Day Eighteen: Stephen Wood and the Tomb of Henrico Dandolo

Before I start, I'd like to mention that I had to change the background of the text because large portions of it just showed up as white bars when I first published it.  It looked like someone had gone through and whited out about half of what I said, so I'm thinking it was either an error on the part of the host or some secret agency doesn't want you to read what I've written.  Sorry for any inconvenience that may cause.
Some good stuff has happened since I last wrote.  We toured the Hagia Sophia, the Byzantine church built sometime around 360 and converted into a mosque by the Ottomans after their conquest of Istanbul in

Words can't really capture its beauty.  Neither can pictures, but I took some pictures anyway, and here they are:

 I'm no expert on Arabic calligraphy, but I think this is Arabic calligraphy

 from the second level

 The mosaics are in pretty good shape considering they were covered by plaster from 1453 until the 1950s

The sultan's box.  Kind of like mezzanine level at Camden Yards, except I saw no soft pretzels.

Aside from being an astounding sight to behold and a treasure trove of historical and religious artifacts, the building is also significant for its roof, which was the Largest Dome in the World for some time.  Ottoman architects, among others, tried for a very long time to create a larger dome, but no one succeeded until a mosque in Edirne, in Northeastern Turkey, was built with a larger dome about a thousand years after the Hagia Sophia.  Yeah, a thousand.  Unfortunately, the Hagia Sophia lost this title before the creation of the Guinness Book of World Records, so the dome was never featured alongside pictures of people with ten foot-long toenails.  But if you ask me, it's still more impressive than all the toenails in the world put together.

Right?

Again, I can't really do that justice with a photograph.  Something I might be able to do justice, however, is the tomb of Henrico Dandolo.  Henrico Dandolo was a crusader from an Italian city-state whose name I forget who attacked Constantinople during the Byzantine period.  Apparently those Byzantines were really nice people, because after Dandolo was killed in the attack they decided to bury him, a Catholic who was trying to take over their city, in their own Greek Orthodox church, which happened to be the most amazing building in the world, even though in Greek Orthodoxy people usually aren't buried in churches.  My theory is that they just did it because the phrase "The Tomb of Henrico Dandolo" sounded awesome.  Maybe that's not why they did it, but that's why I took a picture of it.  It's just casually embedded in the marble on the upper level of the church/mosque/museum.

I'm getting comfortable in this neighborhood.  Just as I looked forward to walking around the city, buying groceries or whatever, that's one of the things I'm enjoying the most.  Just running around or taking a five-minute walk to a bakery to buy borek, this awesome thing that consists of the kind of bread they use in baklava surrounding cheese, potatoes, or just more bread (my choice!), excites me almost as much as crossing the Bosporus on a ferry or standing under the dome of the Hagia Sophia.  My dad might not be far from the truth when he says it's the perfect place to get pickpocketed, but it's also the perfect place to experience Istanbul.  It's been here forever-Byzantine walls separate it from the road that goes by the water-but it's nothing like an historic district.  There's an old Ottoman bathhouse on one street, but nobody makes a big deal out of it.  There's always someone selling fruit, there are usually kids playing in the street, there are always lazy cats and dogs on the sidewalk, there are often men playing cards and laughing in the open-air restaurants, and there is always borek, thankfully. 

 Now that we know our way around this neighborhood, we've been exploring other parts of Istanbul.  This week we've spent a lot of time in Bebek, an affluent neighborhood to the north of Taksin located on the water, close to where the Bosporus is at its most narrow.  On Sunday, we had dinner at a restaurant right by the water.  The restaurant is one of maybe ten around the city that are operated by the government of Istanbul, apparently so that customers know they're getting quality service and can count on it being clean.  When Professor Gilson told us that, I had to wonder what had prompted the city council to get together and say, "Guys, we really need there to be some kind of restaurant that people know is clean."  Anyway, there are some great non-state-run ice cream places in Bebek, and some beautiful old buildings that I wish we had walked past before my camera died.  

a picture of swimmers near Bebek and the Bosporus Bridge, taken in my camera's final moments

I left the extra batteries in my room, but before it died we toured a house on a hill near Bebek.  From what I could tell, the story behind this house was basically that it belonged to a rich industrialist and that late in his life he decided to turn it into a museum to show everyone all the nice things he had collected over his career as a rich industrialist.  And truly, he had some very nice things.  My camera died about halfway through the tour, so unfortunately I can't show you all the priceless manuscripts and classics of Turkish art in the lower levels of the museum.  It's a shame-there were probably a hundred different Korans, all of then hand-painted and gold-leafed and filled with beautiful calligraphy.  There were also large pieced of parchment with the signatures of various sultans.  I learned that each of the lines and swirls and other beautiful curves in these elaborate signatures actually has a meaning, although they seem like something just put there to make it look fancy.  Apparently the signatures gave not only the sultan's full name but also the name of his father (and possibly other significant relatives), along with his father's epithet ("The Mighty," "The Conqueror," "Mr. October," etc.).  

This is a large decorative shield bearing the signature of a sultan.  It's less blurry in real life.

I also learned that, although Islam forbids the artistic rendering of anything created by God, artists used calligraphy to create such shapes.  What that means is that they could write something so elaborate and detailed that if you stand back it looks like a fish.  They did that with all sorts of animals and, coolest of all in my opinion, boats.  Really wish I'd brought extra batteries for my camera.

I did get pictures of a few things, and here they are:

 the view of the Bosporus from in front of the museum

a painting of the Bosporus inside the museum

Not pictured: Babe Ruth, the Sultan of Swat

Those last few were all sultans, but of course I forget which ones.  But the sultans weren't the only ones whose images decorated the grounds of this mansion-turned-museum:

Yep, you guessed it-the guy who owned the house decided to have busts made of him and seven of his family members and put them on marble pedestals in the front yard.  Mom, this might be something else we can put in the yard to cover up the lack of grass.

We've also been learning some things.  I gave a presentation on millet reform in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century in class on Monday.  To sum it up, the Ottomans basically tried to bring their people together by requiring the various religious sects within the empire to come up with their own, separate constitutions.  It didn't work.  Be glad you got the brief version of that lecture-my classmates had to sit through the long version while the AC in our classroom was broken.  Professor Hanioglu ended up dismissing class twenty minutes early when I was done, which everyone agreed was the only thing to do given the temperature.

Turkish is going pretty well.  We're learning how to use verbs and the locative case (the nominative case's tricky sister), and we can now ask whether something is there or not, which is huge for going to bazaars and restaurants.  The Turkish kids in our history class don't join us for Turkish class for obvious reasons, but they're always very willing to help us with Turkish and to shepherd us around Istanbul.  On two such excursions over the last two days, a curious thing has happened on the bus.  I've been standing there, holding on to the handles for dear life and chatting casually with my friends, when one of my fellow busriders has told me to shut up.  The first time, the guy next to me turned to me, with a pained expression on his face, and said, "Silence, please."  I thought maybe he had a headache or something, so I tried to distance myself from him and speak much quieter.  Weird, but whatever.  I didn't think much of it until just before we got off the bus, when another man explained (loudly, I should add) to my friend that some people were tired and that she should be quiet.  We got off the bus wondering how anyone could think that public transportation was supposed to be a quiet-time place, especially when plenty of native Istanbullus were talking.  I thought maybe there was an unwritten rule that you didn't talk too loudly on the bus when you knew people were returning from work tired and ready to go to bed, so I thought, "Gee, that sure is nice of them!" and put it out of my mind.  But then today, when I was shushed vigorously on a bus at about 1 in the afternoon, I realized that there isn't an unwritten rule-we're just Loud Americans.  I'm not sure if there's anything I can do to become anything else, other than just not talking.  Maybe the fact that that sounds impossible to me is why those three guys all felt it was necessary to quiet us.  Hmm.  Every time it happened, I was tempted to include in my apology the phrase, "I'm from Canada" just to disprove the Loud American stereotype that I was enforcing, but I decided that would be wrong.  You're welcome, Canada.

Day Twelve: Who's Winning the Match?

This actually happened yesterday, but I thought I'd mention that I played soccer with some local Istanbulus (that's what you call people from Istanbul, I think).  Most of the guys in our group wanted to play, and I had fond memories of indoor soccer in middle school, so I joined them as they went across the street to play in the chain-link boxed-in turf field that Kadir Has put across the street so that people could play "mini futbol."  Wasn't that nice of them?  As a side note, I think it's funny that pretty much every language in the world has a word like "futbol" and the USA is the only place where it doesn't mean soccer.  I'm not saying it's bad, it's just funny that we managed to avoid that otherwise universal term.  Anyway, some of the guys in our group are pretty good at soccer, but obviously I'm not one of them.  Nobody wanted to play goalie and, although I'm not really good at dribbling or shooting, I'm great at getting in the way of things, so we decided I would be the keeper (apparently soccer players have adopted some Quidditch terminology).  We were playing some local kids whom some of the guys had met the day before in the same place.  They were all very nice, especially the one who kept asking me how I was, although the more I think about it the more I think he was just trying to distract me.  He succeeded once, and the Turks scored on us.  I don't mean to brag, but that was one of only three or maybe for times they scored on me.  The term "greatest goalie ever" gets tossed around so much that it's kind of lost all meaning, but I don't think it'd be too much to say that I was the greatest goalie there.  Granted, the other one was a very small Turkish kid (I think they were all about 14 or 15) who kept tripping over the ball, but, I mean, you didn't have to look at the competition to know that Pele was good, right?  Anyway, we beat them handily.  The only tough moments were right at the beginning of the game, when this kid named Faisal took a long-distance shot and I blocked it with my mouth (all the teeth are still there, I checked) and, of course, the numerous times when my total ignorance of the rules of soccer proved embarrassing.  I think maybe they just wanted me in goal so that they wouldn't have to teach me how to play without using my hands.  For the record, if there are any FIFA officials out there, it's way easier if you use your hands.  So, I don't know, maybe look into changing the rules.
Speaking of soccer, our lecturer today (a Turk who went to a German school and now teaches at Michigan in very interesting accent) mentioned that a few years ago Turkey hosted Greece in some sort of soccer tournament and the home crowd brought a huge banner reading "1453," the year that the Ottoman Turks laid siege to Istanbul, then Constantinople, and finally captured it, toppling the Greek-ish Byzantines.  I like the idea of bragging about something that happened further back than anyone can trace their ancestry, and evidently the Turks do too, because this was facing the Bosporus on the Asian side near a lighthouse we walked by:

We should do this with 1776 and put it right across from the British embassy.  Or on top of our embassy in London

They also did the same thing with 1923, the year Ataturk came to power... I think (we haven't gotten to that stage of Ottoman history yet).  I was reminded of a shirt I saw recently that had an American flag on the front and on the back, around a larger American flag, the words "Back to Back World War Champions."  Take that, forces of evil!

Day Eleven: A Slideshow

So a lot has happened, but I'm just going to give a brief summary and then put up a bunch of pictures.  Basically, I've been to Taksim, the center of Istanbul if Istanbul can be said to have one, both of the last two nights, and both times we've had great food and it's just been awesome to walk around.  There are constant waves of people going in both directions-I don't know where they all come from, but the flow of people never stops.  I don't think I have any pictures of that area, unfortunately, but the area around Kadir Has is beautiful too.  Yesterday, I went running toward the end of the peninsula formed by the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara and got a little lost, but before long I realized I was at the Grand Bazaar.  I avoided going inside, but it still took a while to navigate my way through the crowds of tourists and street vendors and people trying to hand me fliers.  I got back fine, though, and I felt very accomplished.  I also might have passed the Blue Mosque, but I'm not totally sure if it was the Blue Mosque or just a blue mosque.  It seems as if the Ottomans were determined to cap even the most minor of hills in this area, Fatih, with a gigantic mosque, complete with domes and enough minarets to rival the Jedi Temple in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.  Speaking of Star Wars, we got a picture of Professor Gilson wearing a stormtrooper helmet this morning.  I don't have that picture, but here are some pictures of Istanbul for your entertainment.

The tiny, red building is our dorm-my floor is beneath street level, facing the inner courtyard.

the view of the Golden Horn from in front of Kadir Has

the inside of Kadir Has

a street near the university that was gorgeous but smelled like fish

another street, one that smelled much better

a house in the Phanariot district, home of the Greek Orthodox Church, a ten-minute walk from our dorm

the Phanariot high school

view across the Golden Horn from a mosque on the top of a very steep hill

The Blue Marmara, a ship which was recently raided by Israeli commandos in a major international incident, is casually docked near the place we went for brunch

the minaret of the mosque across the street (oddly enough, I stopped being woken up by the call to prayer after just one night)

Day Eight: A Tale of Two Continents

We went to Asia today, no big deal.  As I'm sure you know, Istanbul is the only city in the world situated on two continents, so Asia is about a 10-minute ferry ride from Kadir Has.  Crossing the Bosporus by boat is an amazing experience.  Once you get into the Bosporus itself, leaving the Golden Horn, the wind really hits you and you don't notice the sun beating down on you (which it does-I saw maybe ten clouds all day).  There are all kinds of craft on the water, ranging from small fishing boats and tugboats to ferries to cruise ships to the massive freighters painted with words from all over the world.  I've noticed a lot of Russian and Chinese ships, especially.  When we got to Asia, we walked for about fifteen minutes along that bank, going south toward the Maiden's Tower.  I forgot to take my camera because we left the dorm right after I got back from lunch, but if you haven't seen the Maiden's Tower just rent the Bond movie "The World is Not Enough" and watch the last twenty minutes or so.  As far as I could tell, no supervillain was docking a stolen nuclear submarine under it today, but then again, how would I know?  Part of what made Renard so hard for James Bond and his attractive scientist associate (played by Denise Richards) to catch was his ability to manipulate the governments without being detected.  Thank God for Bond's incredible situational awareness.
 Anyway, we went to a restaurant with a large terrace on top and ate there, overlooking the Maiden's Tower and the Bosporus, right where it meets the Golden Horn.  You could see the tops of the roofs of Topkapi Palace and some of the minarets of the Hagia Sofia (I think) and, of course, the waters of the Bosporus.  The  Golden Horn, despite its name, is deep blue, almost green, but there is a distinct line, drawn surprisingly sharply, where it meets the Bosporus and the color changes.  In the Bosporus itself the water is much lighter, a perfect shade of turquoise that I can't describe and that, unfortunately, would probably not show up well on film even if I ever remembered to bring my camera with me.  Oddly enough, I was trying to think just yesterday of exactly what my favorite color was, and on the ferry today I realized that it was the exact shade of the Bosporus... woah.  There were a million cool sights along the edge of both waterways, but I'll save a full account of those for when I actually remember to take pictures, because words can't do them justice.
Earlier in the day, Thomas, Allan, and I went for a run.  It was the heat of the day, so it was the worst time to go running (it just seems right to me after running cross-country in high school), but there's never a bad time to run along the Golden Horn!*  We saw the aforementioned beautiful sights and, what was cooler, scores of people hanging out on the parks and paths of the shore.  There's a wide sidewalk right on the bank for most of the length of the Golden Horn, and it is oftentimes separated from the street by sizable patches of grass.  All day long, these parks were covered with people.  Kids were playing, men were fishing, and everyone seemed to be cooking something or heating up tea.  It was a lively, happy sight, and it reminded me of the people we saw exactly a week ago on the banks of a river in the mountains of Romania, though on a much larger and more beautiful scale.  I got to see this again much later in the day, when we were coming back from Asia.  Professor Gilson, who went with us, said that we could either get off at the stop near Kadir Has or take it one stop further and have a nice, educational walk back past the Bulgarian church.  Most of us stayed on the ferry, and I was only mildly disappointed when we learned that the next stop was closed.  We continued up the Golden Horn, and I was only slightly more disappointed when we learned that the stop after that was also closed.  We eventually go off just before a bridge where the water got significantly narrower, and the spot turned out to be very close to where we had had turned around on our run earlier in the day.  Some people took cabs, but Thomas, Daniel, Feng, and I didn't want to pay for a ride when the weather was nice, we knew the way back, and we were within walking distance, so we decided to jog it.  I gave up about five minutes in, remembering why they always tell you not to run in flip-flops, but Feng and I enjoyed a nice sunset walk back toward the dorms from there, and all was well that ended well.
Thanks again for reading!  Happy Fathers' Day to my dad and any other dads reading this (I don't know if anyone actually reads this, but I enjoy writing it anyway)!

*Lots of mugging victims would probably contest that statement.

Day Seven, still: A Correction

One thing is potentially problematic about the location.  We are situated very close two two mosques, one of which is basically across the street.  That in itself is no problem at all, but I had forgotten until recently about the call to prayer.  We've heard it twice since we got here: once sometime between 4 and 5 and again just now, a little before 9.  It happens five times a day, meaning that it will happen at some point in the early hours of tomorrow morning, when we're scheduled to "sleep in" until 9:15.  I know from experience that it won't be hard to get back to sleep, but it will be startling even though I know it's coming, seeing as the megaphone on the nearest minaret is only a few yards away.  It was interesting how it started just now.  At first we heard noises from somewhere far away, and I couldn't tell what they were.  One started close enough for me to tell what it was, and seconds after that the blare of the nearby megaphone filled the room.  I love hearing the prayers because, although it's hard to forget that I'm in Istanbul, it's easier to forget that despite all the trappings of a Western, predominantly Christian city, the vast majority of the people here are Muslim and their home was once considered the capital of Islam.  I hope I enjoy thinking about these things again when I'm woken up by them around 4 AM.

Day Seven: Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

After waking up and leaving the Ibis Hotel in Bucharest around 7 this morning, we arrived in Istanbul early this afternoon.  Our plane was in a holding pattern over the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara for about forty-five minutes, which meant that the anticipation had plenty of time to build.  On the way to the Kadir Has dorms, we listened to some Turkish pop music that Mujgan (who was nice enough to meet us at the airport even though she flew home to Istanbul the night before we got there) brought for us as we rode past the old walls of the city.  It was an interesting effect.  The walls, of course, are ancient and beautiful, and it's crazy to see them in the middle of a sprawling modern city, especially when the Turkish version of Lady Gaga is playing in the background.
Kadir Has is an amazing place.  Some of us were talking back in Bucharest about how we like old buildings that incorporate modern architecture, so this is definitely the right place for us.  The main building is an old tobacco factory that fell into disrepair until some Turkish philanthropists, led by Kadir Has, decided to turn it into a college.  I haven't gotten pictures yet, but I can't wait for you to see the inside.  It isn't just modern, it's modern in a very beautiful way.  The roof is mostly skylights and many of them shine down on the numerous atria between classrooms, lounges, Starbucks, etc.  The ground on the bottom level is largely taken up by gardens.  The main cafeteria is on the third floor and on the corner of the building, and the view of the Golden Horn from there is simply amazing.  I"ll get around to taking pictures at some point.
The area around Kadir Has is great too.  Luckily, its situation near the Golden Horn means that a strong breeze is usually there to lessen the effects of the baking-hot Istanbul summer (when I say "is usually" I mean "was there for several hours this afternoon").  We're at the bottom of a hill, and the neighborhood on and around the hill is full of small streets and friendly Turkish people, many of whom are selling food and most of whom insist that they give you some for free.  We first encountered this charity at a great bakery nearby, but my favorite example of it was when a man pulling a cart full of fruit stopped to let us try some cherries.  They were the best I've ever had.  In addition to all this goodness, we're also within walking distance (and viewing distance, from a few stories up) of the Hagia Sofia and Topkapi Palace, two of Istanbul's main attractions.
The dorms themselves are, in my opinion, better than the dorm I lived in last year.  We're all living in a small building the size of a reasonably large house.  There are three floors, and Daniel and I are sharing the bottom one with just two other guys, which is nice.  There's a bathroom for the four of us, a washer and dryer, and a lounge complete with a TV, a microwave, and a fridge.  Our rooms might be small for doubles at Princeton (I wouldn't really know) but they're very comfortable, especially considering the most pleasant surprise so far: WE HAVE AIR CONDITIONING!  All in all, everything looks perfect here right now.  Pictures to follow.

Day Three and a Half: Buttered Up

Still loving Bucharest!  Thomas (from Maine), Feng (from Singapore), Dalma (from Hungary), and Mujgan (the only non-Princeton student, from Turkey) went to dinner at a place that, based on the menu, looked pretty good and pretty cheap.  It turned out to be a very nice traditional Romanian place-so I guess Romanian food is a thing-but the prices were still low.  We all had a great meal.  Thomas and Feng tried to split a plate of meat and learned that it was much more than they had bargained for.  I didn't try it, of course, but they both said it was extremely dense, and they ended up eating less than half of it between them.  In Thomas' defense, he had just eaten a large soup-like-thing in a bread bowl (without using cutlery, he would want me to point out) and in Feng's defense, he got zero help from Thomas.  Dalma was about to try some but, upon smelling it, she quickly withdrew in disgust from what was apparently tripe.  I enjoyed my boiled potatoes and polenta, and I was proud of myself for getting some great, authentic local food for eight lei.  My drink, an authentic local (I'm assuming) Romanian beer, was also surprisingly good and only eight lei.  The bread and butter were decent, as was the live entertainment, a five-piece band playing traditional Romanian music, so overall I though the evening was a success.  Then the check came.  We all handed Thomas our money because he's a math major and therefore the only one we could trust to make sure it all added up.  We kept coming up short even though we all thought we had paid for everything we ordered, but then somebody noticed there were two items on the bill for which nobody had paid.  We were stumped until Dalma and Mujgan realized that one of the words was similar to another language's word for butter, and that's when it hit us.  The butter I had asked for had cost eight and a half lei, more than the rest of my food combined.  Well, not exactly-turns out the bread was the other mystery item on the bill.  That cost five lei.  We hadn't even asked for the bread, and I had assumed the butter was complimentary as well, but that just shows how much I know.  I disliked the idea of paying for bread and butter, but I disliked the idea of arguing with a Romanian wait staff even more, so I decided to throw in the extra ten lei or so and tell myself I was paying for the concert.
It was funny at the time, I swear.  We laughed about it half the way back to the hotel, then we laughed about how we're supposed to get on the bus at 7 tomorrow for our trip to Constanta.

Day Three: The Palace May Be Empty, but the Avenue is Bigger than Paris'!

Merhabalar!  I think that's the correct way to say hello to multiple people in Turkish.  Let's just say it is.  Turkish class has begun, so we spent part of last night practicing the first ten numbers in Turkish.  I've got 0-6 down, 7-9 are a little tricky, but 10 is just "on" so no worries there.  Turkish is fun and our history class is also very interesting, and today's classes were a vast improvement over yesterday's thanks to the welcome addition of a large AC unit to our learning environment.  We're studying at the Faculty of History at what I assume is the University of Bucharest (that would make sense, right?).  I forgot to get a picture of the university, but here's a view from the university.

Yesterday we went to a nice restaurant a few blocks away and had a delicious meal on Princeton's dime.  Today we went to a fast food restaurant called Springtime and had a cheap meal on our own dime.  There doesn't really seem to be "Romanian food," but there's a lot of variety in the types of other people's food they serve here, which is nice.  I had a delicious four cheese pizza last night at this sort of open-air sports bar.  The big France-UK soccer game was on, and it concluded in a dramatic 1-1 tie.
After Springtime today, we went to the Palace of Parliament, which apparently is more often called the Palace of the People, a name which was chosen in response to the unintentionally ironic name Ceausescu gave it, which was the Palace of the Republic.  It's easier to just refer to it as "that huge building."  We weren't allowed to take pictures (for free) inside the building, which is a shame, because words cannot describe how much marble there was in that place.  Every wall, column, and staircase was solid marble, and everything that could be gilded with gold was golden.  There was also a plethora of crystal chandeliers.  All these materials came from Romania, in keeping with Ceausescu's policy of making Romania totally self-reliant.  Part of this policy was paying off the national debt, which he succeeded in doing by starving his people.  I know hindsight's 20-20, but it seems like he could have given his people food and not built the second-biggest building in the world (the first is the Pentagon, if I didn't mention that last time) on a hill that had contained two of the oldest neighborhoods in Bucharest, using the money that went to gilding the silk curtains to pay off the debt instead.  The palace contains over 1,000 rooms, many of which are unfinished now, seeing as Ceausescu died before the building's completion.  The rooms that are finished are all spacious, and most of them serve as meeting places for international organizations or political bodies like the Romanian House of Deputies.  I think the vast majority of the rooms are unfinished, but nobody seems to be in a hurry to finish them-apparently many Romanians resent the palace because of the aforementioned destruction of neighborhoods.  Our guide, a graduate student at what I think is the University of Bucharest, said that people say that the stray animals in Bucharest all come from the families that were forced to leave these neighborhoods for some of Ceausescu's apartments.  He didn't seem to believe that, but there is a good number of dogs and cats wandering around, and most of them look well-fed (Mom).  Professor Gilson, our Turkish professor (the one who teaches Turkish, that is-both professors are Turkish), was discussing how much everyone hates the Ceausescu, and when someone asked about his wife, our guide laughed and shouted, "His wife was ugly!"  Not to beat a dead deputy prime minister of Romania, but I'm inclined to agree:

http://www.agenda.ro/pictures/diverse-69/elenaceausescu_tn.jpg

That's it for today, but so as not to leave you with that unpleasant image I'll include one of the avenue that runs through the center of the city, starting at the palace.  It's lined with pleasant, if communist-style, apartments and is wider and (Romanians cannot stress this enough) several meters long than the Champs d'Elysee.  Just one of the many comparisons to Paris we keep getting.

from one of the balconies of the Palace of Parliament

from the upper deck of a tour bus

Thanks for reading!

Day One-Little Paris and Dracula's Palace

HI, everybody!  First of all, I apologize for how bland this page looks.  Let's just be thankful that I figured out how to make a blog at all.  The title was the best I could think of, and I chose it because I knew Mom wanted me to include plenty of food-related details.  I need to go to bed soon, but I wanted to write about today before I forgot what happened.
The day started bright and early, as we had to be on the bus by 8 in the morning.  I slept well, although I'm still feeling jetlagged today.  Here's the view from our room:

(the Palace of Parliament, somewhat more impressive than these trees, is on the other side of the hotel):

Our tour guide was very nice and seemed to know everything about Romania.  We went through the heart of the city, where most of the buildings are still from the Ceausescu era.  I'm not saying he was a good guy, but I happen to like his architectural taste.  It's an interesting mix of the normal art deco-ish Balkan architecture I saw so much of in Istanbul, which I love despite its simplicity, and a very French-looking Art Nouveau style, which is apparently what Ceausescu was going for.

Apparently he wanted to make Bucharest the new Paris.  He might have failed at that (and at running a government, and at surviving a coup), but downtown Bucharest is still very beautiful.  Two rivers run through the city, one of which you can see in the above picture.  Also, notice how capitalist advertisements have overtaken this socialist-planned area.  Take that, forces of evil!  The city is very cosmopolitan and many of the buildings are very modern,

 but there are trees everywhere, and lots of open spaces.  I don't know how many parks we drove past, but there were a lot of them.  The most beautiful part, however, was the main avenue.  I hesitate to call it the Avenue of Victory, because when our tour guide said "This is the Avenue of Victory" we were in the middle of a square formed by at least three streets, but it is certainly deserving of that title.  Trees hang over it everywhere, a park is on one side, and the other side is home to nothing but mansions.  Some of them are now museums, some are still regular mansions, I guess, but most of them are embassies or the homes of diplomats.  Our guide told us that the home of the American ambassador was the most beautiful.  The avenue also featured its very own Arch Du Triumph.  I give it a C for originality but an A+ for looks.  It is worth mentioning that this arch was built before Ceaucescu's time.  He was a huge fan of the Paris parallels, but he wasn't the first one to think of Bucharest as a little Paris and he was by no means the only one to buy into the whole French thing.  French was the unofficial second language of Romania until English took over about thirty years ago (take that again, forces of evil!).  Interestingly, I've been in two cabs so far.  One was driven by a young man who spoke decent English, and the other was driven by an older man who asked if I knew French.

From there we left Bucharest for the plains.  I don't have any pictures of plains, but if you've seen a field before, just multiply that by like a million and there you have it.  After about an hour of driving through plains, we came to the Carpathian Mountains, which form a protective ring around the central plateau of the country (Bucharest is southwest of this ring).  These mountains are not only home to beautiful rivers and trains,

they're also home to Dracula!  Our guide downplayed that part, but we were technically in Transylvania, and you could easily tell that the area had been influenced by Germans, if not vampires.  The buildings in the mountains looked like they could have been in the Alps, and there was even a ski resort only reachable by cable car.  I'm not sure if you can see it, but I think it's on top of that gigantic mountain.

Anywho, we were visiting place called Sinaia, named after Mount Sinai, which was the summer home of Romania's monarchs during the fifty years or so that they had actual monarchs.  A quote from our guide: "The king would spend roughly six months a summer here."  The palace was amazing.  We couldn't take pictures inside, so you'll have to take my word for it when I tell you that there were some incredibly intricate wood carvings and really cool mirrors.  What was cool was that the palace was built less than 150 years ago, so it had central heating and electricity along with all the trappings of a medieval castle.  There were two rooms that were supposed to look like different places in Italy, one that was supposed to be Arabic, and, of course, a French room.  I also loved something we learned about King Mihai I (not sure if the I is necessary when he was also the only King Mihai, but whatever): in his office he kept a writing desk to lean against when he met with people, the idea being that if they had their meeting standing up it would be quicker.  There was also a very nice couch for longer meetings.  I found that hilarious because, if you knew what the couch was for, it must have been pretty obvious when the king didn't want to talk to you.  Here are some pictures of the palace.

After that, we drove to the other side of the mountains, the heart of Transylvania, and saw two fortified churches.  They were basically forts with churches inside them, and the first one contained over 140 rooms that could house 3-4 people each.  They rooms weren't very nice on the inside, being 800 years old and windowless and all, but it sure looked a lot nicer than 1937 Hall on the outside:

Right?
After that we got lunch at a nice place on the side of the road/river going through the mountains and headed back to Bucharest.  We got there around sunset, in time to see the balcony where Ceausescu gave his last speech (two or three days before drawing his last breath, I think):

To the right of the frame there was a monument to the protesters who died overthrowing the government in 1989.  They love to hate Ceausescu and his wife here, and it was pretty entertaining to hear some of the jokes our guide told about them.  It'd be great if I could remember one.

But I can't.  I have to go now, but thanks for reading!  I'll post again the next time something interesting happens.