Istanbul, Not Constantinople

That song ran through my head the entire six days we spent in Istanbul, but it was wrong.  Istanbul is still Constantinople; its Byzantine past is as alive as its Ottoman past and its modern present.

We wandered through parts of town on the European side as well as the Asian side that might have been lifted from San Francisco: painted Victorian style townhouses lining hilly streets, but here broken up by minarets and Greek Orthodox churches and tightly locked synagogues.

Simit, Turkish 'bagels', were sold everywhere, and the markets had gorgeous fresh and dried fruits, as well as the longest, thinnest leeks I've ever seen.

The language was a puzzler.  It took us four days to remember how to say 'thank you' in Turkish, despite being told repeatedly.  Turkish doesn't sound like any other language I've ever learned, but every once in a while I got the foreign words that had been 'Turkishized'.  A lot of French has found its way in.

In six days we managed to see many but by no means all of the major sights and only a couple of the off the beaten track neighborhoods.  It helped that we stayed in a super hotel, the Witt Istanbul Suites, in Cihangir rather than in Sultanahmet, the tourist center.

We took a ferry to Üsküdar on the Asian side and visited the lovely little neighborhood of Kusguncuk, which felt like Glenview in San Francisco.  A walk through Balat and Fener in the European side, below the Golden Horn, showed us a neighborhood that had been home to a changing ethnic and religious population over the centuries of Byzantine and Ottoman rule.  The Greek Patriarchate sits not far from the synagogue that was home to Sabbatai Tvi, the Jewish false messiah, and they are both now in the center of a conservative Islamic area.

We couldn't get enough of Istanbul.  The people were warm and friendly, the food was usually delicious, and the location was incredible, water everywhere you look, a skyline as interesting by day as by night.  The traffic was horrible, but the tramline was great and the taxis not very expensive.

As you might imagine I've got hundreds of photos and lots more to mention, but that's still to come.

What a Time

I've been seriously remiss, I know.  I've ignored you and ignored this blog.  Possibly because I'm feeling our time here is drawing to a close, possibly because I have lacked the inspiration, the discipline, or whatever has moved me to keep it up these last years.  Nonetheless, we've been busy.

At this year's Journées de Patrimoine, when lots of usually closed public buildings are open to the hoi polloi, we decided to target the many embassies in the neighborhood.  I've decided that in my next life I want to be the Dutch ambassador to Paris.  Loved that place, elegant yet livable.  The more spectacular Italian and Polish embassies would intimidate me.  And the Swiss was, predictably, boring.

Then for my mid-September birthday we headed down to the Basque country, both French and Spanish.  On the French side the weather was pretty wet and the countryside not my favorite landscape, but we had a fine time among the cows and the peppers.

Then on to San Sebastian, where the weather improved markedly and the tapas would have kept me noshing for weeks had we not had reservations elsewhere the next day.

And then there was cheesecake and churros

We drove on to Bilbao to see the remarkable Guggenheim Museum there and the Richard Serra and David Hockney exhibits, before setting out on an ill-advised "shortcut" through the mountains to our next stop.  Between the Basque language signage, the twisting mountain roads and the utter lack of gas stations, it was what we are calling an adventure since it didn't turn into a catastrophe.

More to come...

Aging in Place

We were invited to dinner at the home of some friends who have rented the same apartment in a nice part of town for the last 30 years.  While marveling that we're not the only people who don't like to move, our friends told us about their neighbor across the landing, a woman of 92 years who still lives in the same 50 square meter apartment in which she was born in 1920.

Although disabled by polio she climbed up and down the three flights of stairs in this elevator-less building using her canes until three years ago, since when she has not left her apartment.  As she has no family, our friend is kind enough to bring up her mail, do her banking and run the occasional errand.  Her doctor comes to her, her hairdresser comes to her, even her manicurist comes to her.  But still, never to get outside...Why not move to someplace easier to live in?

At least one reason she hasn't given up the apartment became clear when we learned that she is the beneficiary of a rent control law put into effect in 1948 that limits raises for the elderly.  There's no way she could live anywhere else in Paris, or maybe in France, for the 90 euros per month she pays.

The landlord must hate her.

Oh Baby, Baby

We've been toodling around Paris the last few days with an adorable three year old, an old Paris hand who first visited when he was only six months old.  We've had an exhaustive tour of the playgrounds and carousels of the city, with time out for meals and bus rides.

The Wednesday street market on Avenue Président Wilson was a hit as he rode in his backpack, graciously accepting offers of tiny bananas and slices of saucisson from adoring vendor ladies.

A stop under the Eiffel Tower allowed for some time on a slide that he shared very politely with a little blond girl who liked him so much she rushed over to give him a hug when he fell down.  Language did not seem to be a barrier.  Shrieking is the Esperanto of toddlers.

The playground at the Place des Vosges had a range of structures, swings and teeter-totters that could be shared or simply goggled at, but the various fountains we came across might have been his favorites.  Water!  It's wet!

One of these was set in a lawn in front of the Petit Palais.  After an exhaustive search for tiny daisies, some of which were politely offered to people lunching on the benches, we entered the Mini-Palais across the street, where the adoration of several more people kept us occupied through a two hour lunch on the gorgeous terrace.  Turns out we like magret de canard and don't like boeuf tartare.

Many hugs and kisses later, he took off this morning in a taxi with his entourage, waving "bye Paris".  Me, I went back to bed for a well-needed rest.

Three Years Old

A pre-dawn flight that had us waking at an hour that I had previously refused to believe exists and several delayed flights later we were in Paris, almost exactly three years to the day after the start of our Parisian adventure.  This time we arrived knowing that it would be the last trip of this particular adventure.

We've been realizing that we've accomplished our original goal, i.e. learning what it would be like to actually live in Paris rather than just visit.  We still love it, but we've passed the stage when every glimpse of the Eiffel Tower or each walk past the Louvre makes us stop and marvel.  We know how lucky we are and Paris is just part of it.

Adding up the months, we realize that two of the last three years have been spent entirely in Paris, in increments from nine months to three.  We realize too that we miss our home in Berkeley and that a couple of months in summer and three or four months in winter don't let us get back into that California life in the comfortable way we'd like.

And so at the end of November we'll be giving up the apartment and spending six or nine or twelve months in a row in Berkeley, where we'll finally be able to unpack all the things we put away when we first began renting out the house, and spending more time with the family and old friends.

Speaking of family and friends, we'll be visited this fall by our nieces and grandnephew, by friends F & M, who will join us on our planned trip to Turkey in October and then stay down the street here in Paris for a week, and by B, one of my dearest friends, who impulsively signed up for a visit when she realized we wouldn't be back here for a bit and who will stay with our mutual friends E and D, who coincidently have just sold their Paris apartment and plan to travel more.  Change is in the air.

We will doubtless be back to Paris, and maybe even live here again, but the plan for 2013 holds several trips to the East Coast of the US and a long trip to Asia. 

 Meanwhile, we plan to take advantage of our last hurrah.

Playing Catch Up

A quick recap of the last couple of weeks:  a girls dinner when several husbands happened to be out of town at the same time was an opportunity to drink, talk, laugh and remember how much we like each other and how easy it is to enjoy the moment.

Which was good preparation for a bad moment a few days later when I managed, incredibly clumsily, to back into that fire hydrant sitting so innocently on the sidewalk in an area of Oakland that's becoming revitalized with little eating places, artist studios and the odd gallery or two.  The lunch was good but the chunk the hydrant took out of my bumper is taking a chunk out of my bank account.  Ouch.

A quick visit back in time at the 1968 Exhibit currently at the Oakland Museum brought those days back in a rush. 

That was quite a year, including within it the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, Apollo 8's lunar orbit, The Tet offensive and a terrible spike in casualties in the Vietnam War, the premiere of Laugh-In, the conviction of Dr. Spock for conspiracy to encourage draft violations, the capture of the USS Pueblo by North Korea, the Eugene McCarthy campaign for the Democratic primary and the Democratic Presidential Convention in Chicago that pitted Mayor Daley's police against anti-war protesters.  And then there was Richard Nixon, whom (and I cannot believe I'm actually saying this) I would be happy to have back again, given what's happened to the Republican Party since then.  And that was only in the US. 

Walter Cronkite, America's "Uncle Walter" covered the moon launch and came back from a trip to Vietnam to tell the nation that despite official pronouncements the war was unwinnable and should be brought to an end.  That was the last time a war the US was involved in was covered freely by news media as far as I can recall.

Leaving the past behind, we spent a few days showing a visitor around.

I've lived in Berkeley more years than I care to remember and had never been to the top of the Campanile, which turns out to be the third tallest clock/bell tower in the world.  Who knew? 

There are something over 60 bells up there and we got out just before they started to play them.

 A wishing tree in the courtyard of The Jewish Museum, the Cindy Sherman exhibit at SFMoMa,

a four-hour whirlwind tour of the Palace of Fine Arts lagoon, the Legion of Honor, the Presidio, Golden Gate Bridge, Fort Point, the "painted ladies" Victorian houses at Alamo Square,

and Coit Tower with its wonderful Depression era murals funded by the Public Works of Art Project, one of the New Deal's first public employment programs.

Not only do we not have anything like those programs today, but the auto ferry to Oakland is gone too.

A last gasp that afternoon took us to North Beach and Chinatown, 

where they offer culture the way I like it, not too heavy.

And so to bed.  Whew.

Gaultier à San Francisco

We've been back in California for a month or so but hadn't gotten to the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition at the deYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park until last weekend.  Fashion exhibitions seem to be proliferating in museums the last few years, apparently because they bring in the visitors and pay for less 'popular' shows.  Some are more interesting than others.

This one was pretty spectacular.  Gaultier's work plays with gender roles and images, sexual provocation, multi-ethnic inclusion and in-your-face assaults on societal expectations, all displayed here.

The 'truc' was the holographic projection of living, speaking, moving faces on the mannikins, creepy and wonderful at the same time.

There were times when one simply could not believe that there wasn't a living person somehow hidden in there, eyes moving to wink at you, lips muttering at you.  At the entry Gaultier himself was projected, speaking to the entering visitors, interrupting himself to say hello, seeming to notice people mocking his accent, all convincingly real.

It was nearly enough to take attention away from the equally spectacular clothes, some of which had signage noting the number of hours it had taken to produce, numbers in the multiple hundreds.

It's hard to imagine many people actually wearing most of these stunning clothes/costumes, but much of Gaultier's work is for film, video, music tours.  This is not your mother's couture.

All appearances to the contrary, Naomi Campbell is not naked in this shot.

She's wearing this.

The crowds were milling around, chatting, pointing, discussing; if the museum had served drinks it would have been a great cocktail party.  If you have a chance, see it before it closes on August 19.