To Market, To Market (the many markets of Istanbul)

Gate 1 entrance to the Grand Bazaar

Everyone who knows even a little about Istanbul knows about the markets. The most famous of these is the Grand Bazaar in the old city, but really all of Istanbul is a market. For centuries people have traveled here and traded, bringing goods from near and far to visitors from near and far. Today, Istanbul retains it's market place tradition, and holds proudly to the old ways. Not only do the original market halls and bazaars still operate, but nearly all of Istanbul is a chance to buy and sell. On the streets someone is always selling something; tourist booklets, chestnuts or mussels from a cart, a seat at a cafe. 

The Grand Bazaar is nearly always crowded with people from many places as well as locals from around the corner.

All that selling and all those people can be intimidating! I found it best to approach the markets with an idea in mind of what I might want. Then when vendors approached me, I could be clear about what I wanted and be clear with them about what I was not interested in. A smile and no thank you suffice for a shop owner beckoning me into a shop with wares that do not interest me. However, sometimes, for things I might want, I will engage with the salesman. They are friendly, even kidding, "Can I help you." And when you say "No thank you" they say "Can you help me by spending your money?" We all have a little laugh.

The key for me is to make it a friendly interaction. Salesmen have the "gift of gab", they are good with people and easy to connect with. I look at their goods, if they are for me, I might offer 1/2 of what they say is the price and negotiate from there (there is less bargaining on food and spices our guides tell us) If I get a fair price, I'll buy, if not I will leave. If I'm not interested in their goods, no matter how friendly and attentive they have been, I leave with a friendly thank you! I really enjoyed the markets and engaging with the salesmen, and I don't think I bought a single thing I didn't want! 

Gold shop

The Main Street of the Bazaar is filled with gold shops. I learned from our guide that many people give gold as gifts for life events such as children's birthdays or weddings. Some people also invest in gold jewelry rather than a stock market. Many families buy gold in the markets for these reasons. 

Detail of a carpet shop

Lots of people think of Turkish carpets when they think of the Grand Bazaar. Most folks traveling don't have room in their carry ons for a carpet! But they will ship. Also, several salesmen and a fellow traveller told us that most shops can fold a small rug to fit in a checked suitcase. That means you'd have to either also buy a new suitcase, or dump your clothes in the Bosphorus! Of course, like all shopping, you really have to know your product and do your research before you buy to be sure you are getting what you think you are. 

My husband and I admired a beautiful silk rug, woven in Turkey. I knew from the get go, I was not in the market to buy a rug, but I enjoyed viewing the rug as an art piece and asking the salesmen a bit about it; how it was made, and where, how much it would cost. Of course after 10 minutes in his shop, we had to break his poor salesmens heart and tell him, no we would not buy his rug, no matter how beautiful, but that we appreciated his sharing it's beauty with us. As a former salesperson myself, I don't see it as wasting his time because I know the rule that you need 9 "no's" before you get a "yes!". So my "no" gets him one step closer to his goal! 

Beautiful tea trays with Arabic

Our guide let us off at Gate 1 with plans to meet an hour later. My husband who has a great sense of direction promised to remember our turns and help us return. But of course we got turned around and soon, we couldn't find our way back to the Main Street (a wide boulevard inside lined with mostly gold shops) Luckily, all the salesmen speak excellent English and are very helpful. "Left, right, left" one told us and he was exactly right. In addition to excellent English, nearly every shop will price your goods in whatever currency you have in your pocket, and take credit cards. Though the best bargains happen when you offer cash!

Another major market is the Spice Market. This one is smaller than the Grand Bazaar, but similar in terms of customs. The only difference is there really is not bargaining for spices and foods (with lower margins) unless you are buying in bulk. The Spice Market is called the Egyptian Market by the locals because of course it was the marketplace for Egypt and other far eastern sellers to sell their spices to western traders and visitors. To me both markets had similar "tourist" items as well. 

Some of my purchases being weighed

If you decide to buy spices, you can buy the whole corn or clove and a mill to grind them yourself, or buy the whole spices ground already. You can also buy spices ground and mixed for easy additions to food. This is for lazy cooks like myself; I ended up with meatball spice and something fun called "mother in law chili", a super hot chili mix meant to discourage your MIL from visiting at dinner. Being partial to hot chili, we bought this one, as much for the fun name as for the hot taste!  All of these are vacumme packed so they sail through US, Euro and Canadian customs- however Aussies and Kiwis know they won't be able to take these back no matter how they are packaged. 

Whole cloves and peppercorns

In addition to spices, there are nuts, dried fruits and teas as well as the famous Turkish Delight (a candy made from honey, starch, pistachio and fruit or chocolate) that is for sale everywhere! I have to admit, I wasn't "Turkish Delighted"- I generally like candies, but this didn't do it for me, but it's worth a try! 

Yours truly with my spice seller, but no Turkish Delight for me! 

A fun place to check out is the Pet Market to the left of the Spice Market. This is a fun place to people watch because the stuff sold; birds, pet food, plants, seeds, bulbs and and exotic pets like baby alligators, are not really appreciated by customs officers in too many places! However, there are also buckets of leaches for sale, so you could do a little blood letting in your hotel before you leave! Ok, so maybe not! But it's a great place to see locals shopping, but of course there are far fewer English speaking salespeople here. 

The local doves thought the pet market seed stalls are a great place to sample the wares.

Did I mention food? Like most big cities, someone is selling food on nearly every corner, and even places where there is no corner at all! We enjoyed the famous kebap. There were two types; sis kebap, which is grilled chunks of meat, and doner kebap, which is huge stacks of meat seasoned and grilled on a vertical brazier, then shaved thinly with a knife (or in busy places with a power saw) and stuffed between bread or rolled up in a flat bread. It's a great, affordable street food (about 7 TL) and available almost everywhere. 

A cook prepares kebap at a stall

So you've got all these salesmen selling to locals and tourists, and then you've got salesmen selling to salesmen! Many shops have a sole propeitor, or the salesmen don't want to step out and miss a sale, so the tea man sells them tea!  They call to order on one of several hotlines into his tiny kiosk (with room only to stand next to his huge cappuccino  machine) and he makes their teas and coffees and has his helper deliver them to the salesmen in the markets.

Coffee and tea seller in his tiny kiosk 

delivering tea to the salesmen outside the spice market

So what else can you buy? Well, this weekend is Eid Al-Adha (day of sacrifice) Each family (or several together) buys a sheep and sacrifices it and then gives the meat to the poor.  During our wanderings through an ordinary neighborhood in the Old Town with our guide, we came a cross another interesting market. A temporary sheep market set up for the holiday!

A temporary sheep market set up in a vacant lot in a residential neighborhood

The sheep were packed in a temporary pen set up in a vacant lot. The fellow in the suit jacket was the broker. The sheep had markings on them to indicate which farmer provided them, so the broker could keep track. Men from the neighborhood kept arriving and would choose their sheep. Two young boys would grab it by the horns and drag it to the van where they would deliver it to the yard of the family who bought it. It is quite a sacrifice too! On the day we were there, a ewe was 600 euro and a ram was 800! 

When we saw Istanbul from the air, it was clear this was a crossroads, a narrow spot where poeple move from one place to another. On the ground, seeing so many markets and salespeople showed us that this crossroads is the perfect place to sell ANYTHING!  

Istanbul - A Crossroad for Humanity

With our guide book, and a local Turkish beer, we are fortified to explore Istanbul! 

We arrived in Istanbul this morning. We've read our history and guide books and we know that Istanbul sits at a crossroads of Asia and Europe; a way station and meeting place for the 3 continents. Flying into Ataturk Havalimani Airport in Istanbul this is evident when you see from the air that Istanbul is a narrow peninsula surrounded by the Black Sea to the North (we had just sailed down the Danube, almost to the Black Sea on the AMAPrima) and Marmara Sea to the South, with the Bosphorus splitting the city into its Asian and European sides. If you want to travel by land- this is clearly the path of least resistance, but also a choke point!

A view of the Asian side of Istanbul with ferries and shipping traffic from our hotel room

Looking a large map, it's clear to see that the easiest way to go East to West or West to East by land is to go through Turkey and cross the Bosphorus.  This is how peoples moved for migration and trade routes since ancient times. Istanbul was a place where people pass through, but also where trade commences. My first impression is how clean, bright, well landscaped and just how huge, and very busy this city is. I'm also surprised by how many huge Turkish flags fly here. There is a lot of local pride.

Taksim Square; which is actually round with not one but 2 huge Turkish flags flying.

I wasn't surprised to see that it is still a cross roads for humanity. People are here from every corner of the globe; women in burkas from the Mideast carrying Michael Kors bags, dreadlocked youthful European backpackers, a Chinese couple just off the train (who look like newlyweds and get suckered into the "shoe shine" scam right outside our cafe window. *see below for a description) middle aged Americans (that would be us) and 20 something girls in belly shirts with pierced navels. Even the waiter at the cafe can't sort our where everyone is from- he guesses that Jeff is from Australia. Jeff tells him "close" and then explained he was from Boston, USA. We all had a good laugh over that! 

Looking down Istiklal Street

But I was surprised at just huge this city is and and just how MANY people are here! At 3 PM on a Tuesday, Istiklal street, the main pedestrian shopping boulevard in the new part of the city, is teeming with so many people that it makes rush hour in my own city seem like a bank holiday. So many people, from so many places, so many stories. The saddest are the newest arrivals; tiny Syrain refugee children begging on the streets, singing in their little voices, hoping for people to notice them and give them some coins. Our guide tells us 500,000 have come to Istanbul recently. This is an amazing place to people watch, a fascinating display of global culture and commerce...and that's just within walkin distance of our hotel...over the next two days we will see far more of the city with our guide Meli. 

A crowded tram that runs the length of Istiklal Street

* Shoe Shine Scam

Our concierge here at the hotel sent us to his favorite spot for lunch, not an hour after landing (well ok, it was more than an hour because it tooks us an hour to cross town in our van because of the traffic- but let's say within a few hours) He walked us to the revolving door with only one warning "if you see a shoe shine boy and he drops his brush, just ignore it." We didn't have time to wonder about this before we had stepped 10 steps out of the hotel and a shoe shine boy passed us dropping a shoe brush as he passed. He expects naive tourists to say, "hey, you've dropped your brush!" and then they pounce with the hard sell to "shine your shoes" (the Chinese fellow had sneakers for heavens sake but once he picked up the brush, the tout was on him brushing his Addidas like they were Bruno Magli's.) Of course all this attention ends with the tout expecting a "tip". In the case of the poor couple we saw targeted; even his young wife came over realizing they had been had and decided to get a picture out of it, but another shoe shines tout started in her shoes! The best advice we got was "ignore them", which is exactly what we did when the brush fell at our feet. We sidestepped it and felt proud that just hours in, we were no longer newbies in this huge complex city.

"It's Complicated"

There's a reason international relations of all kinds are tricky and delicate. A mix of cultures, histories and goals make global peace and cooperation... well...complicated.

We've spent the last two days cruising to ports along the Danube in Croatia and Serbia. These used to be part of one country, Yugoslavia, as recently as 25 years ago under the rule of Josip Tito, a Communist Partisan. When he died in 1981, things began to fall apart, with different ethnic groups in different regions deciding to "make their own way" after the fall of Communism, and other groups feeling like the only way to survive and protect their ethnic minority in those areas was to stay united. Needless to say, when disagreements between people happens, sometimes it is settled by war, sometimes very brutally. 

That's been our experience for the last couple of days; witnessing the recent (and ancient) history of mans brutality to man during war. It's been a sobering and thought provoking couple of days, sprinkled in with the warmth and humor of the people who live in a region struggling to make it back to their days of glory.

Heavy shelling is still evident on this building 25 years later in Vukovar, Croatia

Our first stop was to Vukovar Croatia. This small port town in the Danube was the place where Serbians and the Yugoslav Army (which was largely led by Serbian command) tired to take control of Croatia to prevent it from splitting away. The town of Vukovar sustained heavy bombing and was defended by only citizen "defenders", most with only their wits and Molotov cocktails. The siege lasted 3 months in the fall of 1991. Homes and businesses and municipal buildings in the area are slowly renovating their facades, but the wounds underneath still persist; there are few residents in the area and fewer businesses. 

This war was called the Croatian War for Independence by the Croats and the quashing of a rebellion by the Serbs.

It's complicated.

Another building with bombing damage in Vukovar, Croatia

Eventually, the Serbs and Yugoslav Army did control the city, and under Slobodan Milosovich, terrible war crimes were committed. Many civilian Croats were murdered in ethnic cleansing. We visited War Victims Memorial Cemetary, in Vukovar

This statue of a cross in the War Victims Memorial holds an eternal flame to remember the Defenders and innocent civilians who dies during the war. 

There is a large statue of a cross with an eternal flame bringing within to never forget the victims. There are many plain white crosses set out to symbolize the many citizens murdered and dumped in mass graves. Not all of the mass graves have been identified and many people are still missing, assumed to be victims of the war, whose bodies were never found.

At the memorial, the Defenders are buried with identical dark marble headstones and carefully decorated tombs kept by loving family members who live on after their loses.

The Soldier Defenders have many rows of these black tomb stones; sometimes boys of 17 or 18, sometimes 4 brothers in a row, lost within 2 months.

So that makes the Serbians and what was left of Yugoslavia the bad guys, right?

Well, after traveling next to the town of Novi Sad, Serbia and Belgrade, Serbia, we learned it isn't that simple. The people there we talked to (our local tour guides and university professor who lectured us) admit that there were atrocities and Slobodan Milosovich did things in the wrong way, but they maintain that the Croats (and later Bosnians) were engaging in civil war, not a war for independence. They still believe they would be better off as Yugoslavia, united and stronger. The question I asked was...Why? 

Well, the US and NATO perspective was that Serbians had to stop preventing Balkan nations they recognized from seeking independence. International pressure grew and eventually NATO prepared to bomb key targets in Serbia.

During our ride around Belgrade, Serbia we saw bombed out building here and there- each building was identified by our Serbian guide, as either a ministry of defense, or another key government target. Most have not been repaired as the government cannot find any one willing to buy and renovate the property. We saw no non governmental buildings bombed out, except for one hotel where some strategic information was being hidden, and NATO learned of it and targeted it.

How that happen might be explained by one of our guides making an off hand comment that "Serbs would sell out their mothers to get ahead". Whether that's true or hyperbole by one guide, it's hard to say, but I found it interesting. However, it still didn't answer the "why" that these people would cling so desperately to territories filled with peoples who no longer wanted to be part of the union. 

A NATO bombed building in Belgrade, Serbia.

A little later on in our tour of Belgrade, it occurred to me "Why"- we saw this coat of arms above a door at the Kalemegdan Fortress. This fortress at the meeting of the Danube and Sava Rivers served as the demarcation line between the Christian Europe and the Muslim Turks for many centuries. Of course, no one stayed on their own side, various leaders over various centuries of time made incursions in one direction or the other. This fort "changed hands" so to speak, dozens of times. The city was occupied and re captured many times over. As often happened in these areas, churches were converted the poms quest then converted back to churches, or leveled entirely. Not much is truly "old" in this region because someone has razed it some time along its history. During our tour our guide rattled off the dozens of regimes that exsisted over Belgrades history, in a "Two Minute History" of Belgrade.

The crest above the door of the Kalemegdon fortress

So the "Why" for me can be seen in this crest.  The sheild in the middle contains 4 Cyrillac alphabet "c"s, which are the Latin letter "s". The 4 S letters stand for the motto :

ONLY UNITY SAVES SERBS

When I heard my guide say that, it occurred to me that if you had a history of people kicking your butt, and conquering your city for centuries, you might begin to get the idea that the best protection is to be as big and as powerful as you can be, and the motto sums that mentality up. With each loss of territory, it gets harder to defend what's left.

So after 2 days and very cursory first hand look at the history of the region, I can only conclude, like most wars..."it's complicated"