Sorry that I’ve taken so damn long to update! I think I will start with Wednesday, which was the evening of this week’s second concert: Yann Tiersen at Parkorman Arena. I caught a cab with Michelle, Katherine, and Jeremy to the venue, which is in the way northern part of Istanbul called Sariyer. It’s fairly close to the Black Sea, as the crow flies. We hopped out and headed into the park, which was easily the coolest venue ever. It reminded me a lot of the Merriweather Pavillion in Maryland, where we went to see the Shins and the White Stripes last fall, except way, way cooler. This was partly due to the fact that it has Istanbul’s largest outdoor swimming pool, which just so happens to be shaped in such a way as to smack of 1970s decor and kickassitude. Surrounding the pool there were restaurants, snack stands, bars, cigarette stands, and an ice skating rink. Not to mention cute kittens, trees, and the four of us. Also, the shitter looked like a white circus tent from Russia.
We wandered around a bit, found out how much beers were (8 YTL), and then how much an Icee-style drink was (10 YTL). Neither was going to be imbibed by this shebab. We also took some photos of the Marlboro stands that were all over the place. They look sooooo cool, they make me want to start smoking. They are really geometrical and minimalist, but they are lit throughout by red and white light, and they are all staffed by beautiful women. The packs are laid out all sexy on the shelves behind them like you’d imagine a grocery store in the Fifth Element. If only Bruce Willis would take on Big Tobacco in Turkey.
We decided to look for a place to stand, and then Katherine told us that she and Jeremy had opted for seating tickets, which were more expensive. Michelle and I were left to our own devices, and we managed quite nicely, finding standing room on the left. The way the seating was arranged, there were no bad views. The seats were directly in front of the stage, and were low, and nobody was standing in front of them, so you could see the stage from anywhere around the seats. There was a big video screen playing commercials (including a cool ninja robot car commercial) until the show started. No opening band, which I appreciated. And we were both a bit surprised to see no orchestra, either, but we figured he had something in store.
We were right, and he proceeded to rock the house with his 5 piece band, which featured the theramin heavily. He played a lot of new stuff, and reworkings of songs from Amelie. Rock interpretations that were similar to but 100x better than Mogwai. As if that weren’t enough, he whipped out a violin between songs and beat the shit out of it during some fucking amazing solos. He was playing arpeggios faster than most rock guitarists do. He went through two or three bows during the show. We rocked hardcore, and again found ourselves next to some loud Yann Tiersen fans, maybe Turkey’s biggest. One girl found a cute kitten and was holding it during the show. That would be a rare site at Bogart’s back in the Nati, so I seized the opportunity to pet it. Oh, and the guitarist for the band also used a power drill to play his guitar, as well as an old voice recorder. The drummer played a saw.
They came out for an encore, and then afterward, Michelle suggested that we try and get close to the stage and see if we can’t get something from it. When we got up there, the crew was turning off all the speakers and stuff, and the audience kept clapping. We laughed at the silly Turks, who obviously didn’t understand how encores worked. It was only when Yann came back out for a second encore that we felt stupid. We were maybe 10 feet away from him, and two feet away from the stage. He came out and rocked the accordion, the dulcimer, and his violin again, playing classic Amelie stuff to a suddenly on-its-feet crowd. We were beside ourselves. He actually made eye contact with me and Michelle, presumably to ogle her red hair and my breasts.
As if that weren’t enough, they came out for a THIRD encore. THIRD. Yes. Amazing. I shit my pants twice in a row. Michelle peed a little. Afterward the guy in front of us got a set list, and his girlfriend got a violin bow. We got nothing, but I did get a picture of the sweat on the floor, so…I guess that’s worthless. They started screening Amelie afterwards on the big screen, and to our chagrin, they had the Turkish dubbing on, which Katherine shouted down. We cheered when they switched it to French. It was a minor victory over the creepy nationism that surfaces every once in a while in fucked up places here. Some Turks would cheer whenever a line was said in Turkish before they switched to the French. Odd. We tried to get Yann to autograph the CDs the girls had bought, but he wasn’t coming out. Michelle asked a stagehand if he spoke English (in Turkish), and he said “Yes, I speak English.” She asked him, and he said no dice. He sounded a bit snooty, and we think it’s because she asked about English. The problem is, should she have asked him in English, or Turkish whether or not he spoke English? I mean, we are in Turkey, so Turkish is the default language, but if he worked for Yann, he might be French, and would prefer being asked that in English to the dirty language of the Muslim Turque. What would you have done?
We decided we were tired and wanted to get home at a reasonable hour (the movie would have ended at 1:00am). We headed up the path to the row of cabs and grabbed one just in time to still get the day rate. The cabby tried to screw us again after we got off the highway by starting to turn left instead of straight, but I caught him and told him that we were going to Uçaksavar, and he said “Bogaziçi Üniversitesi,” and I said “Yes, and it’s on this street. Go straight.” We got out alright, hooray! And that was Wednesday!
Thursday afternoon I went to a cool little pair of museums with a bunch of students as a field trip after classes. There was a museum of Ottoman clothing, art, and documents, which was called the Koç Museum. The adjoining building (neither of which we were allowed to photograph) was a nice little archaeology museum that featured all kinds of old shit. Some pots dating back to 3000BC, and I got to see some of those cool stuff. One exhibit featured old glass and then some gems with ivory carvings on them. Another featured some nasty hook-looking things, which the plaque next to them described in English as “Flesh Scrapers.” This sounded nasty, and then I read the Turkish description, and my heart leapt up in my chest. Turns out they were the tools used to scrape the olive oil off the gladiators before they went into battle. One of my professors confirmed this, and then I told her that in high school (world cultures!) we learned about how the scrapings would then be sold as a kind of parfume/aphrodisiac. It was really cool to see them in person. I also got to see the queen’s danged undies, as the feller used to say. They had an underwear exhibit. And a model circumcision room. The boys got a huge bed and a cool bedcurtain. But they then had their dicks snipped, so…yeah. The informational paragraphs often had a nice subtle nationalistic tinge to them, often slighting the Byzantines (read: Greeks). We got some tea and then headed back to the bus, where Michelle, Dane, and I sat in the back, where the seat by the door had a cool rollercoaster-style bar that went over the lap so you didn’t fall out while the bus drove with the door wide open because it didn’t have air conditioning. It was sweet.
On Friday after classes ended a bunch of us headed back to Dürüm Evi, where Mehmet Fatih Bey, the Kurd from Diyarbakir, greeted us warmly, since he loves it when we come there instead of going to the shop next to his. He knows all our names now and gives us free dolmas. Delicious ones, at that. He also really likes rubbing my shoulders, a whole lot, and is prone to answering any request I make with “of course.” If it weren’t for the fact that he has two daughters, I’d think he was coming on to me. After lunch, Dane, Michelle, and I decided to go find her old grade school, which she went to for a few years when she was very young (she is still very young, but I’m talking like 5 years old). We hopped in a cab and gave him the address, and he was a younger guy, so he asked like 4 different people for directions. Also, the fact that none of the streets have signs might be a factor. It turns out the place was down the hill on a tiny side street that was actually pretty well hidden, but well within walking distance from campus. We walked up to the gate and a guard came up and I told him my friend studied there when she was a kid and wanted to stop by for a visit, but he told us there was some kind of conference today and for security reasons they couldn’t let anyone in. So we’ll head back later.
We decided to seize the moment and walk to the castle near campus, Rümeli Hisari, since none of us had been there yet. The walk was so fucking hot we almost died, but we saw a cute sign that featured a drawing done by a child, and we randomly broke into a wonderful rendition of “California Dreamin’” on the way up a nice steep stretch of hilly road. This part of town was really cool, kind of off the beaten path. We ended up at the castle, but, well, outside of the castle. Kind of at the back door, literally. There was a hatchback parked there with the driver side door open, and we walked to the edge of the hill to see what we could see besides the amazing view of the Fatih Bridge. Michelle got a bit worried that someone was disposing of a body, and neither of us could blame her, so we kept walking around until we got to the front entrance.
Tickets were 5 YTL. This was because the student discount only works for Turkish students, which strikes me as a bit unfair and typical. We headed in and checked out the sights. There was a bit of construction going on inside for some reason, I think to accomodate some concert series that starts soon. There’s a large ampitheater inside the castle, and there was a Turk doing a really bootleg soundcheck the whole time we were there, clicking his tongue and counting from one to two and back again, over and over. We checked out the inside of the main tower, which had pigeons in it and was pretty sweet, then we climbed some stairs up onto the wall, where Michelle and I felt a touch of the dizzies, and headed back toward the ampitheater, where Michelle sat and waited for a bit while Dane and I explored up the hillside the castle was built on. I found a relatively intact staircase that led up to the wall, and the view was sweet. I can’t imagine having to run along the walls or up and down the steps carrying things, though. I was taking the steps one at a time going down, and the wall was upwards of 30 feet high in a lot of places. I wonder if there was a handrail back in the day, maybe made of wood? No? Oh, I guess that people back then weren’t huge pussies like I am. But at least I can write in English correctly, which is more than I can say for the people who translated the Turkish informational placards. Check out my photos, and you’ll see at least a couple typos in each one.
We got back to campus via cab and Kent was all settled into our apartment by then, since everyone had to switch to Süperdorm due to window repairs. This is awesome now, because Michelle, Dane, and Kent are all here (Kent’s living with us!), and now they don’t have to leave by 1:00am. Kent and I helped Michelle with the last of her shit, and they we kinda hung out, laying around on my couches listening to music, drinking tea and Cola Turka, and eating crackers. This continued until around
10:00pm, when we prepared to head out to Taksim and meet up with a bunch of people and go to a club that Kent’s cousin knew about. We fellows all rocked the button down shirt and dresspant scene, although I opted for the undershirt as well, since my back was sweating like it was its job (yeah, totally hot.). Ali came with us, and he and Tugçe managed to negotiate a flat fee for the two cabs that took us all to Taksim. When we got there we met up with some folks and then walked to the club, which it turns out, we could not get into despite having 3 girls with 4 guys.
Kent’s cousin showed up, and talked to the doormen, but you know, that shit just doesn’t work all the time. So we headed back to Nevizade and up five flights of stairs to a neat little bar and had some beverages (some people went NA and got pips, which I tasted, a perk of being Michelle’s manpurse for the evening. It was good.). We decided to head to a club that Katharine knew about called Cambaz. It looked cool and had a cover charge of 20 YTL, which included two drink tokens. That’s actually a decent deal, and works out to about a $6 cover when you factor out the drinks. We went in and headed all the way to the rooftop, where there were some phat Turkish techno beats pouring out of the speakers and a bunch of sweaty Turks dancing or chatting all over the place. We found ourselves a nice corner of the floor and got some drinks and started to dance.
After a few minutes, a stranger started urging us all to dance like him, and he entered our sacred circle. Then he beckoned to Michelle to dance, which she did reluctantly and at a great distance from this guy, whom we later decided was either after her or me, because he was trying to get me to dance with him too. I did dance, albeit by myself and on Osvaldo’s video camera. I think that should prove to be quite the incriminating video someday. I’ll see what I can do to make it available. After Michelle got away from him, I started dancing between him and her, and he asked me what I was doing there, so I told him I was dancing, and he left. So yeah, from then on, the guys in the group started dancing interference for the ladies, and we headed to the upper rooftop level, where the music was louder and the creepy guy wasn’t. We must have been there for about 3 hours, at least, just dancing, laughing, and having a great time. The music was really fun, and the view was cool as shit. We rocked out super hardcore style like wicked whoa to a Turkish language version of “I Will Survive.” The refrain literally translates to “I am living.” Anyway, it fucking rocked. I used two of the four drink tokens we had (between me and Michelle, since I was the moneylender for the eve) to get some water for us, and I sobered up super quick after all the dancing and sweating. I should really have some kind of A/C suit made. It was quite the awesome evening, and it lasted forever. We didn’t leave the club until 4:00am. We walked back up Istiklal as a group and got a couple cabs with Ali’s help for a flat rate of 15 YTL each and piled in and headed home.
Sleeping at 5:00am and waking up at 10:45am don’t go together well, so Kent, Michelle, and I were quite exhausted all day today as we headed to Topkapi and the Archaeology Museums. I’ll try and get that flow busted out for you tomorrow night, because I have to sleep now in order to wake up in time for the boat trip tomorrow at 8:45am. Seppa kai, my damies. Wa dah tah.
