A casual list of birds of Istanbul

Birds of Istanbul (2-9 August 2015)
White stork (thousands!)
Hooded crow
Common Myna
Yellow-legged Gull
Pigeon
Turtle dove
House sparrow
Ring-necked parakeet
Alpine Swift
Magpie

Shag

Istanbul

Enjoying the warm sunshine of Istanbul - The Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, the Grand Bazaar, the Chora Church, palaces along the Bosporus, and singing from the minarets five times a day.  Ingrid of course needed appropriate head covering to enter the mosques and other holy places, and we all needed to remove our shoes. 


The tile mosaics, frescos, caligraphy, and sheer splendor of the buildings was hard to take in at once.  The Blue Mosque was spectacular and felt like a very sacred space.  Eli was disillusioned by the the Hagia Sophia because nearly all traces of the Byzantine church were gone (except a few restored images of Jesus and Mary and the seraphim) from when it was converted to a Mosque.  It has also be "secularized", so that it was strictly a museum, and for Eli there was a big loss in converting what was once the grandest of all Christian churches into a tourist attraction.  He expected it to feel more like the Blue Mosque.  Later we did visit the Chora Church, which, although currently under renovation, the parts we could see gave a great feel for what the ancient churches were like. 


Our first day arriving to the Hippodrome area we were treated to thousands and thousands of white storks flying over head.  Apparently they migrate to the Bosporus at this time of year.  A countless stream of black and white sails. 


 We are enjoying trying all kinds of new foods, pistachio sweets, kebabs of many sorts, lots of yoghurt, a very interesting and refreshing turnip juice with pickles and cabbage in it, fresh pomegranate juice, great teas and Turkish coffee, Ayran (yoghurt drink), and some salads of cheese and chilies, or peaches, or beets, or ...   If it doesn't come from mammal meat, I'll give it a try.


The Grand Bazaar and the many small bazaars are overwhelming, exciting, and impossible.  It is a bit like Sal-si-puedes in Panama, but much more extensive and packed, packed, packed with locals and tourists from all over the world.  It is a little hard to take the aggressive "Yes. Please. Come in. You want to buy"  every few steps, but the assortment of what is available is hard to believe.  The Grand Bazaar is all under roof, with 23 doors.  I had to buy a Zurna to add to my world-wide collection of flutes after watching a Janissary band perform.  


We spent the first four days on the Fatih side, in an airbnb flat in the last residential neighborhood just south of the Hagia Sophia.  It was a wonderful location, just a few minutes walk to most of the famous sights and hundreds of restaurants and cafes. 

Yesterday we moved over to the Galata side, across the Golden Horn.  The airbnb flat here is literally a stone's throw from the Galata tower, on the top floor of a very old building, with an astounding view of the Bosphorus and the entrance to the Golden Horn.  It is truly astounding, even the five flights up the spiral staircase to get here.  All around us the buildings are a mix of decadent brick buildings and beautifully restored buildings.  It seems like every third building is undergoing a major renovation right now.

Hølbæk

Wednesday we spent a lovely day and night visiting Ingrid's "aunt" Ulla, a concert harpsichordist and organist.  She and Eli played much music together, and we enjoyed many fruits of her garden -- fresh potatoes, gooseberries, currants, apples, plums ...  and collected 231 slugs in a futile effort to put a dent in their truly impressive population.  Ingrid mused why our similarly sized banana slugs in Santa Cruz are so cute whereas these are rather hideous.  It would be great if we could find a good recipe for them.

The next day we headed back out to the Højby sommerhus, this time by way of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, with spectacular statuary and paintings. The special exhibit of Peter Doig was impressive, and the Henry Moore sculptures brought be back to my university classes in art history.  

Eli was sufficiently inspired by playing music with Ulla that he woke early today to begin composing a Sonatina in C for Clarinet.  Fortunately Klemens left the keyboard at the sommerhus, which has made that possible. I think he hopes to finish it before we return to see Ulla again. 

Today we spent in Hølbæk, at the Middle Ages Fair and Combat Tournament.  This has been Eli's dream to come to these games for a year and a half, and we organized our summer schedule around it. Unfortunately, they moved the combat tournament until tomorrow (although the fair was much fun on a very blustery day), so we will return tomorrow to see medieval "vikings" pound each other on the head with swords.  

I've made time every day for a while now to learn the birds of Europe.  This is much fun, since almost everything I see is brand new to me.  It has been years since I've felt I could spend time birding as I did for so many years.  Birding was my first love in nature, and regular weekend birding kept me sane through university and much of graduate school.  But it has faded over the years with competition for so many other things.  This year is my opportunity to get back to my roots as a natural historian, with so much new to learn.

Tivoli and Højby

Three more great Danish days.   Saturday we had a wet but fun-filled day at Tivoli gardens, where Eli and Ingrid did tons of rides and I enjoyed keeping my feet on solid ground (except for a ferris wheel ride!).

We had a wonderful lunch of very traditional smørrebrød (open faced sandwiches with assorted pickled or smoked fish, eaten with fork and knife), and enjoyed the traditional pantomime in the Peacock Theater (in the rain), the jazz band (with a great Tom Jones-style singer), and stayed for the 11:45 fireworks.

Sunday we took a train west to the summer house of Klemens and Ana (and Rosa, Sarah, and Sunneva) in Høby.   We ate and ate, visited the fish market (to get more to eat) and briefly hung out at the beach and waded in the North Sea (warmer than Santa Cruz water) until sandblast from the wind drove us home.


Today, back in Copenhagen, we slept in a bit of the cold, misty morning, then took the train across to the amber museum and climbed the Round Tower.

We then headed out to the suburbs to visit Hanne's cousin Kristian and his Greenlander wife Judithe for a long afternoon of stories of life in Greenland and multiple rounds of cakes, sweets, and alcohols.

Eli was particularly fascinated by getting to watch home movies about dog sledding from the 1970s -- on a genuine super 8 reel-to-reel movie projector!

The genuine narwhal tusk, walrus tusks, and stool made of walrus penises were pretty special too.  Elias and Kristian made a great connection over track when we shared a picture of Eli throwing discus.  It turned out that Kristian was the Danish champion discus thrower - in 1953 -  throwing the discus about three times farther than Eli's best throw.  What a hyggelig day!

GBIF and Christiania

A great day mixing business and pleasure.  Ingrid and Eli climbed the crazy spiral tower of Vor Frelsers Kirke while Greg checked out birds in a nearby Stadsgraven park, then we all strolled through the "hippie city" of Christiania.   Christiania was a great follow-on to the morning's discussions about Animal Farm, which Eli just finished reading. 

Eli with a sperm whale heart

We had lunch with colleagues Dmitry Schigel and Olaf Bánki from GBIF.  Then Eli went to explore the Natural History Museum with a couple GBIF staff kids while Ingrid and Greg talked fungi, wood decay, and tree diversity with Dmitry and Olaf.   Great connections over the best way to collect sawdust for Illumina sequencing and the relative merits of flat files and relational databases for broad-based access to project-based biodiversity data. 


After lunch we went to the Glyptoteket museum to see some great Rodin and Degás sculptures, as well as as a lot of great Danish works.














By the end of the day we were tired from 14 km of walking, and opted not to go to the open-air Snoop Dogg concert at Tivoli and instead bussed home.  We are hoping to see the hedgehog that supposedly lives right outside our back door tonight.   

A Casual Bird List in Denmark

Birds of Denmark (21 July  - 2 August 2015)
Woodpigeon                 Great spotted woodpecker
Collared Dove              Tree sparrow                
Pigeon                     Redstart
Magpie                     Blue tit
Jackdaw                    Chaffinch
House Sparrow              Greenfinch
Mute Swan
Cormorant
Great tit
Coot
Great-crested Grebe
Blackbird
Grey Heron
Black-headed Gull
Robin
Rook
Hooded Crow
Mallard
Graylag goose
Canada goose
Moorhen

Copenhagen

We are finally settled in to Copenhagen, and reasonably well time adjusted.  We traveled with more baggage than we ever have (3 people for a year with a diverse variety of activities planned), but made it without incident.   We are staying in Ingrid's childhood friend Klements' house while his family is away, so we are comfortable and can eat at home when we want.


We have fresh pastries for breakfast each day, and Eli had his first Danish pølser (red hot dog).




We've spent the last two days exploring Copenhagen as tourists walking all over Nyhavn, Christianhavn, visiting palaces and museums and just walking about. A special treat at a museum cafe was rhubarb soda!  Who could resist?   Quite tasty -- pleasantly tart. 

The architecture and colors around Copenhagen are wonderful, and we've done more walking than we have in a long time.   We will visit some colleagues at GBIF and the University tomorrow, then to Tivoli on Saturday.

Most of our time in Denmark is vacation and visiting Ingrid's relatives and friends, with a little "cleanup" work (grants, revisions) for Greg the first few days and a couple University talks and meetings.   And lots of catching up on sleep.


I will be posting some photos on instagram as gregorysgilbert.    Click on the icon at right to follow me.