Travel | Laura Billings Coleman

How to Buy a Turkish Rug

Laura Billings Coleman — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 16:30:46 +0000

A Turkish shopping adventure

Originally published in the Salon.com anthology Wanderlust

If there is something missing from the American Shopping Experience — and if you’ve been to the Mall of America, as I have, you know not much has been overlooked — it is the act of bargaining. Not buying a bargain, a blandly experienced purchase of an item whose price has merely been called back to our atmosphere (i.e., “I saw these $400 shoes marked down to $39.99 and I had to have ’em!”). No, I mean the act of bargaining, in which buyer and seller come together in the great mambo of marketing, which, in the best cases, makes each leave the exchange satisfied they’ve ripped off the other just a little bit. Bargaining may be disappearing from our commercial landscape (witness the rise of Saturn dealerships), but it lives on in the rest of the world. This is, in large part, why we travel.

Not long ago, a friend called to invite me on a cheap, off-season tour of Turkey. She promised that I would see the ruins of Ephesus and the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, that I would wake each morning to the sound of the Muslim call to prayer and go to bed each night with a belly full of aubergine. Yeah, whatever, I said, just as long as I get to buy a rug. The truth was that ever since I bought my first car and was introduced to the delirious back-and-forth of negotiating, I had dreamed of going toe-to-toe with the guys who invented the dealer showroom. Since flying carpets were our first automatic conveyance — and if you’ve read “The Arabian Nights” or seen “Aladdin” you know this is true — rug merchants were actually the world’s first automobile salesmen.

And they’re outstanding salesmen, living as they do in the busy confluence between Europe and Asia, a ripe spot for studying humanity and perfecting the first salesman credo: Tell the customers what they want to hear. On my first day in Istanbul, I nearly fell prey to a green-eyed charmer who accosted me in the Kapali Carsi, the famous covered bazaar that holds more than 4,000 shops. (Take that, Mall of America!) “You are a great beauty,” he said so wolfishly that it was clear the antiseptic threat of harassment charges hadn’t drifted into this pungent corner of the world. “You must be Italian.” Actually, I’m a poster girl for the corn-fed Midwestern look, and was so pleased to be deemed continental that I was opening my wallet when my Turkish tour guide dragged me away.

After another half hour in Istanbul, I discovered that merchants’ flattery flew almost as quickly as the prices they quoted, but it was the numbers I had to pay attention to. At the time I visited, each U.S. dollar was worth about 35,500 lira, a complicated ratio, but one that gave me the heady thrill of announcing, “A million? No prob!” I spent the week learning, but it wasn’t until I passed the souvenir stands outside the ruins of Ephesus that I felt I had hardened myself to the Turkish marketing come-on. There, a young man bearing an armful of dolls and a striking resemblance to Johnny Depp deliberately bumped into me. “Excuse me, madame,” he said, his voice warm and rich as ripe olives in sunshine, “You dropped something.”

I looked to the ground and then to him. “What did I drop?”

He paused for a moment, searching my face soulfully. “It was my heart,” he dripped, but I kept walking. I was finally ready to buy a rug.

So we went to Oba, a veritable rug ranch of low-slung buildings and grassy courtyards, just down the road from the House of the Virgin Mary. A hawk-browed Turkish man in a double-breasted suit greeted us and gave a lesson about rug craftsmanship designed to dispel any notions we may have had that a good rug could be purchased on the cheap. He showed us baskets of tobacco leaves, onion skins and indigo used for dying fibers. He showed us the silkworms boiled alive for our textural pleasure — a sacrifice that Doublebreasted assured us the worms were only too glad to make. Same went for the young girls in the weaving room whose hands shuttled and knotted wool with the fluttering speed of hummingbirds. Doublebreasted promised that the girls got full health coverage, nutritious meals and a good wage, and that they didn’t complain when the small-motor demands of rug weaving forced them to leave the work by their late teens. “It is a privilege and an honor to make something so beautiful,” he said, but I couldn’t stop the piteous look that swept across my face as I watched a young girl squatting and squinting before an intricate Persian pattern. An equally sympathetic look crossed her face as she saw us herded into the carpet showroom, lambs to the slaughter.

We were led through a series of rooms where vibrant rugs and kilims were
layered like sheets, rolled into columns, and tacked to the walls — each room
duplicating and expanding upon the previous room’s treasures. At the end of
the procession was a ballroom-sized showroom where we were offered Turkish
apple tea, soda, beer and wine (American car dealers should reconsider the
popcorn and Coke routine, I thought).While we were served by a long-lashed
girl in harem pants, her counterpart — a sulky John Malkovich look-alike in
Western clothes — quietly shut the heavy wood door that was our only escape
route.

Like a Turkish kervanseray floor show in which a slim-hipped belly dancer
preps the crowd for the heftier model and finally for the cartilaginous
creature who shakes her extra-wide-load hips to tambourines and thunderous
applause, the rug show started slowly. Malkovich and Harempants lifted each
rug by the ends, walked to the center of the room and let gravity unfurl it,
the bright colors of Anatolia, Kars and Kayseri washing over us. As the
pacing built, the rugs started to cover the shining wooden floor, then
overlapped one another. Soon we had left our perches on the wooden bench that
lined the wall and begun crawling around on the rugs, examining their fine
weaves and lustrous textures. The climactic crescendo arrived with the
unfurling of a massive silk Persian of geranium reds and robin’s-egg blues.
Though we were already breathless, Doublebreasted clapped his hands and
Malkovich and Harempants, moving like choreographed game-show models, picked
up either end of the carpet and turned it by 180 degrees, shifting the rug’s
palette to crimson and cobalt. Amazing! we cried. Astonishing! we clapped.

At that, a cluster of salesmen who had been gathering in the room suddenly
converged on us and pulled us to separate corners. Three men whisked me into
another room. Their leader was a raven-haired fellow with cheap shoes and a
wistful expression. His name, Ogun, means “That Day” in Turkish, a fact that
was the source of huge laughs for his two squat henchmen who clearly
understood my English, but spoke only in Turkish with Ogun. I started to say
that I was in the market for a 5-by-7 kilim with a lot of red in it, but Ogun
shot me a pained look that suggested such a request was as déclassé as
demanding that an Old Master painting match my sofa. Instead, he ordered the
henchmen to unroll a series of rugs at my feet. When I shook my head at the
choices, the henchmen tossed their arms up in disgust, but Ogun had a more
courtly approach. With each selection I dismissed, he nodded appreciatively
and moved closer to me, as if irresistibly drawn to my aesthetic.

Soon he began dismissing rugs for me — “Can’t you see she won’t like that? She wants
real beauty,” he would scold the henchmen. He asked if my husband would like
my choice of rug, and I said I didn’t have a husband. He shouted in Turkish
to the henchmen, who eyed me up and down, and again tossed their hands up in
disgust. “They think this is a tragedy,” Ogun said, and then sighed toward
his cheap shoes, “and so do I.” At this point he asked if I had a credit card
with me. I said yes. The haggling began.

The rug I selected, or that Ogun had selected for me, was a jewel-toned
affair of blacks, pomegranate reds, jade greens and deep blues. Ogun
explained that normally he would start the bidding around $1,000, but since
this was the end of the season, and since I had no husband, he would start at
$500. I shook my head at the price, and though my blood was racing, I
couldn’t coax out a counter-offer. Ogun strode away from my side with his
hands thrust deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched. He nodded his head
and Henchman No. 1 scurried to the other room. Ogun smiled, puffed out one side
of his cheek, and slowly blew out a low whistle of air. A few minutes later,
the henchman returned and whispered in Ogun’s ear. Ogun told me that
Doublebreasted had insisted that I leave with a rug today — how did $260 sound?
Well, it sounded pretty good to me, now that my lust for bargaining had
flagged. Ogun wasn’t a shrewd creep, I thought, he was a fellow connoisseur.
Just then, my friend walked in and saw me handing off my credit card.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, and I explained the situation. “No way,”
she said to Ogun. “Two of ’em for $260!”

Quickly, my friend’s bad-cop display
made me realize I had allowed myself to be swept along too easily. Ogun
looked to me. “Two for $260?” he asked, and I nodded. He held his hand to his
heart. He walked to the corner of the room and sighed. “We are friends,
Laura?” he said, coaxing a small tear to the corner of his eye. “Why do you
hurt me like this?” Finally, I understood the theatrics required here.

“Ogun,” I said, so forcefully I convinced myself I was truly affronted. “I
don’t think you’re being honest with me …” and I snatched back my Visa card.

At that there was a very pregnant pause in which Ogun and the henchmen bored
their Turkish eyes at me. They huddled and Henchman No. 2 threw his hands up in
the air and pointed at me. Henchman No. 1 made a spitting noise. Ogun looked
over his shoulder. “So you want two rugs?”

“If the price is right,” I said. Henchman No. 2 sniffed and gestured again.
Ogun came back to my side and put his arm around me, hand to his collarbone
in a gesture of sincerity. “My friend, you know that I must make a living?” I
clenched my fist around my plastic. He let out a heavy sigh. “My friend, you
may have two for $400. No lower please.”

“Three hundred,” I said.

“Three sixty,” he said.

“Three hundred,” I said.

“Three twenty-five,” he said.

“Sold,” I said, and at that there were cheers from the henchmen and from the
small crowd from my tour bus that had gathered for the final negotiation. As
I handed off my Visa, Ogun took my hand and wrapped it under and over his
forearm as though we had been wedded by this exchange of currency. He
lovingly folded and packed my rugs in brown paper and then in a nylon case he
promised would fit nicely under my plane seat. It did.

Now I come across my two rugs, one in my living room, the other in my
bedroom, and I feel a wave of pleasure at my purchases. But the souvenir that
pleases me most is a photograph I have of Ogun and me. We are standing in the
courtyard of the rug ranch — I have my hands clasped and my head tossed back in
laughter; he gazes at the camera with the smallest trace of a smile. We both
look so satisfied — like we each ripped off the other just a little bit.

Our Pilgrims’ Progress

Laura Billings Coleman — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 17:42:53 +0000

I’m at work on a project about America’s growing fascination with geneaology, and this travel story in the May 2015 Family Fun (“The Secrets of Happy Travelers”) is one of the byproducts.

We’re particularly interested in this Groton, Massachusetts, ancestor I mentioned in the story, Ellis Barron, who was the alleged descendant of both the FitzGeralds and the Butlers, two great Irish clans of myth and legend. I say alleged, because about a century ago, there seemed to be a fashion in geneaology for improving the provenance of one’s earliest relations, and proving they were descendants of noble families. (Thus the astounding number of Plantagenet kings and Shakespeare characters in our family tree.) This trip didn’t shed much light on “Grampa” Barron, but we did get to see whales up close, and try our first ever lobster roll, so that was something.

Together in the Wilderness

Laura Billings Coleman — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 20:13:40 +0000

Together in the Wilderness

A trip to the Boundary Waters
requires guts,
endurance,
and a
convenient
escape plan.

From the June 2014 edition of Mpls/St. Paul magazine.

A Beginner’s Guide to the Boundary Waters

If you are raising children in Minnesota, it is your duty to take them to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness at least once in their young lives, but until last summer my husband and I couldn’t agree about the best approach.

A veteran of many rough portages into the back woods, he’s been pointing out which plants most closely approximate toilet paper since before our three kids were Cub Scouts, teaching them to pity the nervous families we’ve met on trips out west, ringing jingle bells to keep the bears away.

I, on the other hand, have nothing but sympathy for the jingle bell types, having had a too close encounter with an equally surprised moose on Isle Royale when I was a kid. Freakishly allergic to no-see-ums of the north woods, I once had an eyelid puff up, Rocky Balboa-style, on a paddling trip, leaving me with one working eye and no depth perception for the long portage back.

So while my husband hungers for a total wilderness immersion experience, I also like a quick exit strategy—with possible access to urgent care. Fortunately we found the perfect meeting place at Bearskin Lodge, a historic family resort on the Gunflint Trail, just a few paddle strokes from the million acre expanse of water, sky and mosquitos that make up Minnesota’s greatest natural treasure.

If you’ve been there, or if you’ve just seen the postcards, then you already know the Boundary Waters is one of the most beautiful ecosystems on the planet, deserving of every superlative the team from National Geographic bestows. While the B-Dub regularly makes the list of 50 places to see before you die, it’s no Disney World for kids, so on our drive north, we do our best to prepare our boys, ages 7, 9 and 11, for the hardships they may have to endure. Swarms of black flies and mosquitos, blistering hours of j-strokes, risk of sunburn, heat stroke, and hypothermia, trails tangled with ancient, toe-stubbing roots and rocks, and soggy sandwiches laced with the aftertaste of DEET—all the amenities Minnesotans have come to expect from the BWCA.

We didn’t mention the privation that would hit them hardest until we turned left at Grand Marais and heard a groan from the backseat.

“Hello?? Did you know the cell phone doesn’t even work up here?” the sixth-grader asks, incredulous. After five hours of Angry Bird he is finally forced to look out the window where he counts three hawks, a possible eagle, four deer, and a red fox that we really should have kept a closer eye on. That night she crept up on our cabin deck and stole just one of his brand new water sandals, adding to a growing collection of quality footwear that has earned her the neighborhood nickname “Imelda.”

Wildlife encounters like this are a big part of the Bearskin Lodge experience, where my mother still remembers watching a local woodsman gut and flay a black bear in front of a crowd of tourists when she visited here with her parents in the late 1940s. From our private dock, we hear wolves howl one early morning, and watch loons dive in the afternoon, and welcome our fellow lodgers back from their fishing expeditions in the evening, paying attention to all their advice about what’s biting (besides the obvious bugs).

Fifteen minutes after check-in, our kids gave up all hope of a wi-fi connection (before the new broad band connections started up the trail, “bandwidth” was exhausted by about 10 a.m.). Happily unplugged, they spend their days learning to paddleboard in the small bay on the west end of East Bearskin, tipping over and trying again until they are able to stride the water like Venetian gondoliers.

We might have been perfectly happy doing nothing but paddle boarding all week, were it not for an afternoon trip up to Grand Portage National Monument to remind us that we were here to travel like the Voyageurs. At the close of the 18^th century, the beaver pelt boom turned an 8.5 mile portage along the Pigeon River into a profitable crossroads for international trade—a cultural moment you can see reenacted every August at the annual Rendezvous and Powwow. (This year it’s slated for August 8-10).

As we toured the Heritage Center, and watched interpretive films about the derring-do of these red-capped, chanson-singing super heroes, my middle kid decided that paddling up and down the same lake just wasn’t going to cut it. “If you want to tell people that you’ve been to the boundary waters, I think you actually have to carry a canoe,” he said.

Enough with the toe-dipping, we decided—it was time to take a deep breath and drive in. The next day, we rose early, slathered on the sunscreen, and packed an army’s worth of sandwiches, snacks and water and set out in canoes across East Bearskin. A light breeze across the water kept the 90 degree sun from bearing down, but it did nothing to break up the dark cloud of mosquitoes that chased us up the portage trail to Crocodile Lake, official BWCA territory. The boys ran straight up the hill with their packs, whimpering, while I calculated how long it would take to turn it all around go back to the safety of our cabin.

But by the time we carried the canoe up to next the launching point and reconnected, they’d already accommodated themselves to the blood payment required to reach this elevated cloud-mirror lake steeped in lily pads and pines.

“This is the worst!” the oldest one laughed, slapping a juicy one on his younger brother’s shoulder.

“Let’s get out of here!” the middle one agreed, surprising us by grabbing a paddle and climbing right back into the canoe.

They’re still just BWCA beginners, but they’ve already mastered one of the most important lessons for survival: The welts will eventually go away, but the memories last forever.

If you go:

Flinty characters: Don’t miss the wonderful little Chik-wauk Museum and Nature Center, near the southeast edge of Saganaga Lake. This interpretive center showcases the lives and legends of pioneering spirits like the late Justine Kerfoot, of the Gunflint Lodge, who didn’t give up portaging her wood-frame canvas boat until she was ninety.

Stretch your legs: To get your bearings in this corner of the Boundary Waters, take a mostly vertical hike up to Honeymoon Bluff, near the Flour Lake Campground. A 1.5 mile round-trip will take you to a scenic outlook over Hungry Jack, East Bearskin, West Bearskin and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and give you a great view when the sun sets.

Pack it in, pack it out: That’s the rule for keeping the Boundary Waters pristine for the people behind you. But if the burden of packing for your family is what’s keeping you on shore, consider hiring one of the many knowledgeable and reasonable outfitters in the area to pack for you. Outfitters can point you to the most rewarding passages among the BWCA’s 1,200 miles of canoe routes, and set you up with the permits you’ll need to gaze at the stars from one of the BWCA’s more than 2,000 campsites.

Malt and moose: Just four hours of paddling at a leisurely pace can burn more than 1,000 calories, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t refuel with one of legendary malts at the Trail Center Lodge, a community-building burger joint that still retains its 1938 logging camp vibe. After your burger and before bedtime, be on the look-out for trucks and minivans pulled out along the trail, a sure sign there’s a moose browsing nearby.

Loving Lutsen

Laura Billings Coleman — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:56:07 +0000

Originally published in Mpls/St. Paul magazine, March 2012

On a bluebird morning last March, I slid off the chairlift for my family’s first run of the day at Lutsen, and surveyed the wintery scene. To the south, the Midwest’s only mountain tram was already running at full speed, disgorging black diamond types from bright red gondola cars. To the east, sunlight glazed the granite surface of Lake Superior, as glacial chunks of ice bobbed and rippled at the shoreline. In the sky overhead, a hawk drew circles around the frozen pines. And at the top of the aptly named “Big Bunny” run, my kindergartener was screaming his head off, begging to go back to the car.

“But we just got here,” I explained to the youngest and most fearless skier in our family, the kid whose physical daring and thrillingly low center of gravity had finally convinced us we were ready for our first family ski vacation—an excursion that now seemed in danger of becoming the most expensive 15 minutes we’d ever spent outdoors. Wiping snot on his polar fleece, he caught his breath long enough to explain the problem. “You didn’t say it was going to be a mountain,” he said, accusingly.

He’s probably not the first overconfident Midwest skier to be thrown off balance by seeing Minnesota’s most familiar resort from a much loftier point of view. Five hours north of the glaciated golf-course terrain of the Twin Cities, the Sawtooth Mountains live up to the name, rising more than 1,000 feet over the surface of Superior, and giving generations of Minnesota kids their first experience on ski runs that last even longer than the chairlift ride to the top.

Though Lutsen is the state’s oldest resort, it’s looking like a surprisingly fresh alternative to more expensive Rocky Mountain retreats thanks to a new western-style Summit Chalet on Moose Mountain, glowing reviews from winter sports writers (including the New York Times, which called it “The King of the Midwest Hills”), an acoustic and authentic North Shore night life, and the increasing pain-in-the-ass that is air travel. “We’re five hours from Minneapolis and St. Paul, and in the old days, people used to say, ‘I could fly anywhere I want to in that amount of time,’ ” says Jim Vick, Lutsen Mountain’s marketing manager. “Now you can’t fly anywhere in five hours. And you’re not going to be very relaxed when you get there.”

After pricing out a family ski package in Park City, Utah, where I met my first real mountain, we came to the same conclusion, and set out from a slushy, gray St. Paul one morning to find the North Shore blanketed in blue-white snow by mid-afternoon. In fact, the Lutsen area gets more than nine and a half feet of snow on average, ensuring a ski season that lasts into April. More seasoned skiers also rave that 92 runs spread across Lutsen’s four mountains—Ullr, Eagle, Mystery, and Moose—make it possible to ski from every compass point, switching positions to chase the best conditions throughout the day.

In spite of these natural assets, downhill skiing didn’t come to the North Shore until George Nelson, grandson of the Swedish immigrants who first homesteaded the area in the 1880s, came home from the war. A veteran of the 10th Mountain Division, he’d survived cold weather training in Leadville, Colorado (where he tried one of the first tow ropes in the country), heavy artillery in the Italian Appenines, and had a vision for transforming his hometown hills. By 1945, he’d persuaded his father to winterize the iconic summer resort, and in 1948, the state’s first chairlift started up at Lutsen with just two runs, “Chickadee” and “Hari Kari.” Though Nelson had high hopes, even he was surprised by how good the conditions turned out to be. “I did not know that we had the best hills and terrain in the upper Midwest. I’m not even sure we had maps,” says Nelson, who still marvels at the fact his daughter Cindy Nelson went on to compete in three Olympics. “She was from the smallest hill of anyone in the world, and here she was, winning the downhills, which was just amazing.”

Though Nelson, now 86, sold the ski business in the 1980s, he has fond memories of hitting the slopes with all five of his kids—a Minnesota tradition he’s very pleased to see snowball the way it has. “Kids will pick it up in nothing flat, and it’s just wonderful to watch them go,” he says. It’s true. Once the kindergartener realized we weren’t going home, he plunged down the Big Bunny and never looked back, hopping on the chairlifts a half-mile ahead of us, and waving happily on his way down. The only tears we saw the rest of the trip came when it was time to get back in the car.
If you go:
Sign up for lessons: Putting a kid on the top of a mountain and hoping he’ll figure out how to ski is not actually recommended. (Our three boys had already had a handful of lessons at local ski hills prior to our trip.) Fortunately, Lutsen’s Snow Sports Learning Center does a great job at catering to new skiers and snowboarders with half and full-day group and private lessons. Make reservations early during high-traffic holidays to guarantee you’ll get in.
Don’t forget your skinny skis: Downhill is the big draw for the majority of tourists, but Cook County’s cross-country terrain is world class, with more than 400 kilometers of groomed trail, the largest Nordic ski trail system in North America. One day when the weather report called for bone-chilling lake effect winds, we took cover within snow-white forests on trails that were groomed for both classic and skate-style skis. Before you go, check out volksski.com, a website where you can log your distance, report conditions to other skiers, and record new trails you’ll want to return to.
Enjoy the view from the top: Even if you aren’t ready to take “The Plunge,” one of Lutsen’s many double black diamond runs, don’t miss out on the amazing view from Moose Mountain. Leave your skis at the bottom of the hill and take the tram up for lunch at the Summit Chalet, which offers 100-mile views over Lake Superior. Soup’s not bad either.
Stay out late: If you’re not too worn out, there’s actually stuff to do after dark, including sleigh rides, comedy shows, and live music performances at various pubs and restaurants around the mountain. Lutsen’s commitment to having live music every night of the week has helped to build a critical mass of musicians, singers, and other creative types on the North Shore—many with CDs they’d be glad to sell for the car trip home.
Find a pillow: Lutsen boasts of having more than 3,000 places to lay your weary head within 20 miles of the slopes, with options that range from ski in/ski out lodging at Caribou Highlands and Eagle Ridge, to the old-world charm of Lutsen’s shoreline resort, to condos and townhomes between Tofte and Grand Marais that offer shuttle buses to the hills. Spots closest to the mountain tend to fill in quickly during school vacations, so plan accordingly.
Extend your weekend: Perennial discount packages like Lutsen’s “3 nights for the price of 2” January special, and half-price lodging and lift tickets during midweek definitely add to the destination’s popularity with families. Most specials make it possible to pay a little less and stay a little longer, a perfect excuse to dig deeper into all the other winter activities the area has to offer, including dog-sledding, and classes in everything from knitting to blacksmithing at Grand Marais’ North House Folk School.

Originally published in Mpls/St. Paul magazine, March 2012