Bargains and Tea: Turkey

Lütfen (hello)!

            To say the least, I have not come close to mastering the Turkish language! We are spending five days in Turkey and it is great being back in this beautiful country. We are docked in Istanbul and we walk over the Golden Horn on the Galata Bridge to reach the old part of Istanbul. We are staying on the middle land section of Turkey that is surrounded by the Golden Horn and Bosporus Straight. There are bridges over both bodies of water that connect us to Europe Istanbul and Asia Istanbul- the land we are on is also considered to be Europe Istanbul.

            We spend the first day navigating the city and I served as the under-educated tour guide. I successfully found Hagia Sophia and we stood in line while being hassled by professional tour guides. After studying Hagia Sophia in class and seeing it last year, we passed up the “once in a lifetime” offers from the relentless guides. Hagia Sophia was a church that used to have beautiful golden mosaics covering every ceiling and wall. When it was converted to a mosque all of the mosaics were hastily plastered over. A few hundred years after all of this happened Ataturk took over and turned Hagia Sophia into a secular museum. Restoration work has been done on the mosaics, but only some of the beautiful tile work survived the plaster. I loved seeing the golden mosaics of Jesus and Mary. The light hit both of these mosaics and the tiles glowed, lighting up the room. I find it funny that the mosaics also include images of the emperor and empress who ordered the construction of Hagia Sophia. They appear right next to Jesus, as if they were the Wise Men or the Sheppards. They later decided to add a mosaic of their son but ran out of wall space… so they added him on the perpendicular wall. To say the least, he looks like the loner of the group!

We walked across the plaza to the Blue (Sultanahmet) Mosque. It currently is the Ramadan, the Holy Month of Islam and Muslims cannot eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. (Due to Ramadan we all were instructed to be extra discrete when drinking water in front of the mosques around the city.) All of my SAS friends and I wore ankle length dresses so we just covered our heads, took off our shoes and silently entered the mosque. The tile work is spectacular and I find it amazing to think about how they made building of such grand scales without the current construction equipment we have. As we walked back into the plaza we heard the call of prayer echo off the neighboring buildings. The distinct sound reminded me of last summer when my family admired the call of prayer- until it woke us up a 5am. I laughed as I remembered Katie had made the unfortunate mistake of leaving her window open and had an extra-early wake up call!

A smile spread across my face as we entered the Grand Bazaar. The Grand Bazaar is a pretty much a labyrinth of shops and restaurants. There are over 1,700 shops- but a 3x5ft booth qualifies as a shop. The Grand Bazaar is a claustrophobic’s nightmare and a bargain hunter’s dreamland. Prices are negotiable, so shopping becomes a game. Before entering the rat maze of shops we went over bartering techniques. Some of our strategies were inspired by my bargain-queen family members. If we loved something and wanted to our friends’ opinions, we would ask, “Do you think Aunt Dede would like this?” This was purely inspired by my Aunt Dede, the queen of Turkey. We didn’t want the shopkeepers knowing that we must have that item, so we pretended to be indifferent while negotiating. I also practiced the technique that Katie and Natalie had mastered, say your lowest price and when the shop keeper doesn’t lower his price just walk away, at which point he will start yelling “Lady, lady, fine I give it to you for ‘x’ liras.”

We had fun bargaining and I had even more fun revisiting some of the shops from last year. When I was with my family we found a wonderful jewelry shop that was 3x5ft big. The shop was passed down over many generations and at one point the pair of brothers that inherited it hated each other and builds a wall in the middle of the shop. I was talking to the shopkeeper and he claimed to remember me… I don’t think he did, but either way, he gave us wonderful prices and Apple Tea. Apple Tea is equivalent to scalding hot, tart apple cider. Even though it was 90 degrees it is customary to drink the delicious tea. So, while standing in the microscopic shop we had our first glass of apple tea and then continued to shop our hearts out. I quickly learned how to say “very expensive”: chaulk pa-haa-lah (don’t ask me how to properly spell that!)

I love that the shops are passed down through families in the Grand Bazaar. Rumor has it that there is a waiting list to get a booth and that can take many, many years to move up the list. My last fun fact about the Grand Bazaar is that all booth owners have to pay their rent in gold. The Turkish Lira is not strong enough to be reliable, so they only accept pure gold. That explains why many of the shopkeepers wear gold chains and necklaces; they literally are wearing everything they own. Ok, I lied, here is your last fact- all shop keepers are male. Majority of the families start training their sons when they are still children, so I had to negotiate with kids at some booths- this pulled at my heart, so I tried to only bargain with the adults.

Hosçakal (goodbye)

~Tori