Destination: Turkey

I miss Europe’s big sights. But I also miss exploring off the beaten path. And one of the most vivid places for that is in Eastern Turkey.

Even though we’re not visiting Europe right now, I believe a daily dose of travel dreaming can be good medicine. I just published a collection of my favorite stories from a lifetime of European travels. My new book is called “For the Love of Europe” — and this story is just one of its 100 travel tales.

I’m in Kastamonu, five hours northeast of the Turkish capital of Ankara. It’s a town that has yet to figure out the business of tourism. The business hotel where I’m staying is cheap and comfortable, but not slick. I hand a postcard to the boy at the desk, hoping he can mail it for me. He looks it over a couple of times on both sides, compliments me, and politely hands it back. As I leave, he raises his right hand and says, “Hello.”

While changing money, I’m spotted by the bank manager, who invites me into his office for tea. I am his first American customer, so he wants to celebrate.

Outside, a gaggle of men wearing grays, blacks, and browns is shuffling quietly down the street in a funeral procession. A casket floats over them as each man jostles to the front to pay his respects by “giving it a shoulder.” Turkey is a land of ceremonies. Everyday life here is punctuated with colorful, meaningful events. I’m always on the lookout, traveling with sharp eyes, hoping to add to my knowledge of the folk culture. Who knows, as the dust from the funeral procession clears, I may see a proud eight-year-old boy dressed like a prince or a sultan on a horse — riding to his ritual circumcision.

My plan is to continue driving inland, exploring further into Anatolia. While Istanbul and the western coast get the lion’s share of Turkey’s tourism, I’m looking for maximum cultural thrills, so I know I should head east.

Under 10,000-foot peaks, my guide and I drive up onto the burnt, barren, 5,000-foot-high Anatolian plateau to Erzurum, the main city of eastern Turkey. Life is hard here. Blood feuds, a holdover from justice under the Ottomans, are still a leading cause of imprisonment. Winters are below-zero killers. Villages spread out onto the plateau like brown weeds, each with the same economy: ducks, dung, and hay. But Allah has given this land some pleasant surprises. It’s a harsh land, but gentle at the same time. The parched plain hides lush valleys where rooftops sport colorful patches of sun-dried apricots. You can crack open the sweet, thin-shelled hazelnuts with your teeth. Teenage boys prefer girls who dress modestly and shepherd children still play the eagle-bone flute.

Entering a village, we pass under a banner announcing, “No love is better than the love for your land and your nation.” The town takes us warmly into its callused hands. A man with a donkey cart wheels us on an impromptu tour. Each house wears a tall hat of hay — food for the cattle and insulation for the winter. Mountains of cow pies are neatly stacked, promising warmth and cooking fuel for the six months of snowed-in winter on the way. Veiled mothers strain to look through my camera’s viewfinder to see their children’s mugging faces. The town’s annually elected policeman brags that he keeps the place safe from terrorists. Children scamper around women who are busy beating raw wool with sticks — a rainbow of browns that will one day be woven into a carpet to soften a stone sofa, warm up a mud-brick wall, or serve as a daughter’s dowry.

Driving east from Erzurum, we set our sights on the northeast corner of Turkey, marked by the 17,000-foot summit of Mount Ararat. Villages growing between ancient rivers of lava expertly milk the land for subsistence living. After a quick reread of the flood story in Genesis, I think that this stark, sun-drenched, and windswept land has changed little since Noah docked.

On a ridge high above our car, I can make out the figure of a lone man silhouetted against a bright blue sky waving at us. The sight reminds me that this is a part of West Asia where mighty nations come together, denying the Kurds who live here a land of their own. The lone sentry is one of 10 million Kurdish Turks; many of them would like their own country. The turmoil in Iraq — and the prospect that those Kurds could form an autonomous nation — has reignited this prickly issue. One thing is for sure: Turkey does not want to share a border with an independent Kurdistan.

When I get up early the next morning to see the sun rise over Mount Ararat, I also see a long convoy of Turkish army vehicles. It reminds me that our world is a complicated place in which the daily news is just a shadow play of reality. What’s so often missing is humanity. And to get that, you need to travel.

This story appears in my newest book, “For the Love of Europe” — collecting 100 of my favorite memories from a lifetime of European travel. Please support local businesses in your community by picking up a copy from your favorite bookstore, or you can purchase it at my online Travel Store. You can also find a clip related to this story at Rick Steves Classroom Europe; just search for Turkey.

Today, I was supposed to be landing in Istanbul — kicking off a weeks-long guidebook research trip through Europe. Instead, I’m home, doing my part to slow the spread of the coronavirus…and dreaming of my next trip to one of Europe’s greatest cities. Here’s a story from a previous trip to Istanbul, a few years ago. I imagine that when I get back there, it’ll be all the same, all over again.

With so many of us stuck at home for the foreseeable future, I believe a daily dose of travel dreaming can actually be good medicine. Here’s another one of my favorite travel memories — a reminder of what’s waiting for you in Europe at the other end of this crisis.

When I was in my twenties, I ended eight European trips in a row in Turkey. I didn’t plan it that way — but it became the natural finale, the subconscious cherry on top of each year’s travel adventures. Realizing I haven’t set foot in Istanbul for nearly a decade, I have decided to return to the city where East meets West. Comparing today’s Istanbul with the city that lives in my memories, will I find comforting similarities or jarring differences?

The moment I step off the plane, I remember how much I enjoy this country. Marveling at the efficiency of Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport, I pop onto the street and into a yellow taksi. Seeing the welcoming grin of the unshaven driver, who greets me with a toothy “Merhaba,” I blurt out, “Çok güzel!” I’m surprised I remember the phrase. It just comes out of me — like a baby shouts for joy. I am back in Turkey, and it is “very beautiful” indeed.

As the taksi turns off the highway and into the tangled lanes of the tourist zone — just below the Blue Mosque — all the tourist-friendly businesses still line up, providing a backdrop for their chorus line of barkers shouting, “Yes, Mister!”

I look at the scruffy kids in the streets and remember a rougher time, when kids like these would earn small change by hanging out the passenger door of ramshackle minibuses. The name for these vehicles — a wild cross between a taxi and a bus — is dolmuş, literally and appropriately translated as “stuffed.” The boys would yell out the name of the destination in a scramble to stuff in more passengers. I can still hear my favorite call, for the train-station neighborhood: “Sirkeci, Sirkeci, Sirkeci” (SEER-kay-jee). While Turkey’s new affluence has nearly killed the dolmuş, the echoes of the boys hollering from the vans bounce happily in my memory: “Topkapi, Topkapi, Topkapi…Sultanahmet, Sultanahmet, Sultanahmet.”

I pay my taksi driver and step out into the Sultanahmet neighborhood, stopping for a cup of tea to get my bearings. From my teahouse perch, I watch old men shuffle by, carrying nothing, but walking as if still bent under the towering loads they had carried all of their human-beast-of-burden lives. Istanbul, now with a population of more than 15 million, is thriving. The city is poignantly littered with both remnants of grand empires and living, breathing reminders of the harsh reality of life in the developing world.

And yet, this ancient city is striding into the future. Everyone is buzzing about the new tunnel under the Bosphorus, which gives a million commuters in the Asian suburbs of Istanbul an easy train link to their places of work in Europe. This tunnel is emblematic of modern Turkey’s commitment to connecting East and West, just as Istanbul bridges Asia and Europe. I also see it as a concrete example of how parts of the developing world are emerging as economic dynamos.

Walking down to the Golden Horn inlet and Istanbul’s churning waterfront, I cross the new Galata Bridge, which makes me wistful for the old bridge — now dismantled — which was crusty with life’s struggles. I think of how all societies morph with the push and pull of the times. While the beloved old bridge is gone, the new one has been engulfed in the same vibrant street life — boys casting their lines, old men sucking on water pipes, and steaming sesame-seed bread rings fogging up the panes of their glass-windowed carts. It reminds me how stubborn cultural inertia can be.

On the sloppy harborfront, the venerable “fish and bread boats” are still rocking in the constant chop of the busy harbor. In a humbler day, they were 20-foot-long open dinghies — rough boats with battered car tires for fenders — with open fires for grilling fish…fish that’s literally fresh off the boat. For a few coins, the fishermen would bury a big white fillet in a hunk of fluffy bread, wrap it in newsprint, and send me on my way. In recent years, the fish and bread boats were shut down because they had no license. After a popular uproar, they’ve returned — a bit more hygienic, no longer using newspaper for wrapping, but still rocking in the waves and slamming out fresh fish.

As the sun sets and evening prayer time approaches, I hike through teeming streets to the iconic Blue Mosque. The outer courtyard is crowded with families — worshipful parents and kids looking for entertainment. Two schoolboys high-five me and try out their only English phrase: “What is your name?” I answer, “Seven o’clock” and enjoy their quizzical look. I’m struggling to understand their society; they can deal with a little confusion as well.

Wandering under stiletto minarets, I listen as a hardworking loudspeaker — lashed to the minaret as if to a religious crow’s nest — belts out a call to prayer. Noticing the twinkling lights strung up in honor of the holy month of Ramadan, I think, “Charming — they’ve draped Christmas lights between the minarets.” (A Turk might come to my house and say, “Charming — he’s draped Ramadan lights on his Christmas tree.”)

The Blue Mosque offers a warm welcome. Stepping out of my shoes, I enter the vast space — more turquoise than blue — hoping for déjà vu that never comes. Something’s missing. Gone is the smell of countless sweaty socks, knees, palms, and foreheads that had soaked into the ancient carpet from worshippers’ energetic, physical prayer workouts. Sure enough, the Blue Mosque has a fresh new carpet — with a subtle design that keeps worshippers organized in the same way that lined notepaper tames written letters.

As the prayer service lets out, I’m caught up in a sea of Turks that surges toward the door. This is the kind of connecting-with-humanity moment that I seek out. It’s the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing the exhilaration of bodysurfing above a mosh pit. As I surf the flow of worshippers through the gate and out into the street, the only way to get any personal space is to look up into the sky. Doing that, I enjoy another prized memory…another Istanbul déjà vu: Hard-pumping seagulls flap their wings through the humid air in the dark sky before surging into the light, crossing and then circling the floodlit minarets.

The Hippodrome — a long, oblong plaza shaped like a chariot racecourse, as was its purpose 18 centuries ago — is invigorated by the multi­generational conviviality of the Ramadan crowds emptying out of the mosque. While the crowd seems to be gaining energy, I’m running out of steam. But before heading back to my hotel, I look for a teahouse to follow my end-of-day ritual.

I established this ritual in visits to Turkey as a backpacking student and I return to it now. I cap my day with a bowl of sütlaç: rice pudding with a sprinkle of cinnamon. It’s still served in a square steel bowl with a small matching spoon. Another part of the ritual: I don’t let a Turkish day go by without enjoying a teahouse game of backgammon with a stranger. Looking at the board tonight, I notice that it’s cheap and mass-produced, almost disposable. Today’s dice — plastic and factory-perfect — make me miss the tiny handmade “bones” of the 20th century, with their disobedient dots. But some things never change. To test a fun cultural quirk, I toss my dice and pause. As I knew would happen, a bystander moves for me. When it comes to backgammon, there’s one right way…and everybody knows it. And in Turkey, perhaps as a result of its ruthless history, when starting a new game, the winner of the last game goes first.

With each backgammon game, I think of one of my most precious possessions back home: an old-time, hand-hewn, inlaid backgammon board, with rusty little hinges held in place by hasty tacks, and soft, white wood worn deeper than the harder, dark wood. Twenty years after taking that backgammon board home, I open it and still smell the tobacco, tea, and soul of a traditional Turkish teahouse.

There’s almost nothing in my world that is worn or has been enjoyed long enough to absorb the smells of my life and community. It’s a reminder to me of the cost of modernity. At home, the feel and smell of my old backgammon board takes me back to Turkey. And when it does, I’m reminded how, in the face of all that modernity, the endangered though resilient charm of traditional cultures — anywhere in our world — is something to value.

Today in Turkey, the people — like those dots on the modern dice — line up better. The weave of a mosque carpet brings order. There’s a seat for everyone on the dolmuş, which is no longer so stuffed. Fez sales to tourists are way down, but the use of scarves worn by local women (a symbol of traditional Muslim identity) is way up. As I get caught up in moments of déjà vu, I realize that Turkish society is experiencing something similar: confronting powerful forces of change and progress while also wanting to stay the same.

(This story is excerpted from my upcoming book, For the Love of Europe — collecting 100 of my favorite memories from a lifetime of European travel. It’s coming out in July, and available for pre-order. And you can also watch a video clip related to this story: Just visit  Rick Steves Classroom Europe  and search for “Istanbul layers.”)