Too old to rock 'n' roll

Festivals. Every town seems to have at least one celebrated annually, and many have more than one. The more popular festivals are anticipated with the same excitement as a holiday. Most last for a weekend starting Friday night, some last for a week or more and a few are over in the blink of one day. Stilt racing, religious, music, fried food, fish, historical event, cherry wine, cheese, chocolate, communism: they always have a theme. Festivals bring everyone together,, from the town, from the province or sometimes, from the entire region. They are the perfect excuse (as if one was needed) to socialize, eat food “typical of the region”, drink, dance and shop for prodotti tipici e artigianali con i produttori locali.

Last Friday night, we left after work to go Ostra, a small town about 40 km from Ancona for La Notte degli Sprevengoli a Ostra.


According to local folklore, Sprevengoli are goblins that torment people while they sleep by jumping up and down on their stomachs and stealing their breath (just like cats!) so you wake up in the morning unrested and out of breath. Ostra hosts this festival so the joy, good food and fun will chase away the Sprevengoli. As their slogan said: “The party that casts out fear…even that of the [economic] crisis!” The party lasted well into the night and cast out most fear, except the fear of the price I was going to pay when I woke-up the next morning (ehrm, afternoon).


Downtown Ostra by night.

Massi and Lorenza deciding on where to eat dinner.

And the search continues.
Saturday, I woke-up feeling like a shoal (congregation, troop, drove, swarm, clutch?) of Sprevengoli had spent the night doing the samba on my stomach. By the evening I had scraped together enough will to live to join Valentina for the drive to San Paolo di Jesì, a commune about 35 km from Ancona, where the Festa del vi’ de visciola was going on.


This is a wine festival for the latest bottling of visciola, a meditation wine made from cherries typical to the Le Marche region. The Gomma Gommas were headlining that night and by the time we arrived, they had already set-up and then heavily sampled the viciousness.


For dinner, we joined the very long line to order from the community cassa. Just as we placed our order, the power went out for about 20 minutes, including to the receipt printer. They had our money but we had no receipt. No receipt, no food. Panic! Eventually, with the power restored and anarchy avoided, we found a seat in one of the large dining areas set-up around the piazza. When your food is ready, a waiter wanders around until food and table are matched which means whenever you see a waiter with a tray of food you signal frantically in hopes that it’s yours.

I had stinco (plural: stinci) because the opportunity to order a plate of something called stinco or stinci for dinner should not be missed, and it's delicious, and because it came with mashed potatoes which you rarely see.


The vicious power of the visciola launched the Gomma Gommas to never before reached artistic heights and between post-concert tear down, a DJ in the piazza and the generous offerings of wine from the band’s hosts, we didn’t leave until near four in the morning.


This "petrol" station on wheels keeps the party fueled, dispensing visciola from the pumps to the willing crowds.

Downtown dance party.

The brains behind the Gomma Gomma revolution?
I am living a rock and roll lifestyle. And I feel like a pensioner.


This weekend is a long-weekend because Monday is All Saints Day, a national holiday so we are going to Perugia for a couple days. Perugia is home to a couple massive universities and I’ve been told has a fantastic historic center in the middle of a warren of tiny streets where visitors can’t help but become hopelessly lost. I can’t wait.

Istanbul: The spice must flow!

A picture of a turkey. Taken in Turkey. Get it?
We saw everything, and I mean everything. Including wild cats and dogs. Not something you expect to see in a modern city, but there you have it. The dogs roam in mangy packs, napping on curbs, startling unsuspecting tourists and scrounging through the piles of trash. The cats are always watching but not as visible, until you sit down to eat. Then they join your party of two to make an awkward threesome. Making their presence known, begging pitifully and insolently dodging the kicks of the hustling waiters.


I can haz Ottoman clay pot dinner now?


On the last day we didn't know what to do so we pulled up one of those ”Top 10” lists on the Internet. After checking out some amazing bikini models we finally got around to a list on Istanbul. Did most of those our first day. "Top 15". Done. (Ok, we skipped the museums but that’s because we’re uncouth, uncultured louts, and we didn’t do a Turkish Bath because we already had our showers for the month.) "Top 25"? Ah, there's one we haven't done. So off we went to a cemetary.

A revelation came to me during the trip. By no means original, but new for me. There is this idea that everyone seems to have when traveling. They have to get off the beaten track in order to have the “best” experience. Escape the crowds. Blend in with the locals. Avoid tourist traps. And that approach has value and can lead to extraordinary moments. Christopher Columbus' cruise comes to mind. But sometimes, once in a while, it's worth it to stay on the path. Think about it. There’s a reason there’s a path. Not always a good reason, but sometimes, once in a while. it's because where the path goes is really cool. Like the Galata Bridge. Gaudy. Lit-up. The trappiest of tourist traps. But imagine one of Portland’s bridges with a lower deck that is all restaurants and shops and pedestrian walkways. The traffic goes by overhead but underneath you walk just above the river or sit and have a beer in a bean bag chair and watch the river and the ferries and the people stroll by. Tourist Moment 101. But totally cool.



What else did we do? We visited the mosques, we climbed the Galata Tower, we skulked through the Grand Bizarre (den of iniquity, cheap souvenirs and unconvincing knock-offs) and the Spice Market (why do people who never drink apple tea or cook with saffron suddenly feel compelled to buy so much of it here?), ducked underground to explore the Basilica Cistern, and we took a six hour tour down the Bosphorus Strait. We left the pier in Europe in the morning...


Europe in the rear view mirror.

One of two Golden Gate-esque bridges connecting the two continents.
Had lunch in Asia in the afternoon...


The Black Sea in the distance.

Luncheon in Asia.

Asia in the rear view mirror.
...and were back in Europe for dinner. Kind of a neat trick of geography that.


Pulling back into Europe.

So much to see and experience.










Bewildering and beguiling city. It's incredible how much ground we covered.


That's a lot of ground covered.
Mostly we just did a lot of walking. And avoiding. After a while you develop this ability to see everything and nothing. It feels like a super-power but it’s not. It’s a survival-power. No matter where you go someone is trying to sell you something. Anything. Everything. It’s all for sale. And it's all negotiable. At some point you just want someone to tell you a price, pay it, and be done with it. It's two Turkish lira to one Euro so I'd get to the point where I was haggling over five lira and realize we were talking about two euro and just be done with it.

It all looks authentic and it's all a fake (one guy admitted the jeans were fakes, but they weren’t fakes made in China, they were fakes made right there in Turkey!). Whatever. You can't stop to look at anything or you get swarmed. They start them young with boys who look no older than 8 or 9 manning the stalls or walking the streets with product, already masters of the come-on lines in multiple languages and unafraid to hear a “no” and totally convincing. As the Italians say: "pesante" which doesn't mean peasant although there are a lot of poor people. It means heavy. As in tiring. Wearing down. Constant stimuli (stimuluses?)


In front of one of the many gates into the Grand Bizarre.

Spices, get your sitting out in the open day after day spices!

Note the sign in the bottom, center of the picture.
The food was interesting. Very heavily spiced, but with a spice market that big I guess it has to be. The bread was amazing. Flat bread but not really pita but also large loaf French style bread. Served with every meal. Bottled water came automatically with every meal (in a cool mesh basket like the tee-totalers version of chianti), but so did a charge for it. Fish featured prominently but coming from Ancona, I wasn’t that interested in eating more fish. Lots of lamb and chicken in dark, rich sauces. And of course, kebab. Everywhere, anywhere, at any time of day or night, kebab. Cheap, expensive, wrapped, between bread, terrible, delicious, spicy, plain, lamb, chicken kebab.

Our first meal there, Sean tried to order some humus and pronounced it in the American way, "hoomus" and the waiter said they didn't have any. They brought the English speaking waiter and Sean carefully repeated his request along with the requisite hand signals. (Who knew there were hand signals for humus? Apparently there are.) Moments later a plate of butter arrived. We tried again the next day and again they didn’t know what we were asking for. I saw it on the menu so I pointed at it and the waiter smiled and said "humus" with the guttural, throat clearing sound on the first syllable like I used to hear in Africa. Pronouncing it that way the rest of the trip, we were set. One meal we had the Ottoman clay pot stew where they cook everything in a sealed clay pot and then break it open at your table to serve it. Ours had lamb, mushrooms, eggplant, and onions in a gravy over rice.


Don't be fooled. That's not our meal. It's just a picture I took from the internet. But it's a lot better than the one I managed to take.


Our waiter breaking our pot. Who was it that said, "You have to break a few pots to make Ottoman clay pot stew?

After a year of Italian food though, it was all pretty rough on my stomach. All Italian all the time makes for a wussy digestive track.

One of the best parts of the trip was the exchange rate. It’s basically 2:1 with the Euro so the whole time I felt like I was getting a 50% discount on everything. Irrelevant that the starting price was often close to double what it would cost in Italy so the discount just got me back to equal cost; it still felt good and in many cases it made things feel downright inexpensive.

So I lost another camera in Istanbul. Can you believe it? I really have a problem holding onto them. My first camera was stolen in Courchevel and then I lose its replacement in Turkey. At least I'm in exciting places when it happens. I think it slipped out of my pocket while we were having dinner in a bar one night. At some point, I come back from the bathroom and realize my right pocket is empty. My camera pocket. We look all over around the table but come up empty. Go back to the hotel at the end of the night thinking maybe I didn't bring it (but I know I did, I always do) and search everything. Nothing. Zero. No luck. Sean says maybe someone found it at the bar and turned it in. I say maybe but I’m feeling surly and starting to sulk and I think, “We've been getting ripped off by everybody since we arrived so what are the odds that if it was found it was returned?” Oh well, might as well go ask. Walk back to the bar, angry at myself and ranting the whole way about how unfair life is and why does this have to happen to poor old me. Quite pitiful actually.

Get back to the bar. "Bartender," says I, "perchance was a camera turned in this evening?"

"Maybe. What kind?"

"Black Lumix. It will have pictures of the Bosphorus Strait on it."

Some digging around in a drawer behind the bar with a goofy grin on his face and I start to think, "No way! He's got my camera!" He pulls it out and asks if it's the one. Yeah it's the one. Yahoo! Big thanks and hearty handshakes all around. Grinning like an idiot. No tip. I am an idiot.


My Heroes!
So, funny detail. Early in the night, I noticed a waiter taking goofy pictures of the bartenders and thought, “That’s weird,” but maybe it's for their website or Facebook or something. Looking at my camera later, I see those pictures. The waiter picked it up and turned it into the bar and I saw it happen but I didn't make the connection at that point. Ok, maybe I was drunk. Not my fault. Efes Beer, Turkey’s beer, is wondrous. I think it’s the same stuff that got Noah in all that trouble all those years ago. Without overstating matters, it’s one of the easiest drinking beers I’ve ever had.

So I got the camera back. Istanbul. I saw Ya and I'll be back. Maybe. It's all negotiable.

Istanbul not Constantinople

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks
News from the home front. I’m totally cured of the raging cold I wrote about last time. Thanks everyone for your well wishes. A combination of gargling salt water twice a day, drinking lemon and honey, and a magical Italian elixir called Influvis seem to have done the trick.

Also, the apartment is full again with all four rooms being occupied for the first time since the summer started. When the school year ended last June, Alice and Deborah moved out and it was just Raimondo and me through the summer which was quite nice. In mid-September we were joined by Simone who is from Mantova in Lombardia and is a veterinarian. At the end of September, Raimondo’s contract with the university in Ancona ended and he moved to Seville, Spain for a new job. His room was quickly taken by his friend Pasqualino who Raimondo knew from the university, and a couple weeks ago, the final room was filled by another student, Alfonso, who is from near Milan. Now the apartment is full. Pasqualino is always at the university and eats all his meals there. I’ve seen him four times total in the month he has lived with us and spoken to him twice. He’s the perfect roommate. Simone is great too. We get along well, we have similar philosophies about sanitation (kitchen, bathrooms) and while his English isn’t great (yay!), he is very patient with my Italian and makes efforts to speak slowly and plainly to me so that I understand him. I actually prefer this situation as it’s forcing me to work on my Italian instead of defaulting to English as I did with Raimondo.

The less said about Alfonso the better. He is a disaster so far in both the hygiene and sanitation departments and is suspected of helping himself to food and toiletries that aren’t his. Not an auspicious start. On the one hand, this is his first time living away from home and likely he has never had to look after himself before so this may just be a learning hump he has to get over. I was probably pretty similar when I was his age and living on my own for the first time. On the other hand, I’m not his age and haven’t been for a while, I’m not living on my own for the first time and it’s not my idea of fun to house train a college freshman. It’s no longer the pleasant living environment I enjoyed for the past year. I’m hopeful that a bit more acclimation time and some input from Simone and me will perhaps stabilize the situation. That, or I’m house-hunting.

Istanbul. (That's my transition sentence. Just like they teach you to do in school.)

Istanbul was cool. Literally and descriptively. We had a couple days of pleasant, partly sunny days to start and then it was pretty lousy and rainy the rest of the time. I wasn't amazed like I have been with a couple other places, but I really enjoyed it.


My visit began with the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel. I’d done some research before the trip and a recurring piece of advice was to beware of the taxi drivers. That’s where the exploitation starts. I’d had an email from Sean already saying it was fine and should only cost around 40 YTL. The adventure began in the airport when I was approached by a service offering a “private taxi ride” for “only” 60 EUR (at 2 lira to the euro this would have been about 120 YTL!). Among the benefits touted were a private ride and I wouldn’t have to deal with the traffic of the regular yellow taxis. Since I don’t really trust hover technology yet and would be riding by myself in the taxi anyway, I decided to brave the traffic and pass on their offer.

At this point, I had been up since 4.00h (it was around 13.00h now), eaten little and was leery about what to expect, on edge and overly suspicious. When my driver drove us 5km through heavy traffic to a traffic light and then did a u-turn and drove us almost all the way back the way we had just come I got very nervous, and when he turned into a gravel parking lot, bounced us over a curb through a giant puddle and then along a muddy track, well, I admit I may not have been thinking clearly at this point, but I was positive I was being taken hostage or in the middle of some scam. I had my hand on the door handle and was fully prepared to execute a rolling, tumbling evacuation should my crack survival skills deem it necessary.

However, we ended up on a main road after having, I have to assume, taken some proprietary short cut. I began to settle down a bit and take in the city as the road we were taking traced the curves of the seashore on the right and the city walls on the left. The city covers a huge area and about thirty minutes into the trip, just as I started to fully relax, I saw traffic slowing while realizing we weren’t slowing proportionately and realized we were about to get into an accident.

My brain locked-up in disbelief (which demonstrates how well I react in a crisis) as we crunched into the car in front of us. No one suffered any real damage and after a slight delay we were off again and soon at the hotel. The W Hotel in Istanbul is an overly luxurious hodge-podge of conflicting design ideas (I assume, since I really don’t know anything about design) with a lobby more akin to a disco and staff sporting designer jeans and sweater vests, but that’s where we were for the first night and the bed was divine and I spent my first five hours in Istanbul watching Turkish television (which featured Polish music television and dubbed episodes of “According To Jim” prominently) and snacking on chocolate covered pretzels. And so began my stay in Istanbul.


Main lobby, W Hotel, Istanbul.
Istanbul is a city of contrasts that goes beyond what I’ve experienced before. At times I felt I was reliving scenes from my childhood in Africa. It’s huge in both area and population (16 million or so), resting on the continents of Europe and Asia. The reminders of its antiquity sit alongside metro stops and modern skyscrapers. It’s European in character and feel and Asian in appearance and behavior but never all the time and never consistently. Roles and scenery are constantly switched and interchangeable making it hard to fully grasp or comprehend.

Men in traditional robes and head coverings clutching prayer beads walk next to women in jeggings and knee high boots while girls with their heads modestly covered by shawls sport Dolce sunglasses and Converse kicks. A buffed and polished store sells the latest smartphones while right next door tucked beneath an overhanging ledge is a man making a living selling individual cigarettes and sticks of chewing gum. The waters and ships of the Bosphorus constantly remind that this is a city that has had the influences of the world arriving on its shores for most if not all of its existence, to be absorbed and appropriated.

It's much more modern than I expected it to be.


And by that I don't mean that they had running water and electricity - of course they did - I mean it felt like a major European city although instead of cathedrals and scooters they had mosques and men pushing huge carts stacked high with inventory down the middle of three lane roads. Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King. Their stores are everywhere, right next to the baklava chain. I don’t know what I fully expected, but going that far east I thought something.


Two instances remain prominent in my memory which I’ll end today with and then write about the rest of the trip next time.

On Sunday, our first full day, we stopped for tea during our wanderings. Tea shops are everywhere. The one I happened to choose, because it looked like it was “authentic” and not “touristy”, was outdoors and consisted of a few plastic tables maybe two feet tall with plastic stools of equal height. These were scattered around a small patch of cement at the foot of some steps leading up to a mosque. A couple of the tables were taken by men playing backgammon which gave it that all important “authentic” air. An old man manned the kitchen which looked like it was easily packed up at night along with the rest of the furniture and wheeled off home. He didn’t speak any English but when tea is the only thing on the menu and two fingers are raised, the meaning is pretty unmistakable. When we sat down I told Sean, “Don’t turn around, don’t turn around, don’t turn around,” which of course he did, because I didn’t want him to see what passed for the sink which was a five gallon bucket of water, turned light brown now from a day’s worth of rinsings and evoking anew memories for me of my childhood in Africa which had drawn me to the place in the first instance.


A kitchen, the chef's table, and the washing station.
Our tea came, along with lots of smiles and a speech totally incomprehensible to us. When we were done, the international sign for “Check please” (how does that work everywhere?) along with more finger illustrations got us through paying the bill. He noticed my camera on the table and offered to take our picture, which we appreciated.


I like to think of him now, selling his tea to grown men hunched over on stools too small for children, rinsing the dishes in his sink and packing it all up each night.

Later that day, after exhausting, numbing hours in the Grand Bizarre and the Spice Market (“He who controls the Spice, controls the universe!”), we were walking up one of Istanbul’s many hills (technically, this hill is Istanbul’s second hill but I don’t know how that was decided) towards the Süleymaniye Mosque. We nosed around the grounds and the cemetery for a bit (the mosque itself was closed) and the mausoleum of Roxelana (if you have the chance, spend some time reading about her; she’s quite fascinating).




Afterwards, we stopped just outside the walls to buy some postcards and look at some scarves which was when we met my favorite salesperson of the whole trip. There was one rack of scarves for 3 YTL (2 USD) and another for 5 YTL (3.50 USD). I had settled on one to buy for 3 YTL when the salesman approached, greeted us, asking where we were from and how we liked Istanbul. I said I was from Italy and we chatted a bit in Italian and Sean said the US and we switched back to English. When he saw the scarf in my hand he said that one was better for girls and if I wanted a good scarf, like his, I should look on the other rack, the ones for 5. I laughed and pointed this out to him and he laughed too. I selected a scarf and he said I had made a fine choice and started to put it in a bag. Since we had our backpacks I asked how much for a scarf without a bag. He laughed and said 6 with a bag and 5 without. Sean had picked a 3 YTL scarf and again was directed to the ones for 5 which were of better quality and better suited to men. He found one appropriately manly which received the approval of our new style consultant. At this point we’re talking about 7 USD total for the two but we asked if there was a discount for buying two. No discount but the bag would be free. The whole transaction, which included much more humorous and fascinating moments which I’ve chosen to keep to myself and relate only the mundane boring parts, lasted for just a few moments but sticks in my mind, both because of his happiness, good humor and easy-going personality and because it was the only time I didn’t feel like I was being taken for a ride while trying to buy something.


Freelance journalists don’t write articles as long as this, even when they're being paid by the word. I’ll stop for now. Next time, more pictures and details from the rest of the trip. Meanwhile, I’m steadying myself for a weekend which includes a festival having something to do with the ghosts of dead children and another that features a thirty minute period where all the local wine you can drink is free but it might be a cherry wine.