Departure from Istanbul Acikhava Tiyatrosu at 19:00 and 19:30 from Fenerbahce Stadium . .Drive to Konya.
09th May 2009 : Konya
Arrival Konya. Visit the Mevlana Museum later.C/in hotel
Clearly, the beginning of the trip was not terribly exciting, or at least not terribly easy or interesting to photograph.
The Asian-side meetup was not, in fact, at Fenerbahce Stadium, but instead at Kadikoy Evlendirme Dairesi, a fact I discovered when Maeghan texted me after I'd been hanging around Fenerbahce Stadium for fifteen minutes with a suitcase and a pillow (we sleep a lot on the bus). Purportedly, there was an email regarding the change in venue. I'll take their word for it.
Anywho. Having finally reached the meetup point, we clowned around and waited for the bus.
Said bus, when it came, caused a minor amount of consternation. I think, or rather hope, I mentioned in a previous post that school buses here typically seat fifteen and are about the size of an airport shuttle, except for the part where they're smaller. They have no cargo space and the sort of leg room that means you have to get very friendly with your seatmate if you want to pick up anything from the floor. And so help you if the person in front of you (ie, Garet) reclines his seat. Remember the garbage compactor scene from Star Wars IV? The one where Luke's screaming for Threepio over the comlink, only Threepio accidentally shut it off and when he finally turns it back on, Luke's all "Will you shut up and listen to me? Shut down all garbage mashers on the detention level, will you?! Do you copy?!" and Artoo shuts them all down (because Artoo is made of Win), except that Threepio hears everyone screaming (in joy and relief) over the comlink and thinks he's accidentally killed them?
Yeah, like that, except without Artoo and with a lot more screaming.
Somehow, I don't seem to have a picture of the bus we were on, but I've found a similar one online. Just bear in mind that those little humanoid figures by it are children - we were fourteen full-sized exchange students plus a chaperon, a driver, and a guide, and enough luggage to sustain us for ten days.
(image from http://www.fatihkoleji.com) I'm not sure whose bright idea that bus was, but I'm pretty sure they took lessons in sadism from Darth Vader. Just sayin'.
Early in the drive, we took a ferry across a body of water whose name I didn't catch - I got the impression we were shortcutting across an inconvenient gulf - and the moon was full and the ferry's kantin stocked Turkish delight, so we bought a box and had Turkish delight on a moonlit night. Turkish delight are coated in powdered sugar and it was windy on deck, so we also learned not to stand downwind of someone eating Turkish delight on a moonlit night.
These are pics from that night and the next morning, and please keep in mind that I'm sitting in the middle row:
Oh, and this is Maeghan's UglyDoll: part-time stuffed animal, pillow, and soccer ball.
The prescribed schedule had us leaving at 7:30 pm and driving through the night to reach Konya midmorning the next day. Because getting exchange students to be on time for anything is like getting cats to walk in a parade, and also because Jimmer does not believe in trifling things like the difference between 7:30 and 8:30, we left at 8:45, with assurances from the long-suffering guide that we would stop for dinner as soon as it was convenient.
I'm going to guess that the long-suffering guide was working from a differing definiton of "convenient" than the rest of we Earthlings, because we finally stopped for our "convenient" dinner at 4:00 am. At a rest-stop cafeteria that sold only a kind of garlicky sausage called sücük. And I would briefly like to suggest that the effects of sücük fried with eggs on top of nothing but cookies on the human stomach should be studied. I've never heard noises like that before. It was a sort of gastrointestinal concert.
Once we'd piled (nearly literally) back on the bus and gone back to sleep again, we hit Konya about 10:00 am. Significant in Konya was the Mevlana Müzesi, or Mevlana Museum. Descendents of the Sufi mystic (and writer and poet and philosopher and composer) Rumi founded the Mevlevi Sufi Order after Rumi's death. Mevlevi Sufi are most notable for developing the "whirling" aspect of the "whirling Dervishes." Mevlana Müzesi is a major pilgrimage site for many Muslims; next to the pilgrims, tourists are a definite minority.
No photography is allowed of the inside of the museum, which features the tombs of prominent members of the order, historical artifacts (robes, instruments, and beautifully illuminated Korans), and most notably, fragments of the Prophet Muhammad's beard. As I have no photographs of the interior, you'll have to make do with photographs of the exterior:
We also toured the order's kitchens, where hopefuls had to stand for three days without eating before being accepted into the order. It seems that Tyler Durden wasn't a special snowflake, either. Dang.
From the musuem, we walked through downtown Konya to our hotel. After Istanbul, Konya just seemed kind of...short.
Having reached said hotel, we set out in search of food. Maeghan and I found a PizzaPizza* in the base of a mega-mall. It was possibly the best margherita pizza I've ever had.
The mall - which was mostly offices. The actually mall was in the basement.
The mall was an interesting experience - as a major religious center, Konya is quite conservative. Nearly all the women had covered heads, we never saw alcohol for sale, and our hotel room's bedside drawer featured a Koran and a prayer rug.
Our hotel was actually pretty tall. Also, it had a (non-operable but decidedly swank) phone booth.
Having returned to the hotel (after a quick stop at a Wal-Mart-type store for provisions - after the 4:00 am sausage meal, we weren't taking any chances), I sat down to check email and woke up two hours later. Then dinner, toenail painting, and The Princess Bride on Blase's laptop with Juliana, Blase, Maeghan, and Garet.
(image courtesy of the IMDB)
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* Prompting outbreaks of song for the rest of the afternoon.
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