Istanbul, Turkey

Mon, Mar 29, 2010

Wow. Where to begin? We’ve been here a week and leave tomorrow for Athens, and I haven’t gotten a blog posted yet. Will try to do a quick recap of what we’ve been doing.

Istanbul has been a great experience for us – one of the big reasons is that we’ve been staying with a friend, Collette, and her partner, Nur, so have been comfortably ensconced in a genuine home. Most of the sites to see are across the Bosphorus Straight, so we’ve had to take the ferry every day, but that’s actually been a lot of fun. Great people watching on the ferry.

The ferries run pretty much every half hour. It takes 20 minutes to cross the Straight, so that leaves 5 minutes on either side to load and unload passengers. The boats come into the pier really hot; at the last minute, just before they’re ready to bash into the dock, they slam on their reverse engines and pop right up next to the landing. Before it’s even done moving, people are jumping off. They’re very fast about getting the gangplank put out, but everyone is in a hurry to get off, so it becomes a real shoving fest. You just have to get cozy with your neighbor and keep shuffling along. As soon as the boat is empty, they throw open the gate of the holding pen where the return passengers have been waiting, and the process is repeated in reverse.

There is a lot to see in Istanbul, so we decided to concentrate all of our Turkey time here. We have heard good things about Ephesus and Cappadocia, but those trips will just have to wait for another time. I’ve had enough of 12 hours days on a bus (or truck) just to get somewhere. We’ve had no difficulty filling our days. And because we are so close to things, an afternoon nap has worked its way into the schedule more than once.

Our first day out, Collette came with us and showed us the ropes. From her apartment, we walk about 5 blocks to reach a street where we can catch the dolmush, a shared taxi (a mini-van that holds up to 7 passengers). It’s a very cheap way to get around – to get to the ferry from this neighborhood costs 2 lira (about $1.30). The dolmush drops us right at the ferry, so it’s easy to get to where we want to go.

Collette keeps a set of Ikbils (or as Jeff likes to call them, “dongles”) on hand for visitors. They are little devices that serve as a commuter card kind of thing. They can be loaded with money, then you use them every time you go through a turnstile for the ferry or train or tram. It’s been very convenient. We loaded each of them with 20 Lira the first day and have been getting around town all week with that first payment.

Down around the ferry terminal, there are vendors selling all kinds of yummy smelling food. Roasted chestnuts, Simit, a sesame seed encrusted bread (round like a bagel, but bigger and not as chewy), Doner, which is gyro meat in a large wrap instead of pita bread, into which is spooned seasoned onions, tomatoes and pickles and then the entire thing put on a pannini press so it comes out hot and toasty. There also are loads of flower vendors, selling bunches of beautiful and colorful buttercups, roses, carnations, etc. The women selling them are stocky, with ruddy faces encircled by shiny, brightly colored kerchiefs (flower patterns seem to be favored). Their blouses and skirts are also very colorful, and, as in Africa, color/pattern matching does not seem to be much of a concern. Brightness is. They stand or sit on overturned buckets, calling out in loud voices, sucking on cigarettes with their entire body, leaning back as they inhale so that it looks like they’re drawing the nicotine all the way down to their feet.

There is a lot of life around the ferry terminals. Yesterday afternoon as we returned to the Asia side (Istanbul straddles two continents – Europe and Asia – every time we take the ferry, we leave one behind), there were crowds of young people arm in arm, dancing in large circles. One group had music blaring from the back end of a car and another group was dancing to the music of a Turkish bagpipe. The dance is basically everybody, with their arms thrown over each other’s shoulders, bouncing and stepping in beat to the music as they slowly rotate in a counter-clockwise direction. Smaller groups will break off and go to the center where they will do some fancy footwork. I’m not sure if there are dance leaders, but I noticed that there were a few people who would change things up and everyone else would follow – a little like Simon Says.

Last evening we went to a bar on the seaside where we watched the cross-town rivalry football game – Fenerbache (our neighborhood – Asian side) was playing Galatasaray (from the European side of Istanbul). According to Collette, it’s a little like the Vikings vs Green Bay Packers, only about 100 times more intense. The bar was packed and at the mid-game break, so were the streets, as hundreds of supporters poured out of the bars to smoke. At home we don’t watch sports, and I’ve never watched a lot of soccer, but since we’ve been traveling, that’s all that’s been on tv in just about every country we’ve visited. People around the world are wild about soccer/futbal. The poor waitstaff at the bar was trying to keep up with all the orders, and things got terribly mixed up. We kept getting plates of appetizers that none of us could remember ordering. We just went ahead and ate them, and figured we’d straighten it out at the end. It was a fun evening. Traveling has been so tiring for us (me, especially), that most nights we just hit the sack early, and we haven’t spent much time exploring local night-life. So it was nice to join in with a group of friends and just hang out.

Today’s plan was to ride the ferry up the Bosphorus and do some outdoor site-seeing, but it’s cold and rainy, and so far we’ve only made it as far as the breakfast table. Jeff has been helping with a few handy-man chores, and there’s a valve that needs fixing, so he’ll probably work on that this morning. The other evening, I cooked “Mexican” for the house, except I had no chili powder, no coriander and no cilantro, so it was a weak version of Mexican. We laughed at how nice it was to be doing regular house things for a change.

I see I have been chattering away and still haven’t talked about any of the sites we’ve seen. Guess I’ll have to cover that in another post. In the meantime, there’s laundry to be done and our guest room to pick up. We’ve got an early flight to Athens tomorrow, so we’ll be spending the evening getting repacked. I forgot to mention that when we got to Istanbul, one of our bags was missing. It did eventually show up, but it was a good reminder to me to ALWAYS keep a spare pair of underwear and a clean shirt in my carryon. We’re still dragging around souvenirs from Zanzibar and have picked up a few things in Istanbul, so there is extra bulk that needs to be accommodated. I have been amazed at how much we can cram into our relatively small backpacks. The zippers on those bags have held up incredibly well. I keep waiting for one to pop, but so far, we’ve gotten them closed every time. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that they hold up just a little while longer!