Beauteous Bosphorus

March 20th-ish

A couple weeks ago, I hopped on the wrong bus and accidentally ended up in Asia. If you're in my family, you might fondly recall a similar experience where I hopped on the wrong school bus and ended up in a different quarter of town. I think this takes the cake.

In Istanbul, however, bussing between Asia and Europe is really not a huge deal. One of the luxuries of studying abroad is truly living this experience. In class we often talk about "Europe" and "Asia" and the city that "straddles two continents." To actually see it is an entirely unique experience. I'm taking a class on the history of modern Turkey, and our professor is quite fond of pointing out the window to make his point. It's pretty cool when he talks about the arbitrary borders between here and there, and then points to the mass of land called Asia.

There are a couple of bridges crossing the Bosphorus (which, by the way, is gorgeous), and through my time here I've increasingly come to see them as fragile threads desperately holding together two supposedly disparate parts of the world. As Turkey becomes increasingly frustrated with its attempts to join the EU, it's strange to think of what delineates here and there, Europe and Asia. One such delineation is apparently religion. As a Greek American, it blows my mind to think that present-day Greece gave birth to democracy and saw the rise of Christendom in...where? Oh yes. Constantinople. Today's Istanbul. Here. The two countries are culturally more similar than one might assume, and yet Greece is solidly in the Western camp.

This is not to say there are a few very good reasons Turkey has yet to join the EU, but there are also some reasons that are rooted in religious-ism and ethnic-ism, and that are preventing what could be a fruitful relationship, and every time I pass between continents (no, it's not always on accident) I'm reminded of the tenuous differences separating East and West, and how they literally converge in this incredible city.