A Stopover in Croatia

 

On the way back from Turkey, Margaret and I stopped in Croatia for three days.  In our 2-hour Turkish Airlines flight - a huge step up from EasyJet - we were served a snack, a full meal, and wine!  Wow.  American airlines could learn a few tricks.  

When we arrived in Zagreb, we jumped into a taxi and showed the cab driver the address to our hostel.  He was a large, jolly man, who told us his English was so good because he spent several years working on the oil rigs in New Orleans.  He told us New Orleans was "OK," but nowhere near as wonderful as his hometown Dubrovnik, a small but touristy coastal city that is also known for both its culture and its seafood.  

Zagreb

Dubrovnik

Our cab driver - let's call him Ivan - decided that we needed a lesson in Croatian history.  He told us about the war between the former Yugoslavian states, in which (according to Ivan) Serbia was the bad guy.  Croatians wanted to be an independent country and the Serbs wanted the area to be part of a larger Serbian state.  Ivan's home Dubrovnik was the most contested area, claimed by both Serbia and Montenegro.  The way Ivan told the story, the Serbs blindly killed Croatians based on completely unfounded territorial and ethnic claims.  (But after looking into history, I found examples of horrible violence and questionable claims on both sides.)  

Map of the former Yugoslavia

Understandably, Ivan could not see both sides. He had been an adult during the height of the conflict in 1991. His hatred for the Serbs was still vicious and alive.  He even told us that he "could understand where Osama Bin Laden was coming from.” Bin Laden "was protecting his own culture from erosion," Ivan said.  But he just couldn't understand the Serbs.  No way.  "I'd rather be friends with Bin Laden than a Serb,” he said. 

At this point Margaret and I looked at each other uneasily.  When he dropped us off a few blocks later, we sighed with relief.  But he had made his point.  During his adult life, he had seen Serbian people destroy his home.  They had probably killed members of his family.  And although people he knew had probably also hurt Serbs, he couldn't remember it.   

Ivan also expressed dismay at Croatia's impending entry into the European Union.  He seemed wary of joining a larger group of countries, saying, "Yugoslavia could happen all over again."

Listening to Ivan, I couldn't help but think about what it would have been like to live through a war.  I later asked one of our hostel workers - a girl about two years older than me who was born in Zagreb - if she remembered the war.  She told me she remembered a few bombings and that her family went to a shelter.  But she assured me that "it was not a big deal at all."

Her casual attitude toward the war was radically different from Ivan's combative one.  She treated the conflict, and Yugoslavia itself, as if it were irrelevant.  Instead she was looking forward to the day when Croatia would be a part of the European Union, so she could go and work in London.  

I told her about our conversation with Ivan in the cab.  "Crazy old guy," she laughed. 

Whatever it's history or future story, Zagreb is a fascinating city, with grand Austro-Hungarian architecture, tall, beautiful people, graffiti covering every inch of public space, and a hauntingly beautiful cemetery. 

Here are some photos:

A church in downtown Zagreb

The city was fully decorated with graffiti, some of it beautiful.

The main square/green space

Strukli: a traditional dish made with dough, cheese, spinach (in this one), and cream

Mirogoj Cemetery

Turkish Delight

 

At the beginning of 2012, I wrote a post in which I discussed how living in France pushes me to “live in the moment” – to experience each and every new thing as if I were a kid, seeing it for the first time.  

Well.  By the end of February, I had already started to get too comfortable.  Speaking French was no longer a huge challenge, I walked the same route to and from work every day, my diet consisted of bread, cheese and the occasional salad, my friends and I always hung out at the same cafés and bars…. You get the picture.   I was living on auto-pilot and I didn’t even notice (but that’s really the essence of living on auto-pilot, isn’t it?)  

Luckily for me, it was time for another two-week vacation, so my cousin Margaret and I agreed to meet in Istanbul. 

I loved Istanbul before I even got there.  The guidebooks promised it would be a mélange of European and Middle-Eastern culture.  The city is huge (population of 17 million) and full of color, noise and chaos.  But it is simultaneously spiritual and serene - full of ancient history, legendary characters, and great leaders.   

In the shuttle from the airport, I stared out the window at the boats on the blue-green Bosphorus, open air markets selling everything from carpets to hardware, and street vendors selling fruits and roasted chestnuts.  I couldn’t understand how everyone seemed so relaxed, just drinking tea on the sidewalk, in such a hectic place.

When I arrived at the hostel where I was meeting Margaret, she told me we had to go directly to a travel agent to change our plans.  Originally, we had been planning to spend three days in the city of Canakkale, in the Western part of Turkey to see Troy and Gallipoli, but the guy who owned our hostel (a friendly man who quickly took to massaging our shoulders when we were in the common room) was adamant that if we were only going to visit one place in all of Turkey, it had to be Cappadocia, a remote area in the center of Turkey. 

 At the travel agent’s, we were given cup after cup of Turkish and apple tea while the agents tried to talk us into expensive hot air balloon rides.  Finally, our trip to Cappadocia was arranged- a public overnight bus and a two-day professional tour of the area. 

I was not longer on auto pilot.  Time had slowed down and I had arrived. 

It rained that afternoon, so we ducked into the “Blue Mosque,” one of the most famous mosques in the Sultanhamet area of Istanbul.  We took off our shoes, covered our hair with scarves, and tiptoed respectfully inside.  After staring in awe at the beautiful designs on the walls and ceilings (the designs are abstract, since Islam does not allow pictures of saints of angels), we made ourselves comfortable on the carpeted floor (all mosques are carpeted, and visitors sit on the floor rather than in pews or chairs).  

Inspired by the spiritual atmosphere inside the mosque, Margaret and I started discussing our family’s catholic heritage and our own thoughts and reservations about the faith into which we’d been raised.  This sparked a slightly silly conversation about the nature of God and the universe.  I couldn’t help myself from spouting off about the ever expanding cosmos, and the possibility of life on other planets.  Halfway through our conversation, a guy from Manchester, England joined in.  Having been raised Catholic as well, he added some new insights into our ideas about our family’s faith.  We all agreed on at least one thing: The Muslims have got the carpet thing right.  Mosques are WAY more comfortable than churches.  

A view of the Blue Mosque from Galata Bridge

~

Marge and I were admiring scarves at a shop in the Grand Bazaar, when the shop owner invited us back to his storage area to have a closer look.  We shrugged and followed him.  He patiently answered our questions in perfect English as we pulled scarf after scarf off the shelf.  After a while, the shop owner and his apprentice (a business student who works there part time) asked if we’d like to have a cup of Turkish coffee.  He brought us two stools and two cups of thick, grainy, black coffee.  The shop owner told us his apprentice (who couldn’t speak much English) was going to tell our fortunes in our coffee cups and he would translate.  

When we had finished our cups of coffee, we turned them upside down on a plate while the grains hardened.  Apparently the shape of these grains in the cup, held the key to our futures.  The apprentice squinted at the contents of the cup and spoke in rapid Turkish while the shop owner translated.  

My fortune went something like this: “You will work very hard and make a lot of money one day.” Pause.  The apprentice squinted again at the cup and started chuckling. “What?”  I demanded.  The apprentice shook his head.  Finally the shop owner said, “Very soon you will meet a man who will make you very happy.  And this man will have Baklava.” Baklava?  Apparently this is the Turkish term for “six-pack.”  The apprentice informed us that he himself had a nice set of baklava and that he worked out at the gym every day.  We both laughed and assured him that the only baklava we were interested in at the moment was the kind you can buy in a pastry shop. 

Speaking of Baklava…  

A few words about Turkish food:  it’s phenomenal.  And the cheaper the better.  Margaret and I would wonder far down side streets and into little cafés where no one spoke a word of English.  We’d point to whichever dishes appealed the most to us, or sometimes the owners would bring us something random, of their choosing. 

One of our favorite lunch stops in the Beyoglu neighborhood

We tasted almost everything we could, and rarely tried something we didn't like.  Some of our favorite Turkish specialties included: 

chocolate baklava, 

simit (like a Turkish soft pretzel, but covered in sesame seeds), 

corbasi (lentil soup), 

halva (a sweet made from tahini),

 aryan (a thick, yogurty drink), 

spiced olives, 

and fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice. 

~ 

Opting for the public overnight bus to Cappadocia had seemed like a good idea in theory – we were saving money and “doing what the locals do” – but as our departure time approached, Margaret and I were starting to wonder what we’d gotten ourselves into.  We boarded the bus armed with a bottle of wine and Tylenol pm. 

We were pleasantly surprised.  Tea and water were served throughout the trip and  each seat had a personal TV, with which we could enjoy all the Turkish sitcoms our little hearts desired.  These blessed TVs allowed us to discover, some advertising gems such as this “patos sticks” commercial: 

Patos Sticks 

The one drawback: there is no bathroom on the bus.  Thankfully, we took frequent breaks (every three hours or so) at large gawdy bus stations.  At 3 a.m., one can use the toilets (for a small fee of course), buy nuts and dried fruit, eat a three course meal, or shop in what Margaret and I dubbed the “home depot” section – where one can buy anything from postcards and souvenirs, to blenders and drills.  

Margaret perusing the drills

When we arrived in Cappadocia the following morning, it was too late to go to our hotel to freshen up, so we had to jump straight from our overnight bus onto our tour bus without so much as splashing water onto our exhausted faces. But we hardly noticed because of the breathtaking views from the bus window!

The pointed rocks are called "fairy chimneys," and local people have built their homes in and around them.

We stepped out of the bus into about three feet (one meter) of snow.  It was colder in Cappadocia than it was in Stockholm.  Margaret and I were extremely underdressed wearing light jackets and leather city boots. 

When we boarded our bus, we were greeted by the enthusiastic smiles of the rest of our group.  Let me introduce you:

The whole group together...

The thirty something American couple.  UPenn graduates who lived in Philadelphia, they were slightly overweight and wearing the latest gear – hiking boots and North Face coats.   They had thoroughly researched Cappadocia before their trip, and asked interesting intellectual questions, at every stop. 

Three Brazilian guys, only one of whom spoke English.  Every stop we made on the tour, they would buy something ridiculous like a turban or a large ceramic vase.  At lunch, they would each order three or four beers, so that afterwards they were significantly more rowdy than before.  Their favorite phrase was “let’s go!” which one of them would yell whenever he got bored of listening to the tour guide’s explanations.  

The Chinese-Canadian family.  The husband and wife had immigrated to Canada from Beijing 20 years ago.  They now live in New Brunswick, Canada where their 17-year-old daughter was born.  At every landmark, the parents wanted to take a family photo, in which they would make a “peace sign” with their fingers while their daughter sighed and scowled.  

Last but not least – the two young American girls who kept saying weird things like “y'all” and talking quickly and unintelligibly to one another.  They ate huge amounts of food at the buffet lunches because they couldn’t afford to buy dinner later and regularly followed the bus driver and his friends into cafes to watch Turkish TV, drink tea, and keep warm, rather than admire the views.  Oh wait.  That was Margaret and me.   

Luckily, we did take some pictures:

An underground city - where Christians used to hide from the Ottomans

This rock is fondly called "sitting camel"

~

Our last day in Istanbul was beautiful and sunny.  We met up with Liza – an old family friend who is studying in Istanbul for a semester.  We strolled in the area around her university – a slightly ritzier residential and shopping district that is right on the Bosphorus.

 Liza wanted to show us a jewelry shop she had stumbled upon the day before, so we followed her down a wide street of high-fashion boutiques and impeccably decorated restaurants.  The shop sold jewelry by designer Sevan Bicakci – who gets his inspiration from Ottoman jewelry.   

As we were admiring the rings on display, the saleswoman asked if we would like to try some of them.  We looked at each other.  The stuff was WAY out of our price range, but, judging by the way we were dressed, we felt pretty certain she knew that.  Perhaps she wanted to practice her English?  We will never know exactly why she allowed three vagabonds such as ourselves to touch this beautiful jewelry.  

She took us to a back room where we sat down and were served tea.  She then brought out some of the most intricate pieces of jewelry I have ever seen.  

 Sevan’s customers, she informed us, ranged from Halle Berry to Liv Tyler to Celine Dion to the Queen of England, and some of the pieces we were holding would soon be donated to a museum in London. 

I guess she didn’t want us to get too comfortable. 

But that's the thing about Turkey.  Two weeks is not enough time to get comfortable.  In a good way.

Stay tuned for tales from our three-day stopover in Croatia!