Day Thirty-six: The Halfway Point

I've spent most of the last week either getting to know the city or learning about the Fourth Crusade.  The crusade is the topic I finally chose for my research paper.  It feels good to actually know what I'm writing about.  I'm still learning, but I think a basic synopsis of the Fourth Crusade would be "medieval Christians want to take back Jerusalem so they decide to attack Egypt but don't have the money or manpower so they just lay siege to Constantinople even though it was a Christian city."  The crusade was led by Enrico Dondolo, whom I believe I have mentioned in an earlier post.  What I may have failed to mention is that, at the time of his attack on the city, in which he led a charge against the walls, he was 90 years old and blind.  So call him what you want-and historians have called him some pretty bad things, according to my research-but Dandolo was dedicated.  Anyway, experts may note that our class is on Ottoman history and that the Byzantines were not, in fact, the Ottomans (recent studies have proved this definitively).  Luckily, our professor is chill enough that he didn't mind the rather off-topic nature of my essay.  I think he was glad to see someone interested in ancient history.  For the record, we walked into a bookstore in Taksim the other day and saw a pile of his book on Ataturk in the Best Seller section.  Writing a book in the first place is something to be proud of, and having it received well is quite an accomplishment, but to have your book on Ataturk become a best seller in a country where everyone has been talking about Ataturk for the last ninety years is just crazy.  Logically, I figured, it must be one of the greatest biographies ever written, so I bought a copy.

that's Ataturk on the cover, not Professor Hanioğlu

Good stuff.  Now, about the city.  We've spent a lot of our free time lately in the area across the Golden Horn from Eminönü (yeah, I figured out how to type Turkish letters), where buses, trams, and cabs crowd the area near the Grand Bazaar.  I'm still not sure what to call this area.  It's near Taksim, so for a while I referred to it as Beyoğlu, the name given to the area around Taksim Square and İstiklal Avenue, but nobody else seemed to be doing that.  It's centered around the Galata Tower, an ancient building that actually played a significant role in the Fourth Crusade, so I'm thinking now it might be called Galata, although the tram stop is called Kadiköy.  Let's just say it's Galata.  Anyway, Galata Tower is a major tourist destination but the area around it seems not to be that touristy.  At least that's how it seems to me, a tourist.  There are lots of cool cafes, like the one where I got awesome (and organic!) yogurt and granola for brunch yesterday, and some great restaurants and bars.  Mostly, though, I just love walking around.  It's not incredibly crowded at night, at least not like Taksim is, and there's something cool to be found on every block of the cobblestone streets that wind down the hill toward the water.  Plus, every now and then you'll walk out of some building and look down the street to see the gigantic tower looming at the end of it, like Pluto's Ghost in Luray Caverns back in Virginia.  Always a pleasant surprise.

If my calculations are correct, I'm halfway through my time abroad.  Five weeks have passed, and there are five more to go.  It's nice, because I miss everyone at home and it's good to know it isn't too long before I'll be back, but at the same time five weeks is enough time to see what I want to see from Istanbul without feeling rushed.  I do feel at home here, which is great.  Yesterday, I walked back to the Compound from brunch in Galata, a walk that took me down the hill to the Golden Horn, across the Eminönü bridge, and through a large market I hadn't known existed back to Kadir Has.  It's nice to be able to get around without worrying too much-we pretty much have the transportation system down.  I might feel a little less comfortable once we move into our apartment, just because we'll have to get used to a new place, but (again, if my calculations are correct) it actually won't be that far from the area I just wrote about, which is fantastic.  Despite the still significant language gap and the fact that I don't look that much like a local (although I'm definitely tanner than when I arrived), I don't feel like a tourist anymore, even though I called myself one earlier in this post.  Istanbul, as it has been for the last few weeks and will be for the next five, is home.  For that reason, I don't feel homesick like I would on a shorter trip-it's more like it is at school, where I miss Richmond but I don't exactly think of it as home because, even though that's what it is, I have a home here now, too.  The neighborhood around the Compound and, more recently, Galata have started to feel like home: the kind of place you're glad to return to, where you feel comfortable once you start to see familiar sights.  Of course I can't wait to see Richmond and everyone in it, but it'll be sad to leave Istanbul, too, and I'm glad I won't have to for a while.  Long story short, it's nice to be settled in here at the halfway point.  Thanks for reading!