernous concession stand areas in which you walk around trying to find your section. Then, turn every one of those concession stands into a bus company booth with a bright, visually noisy sign advertising its routes. Thankfully, I was there around 10pm and the monumental hall was largely empty- I can only imagine the scene in there at peak hours.

Anyways, there was a point to all this. This intense competition between bus companies also seems to have fostered a rather amazing level of service on the buses themselves. Each vehicle has a well-dressed attendant who goes up and down the aisle several times a trip with a trolley cart offering free (what?!) coffee, tea, soft drinks, juice, snacks and water. If you want to pay a little more, you can end up on a deluxe bus with huge leather seats, wireless internet, a personal audio connection and an up-close vantage point from which to observe Turkey’s moneyed class.

And it was riding Turkey’s great bus system that I was first introduced to Kolonya.

Kolonya sneaks up on you quietly, most often in clear, squeezable plastic bottles. The best way to describe its composition would be a nice blend alcohol, cheap cologne, citronelle candle and heavy-duty pesticide. I’m not exactly sure how its use came about in Turkish culture or what the social norms surrounding it are, but I sure got doused with a hell of a lot of it. On every bus trip, the attendant would work the aisle on several occasions and squirt Kolonya into the cupped, waiting hands of each passenger. While I restricted myself to rubbing it into my hands, some other passengers seemed to prefer massaging it onto their necks or even smoothing it into their hair. I didn’t really know why I was subjecting my palms so frequently to this substance, but I knew I sure as hell wasn’t going to get any mosquito bites there.

My exposure to Kolonya was, thankfully, not limited to bus journeys. My girlfriend, being the good Turk she is, also had a trusty bottle of it in her bag. I thus had the chance to regularly experience both its medicinal qualities and the soothing effects of its sweet smell. Scratch on your toe? Kolonya. Pimple on your face? Kolonya. Looking Tired? Kolonya. 2:35pm on a Tuesday? Kolonya.

However, one should be warned not to mix different brands of Kolonya. One particular bus trip, I was subjected to both my girlfriend’s Kolonya and a rather less pleasant one courtesy of the bus company. Faced with such a concentration of Kolonya on my fragile hands, what did I do? Why, I smelled them of course.

Big Mistake.

I’m not sure what did me in more, the intense faux lemon smell or the cheap chemicals assaulting my brain. All I know is that I haven’t felt that instantly nauseous in a long time. Good thing I was on a bumpy bus. I quickly ate some biscuits and prayed for the best, desperate not to become that ‘foreign guy puking in the back of the bus’. Through the grace of some deity or other I was thankfully spared that fate, gasping for fresh air as the bus unloaded us at our destination.

The most unexpected appearance of Kolonya came on my last day in Turkey. In a photo shop in Istanbul, as my girlfriend and I waited for digital prints promised to some kids (another story to be told), the shop owner decided the occasion necessitated perfumed hands. With a big smile and a query to my girlfriend as to whether they had Kolonya in Europe (everyone in Turkey thought I was British, or at least European), out came the infamous plastic bottle. By this point, I had learned to stop worrying and love Kolonya. I gleefully extended my cupped hands and accepted the sweet, insect repellent concoction. This time, however, I didn’t smell my hands after.

I’m not a chemist nor a sociologist, but through my limited observational powers I believe Kolonya to be the Turkish cousin of the famed Chinese 白酒 (baijiu) alcoholic delight. They seem similar both in chemical composition and through the seemingly random occasions in which they are foisted on unsuspecting foreigners. Of course, the Chinese actually make the mistake of drinking their version, which might explain a lot about the current state of that country. The Turkish, it seems, prefer the milder oomph of Raki, a more distant and more palatable relative of the East Asian firewater.

As I sit here now in a cafe on my last day in London, watching the suits and umbrellas file by outside in the rainy weather, I long for the fun of Kolonya.

I just got back from Turkey last night and although I am still a little too worn out to blog in earnest, I thought I would kick things off with a little visual treat. One of our stops along the way was Efes(Ephesus) of stunning Greco-Roman ruins fame. This major tourist attraction has its fair share of interesting signage to say the least, lest Turkey be outdone by certain larger Asian countries. Here is a taste:

Caution: Aliens Falling

This next one, however, takes the cake. Apparently announcing the payment necessary to enjoy the site’s restrooms, the wording alone makes this sign the one to beat in terms of laugh-out-loud hilarity. The accompanying graphic, however, brings it to a whole new level.

Pure Magic

I’d say this confirms Turkey’s ownership of the esteemed “Funniest Sign Ever” title. Feel free to prove me wrong, but I have a feeling it might be hard. PS: Turkey was absolutely amazing, a lot more on that in the coming days.