Istanbul – Monday 27th July

Ok, just so you know, I am running about a week late with these blogs, but will do my best to catch up over the next couple of days – I have a 2 and a half hour bus trip tomorrow, and should have made better use of the 7 hour bus trip yesterday (although sleep seemed like a much better option). I will endeavor to do so ASAP.

Driving into Istanbul was a very surreal experience. Of course, given that I had had barely any sleep, and I had just woken up from the longest unbroken period (about 2 hours) didn’t seem to help. There were lots of men standing on the side of the freeway, and I saw a number of them being picked up in buses – I realized that there was a large percentage of the population unemployed (apparently it’s about 30%) and these were workers who waited for somebody to come along and offer them manual labor, or to do random jobs. Very different to back home, where our unemployment is about 6%, unless the arse-end of the country dropped out recently.
Istanbul – formerly Constantinople until the 1920s, is a city that is at least 3000 years old, if not older (according to the man on the park bench – more on that later). We reached the outer limits of the city at about 7.30am, and kept driving and driving and driving until we got to the Otogar (bus terminal) at about 8.30am. On the way in, there were these massive modern buildings, interspersed with older areas and plenty of mosques. This was the first time that I had really seen a mosque, or at least paid attention to one.
They are normally a large round building with a dome on top, and one or two spires reaching up into the sky, towering over the other buildings around. They are a bit intimidating at first, until you think back to the silhouette image of the Disneyland castle, which had a similar shape (dome topped building and large spire) amongst other areas of the castle. There have been so many negative spins on the Moslem people in the news since September 11, 2001, but I was keen to see if there was any substance to it, or if was all bull-shit.

We arrived at the Otogar, and were immediately thrown into a state of confusion. Shortly before getting of the bus, Aladdin had come around and asked us if we needed to catch the metro or taxi. We said taxi, thinking that he meant the train system by ‘metro’. What we realized he meant about 10 minutes after getting off our bus was that the bus company was Metro, and they offered shuttle buses to various locations around the city… d’oh! Doolittle started feeling a little bit self-conscious, as all of the men were looking at her lewdly in her singlet top. She wanted to get the hell out of there, but I wanted to make sure that we were heading in the right direction. We quickly checked the lonely planet, and headed up over the bridge, hoping to get on the train system and make our way to our accommodation. Not having any Turkish Lira, we decided that catching a taxi was the best way to do it, since all of the ATMs were either out of order, or had no money in them.
We approached a taxi driver, who didn’t speak any English, and gave him the address of our hostel. We tried to make him understand that we didn’t have any Lira, and after about 2 minutes, he clued onto what we were saying. He loaded our bags into the boot (and Doolittle into the back of the taxi), and waved for Lapzang and I to follow him. Not sure what was happening, Lapzang and I followed. Fortunately, he was taking us to a currency exchanger. We changed over our Euros for Lira, and headed back to the taxi. He told us that it would cost us 25 Lira, 35 minutes later (of rather hair-raising driving through the streets of Istanbul) and a short stop for him to holler a query to a local taxi driver, we arrived at our hostel in Sultahnamet.
Sultahnamet is the old part of Istanbul, and when you say Constantinople, it was the main section of the city, where all of the emperors of various empires ruled from (those empires being the Greek, Roman, and Ottoman).
We arrived at the hostel, the Nobel Hostel at about 11, and were told that we could check in at about 1pm. We were allowed to leave our bags there, and went for a wander. At this point, we didn’t realize how good a spot we were in, as we walked up past a rather large mosque, through a park near another large building, and quickly found some ATMs, where we could get more Turkish Lira. We were quite peckish, so we moved quickly to a food store that proudly proclaimed “Best Kebabs, Decent Prices” out the front.
A rather tasty and decently priced meal later, we headed back to the park we had passed through to pass away 30 minutes until we could book into our hostel. While we were sitting there, a man approached us and said hello, asking us where we were from. We (unwittingly at this point) said “Australia”. “Oh, my cousin lives in Australia!” he proudly proclaimed. He told me that I looked Turkish, and that we should follow him to his father’s store, where we would be able to find out information about what to see, and if we needed anything, they would be able to help us out. Doolittle was feeling rather poorly at this stage, so we declined, and he walked off in a bit of a huff.
At this point our attention was drawn to the laughter of an old man on the other side of the bench we were sitting on. “He thinks you look Turkish? That’s because he looks like a Gypsy!” the old man chuckled. He was sitting there, throwing little crumbs to the sparrows. He informed us to be careful of anybody approaching us, as they were only out to get commission on helping tourists find their way around, and to book tours through local companies. He also told us that people in Istanbul used to eat sparrows, but now that he was retired, he was happy to feed them and keep them healthy and able to avoid people. I mentioned that Istanbul/Constantinople was a very old city, and he told us that recently archaeologists had found relics that suggested people had been living on that particular piece of land for almost 8000 years. Definitely a city with a bit of history!

It got time to go and book into our hostel, so we thanked our old benefactor and headed back towards the hostel. On the way back, an old Mongolian looking fellow asked me for a light for his cigarette. Being the friendly Aussie that I am, I did so, and he offered to polish my sandals as thanks. He was doing a good job, and I started to become a bit worried that he would ask me for money… particularly since he told me that the shoe-shine had a 3 year warranty… and he has figured out that it was our first day in Istanbul, and told me that the going rate for a shoe shine was 12 Lira. I told him that I only had 50 Lira notes, and offered him about 5 Lira in coin. He grudgingly accepted this offering. I later found out that the rate for the base shoe polish was 1 Lira, the deluxe was 2 Lira, and the super-duper clean was 3 Lira. I did notice that every time I walked past him again he didn’t bother to make eye contact, after I gave him the death stare next time I saw him.

We were able to get into our rooms at that point, but Jimmy, the fellow behind the counter, told us that it was pay for the rooms upon arrival. We didn’t have enough money, but he said it was ok to give them the money later on that day. We dumped our bags in our room, and Doolittle decided to have a little snooze while Lapzang and I went and got more money out of the ATMs to pay.
We returned to the hostel, paid Jimmy, and grabbed the bottle of Vodka I had picked up in duty free, as well as a newly acquired bottle of Orange Juice, and headed up to the terrace. Lapzang and I polished off about 3 glasses of Vodka, and when he went down to check on Doolittle, I had a tactical snooze on one of the couches upstairs. The view from the terrace was absolutely amazing – we were able to look out over the bay of Istanbul (the Bosphorus), as well as the mosque we had walked past.

At this point, a family of Aussies that were also staying in the hostel came up onto the balcony, and we had a drink with them, having a bit of a chat about our Grecian adventures and what we were all expecting from Turkey – they had just arrived from Australia and were a little bit jetlagged. During our conversation, we heard a booming voice start singing from the nearby mosque. I had only heard this in movies, and was a little bit intimidated at first, until I stopped to listen to the singing in Arabic, and was quite taken by it. It turned out that the nearby mosque was the Blue Mosque, the biggest in Istanbul, and the singing was actually a reading from the Koran. Wow. I learnt something very important that day that would keep on being reinforced over my stay in Istanbul.

Lapzang and I went for a wander in the nearby bazaar, seeing what was on sale (about 1/3 of the stores were carpet stores), then we went to collect Doolittle and headed to a nearby restaurant. We met Mahmut, the Kurdish waiter, who was very nice, and we had a very tasty dinner. As part of our learning curve, we found out that men in Turkey feel very virile when they have many children, and most men aim to have around 10. Of course, this means that there is a large population, 30% unemployment, and many hungry children… or so the people in the stores tell us. He told us that his parents had had 8 girls before having 2 boys, and that his first child had been a son. In order to make conversation, I told him that it was good to have girls, but agreed that boys were better. He looked a little bit horrified at my comments about girls (apologies to my female readers).
We finished up our dinner, and returned to the hostel.

We went back up to the terrace (at this point it was about 8pm) and found Steve, the father of the Aussie family, up there too. We had a few beers and plenty of Vodkas, and his son Riley popped up to see us for a couple of hours. We were also joined by 2 English girls that were staying in the hostel, who returned for a few drinks after dinner at the restaurant we had eaten at. At one point in the night, Riley and I had a very drunken conversation (well, I was drunk at least) about how the solar system worked (being a big passion of mine), and he managed to sneak a vodka and orange juice off me. I say this because he was 13. Hehe. Cheeky little bastard.
We also met a group of Germans briefly who were staying at the hostel, before heading to bed.
All in all, a very nice first day in Istanbul.