Summerized

Other stuff I should have blogged about sooner...

My sister and Michael got married this summer. The wedding took place on my parents property -- a beautiful wooded hillside with views for miles. It was a gorgeous day, and everyone had fun, enjoying the wonderful quirkiness of their wedding. Boston terrier Rufus was one of the groomsmen. Brittany and Michael played paper rock scissors to decide who said vows first.

Everyone danced at the barn reception.

Dad got to show off progress on his Germanic chalet.

And Dan wore a praying mantis.

Jason and I went to Ireland briefly this summer too. We visited Newgrange, a Stone Age burial and religious site with Adam.

The swirling carvings on parts of the structure were very interesting. They may symbolize multiple things, including being an abstract map of the local geography.

Toward the end of the summer, we camped near Santa Cruz with Lisa and Wai, and several of their friends.

With that many foodies, there were lots of tasty things to eat, like Tom Yum chicken skewers, salmon grilled on a flavorful board, and sour plum filled rice balls.

Wai showed us where he surfs every weekend too.

Dublin and London in Winter

We went to Dublin and London last month. It had been 2 years since we'd visited Jason's family and friends; high time we hopped the pond.

Celebrating Jason's birthday in Dublin included a great meal and some pub time with old friends, and a brunch with lots of family. Dublin is always fun.

Padraig and I caught a jazz performance at a pub by another friend's band. And Obama shilled suits in a store window.

In London, we caught up with few more old friends and family members, including Felicia and her fiancee Chris. We'd first met Felicia in Cambodia.

Spending some time wandering around near our hotel in 7 Dials, I found some great design book and tchotchke stores.

I also perused the Enlightenment Hall at the British Museum. It's a grand, library-like hall filled with objects from private collections of curiosities. The commentary and contextualization of the objects is particularly interesting because it helps you understand how these objects were perceived, and why they were collected, at that time. Though many of the Western-centric ideas now seem misguided or just plain wrong, it's neat to see how people were trying too make sense of the world around them. The objects are grouped in sections like "Religion," "Art," or "Trade," with objects as diverse as Easter Island bird man cult objects; astrolabes; several hundred year old naturalistic paintings of South American plants; dinosaur bones; magic amulets; and ancient Egyptian wooden (!) boxes painted with hieroglyphs. In a way, the Enlightenment Hall was also a trip down memory lane; we'd seen reference to many of the objects and art forms on our 9 month trip around the Pacific.

A Wedgwood anti-slavery plaque was among the collection. Coincidentally, I'd recently read about the plaque in a New York Times book review; Charles Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood were both abolitionists (as well as friends), and that Wedgwood had created this plaque to help the abolitionist cause.

There was also an exhibit on Babylon, where one could see lion and dragon tiles from the Ishtar gate, up close and personal. They're stunningly beautiful. I'd been wanting to see them for a long time. The rest of the exhibit was interesting, though it seemed like there were more objects and artwork about later perceptions of Babylon, rather than actual facts and artifacts from Babylon itself. Maybe I'd gotten a little weary of historical perspectives after several hours in the Enlightenment Room.

Ware and London

We’re flying from Minneapolis to San Francisco, our last leg home from London, and my eyeballs hurt from dry planes.

We were in England for Jason’s cousin’s wedding. The wedding itself was in Ware, a 40 minute train ride from London.

It was great to finally meet the bride, and members of Jason’s extended family I'd never met.

Judging from the plumage at the lovely ceremony, Irish milliner Philip Treacy was well represented.

The reception was held at a grand old pile, originally built in the Jacobean style, and added on to in just about every subsequent style. Now it’s a hotel, and a pleasant place to stay -- I wished we'd had more time to explore.

We spent the next few days in London, staying with friends. And managed to catch up with Felicia, an Aussie friend we met in Cambodia on our long honeymoon.

Unfortunately, a grey and rainy London didn't present many tempting photographic opportunities. Fortunately, it did present shopping opportunities.

Walking down the street past a Whole Foods, this London outpost looked so much more designed than those in the US (New York at least), with its trend du jour neo-Victorian-wallpaper-meets-Flatland aesthetic window display.

Back at the Minneapolis airport, this sign brought back memories of the Midwest goose scourge, and of goose-clogged medians in Detroit.

Kappadokya

Kappadokya looks like a lunar smurf village. Biblical and space-age. In fact, part of a Star Wars was filmed there. In Central Anatolia, Turkey, it deserves as much press as the Grand Canyon, though not many Americans know about it.

Surreal "fairy chimney" rock formations were formed when volcanoes erupted, leaving ash, lava and basalt that eroded unevenly.

Assyrians, Hittites, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks and others have lived in or occupied Kappadokya.

Various peoples have LIVED in caves carved out of the soft stone for hundreds of years.

Byzantine monks lived in carved monastaries in the rock formations and in the cliffs. We walked into rock-cut monastaries mimicking barrel vaulted structures. They're painted with amazing Byzantine murals.

Unfortunately, some of them have been defaced recently by vandals and religious zealots who often scratch out the eyes.

The cave interiors are truly Flintstonian, with "built in" cabinetry -- carved niches to hold foodstuffs, and carved areas for stomping grapes for wine. Carved tandoori ovens in the floor and long benches for feasts too.

Within the last fifty years, the Turkish government forced everyone out of the caves because the stone was occasionally collapsing, and was a hazard. Many of them now live in villages, like the one where we saw this youth hostel:

We had the most luscious candy-like apricots ever that day. Turkish apricots are truly the best. We also saw apricots drying on rooftops of the village -- the flies buzzing around them convinced us fresh was definitely better.

Chickens!

Some of the locals live in more luxury in some modern homes that look uniquely Turkish.

We stayed in a cave hotel that was originally a private home. The rooms of the 150 year old hotel were actually carved into the rock, so our room was a cave. Our suite was "Anka's Lair."

Oz and Endam's wedding

All Turkish wedding ceremonies are civil ceremonies and take place in government buildings. Oz's ceremony guests (all 500 of them) waited outside the building, along with the guests of other weddings. When it was time for the wedding, Oz and Endam's names appeared on a readerboard letting us know it was time to enter the theater-like ceremony room. At the front of the room is a long, governmental-looking desk where the judge, the couple, and their 3 witnesses sit under a painting of Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey. My Dad was one of the witnesses that day. He got a round of applause for saying the only Turkish word he knows "Evet" for Yes, when it is his turn. It was very sweet. The ceremony took about 15 minutes.

The flowers took a very different form than they do in the US. They come on a sort of sign-post, and contain the name of the giver. If you can't make it to the wedding, you send one of these. Companies that Oz and Endam had worked at also sent them.

The reception was at a health/country club. The club was festooned with bright oranges, yellows and greens. The bride looked beautiful and wore a western gown, and the couple took lots of glamour shots before joining dinner. When they made their appearance, it was after we took in a video containing childhood photos set to dramatic Turkish music. They had a pyrotechnics budget! Small fireworks went off beside the pool while the couple walked the length of it.

After food and raki, the Turkish dancing started. Their live band was playing some old fashioned Turkish music and some gypsy and Kurd music as well. We got up to dance with everyone, looked foolish, and had a great time. There was bellydancing, but not by me. I scuffed my Ferragamos.

Dusty Springfield for a day

Ozgur and his family arranged for my family to have our hair professionally styled on the morning of his wedding. While the men went to have their ear-hair burnt out with flaming menthol-coated cotton balls, Oz’s mother led me, my mother and sister to a women’s salon about a block away from their apartment. She left us with four male hairstylists who spoke no English. I gestured “up!, no, up! Up!” to indicate “up-do” and hoped for the best.

A shy adolescent boy washed my hair with stiff fingers in a simultaneously creepy and sweet way. An assistant dried my hair while the lead stylist was brushing/styling. The queeny lead stylist snapped his fingers for immediate shut-down/start-up of the dryer. Hairspray and B.O. filled the air as several cans were dramatically applied to my head. Empty cans were hurled at assistants at random. My longish hair was theatrically teased till it looked like a mushroom cloud above my head. In the mirror, my sister wore a pained expression and looked like Diana Ross.

Ultimately, I was fairly happy with my rock-hard pearl-encrusted French-twist hairstyle. Brittany was less thrilled with her poufy bob. But Jason was the real star. When we returned to the apartment, he stepped out sporting a spiky oily David Beckham-hedgehog hybrid. It was amazing and frightening. It even changed his personality a little.

Istanbul

Istanbul is beautiful with lots of red roofs and minarets everywhere. We stayed at the Anemon Galata, a charming older hotel which has been boutique-ified. It's on one of the "7 hills of Istanbul," and by Galata tower, which was created by the Genoans during their occupation of part of the city.

Our hotel was on the western side of the Istanbul -- the side that is part of Europe. Mehmet and Fuson, Oz's parents, live on the eastern side, which is part of Asia. Istanbul straddles the two continents, and has a European side and an Asian side. The freeway sign says "Welcome to Asia." One day we took a boat tour of the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus River, which divides Europe and Asia. The sights were amazing, but the photographs weren't. From the boat, we were able to see all the major large mosques including Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque as well as structures such as an art nouveau mansion serving as the Egyptian Embassy.

Our friends were very hospitable. We had many wonderful meals made by Fuson, Ozgur and Pinar's mother (with the occasional meatball made by Mehmet, their father). We ate kebabs, cucumbers, aubergines, tomatos, Anatolian honey, sour cherries, a ubiquitous white cheese, and Raki (Turkey's answer to Ouzo) on a daily basis.

Dinner with Oz's family on the eve of his wedding was truly special. There must have been at least 25-30 of his family members crammed into their living room that evening for the big feast.

I snuck a photo of this niche in a room of Topkapi palace. The inverse geometric forms are just gorgeous to me -- simple and modern, evocative of Buckminster Fullerian geometry. And the stark white is a nice foil to some of the elaborate painting, tiling, typography, etc.

This is the beautiful "Tree of Life" pattern.

Which happened to be on the outside wall of this special room:

After leaving Topkapi Palace we happened to see a child on the street dressed in a fancy white dress-like garment and white pointy cap. We later learned that this unfortunate child was wearing his "circumcission outfit" for his "special ceremony" that day. Apparently kids are circumcised at age 5 up to age 8. So they actually REMEMBER it.

After the Circumcission Room, we saw some more amazing tiles. I didn't read up on it, but Turkey obviously has an amazing tile and pattern tradition. You can see the mix of Eastern and Western motifs in the tiles and other ornamental elements of the palace.

Ozgur's friend Sebil was our tour guide for a day.

She took us to the Blue Mosque.

After that we walked to Aya Sophia.

I'd wanted to see Aya Sophia for years. The forms are such an amazing combination of East and West.

There was a contemporary tile design exhibit on at Aya Sophia, including this one by Zaha Hadid:

Magic towels were procured at the Grand Bazaar.