Turkey | Turkey
Jul.04.2012
Chris Karslen was born and raised in Chicago. Her father was a history professor and her mother was, and is, a voracious reader. She grew up with a love of history and books. Her parents also loved travelling, a passion they passed onto her. Karslen wanted to see the place she read about, see...
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May.17.2012
Byzantine means "characteristic of Byzantine." But what is Byzantine? Today, it is Istanbul Turkey but before that it was Constantinople and before that it was... you got it... Byzantine. And during the era of the great Byzantine Empire (5th and 6th centuries) certain styles were developed. There...
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Apr.05.2012
Sometimes we need to do a thing even if we’re scared, don’t you agree? Sometimes we feel in our gut that the action is the right even if others are saying it’s not. More and more as I age, I act upon how I feel and take my head out of the decision process. If what I’m about to do or say feels good...
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Feb.06.2012
A few months ago I had never heard the words “Gobekli Tepe” ( which means, in Turkish, “hill with a big belly”) or “Yugas” (which means in Sanscrit “cycles of time measured in thousands of years.”) And now my life seems to be centered around how this big-bellied hill fits into the cycles of the...
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Nov.23.2011
The line stretched around the block. Men in workboots and straw hats. Women in mismatched clothing. Children playing with one another between families. Wheelchairs. Walkers. Hmong, Hispanic, African-American, white, all stood in line for hours today to pick up a free holiday turkey from our local...
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Nov.23.2011
You’ve got the bird home, dressed it in its best Thanksgiving suit, and placed it in the warmth of the oven or the stove, the heat causing the flesh to melt softly inside and the juices to spill out and settle over its body. You will bring it out for the family dinner – an event so positive, so...
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Nov.09.2011
Eski Cami interior
Edirne, 8/11/2011 — Today as our bare feet padded on the thick carpet of Edirne's Old Mosque — the Eski Cami — and we looked up at its wide dome and laterally to the passionate calligraphy calling out from the walls, I thought again of the verses of the only Sufi...
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Nov.09.2011
Edirne, 7/11/2011 — It has been cloudy and chilly in this dusty city where Turkey's Thracian province reaches out to touch Bulgaria and Greece, a quiet day, the second day of the Kurban Bayramı or "Festival of the Sacrifice," and many businesses are closed.
Merely by looking at a map, even...
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Nov.09.2011
Istanbul, 6/11/ 2011 – We love this city, and since we had already seen the top 3-day tourist attractions on previous visits (Hagia Sophia, Topkapı, etc.) and since we're spending more than a week here (of the 3 we're devoting to exploring Turkey) we feel free to stroll around, take the feribot...
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Nov.09.2011
Istanbul, 1/11/2011 — We are in Sultanahmet in İstanbul now, at 6:30 pm Salı (Tuesday) and the muezzin is calling out from the Blue and other mosques. Despite this medieval throwback (amplified by 21st century loudspeaker technology), this is one of the most sophisticated, diverse and populated...
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