(Sacrifice Holiday)Kurban Bayramı celebrated two months and ten days after Şeker Bayramı is Turkey's longest religious and also secular holiday. This holiday commemorates Abraham's near sacrifice of his son Ismail (Isaac). It is a shocking experience for newcomers. According to Muslim beliefs rams and calves are sacrificed. Following Islamic tradition every devout household who can afford it buys one.In recent years Muslims have begun to make donations to charitable institutions instead of sacrificing animals. Despite this however, your neighbor may still decide to sacrifice a sheep, and you might be surprised to see this happen in your garden! The owners of these animals sacrifice them according to appropriate Muslim traditions with the assistance of a butcher on the morning of Kurban Bayramı. In accordance with Muslim traditions 1/3 of the meat should immediately be cooked at home by the owner of the animal, 1/3 of the meat should be distributed among the poor and the last 1/3 should distributed among neighbors and relatives. Kurban Bayram is on December 20, 21, 22 and 23, 2007.

The Yenikapi site is the linchpin of what the Turkish government dubs the "project of the century". The $4bn (£2.2bn) Marmaray transport project is being built by a Japanese-led consortium. There will be tunneling under the Bosphorus for the first time ever, with high-speed trains going through the deepest underwater tunnel in the world in the middle of a high-risk earthquake zone. The tunnel itself will be built to withstand quakes of 9.0 on the Richter scale in the area of the North Anatolian Fault, which runs below the Sea of Marmara nearing the walls of Istanbul. Seismologists say a large earthquake and a mini tsunami are almost inevitable within a generation at the latest.

The ambitious new transport system is to shift 75,000 passengers an hour and to put Istanbul behind only Tokyo and New York in the global league table for urban rail capacity.

There is no doubt the Marmaray is needed urgently. In a city of 12 million, which seems to grow by the week, the traffic congestion is a nightmare and the Bosphorus bridges are gridlocked semi-permanently. So the engineers, transport officials and urban planners are in a hurry to get the infrastructure built by the end of the decade.

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