First my apologies for not posting sooner in Turkey. Our schedule has been front-loaded and after a week packed with tours, lectures, and just plain orienting ourselves to the surroundings I think that most of the students and I are finally experiencing some much needed downtime.
Speaking of time, our rapid transition from Cairo to İstanbul has had lots of us reflecting on the value of our minutes, hours, days, and years. Looking at Turkey's economic status and visiting the sites of ancient ruins at Troy, Pergamon, and Ephesus, has placed me in a strange sort of intellectual time warp that I'll try to explain using antecdotes from our journey.
We arrived in İstanbul on January 26th and were welcomed at a small but clean hotel called the Hotel Prince in the Sirkeci district of the city. We are steps from the Sirkeci train station, where the famed Orient Express made its final stop, Topkapı Palace, and the beautiful Aya Sophia and Blue Mosque that top the hill to the south of us. It takes about 15 minutes walking for us to go to the Karaköy district where classes are held in an old bank building now owned by Sabanci University and used as their conference center. The walk takes us over the Galata Köprüsü (bridge) that spans the Golden Horn just before it meets up with the Bosphorus. Every day the bridge is lined by fishermen who seem to be content to pass some of their day catching sardines while they sip tea and chat. Those of us who are often late can forgo a walk to class and instead hop on the Tramway, which is clean, fast and, for 1.30 Turkish Lira a ride, convienently takes us from point A to point B in no time at all.
Things move faster here, no doubt. Although the traffic in Cairo is undeniably rapid, cars here don't stop for pedestrians. Period. This necessitates underground tunnels and pedestrian-only streets, like İstiklal, where many İstanbullu stroll each night among upscale shops, cafes, and resturants. Shopping is different here, Erin pointed out in class yesterday. Compared to Egypt, where much of the goods in markets and clothing stores are imported, stores here are stocked primarily with Turkish brands, the labels of which are exclusively in Turkish. As Steve pointed out, market interactions are frequently more quick here, a sign that people value time as if it were equal to money. Listening to conversations amongst the students, there is much debate on what this says about the economies and the social values of the two countries we've seen so far.
As I mentioned before, we experienced a bit of a time warp this weekend. I'll expound on that in the next post. It is noon in İstanbul and lunch-time approaches...
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