Rushing to Rwanda - Vaccilating round Vienna

My little piece of work in Rwanda is finally coming off in mid February - it was supposed to have happened in October last year. Then I would just have flown from Vilnius - now I have to travel from Tbilisi....it'll be a long, long journey, 27 hours there (four flights) and 38 hours back (five flights). Kind of far away, this Africa! I am sure as the crow flies I could have got there more easily, but not according to the time tables. So I am hiking there via Vienna, Amsterdam, and Nairobi (there was another option of taking a route via Brussels, but a half-hour turn-around in Vienna does not sound good for peace of mind or luggage).

However, always one with an eye on an opportunity I will now have an 11 hour stop over in Vienna on the way, and about 13 hours there on the way back (and 6 hours in Nairobi and and and). This means that my anticipated 'returning home from Georgia treat' planned for later this year can already be rehearsed on the way to Rwanda. Very pleasant, really. It means even more that I can stock up on books, and maybe also send one or two of my course assignments by snailmail from Vienna rather than by DHL from Tbilisi. But the best thing will be that on the way back I will be able to go to the Volksoper to see Boris Eifman's version of 'Anna Karenina' - at least half of it. It's a relatively new production, and ticket prices at the Volksoper seem to be half those of the Staatsoper.

Boris Eifman has done lots of wonderful choreographies, mostly in St Petersburg, where he hails from, also some in Vilnius ('Russian Hamlet' - about Tchaikovsky, 'Red Giselle' - about a Russian prima ballerina who during the revolution is unable to keep up with new styles of dancing, flees to Paris, everywhere falling unhappily in love with her ballet teachers or partners and finally going mad; both absolutely stunning, and another one where he quoted from a 1930's ballet 'The Green Table' by Kurt Jooss, a bit of an icon of its time). In Vienna he is probably best known to TV viewers for his choreography of the New Year's Concert (which he might consider trivia?). He often uses taped music which is a bit of a shame when, as in Vilnius, you have an orchestra to be employed, but the music he chooses is quite heavy, symphonies and so on, and often crosscutting between pieces. Not sure that the Vilnius opera orchestra is quite up to slipping from Mahler to Mozart via Schnittke.

So there are things to look forward to in all this, and of course the work. Let's hope we stick to the Rwandan state language of English, rather than the Rwandan state language of French.

Loss after loss

Kiran Desai's 'The Inheritance of Loss' , bought in Berlin in the Buch Box, is a totally different kettle of fish compared to Alentejo Blue, reviewed below. As a Man Booker Prize winner it will have been reviewed 1000 times already....

It's brilliant! Set in India in the late 1980s, it focuses on an elderly judge, his granddaughter, his cook and the cook's son in America, and a series of other characters, most of whom are elderly Indians who try to maintain the 'British way of life' against overwhelming odds. All have lost something, or are about to lose something - the granddaughter lost her parents in a car crash in Moscow, the judge loses his dog, a couple of elderly sisters lose their lifestyle, a Brit living in the area loses his residence permit, the whole area loses its peace in a sudden rebellion by Nepalis, the granddaughter loses her boyfriend, the cook's son loses his dream of making it big in America....

Although the book describes many tragic events, it is also really funny in an Indian sort of way. I am not sure how to describe what I think is Indian humour, but you find it, too, in Vikram Seth's 'A suitable boy', in some of Rohinton Mistry's books ('a Fine Balance') - it's always a bit surreal, and often juxtaposing very funny moments with quite appalling horrors. For example, the parents who are killed in a car crash were in Moscow because the father was hoping to be India's first astronaut: 'Just as Mr Mistry [no relation] was confessing to his wife his certainty that he would be chosen over his colleagues to become the very first Indian beyond the control of gravity, the fates decided otherwise, and instead of blasting through the stratosphere, in this life, in this skin, to see the world as the gods might, he was delivered to another vision of the beyond when he and his wife were crushed by local bus wheels, weighted by thirty indomitable ladies from the provinces who had speeded two days to barter and sell their wares in the market.'

I love reading books by Indian writers (though they also come and go a bit - you cannot generalise)! My only quibble with my paperback edition was the appalling small size of the print - but it did make the book more portable.

Book blues

Picked up Monica Ali's 'Alentejo Blue' in Istanbul, having loved her 'Brick Lane'. 'Brick Lane', set in London, was funny, exciting, one did not know what was happening and full of little details (she says, writing from memory and not having said book to hand). 'Brick Lane' is all that 'Alentejo Blue' is not.

Maybe it's the difference of being set in vibrant London, compared to life in a little village somewhere in Portugal. This book is a series of descriptions in rather dull days of different people, locals, expats, tourists, written from each other's perspectives in life going on in this village. There is a loose kind of time sequence but when one person speaks one only occasionally picks up hints about other people who one has passed by in earlier chapters. The only tension is created by the blurb on the back of the book 'the homecoming is a subject of continuing speculation, and when Marco Alfonso Rodriguez finally does appear, villagers, tourists and expatriates are brought together and their jealousies, passions and disappointments must inevitably collide...'. Don't hold your breath. This is about the most exciting sentence in the book. The characters are mostly dull people, all feeling downtrodden, and that they could do more with their lives (and indeed they could); nothing very much happens, apart from a teenage pregnancy and this homecoming.

A reviewer in amazon writes: 'Every page glitters with stunning prose'. Eh? What's stunning about 'Field upon field upon field, wheat and grass and fallow, on and on and on, and in this flat composition there was a depth, both sadness and tremulous joy'. 'Flat composition' seems like the operative word here.

I hope Ms Ali will return to the form of 'Brick Lane', and soon.

Slack Alice....

...or East German pianos by the name of Alexander Herrmann. Turns out that the piano I am using is unusual in more than one way - apart from the keyboard sloping away from me, the way it is strung is also different - the tuner muttered something about an 'experimental design'..... The only way of fixing the keyboard issue is by tilting the piano towards me - would I want that? No - and anyway, probably the music would fall off the thing. Also, it seemed to be a particularly relaxed piano, or rather a piano with especially relaxed strings - was it 20 years old or had it not been tuned for 20 years? I did not understand, but he did not seem too impressed even though it looks a nice piano. Inner life issues - I guess. If it were a fiddle it would need retuning again soon - but then for the moment I am not playing it like I would my fiddle. We'll see.

I see that the 'Queen' has been nominated for lots of Oscars, as has 'Little Miss Sunshine' (for rather fewer). Interesting.

Military Hardware, Deadly Potions....

...it must be Romeo and Juliet at the Opera and Ballet Theatre! Prokofiev's version, that is. Choreographer Michael Lavrovsky, it seems, had his 65th birthday last year, as All Russian News stated:

'Michael Lavrovsky will note double anniversary

to One of the most well-known Russian dancers, the national actor of the USSR Michael Lavrovskomu 65 years are executed.
It danced the main parties to " Don Kikhote ", " Swan lake ", "Nutcracker", " the Sleeping beauty ", "ZHizeli", "Spartake".'

Hope you get the drift. I am not sure what the 'double' is about the anniversary, and I also wonder about the size of the All Russian News translation budget.

Anyway. The orchestral start was so bad, so rough, so missing the first violins that I thought of going there and then. Unison in the winds? What's that? During the first interval I heard the front desk of the celli practice a slide, and the players landed on different places every time. Also noted that the orchestra has a fine set of brand new looking double basses, and that there were 4 violas to 6 celli. Unusual.

Once the dancing started, I was riveted. A wonderful production, funny, lots of energy, lots of crowd dancing, stunning costumes, Juliet was sublime! And as for the sword fights - masses of swords all over the place, their clashing almost drowning out the orchestra! It was mostly classical ballet, in a very traditional setting with lots of major scene changes (nothing symbolical or minimalist here) but with a few, very few, touches of modern ballet. Given that the choreographer is a mere slip of a guy at 65, and modern ballet, as we know, has been around since the 1920s, that's the very least he should have done.

The guy who danced Mercutio was dead good looking (and later just dead). He swaggered around, an arrogant and funny b....., taking the mick out of everyone else, and especially his opponents. It was a bit unfortunate that Mercutio looked very like Romeo's arch enemy (Tybalt?), and what with costume changes one could get confused.

It did not seem entirely right that the priest gave Juliet the poison that would kill her; what kind of priestly behaviour is that in dealing with a lovesick 13-year-old? Would not pass modern social work practice.

Still Life with Chicken

Tried out the central market today, a busy, bustling market for all kinds of foodstuffs near the Tbilisi railway station (first time I had penetrated that far into that side of Tbilisi).

Like in all markets in all former Soviet countries, especially at the hotter end, it does not do to inspect the state of the floor too closely. Also like everywhere, however, the food is displayed at its best with piles and piles of fruits, vegetables, chickens (dead), meat, cheeses, probably honey somewhere.... The choice of vegetables is the biggest I have seen in Tbilisi - before I could never find fresh spinach, even though there is a Georgian salad involving nuts and spinach, but here it is (though I still have about 2 kg in the freezer).

Living alone, the problem is buying small quantities. Here I bought the smallest quantities I could....as seen in the photo. This all needs to be processed - the food is so ready to eat that it does not keep long. No trip to the market, or indeed the supermarket next weekend, I guess.

Points of particular interest - the round bread at the back, which someone tells me is called 'lavash' like the very thin Armenian bread (don't entirely believe this story). The pot of matsoni, Georgian yoghurt at the front - wonderful stuff. A bit of a little round white cheese, slightly salty. A bag full of mushrooms...and of course a chicken, complete with head and feet (very clean, and nearer an 'A' size than a DD size like British chickens). Of course when it is weighed you also pay for the head and the feet....

Even though the prices were not marked, I did not think I was being ripped off particularly, as I might be in some other countries - the prices seemed fairly normal compared to those I have seen written down in other shops. The lady with the cheese was appalled - she told me it cost 6 laris, I gave her six laris, but actually the price was per kilo and she only wanted two. Another lady taught me to say 'a kilo' and 'half a kilo' in Georgian. 'Erti kilo' and... the other one is complicated!

Talking of food, the Guardian led its readers to a lovely blog for quick Indian cooking which looks very interesting. Must look for something to do with all those aubergines - but I could also look at www.aubergine.org!

A couple of days ago I discovered a wonderful Turkish restaurant, the Ankara in the area quite close to the Turkish Airlines Office (around +- No 130 Agmashenebeli Avenue). It's a lokantasi where the food is on display, you pick it, a waitress loads it together with a huge basket of bread and a glass of water on a tray and follows you to a seat at a table. Great for lunch - and it's cheap, too. They have the rice pudding!!!! But with it being Georgia, nothing goes without nuts, so a teaspoonful of grated nuts is sprinkled on top of it.

The Piano Tuner

A book with a title after my own heart by Pascal Mercier, and not just because it's three days before my own piano tuner cometh. Actually it's only in German - 'Der Klavierstimmer' - does not seem to have been translated into English, nor do any of his other books, or amazon would sell them.

It's quite a fat paperback, with quite a lot of bang for the buck (high word count). Starts very slowly - if I had not been trapped somewhere without anything else to read, I might have put it down again after the first 20 or 30 pages. As I went on, it became less and less putdownable.

Pascal Mercier is a Swiss (and a swish) professor of philosophy living in Berlin, who writes books, not too many of them, in his spare time. Unlike that other heavyweight professor, Alexander McCall Smith who does quite easy reading with a sprinkling of philosophy, Mercier's books are quite heavy (without any obvious philosophy references) - though slightly easier than those by Orhan Pamuk (or is it just because this book is set in a society more familiar to me?).

The book is about a Swiss piano tuner, living in Berlin (no! really?), who works for Steinway (odd bit of product placement here, no?) and who is accused of shooting dead an opera singer in mid-performance. His twin adult children, Patrice and Patricia, who had run away from home after a brief incestuous moment, try to reconstruct what lead to the crime. Each fills a series of exercise books of their thoughts and recollections of their own lives and their parents lives, and these are alternated in the book, so that one constantly sees the same situation from two different understandings. Thankfully, though, the exercise books join up the story line very well.

The beginning is heavy-going, but the reader really does get drawn in, often guessing in advance of what might have happened, and reading on in an appalled and fascinated way to see when Patrice or Patricia will work it out, too. Some events are hinted at, described from a child's understanding, which is then reviewed later.

For me there is an interesting link - the twin's grandmother was a ballerina of Georgian extraction, who researched the history of ballet, also coming across the story of Filippo and Marie Taglioni, a choreographer and his ballerina daughter. Filippo choreographed 'La Sylphide' which I saw in Kiev only a month or so ago, in the same choreography.

Very recommendable for those who like a rather (much) more demanding, much subtler, almost 'detective novel' - and who can read German.

Sounds of Silence

My neighbours might not agree! The blog may have been silent for a couple of days, but my house has not....

On Tuesday I had my first ever piano lesson with a local teacher. In anticipation of the lessons I had bought 'Die Russische Klavierschule' (the Russian piano school), published by Sikorski who did very well for themselves out of the fall of the Soviet Union, when they bought up copyrights to large amounts of former Soviet composers - and they are still chasing some composers - I know! This piano school is however adapted for the German market, and contains quite a lot of German children's songs, too - that's how instrument schools go. I had peered at it before I started and thought that it looked like quite a relaxed approach; first one hand, then the other (to start with in treble clef....).

By the end of the lesson I was 'playing' item 112 of the book, firing on both hands, and if the piano had not yet to be tuned, would have been firing on both feet as well. Geeeez. Sink or swim, I think. At two lessons a week life is going to get pressuresome. The teacher is going to bring some book of 'easy pieces' for tomorrow's lesson. How long before Elise comes knocking at the door?

Quite apart from that, also started on my music course. At the moment it seems fairly straightforward (after decades of music playing), but no doubt one day it will turn around and bite me. It starts right at the beginning, and I mean totally at the beginning, about at 'what is a note'. But I wonder if a) anyone who has never learnt music would ever embark on this course, and b) if they do, how would they cope. The course introduction states that this subject is usually taught on a one-to-one basis (I feel I am getting some of this in my piano lessons), and there is even some attempt at piano teaching by video (I am about 5 seconds ahead on that!). Like all OU courses the videos/DVDs are ancient, and our presenters look like typical OU lecturers of the 70s, fair isle sweaters and all. But it's quite different from other OU courses in that you have to constantly listen to sound samples. So when I thought I'd do a course to stop me from sitting in front of the computer, internetting all the time, now I am sitting in front of the computer, slotting in and out CDs and DVDs all the time.

My top 5 of Turkish food

1. Rice pudding - comes cold, with more corn starch than rice, but oh, the taste
2. anything with aubergines
3. hot chocolate - just right (though a hat of stiff whipped cream would make it just perfect)
4. Cacik (or Tsatsiki in Greek)
5. Eating in a Lokantasi

Here endeth the Turkish Adventure.

Shopping in Istanbul

Not that I did that much of it...no carpets....

Interestinly a contact suggested that you can buy a carpet there and get the shop to ship it home for you (after you have taken a photo of the shop, the salesman and the carpet); other sources suggest that you might not unwrap the same carpet at home... much like suppliers to EU projects when heavy-duty lino is ordered for a project office floor, and you end up with paper-thin stuff....

In Istanbul there are whole streets specialising in certain types of goods, eg gold, silver, clothes, lights, musical instruments, electric cabling, and so on and so on. Many of the goods are sold in wholesale quantities, even in the town centre - eg a bag of 100 silver bracelets, or, at the side of the road, waist high bags all containing the same wolly hats. There are also many informal little street stalls - I even spotted a microscopic stall selling 'Viagra' and 'Cialis' - no doubt the size of the stall was in inverse relationship with the hoped-for effect of the drugs concerned.

I saw some strange contraptions whose use I could not work out, until I spotted them on the backs of men bent down under loads bigger than themselves. These contraptions kind of extend the back so that the guy can carry a really gynormous load - saves using donkeys and getting in trouble with soft-hearted tourists complaining about animal welfare.

Picked up some spices, some Turkish Delights, lots of dried figs (had a bad do with dried figs as a child, when, in order to keep me regular, I had to eat soaked dried figs for breakfast every morning - yuk!, but unsoaked they are nice), some prezzies but no carpets, harem outfits or fezes!

Harems

lio

Sunday in Istanbul, and another wonderfully sunny day. A culture day (many shops are shut!). Off to the Hagia Sofia (or Agya Sofya) which was made a museum by Ataturk in 1935, probably a good move at the time (at the same time Stalin was blowing up Christian cathedrals in Moscow). The Hagia Sofia, as we will all remember from our school days, is one of the oldest churches in the world, particularly noteworthy for its original architecture (it promptly burned down). The current version, which has been standing for a good 10 or 15 centuries, has had both Christian and Muslim tenants, and you find a mosaic of the Mother of God next to a Muslim shield. The mosaics, consisting of thousands of stones, have been plastered over and opened up on a regular basis in the last 100 or 200 years. (Pure coincidence that on the photo the Mother of God is floating on a sunbeam!). A very impressive building indeed.

After that off to the Topkapi which I mostly know thanks to that film with David Niven, the only sleek cat in Turkey in his black poloneck playing a cat burglar. When I went into the treasury all I could think of was, where is the diamond, and which window did he climb in through. Funny how the big big diamonds, of some 80+ carats, looked so much plainer than the million-faceted reflection of the geegaws, gadgets, bowls, vessels, caskets, sword handles, medals, studded with little precious stones. Interesting also the tulip symbols on many of the gowns. Tulips come from Turkey (and associated countries) of course, not from Amsterdam, despite what the song says.

Had a look round the harem - it was only accessible via guided tour, where the young tourleader giggled a lot and lost herself in a confusion of translation. Apparently this is the place which Mozart's 'Seraglio' is based on (how did he know?). It was very stony, virtually no soft furnishings, some open fires in some rooms, no access to a blade of grass, the concubines were kept separate from the wives, for good reasons no doubt. It seemed that the Sultan slept on a platform bed (or was that another translation issue?). In front of his bedroom were a couple of rooms with padded benches and I wondered if at night all his wives/concubines would assemble there and he would say...'hmmm, it's you tonight'.
Tried to get some of the Seraglio tunes into my head, but succeeded only with the Magic Flute.

In the afternoon wandered down to the ferry port to have one of the legendary fish sandwiches (quite good) and then popped onto a ferry to a place called Kadikoy (there should be an umlaut 'o'). Sunk deeply into my book and got of at Kadikoy - another very busy place. Found a lovely cafe above a bookshop just by the harbour. A building that looked like a former market hall seemed to be part of the Istanbul Conservatoire of Music. Very small, I thought. As I was leaving the place on the return ferry I suddenly thought - this looks like the Asian shore (I was convinced I had just popped round the corner at Beyoglu), and some hasty rifling through my guide book confirmed that I had been in Asian Istanbul, complete with the railway station donated to Istanbul by Kaiser Bill. If only I had realised sooner!

Some more sunset photos

Bliss!

On the weekend my readership exceeded 1000 for the first time (in total, since records began on about 9 November, as they say about the weather). Some people have more readers, but me, I'm happy!

Also today the parcel for my OU music course arrived, all 3.5 kilos of it! About 24 CDs, a DVD and lots of text books - all looking quite technical - I think I'll get to know my intervals and chords and whatnot by the time I finished with this. So the blogging might get a bit less generous for a while! My poor friend Grazina had to get the mail notification from my flat, run to the post office about 2 km away, then pick up the parcel and shlep it to the DHL office - quite close to my flat....She has done wonders!

Turkish politics

Got back to the hotel from dinner on the Friday night, switched on the telly and found a CNN report of the murder of Hrant Dink, the Armenian-Turkish journalist, in Istanbul. Eh? Not so I had noticed. CNN showed a huge demonstration involving, it seemed, thousands, in protest of his murder (which surprised me a little bit). Apparently he was killed by some stupid boy aged 17 or so. Boys should really be locked away between the ages of 14 and 20! Someone had probably wound him up. It must be really hard to govern a country like Turkey which has such huge differences in outlook between different parts of the country.

I had heard nothing at my end of the town. Where was all this happening? So I changed my plans for Saturday and went over to Beyoglu - the big Ataturk cultural centre is there, and I thought that's where the demos might have been, too. My Lonely Planet guide had a walking tour for that neighbourhood, and maybe I could do it in reverse, arriving at Taksim, the nerve centre of that side of Istanbul.

This line of people (read men!), on Galata Bridge, was busy fishing for tiddlers - the tiniest fish, no longer than an index finder, and half the width. There were hundreds of them. Not sure of the point of it all.

Well, I did not even find the starting point (or the end point). Partly this was because in Istanbul roadsigns are a little scarce; also I did not have quite the right understanding of the scale of the map. So what was supposed to be a day-long enterprise had me standing, after quite a lengthy detour (I worked out afterwards), on Taksim Square by 10 am...and for the rest of the day?

Luckily creeping up the very steep hills I had clocked a poster for a concert, by the Istanbul Devlet Senfoni Orkestrasi (Devlet might be a word for a type of institution, like 'municipal' or 'national'). And it was to be at 11 am, in the Atatuerk cultural centre. Perfect, or what?

That gave me just enough time to dip into the lovely cafe nextdoor and partake of not one, but two dainty custard/fruit tarts (see picture - they are on a saucer!) - they were so small that even a dieter could try out both tastes.

The Atatuerk cultural centre is, to be frank, a monstrosity. Built probably in the late 60s or 70s, it is a smoked glass cube, with lots of lights hanging down, darkly teak pannelled walls, red chairs, lights in the ceiling of which random ones work, and a shell for the orchestra. The hall is used both for orchestras and concerts, but the shell suggests that the acoustics for orchestras is not so great.

Anyway - the hall was full mostly of older folk, though also a school class or two. The programme was Rodrigo's 'Concerto Madrigal' for two guitars and orchestra, and Mendelssohn's 3rd symphony. I'm not a great guitar friend, but ah well. The problem with them, apart from the plink plonk, is that they always need to be amplified when playing with an orchestra. Here we had the two guitarists Liat Cohen and Ricardo Moyano. Liat, female, was very much the dominant partner in this. She got all the good tunes...the way they were sitting, her hair hung down so that she could not see her partner (but in some ensembles that does not matter). She also moved her microphone with the result that she sounded as if she was sitting beside you, and he - well, we could see him play. The orchestra seemed to have been told that they had to play quietly for the guitars, and this they followed to the letter, to the point of inaudibility at times. At other times, in any case, the orchestration did not seem that great, and much hanging about took place on stage. I feel no need to hear this piece again in a hurry. For their encore, the two guitarists dropped their music stands and their hair and suddenly came to live with some typically guitarish kind of piece.

The Mendelssohn was nice enough, though I do wonder why it was called the 'Scottish' symphony. Did he write it when he was there, bobbing about in the sea outside 'Fingal's Cave'? Anyway, a perfectly pleasant morning in Istanbul. Interestingly, the orchestra had 28 women out of a total of 67 players - the highest participation of women I have seen anywhere in Istanbul!

Then I wandered back across the square to start the walking tour the right way round... except I could not be bothered to bob up here and duck down there, to peek around a corner or slip down a lane.... The main street, the Istiklal Caddesi, was heaving with people streaming up and down in both directions. The busloads of riot police were loitering at the top of the street, going shopping for their lunches, chatting to their friends, all very relaxed. This seems to be the main shopping street, with many brand name shops, but also many bookshops, quite a lot of whom have English books....

And then there were lots of cafes, self-service restaurants, posher restaurants - a street full of bookshops and restaurants cannot be bad, no? Had a gorgeous lunch in the lokantasi 'Aga', full of slightly ageing men (in the side street by the mosque Agua Camii) - this is a restaurant where you look and point at the food, and it is brought to you at the table (about 5 seconds later). I am not sure that you get alcohol in some of this locantas. Picked something covered in strips of aubergine which turned out to have the tenderest, pinkest meat under it I could imagine? Rabbit? Once I got to the bone I realised it would have been a wer-rabbit. No idea what kind of meat it was. But soo goood!

(In the evening I ate in another locantasi, almost next door, the Haci Abdullah, with a melt in the mouth chicken on a puree of aubergines, a kind of slippery, shiny puree perhaps also with potatoes, but what a taste!! Total bliss - and much cheaper than some other restaurants I had been to).

Tootled on down the street; found a tiny demo about Hrant Dink taking place (about 40 people), with some riot police chatting quietly nearby. The Turkish Daily News said that yesterday's demo had contained 60 people, and yet CNN had shown thousands all facing the same way (unlike a shopping crowd where they go in both directions). Strange - whose news were right?

Crossing the bridge again to Sultanahmet I passed the ferry terminal, and wasn't there a wee boat just ready to leave for a round trip? It was to last 1 hour 15 minutes, or maybe 1 hour 50? Popped up on deck, where, on a January afternoon, it was none too hot....

We sailed over back to the Beyoglu side, then pottered along the coast under the large Bridge joining the Asian and the European side - it took so long that I began to worry whether I had got on a ferry and might have to find my own way back, but as darkness sank, eventually the boat went over to the Asian shore, and returned to the harbour with a very few and rather frozen set of deck passengers. Brrr. - And then the hotel had no water, so no chance to warm up!

A Plump Purr of Pussies

Cats with old men,

cats with young kittens,

cats on rooftops and

cats climbing mesh fencing,

cats sitting serenely

and watching the world.






Cats sleek and chubby,

cats rough ...and tubby,

cats at the butcher's and

cats in the fish shop,

cats taking their share

without fear or alert.




Cats posing for tourists (I swear it miaowed 'where you from?')

cats strolling through parks,

cats sleeping in bookshops and

cats munching from pink dishes

...in the street - that's Istanbul!

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Istanbul!!

I love Istanbul airport - it's where I have done some of my best writing in one or more 6-hour waits between planes from Tajikistan and planes to Vilnius. Getting in there this morning, when it was empty, shooting through the visa and passport queues (what queues?), getting my Turkish Liras from an ATM and being picked up was a matter of minutes.

I love Istanbul. Got to my hotel, the Sari Konak, at about 7 am (room booked from today, normal check-in time 14.00) I had my room available immediately and breakfast thrown in. Wasn' that nice of them? It would probably have been more difficult during a more touristy time of the year. And it's a lovely hotel, recently done up, nice clean bright rooms, everything working in the bathroom (not everyone may appreciate that this is a bonus!) and just very relaxing. The walls seem to be a little thin, but most people are out most of the time.

It is situated in between the Blue Mosque and the Bosporus, which (old town?) though this and all the hotels around it look relatively newly built. Many of the other hotels are wooden buildings - one hopes the fire regulations are strictly enforced! Got in just before sunrise, with a pink sky to the East, and the ships on the Bosporus silently sailing by, all lit up. Very romantic!

Off I went this morning, swithering whether I should do Culture or Shopping. Persuaded myself to do shopping, on account that it is Friday and Mosque Day, but then noticed people (tourists) coming out of the Blue Mosque, so I went and had a look anyway. A very stunnning building, with a huge floorspace covered in a carpet (which did not seem to have joins...that would have been some size of loom!). Despite the carpet I could feel the cold creeping into my stockinged feet. The lighting of the Mosque was hanging very low - a basket ball player might have had trouble with it - I wondered if it was meant to add heat as well?

As I exited, the guard was in some hysterics - some Central Asian looking ladies (black leather jacket, headscarf tied in a Central Asian way) were just slipping back into their high boots on the spot where it was written in English not to put your shoes on. Ah well.

Later in the day the Friday prayers took place, and the pavements outside every Mosque were covered a prostration of men. Quite a number of businesses were shut as well for the duration of the prayers. I't strange that the bazaars are closed on a Sunday and not a Friday.

With some Istanbul men it would not hurt if they spent more time in prostration. I learnt after the first day to keep my eyes firmly on the ground and avoid eye contact if I did not want to be hassled by less desirable types, especially those, who were not attached to a shop. One guy took it really quite badly when I said I did not really want to speak to him - he became very offensive. (So much for the simple 'anti-rape' rule of 'just say no'. Research has shown that this is very difficult to do because we have been taught not to offend people, and 'just saying no' can do just that. So that is not really the answer).

In the morning I wandered round the Grand Bazaar for a while. It's rather embarassing when there are not so many other visitors, and all those salesMEN can focus on you. Did not find anything that I desperately needed, neither belly-dancing outfits, carpets, leather jackets, pottery (quite nice), cymbals, scarves (everyone around me has hundreds of scarves), lamps, jewelry etc. There was a pale beige carpet runner I quite fancied - until I remembered that the only place suitable for it is the place where I park my bike! That made life quite easy....

...but later on in the spice bazaar I literally 'paid' for it. This is a much smaller bazaar which sells spices, but also a limited range of goods similar to the Grand Bazaar, bar carpets and leather clothes. Many of the goods here are labelled with the price, which takes a lot of pressure off. You also then notice that the stalls immediately surrounding this bazaar sell some of the goods at half-price! Picked up some stuff there, including presents for people. Not sure how much they will be appreciated...bought a lot of Turkish Delights which the young guy chucked into a number of boxes, I expected him then to arrange them neatly - but his rather severe-looking mate just closed the boxes and then vacuumsealed them. So how squashed the contents are, goodness knows. I had also looked for the same olive oil soap that I had bought at the airport last time I was here...here I got it loose. He gave me the 'best-looking pieces' (which look as if they have been in a flood)...can I really give them to people? As for spices, I am now sorted for cooking in Georgia until the end of the year!

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'She got a Golden Globe for....

'acting a stiff Queen?....' (or two), was the response of one of my loyal and devoted readers from a republic, hearing about Helen Mirren's success at the Golden Globe awards. The implication being 'where's the acting in that?'.



I suspect that these awards, like the Oscars, are given as much for subject matter as for the acting, lighting or whatever - that was one of the comments when 'Schindler's List' got so many Oscars. The Americans, who I believe give out the Golden Globe, are quite fascinated by our Royal family, and the tragedy of Princess Di. Apart from the fact that Dame Helen Mirren is a fabulous actress anyway (who, according to my commentator, just had an easy time of it in this film), this fascination may also have contributed to the prize. Had she acted Mrs Idi Amin, or Mrs Saddam Hussein, the acting might have been a great deal more difficult, and would the film have been so highly rated?

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A red mullet is a chubby wee thing

...when it's still in the sea, or at the fishmonger's. When it is fried, however, it takes on the semblance of a skinny sardine. So it was quite necessary that I had 7 on my plate this lunchtime - each of which yielded about 2 teaspoons full of meat. And a potato, a slice of onion and a thin slice of radish. Not much danger for my diet there, and all the more opportunity to fill up tonight.



I had come across the fishmarket by accident, having taken quite the wrong turning to go to the spice market (on the opposite side of this land spur). The fishmarket brought back memories of Pieroni's in Ayr, possibly the best fish shop in the West of Scotland and within walking distance of my then work. Their fish was to die for - as was the fish in the Istanbul fishmarket, all beautifully displayed, clearly showing the very fresh pink gills. With the mullets there was not really opportunity to get the flavour, between the friend skin and the thimble full of meat. Might not go for them again....

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Gourmets, Giggles and Golden Globes

Lotus reads has a wonderful review of Madhur Jaffrey's memoir 'Climbing the Mango Trees'; now on my building-up amazon list. En passant I notice Ms Jaffrey has brought out many more cookery books. Must stop reading Lotus read's blog!

The funniest blog entry I have read for a long while is Grannyp's fight with her wetsuit - maybe it was not a good idea? (Grannyp retired to the Canaries, or thereabouts, but seems to be dipping a lot back to the UK or other parts of Europe).

I see that Dame Helen Mirren has won a Golden Globe for her Queens, both QEI and QEII. QEI was filmed in Lithuania! (It was shown in Vilnius in September last year - I found it too long, but it turns out to have been a mini-series).

Heart attack on a plate

For the last few days I had noticed the restaurant near work (just up the road from the Marjanishvili Theatre) with large pictures of the Adjaran khachapuri on its window. It always looked busy, too!

Yesterday some friends went there for lunch and raved about it, so today I took my turn. The only foreigner in the restaurant I effectively blocked a table for four - no-one wants to sit beside a foreigner...A rather dopy local couple was hovering when I sat down - I don't know if I had taken 'their table'. I know they were dopy because 10 minutes later some other people entered the restaurant and took the next empty table, and the couple again stood behind them and let it be taken from them. If I were you, girl, I would not marry him.

I ordered the khachapuri in the picture (courtesy of Wikipedia) - it seems that it is not fast food - but it's fresh food! Half an hour later it appeared on the table.... shaped like Napoleon's hat, filled not only with the raw egg which you then scramble inside the hot bread (my friend had lightly described it as 'scrambled egg on toast') but also with dollops of salty Georgian cheese, and with a great lump of butter on top. That was soon removed, but still - it was extremely filling. This kind of khachapuri has to be made freshly for everyone otherwise the thing with the egg won't work. I don't think I will have it every day....