Mevlana Land

Konya, the land of Mevlana (also known as Rumi), the land of a thousand mosques (ok so no one actually calls it that, but there are a lot of old famous mosques), Konya, the Citadel of Islam, the land of myth...and the land of legend. Konya is generally considered famous for two things: being the home of Mevlana, and a little something they like to call etli ekmek (literally, “bread with meat”). Anyone is welcome to continue to try and convince me that "etli ekmek" is not the same thing as lahmacun. In any case, I spent a little time in Konya a few weekends ago, along with a brief but comprehensive visit to the nearby Karaman (where two other Fulbright teachers hosted me).

Mevlana is known as "the Persian mystical poet" (pretty great epithet, right?). It was under his tutelage that the Sufi Order of Whirling Dervishes began, with their iconic ritual spinning dance. He is also incredibly well-known, as almost any Turk will point out to you, for having uttered the following regarding his order and by extension Konya:

Come, come, whoever you are,
Wanderer, idolater, worshiper of fire,
Come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.

So, I did has Mevlana commanded and visited the museum and his tomb (under the green dome you can see in the photo below) in Konya. (Aside: dervishes still perform in Konya, and the dance ceremony is called a sama, but they only do it there once a year, in December. There are a few dervish lodges elsewhere in Turkey where they perform more regularly. All dervish lodges are state funded and controlled.) As I was wandering around the museum, taking in various signs that made vaguely informative insinuations about what I was seeing, a Turkish man approached me and asked “English?” My subsequent nod led to two hours of him showing me the highlights of the museum and of Konya, a discussion of President Obama's potential reelection, and, of course, a new Facebook friendship. To top it all off he actually thanked me for the privilege of my English-speaking company. All I had to do to find a friend in Konya was to stand around and be American.

Berlin ftw*

FUN FACT: That tower is 30,666 Rittersports high.

Recently I had the privilege of visiting Berlin for a Fulbright conference. How can I even begin to describe Berlin to you, dear readers? Let's try a visualization exercise.

First, imagine a sprawling city where none of the buildings are too high and every so often you encounter a narrow river. Then imagine some medieval architecture and some heavily graffiti-ed Soviet-style concrete blocks. Then, add the look, taste and texture of a beautifully frothy beer. Add a lot of hearty meat dishes but also some crazy-good pastries, some ice cream and edible imports like noodles and döner. Now top that all off with a black bear on its hind legs. That's kind of like Berlin in a nutshell.

As I was taking my leave of that fine city, I figured out what so captivated me about Berlin. First, I find the German language adorable (that's right, adorable. As in cute. Seriously listen to someone say “flughafen” and try not to think “awww”). Second, I like Germans. They're known for being shy and punctual and they love a good beer (and I can relate to at least the first and third parts). Third, Berlin has little pieces of other cultures I enjoy (there is a not insignificant amount of Turks there) added to its own vibrancy. Actually, maybe it could just be that I have a thing for geographical places that are notorious for their past or present east-west divisions. Who knows.

Here is a picture of two German dudes enjoying a sunny Sunday in front of a wall covered with graffiti. I don't think there's a beer in this picture (you can drink it wherever you want! and there's sauce on the döner! Is Berlin just bizzaro-Turkey?!) but otherwise it would really encapsulate a lot of the city.

This was a really cool (and famous?) Sunday flea market in the north-ish part of the city. I had my first currywurst at that flea market (basically a brat in special curry-y sauce, pretty good but I think I prefer regular bratwurst).

At the flea market, there was a throng of Japanese people selling rice balls for earthquake relief, calling themselves "Operation Onigiri". I was delighted to give them some of my euros.

Finally, I had a ton of chocolate in my last few days in Berlin. I met up with a U of C alum and we went to the Rittersport "museum" and a famous Berlin chocolatier, Fassbender & Rausch. We did a comparison study of their hot chocolates (the latter shop's offering pictured above), and while Fassbender and Rausch certainly wins for fanciness and did not lack for taste, the Rittersport hot chocolate was not only spot-on, but also had the cutest lil' Rittersport gracing the saucer. It won by a small margin overall. Also you can make your own Rittersport bar at the shop, which is fun and delicious.

Just your neighborhood palace...

In conclusion, Berlin is awesome. Sure, it was a bit of a downer that Knut died basically the day I got there, but as one of our Fulbright panelists, Ingeborg Junge-Reyer (Berlin's "mayor and senator" for urban development and one of my new favorite people) said in response to a question from the audience which I would basically paraphrase as "KNUT IS DEAD WHY WHY WHY?", "We must remember, he was [only] a bear." I look forward to the day when I can go back to Germany and look more Germans in the eye and say "Prost!" over another brew. Happily I will definitely be back in that fine country in May...for Eurovision!


*I'll save you the trouble: I know I'm a bit of a nerd. (And ftw = for the win, so non-nerds don't have to google it.)

Catholicism, Communism, and [hot] Chocolate[...ism?]

My train trip from Prague to the motherland was a near-fiasco, but all's well that ends well. Just note that if you take the train from Prague and have to change trains in Katowice, most likely no one will speak English, and you ought consult the departure schedules yourself (and know the Polish word for departures) instead of waiting for the quaint flap-board to display your train. It's easy to get a ticket from Katowice to Krakow if you make a mistake, however, so I'd recommend the trip if you have a spare day.

The old town of Krakow has a wonderfully medieval feel. I thought I had reached hot chocolate nirvana in Prague, but that was before I went to Wedel and got a cup of their traditional drinking chocolate—heavenly. Big shout-out to Nowa Prowincja for their amazing drinks and beautiful interior. I went there thrice, I couldn't help myself.

Wawel Castle was as beautiful inside as its smok statue was brutals, but I was a bit disappointed that the “dragon's lair” is closed in the winter months. Entry to Wawel Castle Cathedral entitles you to a trip up and down the bell tower, where each of the huge bells has a name and a history. The Cathedral also has some beautiful tapestries inside, as do the castle staterooms. A word to the wise: admission prices and ticket-buying is a bit confusing, but all of it is cool, so you really can't go wrong. I bought tickets first and then tried to figure out what parts of the castle they were for, rather than trying to find tickets for parts I wanted to see. This worked nicely, but you need to be easy-going about it.
These guys were pretty easy-going, just kind of hanging out and crooning to the accordion on the entry ramp to Wawel Castle.

Krakow had more museums than I knew what to do with (which sounds funny after coming from Prague...). I would highly, highly recommend the Cloth Hall museum in the main square: it's only four rooms, but it has hands-down some of the most intricate and masterful paintings (some on 30-ft canvases) that I have ever seen. Also if you don't think you'll miss the 7 zloty (about 3 dollars), the Archeology Museum feels like a well-done 7th grade social studies project, as it makes ample use of dioramas. The big draw is the only Slavic cult god statue ever found.
I also rekindled a little Catholic feeling by going to Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral (pictured in the background above) and visiting the former apartments of Pope John Paul II (before he was a pope, when he was a professor and cardinal, from 1951-1968 or thereabouts).

Of course, everyone knows that a trip to Eastern Europe is just incomplete without some kind of communist history thrown in. Well, my hunt for remnants of communism in Poland took me nearby the Krakow School of Economics to see Skeletor, a Soviet building that was started but never completed and now stands as a skeleton due to the complexity of zoning laws that prohibit its destruction. But I repeat: it shadows the Krakow School of Economics. Best juxtaposition ever?
And speaking of amazing juxtapositions...
Being unsatisfied with this mere taste of the communist legacy, I continued along the tram line to Nowa Huta, or New Steelworks. This is a completely Stalin-planned community on the outskirts of Krakow (now a part of Krakow), apparently built to countermand how beautiful, medieval, and artistic Krakow was through its industrial, worker-championing layout and amenities. It was not nearly as depressing as I expected, but it sure was a lot of nearly identical dilapidated concrete buildings. I would have tried to adhere more to the route on the map, but I was a bit too cold to stay there too long.

On the way back to Prague I took a bus because the timing was more convenient. Please be aware: when you take a bus across the Czech/Polish border, border patrol will board the bus, take your passport, and then GET OFF THE BUS WITH YOUR PASSPORT. This is absolutely terrifying to someone who does not speak Polish and who consequently thought her passport was gone forever as the bus pulled away, but eventually at the dinner stop (20 agonizing minutes later) the border guards pulled up and returned all of the documents. In any case, one of the movies shown on the bus was called Holy Business (I think). It was about two men who supposedly inherit a car owned by Pope John Paul II. It was adorable, it mercifully had English subtitles, and it was a very fitting end to my time in Krakow.

Czech it out!

Prague is an utterly amazing city architecturally and artistically, but one thing struck me above all else: the sheer willingness of the Czech people to speak English. Even in situations that would in no way require a Czech person to go out of their way to speak English to me (such as reaching above me to get a bag, or just passing me in the grocery store), if they overheard English on my lips they would immediately exchange some pleasantry in English with me. I am sure that this is a result of the insane numbers of tourists that flock to Prague regularly. I never thought I would see the plus-side of relentless tourism, but it turns out that the incredibly welcoming Czech people have extended their hospitality to include language (there is also a goodly amount of French, German, and even Russian, to name just a FEW of the languages that clutter up signage in Prague).
"Are you flirting in English? Oh, do go on..."

Of course, I hit the tourist highlights: Charles Bridge, the Astronomical Clock, Prague Castle, Wenceslas Square, the Municipal Building, eating goulash and honey cake, and sampling some delicious beers. It took a lot to distract me from the ubiquitous hot winter drinks, especially hot wine and rich hot chocolate, but Czech beer is famous, after all. I saw a hilarious amount of malformed babies, either Jesus on his mother's knee or cherubs floating in the periphery of the Christian masterworks that litter Prague's museums. I unexpectedly came across some decaying saints in glass coffins in one of the churches I went to, because Christians are rather macabre.
But sometimes you also unexpectedly find peacocks in public gardens, which is cool.

Like many tourists in Prague, I simply could not spend enough time looking at Alfons Mucha collections. There are two museums dedicated to him (that I knew of), and the one that is simply called “The Mucha Museum” is well laid-out and informative, albeit a bit expensive for its small size. I would recommend if, like me, you are a devotee of his art. Another small, expensive, but worthwhile museum is the Museum of Communism, which somewhat passive-aggressively suggests that tourists are intellectual beings that deserve to know more about the Czech people than what can be seen through the bottom of a beer glass (I paraphrase, but the sentiment was the same). Despite this somewhat off-putting introduction, the museum is like reading a short book about how and why communism affected the Czech nation as it did, and it makes the vibrancy of Prague shine all the more, even from behind tacky tourist shops.
I also visited the Museum of the City of Prague (part of the interior photographed above), which is just adorable. Its “claim to fame” is a 3D model of the city made in the mid-nineteenth century, and every half-hour you can see a 3D film where you “fly” through the Prague of yore...a digitization of the model. There is also a beautiful painting of the city in the stairwell dome and far too much minutiae of how districts were divided for tax and municipal purposes throughout history. The temporary exhibit was about Prague denizens traveling to suburban “garden restaurants” for happy summer picnics and the like, which ended in a FUNCTIONING REPLICA of one such restaurants. They recreated a menu and had the foodstuffs on hand, in the museum, served by people in period waitstaff costume. Brilliant.

What is that in the lower-left corner? A dog? A lion? A lion-dog? A cool building near the Astronomical Clock nonetheless.


The only downside to Prague is that so many of the streets are lined with tourist shops, but in winter there are significantly less tourists, so I only really reaped the benefits. A light blanket of snow suits the Gothic spires anyways; I couldn't imagine Prague without a few big snowflakes falling and a cup of hot wine in a cafe.

Hittites Rule! Lydians...well, they're OK too.

Come with me, won't you?

...to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara!

Here is the artifact that Ankara adopted as its seal. There is a much larger (and younger) version on Ataturk Boulevard.


I just liked this little guy:


The open-mouthed one on the upper right is my favorite in this pic:


And, finally, a fertility goddess, flanked by two tiny musicians and holding...a pomegranate! It was hard to photograph it with no flash but it was too beautiful to not get a picture.


The museum also boasted many amazing large-scale reliefs and carvings, some cuneiform tablets still in their clay envelopes, and a model Catalhuyuk dwelling. For more information on Anatolian Civilizations, consult your local library, or better yet just visit Turkey!