There need to be many posts on things eaten - ?!!, no couscous but many other wonderful things. One evening we sat and made sigara böreks and I remembered km! I also want to do a photo post on the cats of Istanbul, on the Atatürk imagery seen everywhere and busking in Istanbul...still sorting through the photos as of now, though.
Things bought were numerous. Boxes of cevizli and fıstıklı lokum from Hacı Bekir, a kilo of baklava from Karaköy Güllüoğlu, books on Turkey (am currently in the middle of the very wonderful Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey), earrings and more earrings from the Kapalıçarşı - though no doubt my friends would argue that one very cute and refined (and also, sadly, very proper) jeweller in Cevahir Bedestan was largely responsible for me making trek back there a second time* - and of course lots of music. Albums I didn't have by Burhan Öçal, Selim Sesler and Levent Yildirim among others. All great musicians you should be listening to, too!
I was hoping very much to be able to buy the DVD of Fatih Akın's Auf Der Anderen Seite, but unfortunately there were no English subtitles. Sigh. I did however get Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Iklimler (which I am very excited about watching) and Yılmaz Güney's 1982 Palm d'Or winner Yol.
Gah - have I mentioned how much I miss being there?
*I actually had to go back to get a broken pair of earrings fixed. So yeah.
6 comments:
OK, I AM going to visit Turkey (hopefully 2009) and I AM going to bug you for touristy information.
//That's what you get for posting all this great stuff. Thanks!
and I spent once a week in istanbul and was crazy about it, but now after reading all this I suddenly feel the urge to go there again oh...
and I don't want to think about those incredible things you ate and the sweets you bought, no no no :-) but do make these posts on food, please!!!! (I know I am being self-contradictory here :-).
km: oh, you must go! And I will be happy to provide any information you need...this has almost become my second job anyway :D
(Hopefully, insallah, I will be in Istanbul when you visit and will be able to show you around...I am plotting on moving there in 2009...)
roxana: It's an amazing city isn't it? I miss it already :( There are so many food pictures so the food posts will be up soon...hopefully they will make you drool :P
Ah yes, the CATS. What IS it with Istanbul and cats? I saw the Ataturk hang-up (a little at odds with the present religious polarisation) but I didn't see all that many buskers. At least not on the European side.
Beautiful photographs. May I ask you for some translations and some food names? (Yuvalama and lamahcun are what I remember offhand - are these Anatolian?)
J.A.P.
J.A.P: Haha...I honestly don't know what's up with the cats except that they are all around!!
The Ataturk mania is getting worse I think - it's the one image in Turkey even the islamists can't criticize so it makes sense that the secularists use it so much.
Buskers - they usually hang around Tunel on Istiklal, especially on Saturdays...
Oh well - I have posts in the making for all of the above :)
I'd be happy to translate though of course my Turkish isn't very good but I have my dictionary!
Yuvalama I know from the corba - I think it's a specialty from Gaziantep and around...lahmacun is so available all over that I don't think it can be restricted as being from any particular place. That said, I really have no idea as to it's origins, though it must be Anatolia...
Fragments of Culture rocks the casbah. One of my favorite academic books on turkey--Kandiyoti's "Pink Card Blues" is a classic.
Somebody brought me haci bekir lokum in june and fistikli cikolata from the meshur beyoglu cikolatci and it's all gone now.
Mr Prufrock, not sure about the origins of lahmacun, but it is found across the region--Armenian, Turkish, Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian, etc., everybody has a version, usually called by some variation on that same name.
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