Later on Thursday I took myself on a walk up the hill in Istanbul from my hotel past Topkapei Palace along the light rail line to the area where the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia sit side by side. I had decided to try to find a mozaic museum I had seen the day before near the Blue Mosque. I visited the museum which contained dozens of Roman mozaics from the time of Constantine; they were dusty and faded. Looked unrestored. Typical Roman scenes from myhology and daily life.
Then I visited Hagia Sophia (pronounced eye-uh sof-yuh) which in some ways symbolizes what our trip is about. This Medevil church was later converted into a mosque, and most re3cently has been designated a museum by the government...and so belongs to everyone.
Later in the evening I had the opportunity to join a group of Rumanian tourist for a cruise on the Golden Horn and Bosphorus. This two our evening cruise afforde3d me my first major inter-cultural interfai8th encounter of the trip. I discoved tht only two of the Rumanian group spoke English. One was the tour director who sought me out for a conversation. Even though he identified himself as a non-believer, he said he thought it was funny6 and interesting that the Virgin Mary is mentioned more times in the Qur'an than in the Bible.
Perhaps more interesting was an encounter I had at the beginning of the water excursion when an elderly orientalo man sought me out for conversation. I learned that he is a citizen of China who normally lives in Beijing, but is spending five years as a Christian (Nazarene) missionary to the formerly (still?) communist nation. We had a pleasant conversation. His English is better than mine. As I sat at the bow of the boat on the upper deck with a cool ocean breeze bathing my face I watched the Chinese missionary make the rounds of the Rumanians, presumably asking these supposedly atheistist Eastern Europeans if they had yet given their lives to Jesus.
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