Turkey during Ramadan

Okay, so I finally have some down time and free, high speed internet so I'm going to town. I'm currently writing from Istanbul. It's been an absolutely incredible experience so far and the most foreign I've ever had. Getting to Istanbul was of course another adventure in itself. Here's how things went.

We left for Turkey via Mytlini on a small ferry for the port town of Ayvalik. I didn't think I was actually going to get out of Greece. At the passport check they held me there for almost 15 minutes and grilled me on how long I'd been in the country and how I arrived. This was all due to passport control in both Rome and Athens failing to stamp my passport. After a phone call to who knows where, a copy of my passport and fax to again who knows where they determined that I wasn't a threat to national security and let me through. Getting into Turkey was completely opposite. We just had to wait 5 minutes for a visa officer to arrive to issue us our visa and then he even telephoned the hotel we were staying to arrange for us to get there.

I've arrived in Turkey during Ramaddan and it's truly fascinating. I feel really naive in that Wednesday was the first time in my life I had even seen a Mosque! The call to prayers are gorgeous. A man sings over a speaker system at the Mosques and fills the entire area with song. In Ayvalik during sundown they played gorgeous flute music for about 15 minutes. We were a bit startled walking to dinner because an explosive went off right in front of us in celebration of sundown. Later that evening like around midnight a drummer marched through the streets and at sunrise more music and prayers = a bit startling when you're sleeping.

Anyway, communication in Ayvalik has been the most entertaining of my life. Nobody speaks English and all I have is a page of Turkish. We did manage to get bus tickets to Istanbul however. A 10 hour ride! We had no idea it would be so difficult to reach Istanbul. The nice thing is that they were constantly offering water and soda and candies and snacks. It was more like a flight than a plane ride. America's capitalism was felt when we pulled into a Starbucks for one of our pit stops! I think that's enough for now. I'll tell you more about Istanbul tomorrow!