Meeting more of the Sattlers...

On Friday evening we had arranged to meet Martin Sattler for dinner. Martin is a member of the Burgenland Bunch - as I and my cousin Rick are - which has a web site devoted to researching family genealogy in Burgenland.

Martin Sattler is a common name in my genealogy, and is the name of both my great-grandfather and great-great grandfather, both born in Andau.

We were to meet at 7 PM and since we were a little early we decided to walkl through the little Illmitz cemetery that was just across the street from the restaurant. We had just entered the cemetery when Kathy heard a group of people speaking English and struck up a conversation. It turned out to be a group from Minnesota - from St. Paul no less. They were Gartners and were researching their family history in Burgenland. Al Gartner was the patriarch of the group and he is from Rice Street and knows my uncle Frank Tischler. Al's brother is Jim Gartner who ran the St. Bernard's bowling alley when I was in grade school and in a league there. Small world!

We met at the Presshaus restaurant in Illmitz, just a few doors down from our hotel (and, as noted, across the street from the cemetery). Martin brought his uncle Alfred with him. Martin spoke pretty good English but Alfed didn't speak any. Both men seemed genuinely interested in genealogy and we talked for three hours about the Sattler line and how we might be related. Unfortunately, we can't find the exact manner of how we might be related, and more work is required. I did find out that a Sattler left Burgenland for China in the 1920s and ended up farming 60,000 hectares, which is almost 150,000 acres. I may ask for more details from Martin about this since I am sure it is an interesting story.

It was a great evening. The company was wonderful as were the food and the wine at dinner. I also told Martin about Rick's probable visit next year. I have a feeling that we will meet Martin again.

Meeting the Sattlers...

Our first stop on Thursday after we settled into our hotel was the Weinbau Sattler, a little winery run by Erich Sattler in Tadten, just a couple of miles from Andau which is the area where my Sattler family came from. I assume there is some relation between me and Erich but don't know for sure.

I had looked at the Weinbau Sattler web site but had not contacted Erich ahead of time. We found the winery which is on the main street through Tadten - we had expected something out in the country. We brought with us the article from the International Wall Street Journal from February that had reported on the great Austrian wines and noted a Weinbau Sattler red as one of the best.



The sign for the Sattler winery on the main street though Tadten. In the background is the memorial for the men from Tadten who died in WWI and WWII. There are many Sattlers and a couple of Tischlers listed.

We went through a big wooden door from the street and entered the compound. We didn't see anyone and so continued to the back where we found the tasting room. We also found the door to the wine storage warehouse and rang the bell. After a few minutes an older gentleman came out and we tried to explain that we were looking for Erich. He didn't speak English but we understood that he wasn't in now but would be later. We thanked him and left to explore Andau.

We returned a couple of hours later and this time found Erich at home and I explained that I was doing some genealogy research on Sattlers and thought we might be related. His English was quite good and he graciously invited us to sit and have a chat. He brought out some of his wine (and apple juice for Noah) and I showed him a summary of my Sattler line and asked him if he recognized any or thought we were related. His answer, with a shrug, was "All Sattlers in Burgenland are related". He is a low key guy and I got the impression that he didn't really see the point of trying to find old relatives. Kathy sees a family resemblance, and I guess I do as well in the weak chin (which is nice way of saying no chin).

I asked him if business had picked up after he was mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article and he had a blank look. He was not aware that one of his reds was proclaimed one of the best in Europe by one of the best known papers in the world. We gave him the copy of the article that we had brought with us and he seemed proud and happy.

We bought 13 bottles of his wine and then returned the next day and bought 8 more. The prices were very reasonable. The red wine mentioned in the Journal was listed at $32 a bottle at retail, but at his winery it can be had for about $12 a bottle. Again he brought out wine and apple juice and we had another nice visit.


I still don't know for sure if Erich and I are related or how, but I will keep looking with the help of my cousin, Rick. Rick and his wife plan to visit Burgenland next year and I let Erich know that he would probably be having more visitors. We also got the name of Erich's distributor in the US and we hope to be able to buy more of the Weinbau Sattler wine when we get back home.

Back from Burgenland...

We just got back to Prague after spending a couple of days in eastern Austria, in the area known as Burgenland. It was both a vacation to enjoy the wonderful scenery of Burgenland and also to do some genealogical research since my paternal grandmother's family - the Sattlers - emigrated to the US from Burgenland (more on that later).

Kathy and I did a little reading on Burgenland before we left, but we still found out a couple of very interesting facts. The first is that after the end of World War II, Burgenland was part of the Soviet zone. The second is that more than 20,000 Hungarian refugees crossed the border into Austria near Andau when the Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution in 1956 (as they would crush the Czech revolution 12 years later).

From Wikipedia:

Burgenland was...given to the Soviet forces in exchange for Steiermark (Styria), which was in turn occupied by the United Kingdom.

Under the Soviet occupation, people in Burgenland had to stand a time of serious mistreatment and an extremely slow economic progression, the latter induced by investor-discouraging presence of the Soviet troops. The Soviet occupation ended with the signing of the Austrian Independence Treaty of Vienna in 1955 by the Occupying Forces.

The brutally crushed Hungarian Revolution on October 23, 1956 resulted in a shockwave of Hungarian refugees at the Hungarian-Austrian border, especially at the Bridge of Andau (Brücke von Andau), who were received by the inhabitants of Burgenland with an overwhelming amount of hospitality.

In 1957, the construction of the "anti-Fascist Protective Barrier" resulted in a complete bulkheading of the area under Soviet influence from the rest of the world, rendering the Hungarian-Austrian border next to Burgenland a deadly zone of mine fields (on the Hungarian border) and barbed wire, referred to as the Iron Curtain. Even during the era of the Iron Curtain, local trains between the north and south of Burgenland operated as "Corridor trains" (Korridorzüge) – they had their doors locked as they traversed Hungarian territory.

Starting in 1965 and finishing in 1971, the minefields were cleansed because people were often harmed by them, even on the Austrian side of the border. This could well be taken as a sign of the Soviet Union towards opening the borders to the Western countries, starting in the late seventies.


Here is where tens of thousands of Hungarian refugees crossed into Austria in 1956.


The border between Hungary and Austria at Andau as it looks today. With Hungary and Austria both in the EU, new rules that took effect last December means that now there aren't even any border guards or any hindrance in crossing the border. It's like going from Minnesota to Wisconsin.



An interesting side note, James Michener wrote a book entitled "The Bridge at Andau" in 1957 that chronicled the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Michener was living in Austria in the 1950s.

Off to Burgenland...

The three of us are leaving this morning for eastern Austria, which is the area known as Burgenland. This is the land of my Sattler ancestors - my dad's mother was Barbara Sattler. Anyway, I have some good information on my Sattler ancestors going back to around 1800 and had formerly posted on the topic here and here.

While we are there we are going to have dinner with Martin Sattler and we will try to figure out if or how we are related - I have a high confidence that we are kin. We are also going to visit the Sattler winery, which was lauded in the International Wall Street Journal a few months ago as having some of the best wine in Europe.

We are staying in what looks to be a nice hotel, the Hotel Zur Post, in the town of Illmitz, just east of lake Neusiedl am See. The town of my forefathers is Andau, and is located about 15 miles east of Illmitz on the border with Hungary.

I will report more but it will likely be when we return on Saturday.

The assasination of Heydrich...

I have posted in the past about the story of the town of Lidice, just outside of Prague. Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler's Reichsprotekto in Bohemia and Moravia, died on June 4, 1942 from wounds suffered in an attack by Czech partisans who had parachuted into Czechoslovakia after being trained in England. Heydrich's funeral was on June 9, and the following day all of the men of Lidice (173 in all) were executed, the women and children were sent to camps, most of them to perish, and the town itself was raised to the ground to remove all evidence that it had ever exisited. The Nazis even emptied the cemetery of its corpses. This was all to teach a lesson to the Czechs that to fight the Nazis would result in swift and incredibly cruel consequences.

After the attack on Heydrich's car that left him mortally wounded, the seven parachutists ended up at the Church of Saints Cyril and Methodius in Prague which had been arranged as a safe house and they were concealed in the crypt of the church.

With the aid of a turncoat Czech named Karel Curda, the Germans learned of the location of the parachutists and 800 soldiers surrounded the church at 2:00 am on June 18, 1942. The Germans entered the church before dawn but were met by three of the parachutists firing from the choir loft who held the Germans at bay for several hours but were eventually killed. It was discovered that the others were in the crypt and the orders were to take them alive. The Nazis tried pumping smoke and then water into the crypt to force the four remaining parachutists to surrender. Rather than be captured the four committed suicide.


Heydrich's car after the attack on May 27, 1942. He would die from his wounds on June 4.


Bullet holes from the attack on June 18, 1942 remain visible near a small window to the crypt of the church.


Inside the crypt there are many memorials to the men who killed Heydrich.


This small cross is just outside the main door to the church.

The price paid by the church for aiding the parachutists was extremely high. from the web:

The trial of the members of the Czech Orthodox Church was held on September 3, 1942, after which Bp. Gorazd, Fr. Cikl, and council chairman Sonnevend were executed by a firing squad on the next day. Fr. Petrek was executed on September 5. For aiding the parachutists, 263 Czechs were arrested, transported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, and shot to death on October 24, including nine members of the cathedral’s congregation: Marie Ciklova, wife of the dean; Marie Gruzinnova, Bp. Gorazd’s secretary; Marie Sonnevendova, wife of the council chairman; Ludmila Rysova, choir member; Vaclav Ornest, the sacristan, his wife Frantiska Ornestova, and daughter, Miluse Ornestova, a choir and youth group member; Karel Louda, choir member; and Marie Loudova, also a choir and youth group member. In all, the Orthodox Church lost 13 sons and daughters.

More biking in Horomerice...

Last year on May 1st I posted on the beautiful fields of canola/rapeseed around our home town of Horomerice. The link to that old post is here. Well, it's that time of year again, and (not surprisingly) the rapeseed is again growing and in bloom.

Noah and I took a little cycle along our usual route to the nearby spa and passed the now blooming fields. We stopped and I took this picture of Noah.


As a proud father I always knew that Noah would be out standing in his field.



We took a slight detour down a side road that goes to the main road connecting Horomerice and Prague. This memorial to someone who was killed at this spot has been up since February of last year. Just as in parts of the US, it is a common practice for friends and family of a person killed on a highway to erect and maintain a memorial. This one occassionaly has lit candles.

Karlovy Vary...

With our upcoming departure from the Czech Republic we have developed a punch list of things to see before we leave (a short 7 weeks from now). One of these items is to visit Karlovy Vary. Since today is a holiday (May Day) we decided to take the 90 minute drive to Karlovy Vary in the western part of the Czech Republic.


Here is information from Wikipedia:
Karlovy Vary (German: Karlsbad), sometimes known in English as Carlsbad, is a spa city situated in Bohemia, the western part of the Czech Republic, on the confluence of the rivers Ohře (German: Eger) and Teplá. Carlsbad is named after Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who founded the city in 1370. It is historically famous for its hot springs (13 main springs, about 300 smaller springs, and the warm-water Teplá River).

In the 19th century, it became a popular tourist destination, especially for international celebrities visiting for spa treatment. The city is also known for the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and the popular Czech liqueur Karlovarská Becherovka. The glass manufacturer Moser Glass is located in Carlsbad.

The city has been used as the location for a number of film-shoots, including the 2006 films Last Holiday and box-office hit Casino Royale, both of which used the city's Grandhotel Pupp in different guises.

On 14 August 1370, Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor gave city privileges to the place that subsequently was named after him, according to legend after he had acclaimed the healing power of the hot springs. However, earlier settlements could be found in the outskirts of today's city.

Due to publications by doctors like David Becher and Josef von Löschner, the city developed into a famous spa resort and was visited by many members of European aristocracy. It became popular after the railway lines to Eger (Cheb) and Prague were completed in 1870.

The number of visitors rose from 134 families in the 1756 season to 26,000 guests annually at the end of the 19th century. By 1911 that figure had reached already 71,000 but the Great War put an end to tourism and also led to the collapse of the Austro Hungarian Empire by late 1918.

The German-speaking majority protested against being made a part of Czechoslovakia by the Treaty of Saint Germain. A demonstration on 4 March 1919 passed peacefully, but later that month six demonstrators were killed by Czech troops after a demonstrations turned unruly[1].

In 1938 the Sudetenland including Karlovy Vary became part of German Reich and the entire Czech population was expelled. The German speaking inhabitants thus[citation needed] became a majority in the city until their expulsion in 1945.

Before that, the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 had associated the city with anti-liberal censorship within the German Confederation.


The center of Karlovy Vary.


May Day in Karlovy Vary.



Noah trying some tree climbing.



Pastel colors and horse drawn carriages.


Kathy samples the mineral waters for which Karlovy Vary are famous. Nearly every tourist walks around with a special glass for the waters. The water itself was hot and with iron or sulphur. Not very good, really.


Just like Petrin in Prague, Karlovy has a hill with a furnicular to the top, and then a tower you can climb for a great view of the area.


It was aa great day for a trip to Karlovy Vary.

Kathy and "le Sabrage" (Using a sword to take the top off a bottle of champagne)...

Kathy had what she described as one of her best days in Prague yesterday. She went on one of the "Let's Go" tours with several of her friends from ISP. This one was called "Surprising Spring Walk" and covered some hidden places in Mala Strana including the Palffy Palace (music school) and Royal Gardens.

It also included a stop at the restaurant U Maliru (literally,"At the Painters") which is described on-line as "A landmark restaurant with a history spanning 460 years, appreciated by kings, diplomats and politicians alike. Fine French cuisine among the restored frescoes or in the summer garden with a view of a picturesque little square on the Lesser Side. When the famous gourmet King Rudolf II sent his spies to investigate Czech pubs, a superb kitchen was indicated by one star, an excellent one by two. The only restaurant with three stars was this one."

U Maliru's sommelier, Dita Skrivankova, demonstrated a technique called "le Sabrage", where the top of a bottle of champagne is removed with a sword, sabre or knife. This tradition was initiated in France in 1812 by Napolean and used to celebrate victories in battle. She then let several of the women try the technique themselves.




Here is Dita Skrivankova with her "weapon".


Kathy tries out Sabrage on her own.


Here is a demonstration of the "le Sabrage" technique by a French-sounding guy on YouTube.

Prague tulips...

Spring has finally sprung in Prague and the tulips are in full bloom. It wasn't a bad winter, especially considering that some cold weather and measurable snow in December had many predicting it to be long and painful.

I guess it was long, but just not too cold and not snowy at all. It seemed as if March lasted for three months. First there was FebruMarch, then March and then we got three weeks of Marchpril. The high temperatures seemed to fluctuate from 35 to 49 Fahrenheit for that entire period.

Anyway, there were some outdoor cafes open on Sunday as the temperature approached 70, and it looks like the same today.

On the way into Sunday school yesterday we (as usual) parked near Dejvicka circle and then caught the tram to Malostranska namesti where our church, St. Thomas, is. Here are a few pictures of the thousands of tulips in bloom - they were quite beautiful.

Hello I must be going...

A lot has transpired in the last few weeks, and big changes are in the offing. We will be leaving Prague and back to Minnesota. I have already accepted a job, given my notice at Radio Free Europe and informed my staff that I will be leaving. It won't be for a little while yet - June 21 to be exact - because Noah needs to finish the school year at the International School of Prague (which he does on June 19).

We are moving back to the great state of Minnesota, and I have, thankfully, already secured gainful employment there. I will go back to work for my previous employer ATK in Plymouth, and for my old (as in previous) boss, George Frye. The company and George seemed glad that I was available to come back and once the ball started rolling it didn't take long for all of the details to get wrapped up. George's offer was fair - he has always been fair to me - and I am looking forward to getting back to work there.

I do not regret my time at Radio Free Europe. To the contrary, the experience has exceeded my expectations. We wanted to move to Prague to give Kathy and especially Noah the experience of living outside of the US. I had lived in Saudi Arabia for three years so I already knew what living outside of the US was like. And it certainly wasn't a dissatisfaction with life in the US or a belief that life in Europe would be better than in the US. I firmly believe that the US is the greatest nation in the history of the world, and I want to live there. But it's hard to appreciate how great she is (even with the faults) until you look at her from from the outside.

I will have more to say about the move back in the coming weeks, but for now we just want to officially announce our upcoming departure from Prague and return to the Twin Cities. It will be good to be home.

Turkey visit - Final tidbits...

We returned to Prague from Turkey nine days ago, so it's time for me to wrap things up. Here are a few photos that I like.



This is looking down a quaint little alley in Sultanahmet. Notice the mosque framed in the center.



Turkish women.




One of the cafes where we had a meal. You could also get a hookah, or water pipe (also known as a shisha or, in Saudi, a hubbly bubbly) for a smoke (tobacco only).


A view of the Bosphorus from the Galata tower on a warm but hazy day in Istanbul.

Trip to Turkey - The Grand Bazaar...

The last full day in Istanbul was Tuesday, April 15th. Tuana drove Noah to our hotel after her boys were put on the bus to school (she had kept them home from school on Monday just so they could be with Noah) and then the four of us headed to the Grand Bazaar in the old part of the city.

From Wikipedia:
The Grand Bazaar (or Covered Bazaar, Turkish: Kapalıçarşı ("Covered Bazaar")) in Istanbul is one of the largest covered markets in the world with more than 58 streets and 4,000 shops, and has between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily. It is well known for its jewelry, pottery, spice, and carpet shops. Many of the stalls in the bazaar are grouped by type of goods, with special areas for leather coats, gold jewelry and the like. The bazaar contains two bedestens (domed masonry structures built for storage and safe keeping), the first of which was constructed between 1455 and 1461 by the order of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror. The bazaar was vastly enlarged in the 16th century, during the reign of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, and in 1894 underwent a major restoration following an earthquake.

Here is one of the many covered streets (58, according to Wkipedia).






















Here is Tuana helping Kathy buy some scarfs (pashminas). It helps to have a local with you to help secure the best prices. Americans are not used to haggling for everything (in the US nowadays even the price for a car normally isn't negotiated). Imagine going into Walmart and haggling for every purchase.






















Noah and I waited outside the shop while the wheeling and dealing for scarves went on. We went to a nearby shop and found a jersey from another of the four top level football (soccer) clubs. It was offered at 20 Turkish Lira ($15.50) and I got it down to 15 ($11.50). Not bad.



We then had a nice lunch in one of the many restaurants in the bazaar. It was a very interesting experience and Kathy and I both wished we had gone there sooner to shop. As you can imagine, with 4,000 stores they have lots of neat stuff.

"Does Radio Free Europe Still Exist?"...

Here is an op-ed from today's Washington post that makes a good case not only for our continued existence but for our resurgence. Since coming here in 2006 I have said that most people under the age of 45, when you mention Radio Free Europe, think of the r.e.m. song. It's time for Congress to put up or shut up. Those of you who visit the blog know that I report on the falling dollar every month, because I am greatly impacted since I am paid in dollars but most of my expenses are in Euros or Czech crowns. The same is true for RFE/RL - our entire budget from Congress comes to us in dollars and the dollar has fallen so much recently that operations may be impacted.

Radio To Stay Tuned To
By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, April 22, 2008; A19
"Radio Free Europe? Does that still exist?"

That was the question; the speaker was an Important Public Broadcaster, visiting Europe for a few days last week. It wasn't a surprising query, as these things go, or an ignorant one. Not many other Americans know that Radio Free Europe still exists, so why should he?

Nevertheless, the query bothered me, because Radio Free Europe -- the Cold War news service that was, for decades, the only source of independent information in Eastern Europe -- does exist. In fact, it's as important as it ever was, at least in the 21 countries and 28 languages in which it is still often the only source of independent information: Farsi for Iran, Arabic for Iraq, Dari and Pashto for Afghanistan, plus Turkmen, Azeri, Belarusan, Georgian, Chechen, Tajik, Albanian, Serbian and Russian, among others. The fact that you haven't heard anyone mention RFE lately, let alone the achievements of its Afghan journalists-- they provide much of the news in much of that country -- says more about the poverty of the American foreign policy debate in general (and this election-year debate in particular) than about almost anything else. In RFE, we have an American institution that is admired, even beloved, in many difficult parts of the world; and yet we are slowly, methodically, starving it to death.

Reputation to the contrary, RFE is not American propaganda radio. It is better described as "surrogate radio": a broadcasting service that supplies local, national and international news, in radio, Internet and sometimes video form, in countries where other local news is weak or unavailable. Most of the programming is written by local journalists, who follow local politics in the local languages. Many of them live in the countries they cover, sometimes at great risk. When the Newseum was opened in Washington last week, the names of four RFE journalists -- a Turkmen, two Iraqis and an Uzbek -- all killed in the past two years, were already inscribed on a plaque there. In the past year alone, RFE has dealt with staff kidnappings in Iraq and Afghanistan, disappearances in Turkmenistan, official harassment in Russia and Belarus, and blackmail from Iran.

Occasionally, RFE journalists even have to be smuggled out of their home countries. But when this happens, they wind up in Prague, where, for anachronistic post-Cold War-era reasons (President Vaclav Havel gave RFE a building there after 1989) the organization now has its headquarters. Once there, they can't go home, they can't get green cards, they don't speak Czech, and, now that the dollar has collapsed to a degree not fully appreciated in Washington, they can't support themselves, either. RFE, which at its peak received $230 million annually in congressional funding, now gets $75 million in rapidly devaluing currency. That money pays for transmitters, salaries, security and anti-jamming technology as well as programming and Web content in 28 languages. To put that in perspective, as RFE President Jeff Gedmin likes to say, $75 million is also the price of four Apache helicopters.
Which is an apt comparison, since, if RFE vanishes, we may need a lot more helicopters to replace it. Many analysts -- our defense secretary among them -- pay much lip service nowadays to the need for "soft power," the non-military initiatives and institutions that, once upon a time, helped us win hearts and minds in remote places, even when we wouldn't or couldn't send an army. Each of the presidential candidates has implicitly agreed, claiming that when he or she is elected, foreign policy is going to be conducted differently, more diplomatically and so on. But what does that entail? Will "diplomacy" mean we force Slovenia and Norway to send a dozen more soldiers to Afghanistan? Or should diplomacy" mean that we help the people who are trying to foster civilized public debate in Afghanistan as an alternative to warfare? When I was at the RFE office in Prague several weeks ago, the Afghans there showed me the enormous, old-fashioned canvas mailbags that arrive every week from Afghanistan, full of letters thanking the presenters, offering arguments, making comments -- and asking why there isn't more service, more coverage, more than 12 hours of daily service from Radio Free Afghanistan.

RFE does have a good number of admirers in Washington, as well as a few constructive critics, usually people who wish it did more things better. What it does not have, however, is an advocate: someone, in Congress, the White House or on the campaign trail who remembers that Americans have done soft power rather well in the past, that the collapse of the dollar is more than a minor irritant for rich tourists, that with better transmitters we could reach more Iranians, and that we could easily swap a few helicopters for better-informed Afghans. "Yes" is the answer to the Important Public Broadcaster's question; Radio Free Europe still exists. But if no one remembers to support it, politically and financially, Radio Free Europe won't exist much longer.

Turkey Visit - We meet our friends...

Continuing with our Istanbul vacation, on Sunday (April 12th) we met our Turkish friends, Armin and Tuana and their two boys, for brunch at the Istanbul Hilton. Armin had managed the Hilton in Prague before returning to Istanbul last summer. He was there when President Bush visited last June and was able to him. He now manages three properties in Istanbul, two Hiltons and a Conrad (an upscale version of the Hilton).

They hosted us for Sunday brunch at the Istanbul Hilton, which is the flagship of the properties in Istanbul. There was a lovely view and the food and service were excellent.


Here are Kathy and I with Armin and Tuana.


Here is Noah with his best friend from ISP last year, Ares, and Ares's younger brother Marco. They got along like long lost friends, which is what they were (but it sounds odd to say about 10 year olds).

After brunch they took Noah for 2 days giving Kathy and I the chance to explore a lot of Istanbul on our own. And Noah had a great time.

Trip to Turkey...Visit to Asia

Turkey is known as the place where Europe and Asia meet. The Bosphorus is the waterway that goes from the Black Sea in the north to the Sea of Marmara in the south. The old historic portion of Istanabul, Sultanahmet, where we stayed is on the European side of the Bosphorus, so we took a ferry ride to the other side so that Noah could say that he had been to Asia. There are ferries that go to many places on the asian side, but we decided to go to Uskudar. See the map. The price is extremely reasonable, about $1 per person, for the 15 minute trip.


Here we are after arrving at Uskudar. As soon as we were all off of the ferry they allowed the returning passengers board - that is them in the background.



We walked around for about an hour on the Asian side before jumping on the ferry back to Sultanahmet. We found these stairs and climbed to the top. Noah is much faster than Kathy and me.



Here is one of the views from the top - looking back to the European side. After this we climbed back down and explored the shopping area near the port. As you might expect, this area was much less touristy than Sultanhmet.

It was a good (and very cheap) excursion for us to take.