Istanbul not Constantinople

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks
News from the home front. I’m totally cured of the raging cold I wrote about last time. Thanks everyone for your well wishes. A combination of gargling salt water twice a day, drinking lemon and honey, and a magical Italian elixir called Influvis seem to have done the trick.

Also, the apartment is full again with all four rooms being occupied for the first time since the summer started. When the school year ended last June, Alice and Deborah moved out and it was just Raimondo and me through the summer which was quite nice. In mid-September we were joined by Simone who is from Mantova in Lombardia and is a veterinarian. At the end of September, Raimondo’s contract with the university in Ancona ended and he moved to Seville, Spain for a new job. His room was quickly taken by his friend Pasqualino who Raimondo knew from the university, and a couple weeks ago, the final room was filled by another student, Alfonso, who is from near Milan. Now the apartment is full. Pasqualino is always at the university and eats all his meals there. I’ve seen him four times total in the month he has lived with us and spoken to him twice. He’s the perfect roommate. Simone is great too. We get along well, we have similar philosophies about sanitation (kitchen, bathrooms) and while his English isn’t great (yay!), he is very patient with my Italian and makes efforts to speak slowly and plainly to me so that I understand him. I actually prefer this situation as it’s forcing me to work on my Italian instead of defaulting to English as I did with Raimondo.

The less said about Alfonso the better. He is a disaster so far in both the hygiene and sanitation departments and is suspected of helping himself to food and toiletries that aren’t his. Not an auspicious start. On the one hand, this is his first time living away from home and likely he has never had to look after himself before so this may just be a learning hump he has to get over. I was probably pretty similar when I was his age and living on my own for the first time. On the other hand, I’m not his age and haven’t been for a while, I’m not living on my own for the first time and it’s not my idea of fun to house train a college freshman. It’s no longer the pleasant living environment I enjoyed for the past year. I’m hopeful that a bit more acclimation time and some input from Simone and me will perhaps stabilize the situation. That, or I’m house-hunting.

Istanbul. (That's my transition sentence. Just like they teach you to do in school.)

Istanbul was cool. Literally and descriptively. We had a couple days of pleasant, partly sunny days to start and then it was pretty lousy and rainy the rest of the time. I wasn't amazed like I have been with a couple other places, but I really enjoyed it.


My visit began with the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel. I’d done some research before the trip and a recurring piece of advice was to beware of the taxi drivers. That’s where the exploitation starts. I’d had an email from Sean already saying it was fine and should only cost around 40 YTL. The adventure began in the airport when I was approached by a service offering a “private taxi ride” for “only” 60 EUR (at 2 lira to the euro this would have been about 120 YTL!). Among the benefits touted were a private ride and I wouldn’t have to deal with the traffic of the regular yellow taxis. Since I don’t really trust hover technology yet and would be riding by myself in the taxi anyway, I decided to brave the traffic and pass on their offer.

At this point, I had been up since 4.00h (it was around 13.00h now), eaten little and was leery about what to expect, on edge and overly suspicious. When my driver drove us 5km through heavy traffic to a traffic light and then did a u-turn and drove us almost all the way back the way we had just come I got very nervous, and when he turned into a gravel parking lot, bounced us over a curb through a giant puddle and then along a muddy track, well, I admit I may not have been thinking clearly at this point, but I was positive I was being taken hostage or in the middle of some scam. I had my hand on the door handle and was fully prepared to execute a rolling, tumbling evacuation should my crack survival skills deem it necessary.

However, we ended up on a main road after having, I have to assume, taken some proprietary short cut. I began to settle down a bit and take in the city as the road we were taking traced the curves of the seashore on the right and the city walls on the left. The city covers a huge area and about thirty minutes into the trip, just as I started to fully relax, I saw traffic slowing while realizing we weren’t slowing proportionately and realized we were about to get into an accident.

My brain locked-up in disbelief (which demonstrates how well I react in a crisis) as we crunched into the car in front of us. No one suffered any real damage and after a slight delay we were off again and soon at the hotel. The W Hotel in Istanbul is an overly luxurious hodge-podge of conflicting design ideas (I assume, since I really don’t know anything about design) with a lobby more akin to a disco and staff sporting designer jeans and sweater vests, but that’s where we were for the first night and the bed was divine and I spent my first five hours in Istanbul watching Turkish television (which featured Polish music television and dubbed episodes of “According To Jim” prominently) and snacking on chocolate covered pretzels. And so began my stay in Istanbul.


Main lobby, W Hotel, Istanbul.
Istanbul is a city of contrasts that goes beyond what I’ve experienced before. At times I felt I was reliving scenes from my childhood in Africa. It’s huge in both area and population (16 million or so), resting on the continents of Europe and Asia. The reminders of its antiquity sit alongside metro stops and modern skyscrapers. It’s European in character and feel and Asian in appearance and behavior but never all the time and never consistently. Roles and scenery are constantly switched and interchangeable making it hard to fully grasp or comprehend.

Men in traditional robes and head coverings clutching prayer beads walk next to women in jeggings and knee high boots while girls with their heads modestly covered by shawls sport Dolce sunglasses and Converse kicks. A buffed and polished store sells the latest smartphones while right next door tucked beneath an overhanging ledge is a man making a living selling individual cigarettes and sticks of chewing gum. The waters and ships of the Bosphorus constantly remind that this is a city that has had the influences of the world arriving on its shores for most if not all of its existence, to be absorbed and appropriated.

It's much more modern than I expected it to be.


And by that I don't mean that they had running water and electricity - of course they did - I mean it felt like a major European city although instead of cathedrals and scooters they had mosques and men pushing huge carts stacked high with inventory down the middle of three lane roads. Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King. Their stores are everywhere, right next to the baklava chain. I don’t know what I fully expected, but going that far east I thought something.


Two instances remain prominent in my memory which I’ll end today with and then write about the rest of the trip next time.

On Sunday, our first full day, we stopped for tea during our wanderings. Tea shops are everywhere. The one I happened to choose, because it looked like it was “authentic” and not “touristy”, was outdoors and consisted of a few plastic tables maybe two feet tall with plastic stools of equal height. These were scattered around a small patch of cement at the foot of some steps leading up to a mosque. A couple of the tables were taken by men playing backgammon which gave it that all important “authentic” air. An old man manned the kitchen which looked like it was easily packed up at night along with the rest of the furniture and wheeled off home. He didn’t speak any English but when tea is the only thing on the menu and two fingers are raised, the meaning is pretty unmistakable. When we sat down I told Sean, “Don’t turn around, don’t turn around, don’t turn around,” which of course he did, because I didn’t want him to see what passed for the sink which was a five gallon bucket of water, turned light brown now from a day’s worth of rinsings and evoking anew memories for me of my childhood in Africa which had drawn me to the place in the first instance.


A kitchen, the chef's table, and the washing station.
Our tea came, along with lots of smiles and a speech totally incomprehensible to us. When we were done, the international sign for “Check please” (how does that work everywhere?) along with more finger illustrations got us through paying the bill. He noticed my camera on the table and offered to take our picture, which we appreciated.


I like to think of him now, selling his tea to grown men hunched over on stools too small for children, rinsing the dishes in his sink and packing it all up each night.

Later that day, after exhausting, numbing hours in the Grand Bizarre and the Spice Market (“He who controls the Spice, controls the universe!”), we were walking up one of Istanbul’s many hills (technically, this hill is Istanbul’s second hill but I don’t know how that was decided) towards the Süleymaniye Mosque. We nosed around the grounds and the cemetery for a bit (the mosque itself was closed) and the mausoleum of Roxelana (if you have the chance, spend some time reading about her; she’s quite fascinating).




Afterwards, we stopped just outside the walls to buy some postcards and look at some scarves which was when we met my favorite salesperson of the whole trip. There was one rack of scarves for 3 YTL (2 USD) and another for 5 YTL (3.50 USD). I had settled on one to buy for 3 YTL when the salesman approached, greeted us, asking where we were from and how we liked Istanbul. I said I was from Italy and we chatted a bit in Italian and Sean said the US and we switched back to English. When he saw the scarf in my hand he said that one was better for girls and if I wanted a good scarf, like his, I should look on the other rack, the ones for 5. I laughed and pointed this out to him and he laughed too. I selected a scarf and he said I had made a fine choice and started to put it in a bag. Since we had our backpacks I asked how much for a scarf without a bag. He laughed and said 6 with a bag and 5 without. Sean had picked a 3 YTL scarf and again was directed to the ones for 5 which were of better quality and better suited to men. He found one appropriately manly which received the approval of our new style consultant. At this point we’re talking about 7 USD total for the two but we asked if there was a discount for buying two. No discount but the bag would be free. The whole transaction, which included much more humorous and fascinating moments which I’ve chosen to keep to myself and relate only the mundane boring parts, lasted for just a few moments but sticks in my mind, both because of his happiness, good humor and easy-going personality and because it was the only time I didn’t feel like I was being taken for a ride while trying to buy something.


Freelance journalists don’t write articles as long as this, even when they're being paid by the word. I’ll stop for now. Next time, more pictures and details from the rest of the trip. Meanwhile, I’m steadying myself for a weekend which includes a festival having something to do with the ghosts of dead children and another that features a thirty minute period where all the local wine you can drink is free but it might be a cherry wine.