Istanbul.  I don’t know where to begin.  It’s been a week since we left.  This week has seemed like a month.  I guess that’s a good example of my perception of time while abroad.

Istanbul was an experience.  It was the most exotic city I’ve ever been to.  A lot of people got nervous when it was announced that the Rome program was going to Istanbul instead of the Barcelona program.  People get uneasy when talking about the Middle East, Americans in particular.  I know the word Istanbul connects indirectly with other words in the average American’s mind: 9/11, terrorism, instability, suicide bombers, jihad, bin Laden, etc.  While I didn’t really even consider these things before going, I was aware of them.  A lot of us were saying that it was good that we were going to Istanbul because none of us would ever go there on our own.  “A once-in-a-lifetime, unique experience.”  That’s how we dealt with it.  And it’s true.  I probably would have never gone to Istanbul on my own.  But why?  Having gone there, I see now.  Istanbul is no different from any other city - be it Paris or New York.  It’s ignorance and fear of the Islamic culture that soils our view of it.  I think it was terribly important for me to go to Istanbul.

The trip opened my eyes to several important issues/phenomena.  I noticed the difference between myself and the Turkish people (Western vs. Eastern tradition).  The most striking example of this was the call to prayer that happens five times a day.  Getting woken up by a strangely toned song is startling.  The role of women in society is also off-putting.  But for all the differences between myself and them, I couldn’t help but see similarity.  They pray to God five times a day.  I also pray to God.  The same God.  Their mosques are like our churches.  They go to service once a week too, just like me.  Catholicism and Islam share the same ideals.  We’re all in this together.  Even in Istanbul, I felt religious kinship with the people.  To truly know a city you must know its people.  I think I actually started to get know Istanbul’s people on this trip. 

I felt minute immersion during the day while walking around and sketching numerous mosques.  The time that I felt most immersed in the Turkish culture was at night.  At first I was a little hesitant about what I would do at night in Turkey.  I wasn’t sure about the nightlife, having been warned about shady clubs.  The first night I made a very important discovery: the Turkish hookah bar.  It was at hookah bars that I would have some of the most important experiences of my life.  One night, at a very local hookah bar, I met a few Turkish guys.  They shared a room with about four of us.  I got to know them as I returned to the bar the next few nights.  One of them was an aspiring guitarist named Saleh.  Another was a cellist named Cem.  These guys, along with the coal-filler Eyden, became my friends.  They were all devout Muslims.  I explained to them my traditions as a Catholic and they explained theirs to me. 

On the last night, I went out to the hookah bar one last time.  I saw my friends there.  They were with two new guys who spoke a little English.  I got to talking with them.  One of them was an Islamic radical from Vienna who had just come from Egypt.  The other was also from Vienna but lived in Istanbul.  Our conversation turned to politics and eventually religion.  I found myself considering that these men are taking my words as examples of American thought.  In fact I know they were because I was doing the same thing.  They disagreed with American presence in their own respective countries and around the world.  They thought Obama was a puppet.  While I don’t necessarily agree with everything they said (I did feel mildly insulted at points during the conversation), I couldn’t help but think this: I am talking to Islamic radicals.  These are the people that make Americans nervous.  They aren’t bad at all.  And they were really weren’t.  They wanted to know how the United States treated government with respect to religion.  When I explained the concept of separation of Church and State to them they were visibly puzzled because religion is deeply engrained in their government.  We talked about so many things that it is pointless to try to list them here.  All that I have to say is that these conversations I had with these Turkish guys were some of the most important and enlightening conversations of my life. 

Coming back to the hotel at 2 or 3 am, I found myself wondering about something.  This something had to do with my classmates, and to a greater extent, Americans in general.  I went out to the hookah bar every night of the Istanbul trip.  There were some people who didn’t go out anywhere at all.  This occurrence exemplifies an issue that I think plagues many Americans, including everyone on this trip.  I imagine it as a bubble.  This bubble exists for all of us.  It is our comfort zone.  It is our English-speaking, McDonald’s-filled, Mommy-kissing, Facebook-tagging cocoon.  It is carrying our American culture with us.  It is fear of the different.  It is misunderstanding and the lack of will of to understand.  When we’re in a foreign country, in a city like Istanbul, it’s very easy for us to shut ourselves out from our surroundings.  Turkish is easy to ignore.  But we can’t do that!  We must throw ourselves into their world - shock ourselves with their culture.  I kept thinking to myself: when else in my life will I be able to smoke a waterpipe with Turkish bros a few blocks away from the Hagia Sophia?  And at the same time I am doing this extremely extraordinary thing, there are people sleeping at the hotel.  What are you doing?  I’m not trying to promote unhealthy lifestyles, but you can sleep anytime!  What you can’t do any time is get physically purged in a Turkish bath.  We tend to Americanize things everywhere we go.  I’m trying not to force my culture on people.  I can be as American as I want when I get home.  The more you interact with other cultures, the more cultured you become.

I related much more to the Turkish culture at night much more than I did during the day.  The program surprisingly seemed to be geared more toward shopping in the Grand Bazaar and the spice market than architecture.  I would rather have learned the intricacies of the organization of the Bazaar than know where to get the best scarves.  As I have said before, I didn’t come on this trip to shop.  And it frustrated me when we were continually encouraged to spend an afternoon looking for carpets I can’t afford instead of exploring more of the city.  I appreciated all the mosques we saw, but I felt that they were all too similar in configuration.  I was getting bored sketching pendentives and domes.  I know that the mosque is central to Islamic architecture, but in a city of 13 million people, there has to be more than that.

All in all, Istanbul was an amazing experience.  I learned and saw so much.  It broke down a lot of barriers for me.  It made things clearer and brought up new questions.  To think that I never would have gone there is now a ridiculous thought.