Istanbul

Hello Everyone,

Keeping in mind that it is entirely possible that no one actually reads this anymore, I’ve decide that give an update on my continued misadventures.

The semester abroad ended almost 2 months ago, but I’ll summarize what happened any way.

The second to last weekend in may, I went to visit Istanbul to see Tim Sparklin who was flying in from Cairo. I left Toulouse on a Friday afternoon, stopped in Frankfurt, and then arrived in Istanbul in the middle of the night. I then had a sudden moment of panic. There are two international airports in Istanbul and Tim and I hadn’t specified which one we were going to. Also, neither of us had cell phones and I didn’t remember the name of our hotel. But I didn’t really start to panic until I realized that there were no incoming flights from Cairo.

I considered my options. I could head into the city, try to find an internet café and check which hostel we had a reservation for. I could wait and hope that there was something wrong with the “arrivals” screen. Or I could go to the other airport, and wait there. I choose option 2, mostly because I was too exhausted to do any of the others. Fortunately, I choose wisely. Tim’s flight simply hadn’t been added to the list yet (even though many others arriving after it had been).
Tim and his roommate from Cairo arrived, we got out cash, and took the train into town. Between the 3 of us, we spoke at least semi-fluent English, French, and Arabic, but no Turkish. We arrived at our hostel at about 7:30am and had to struggle not to fall asleep. I knew well that I only had three full days in Istanbul.

We walked down to the Sea of Marmora and ordered tea at a little restaurant. As we were leaving, two Turkish men overheard Tim and Greg speaking Arabic and invited us to join them for another round of tea. We had a rather odd conversation. One of them spoke Turkish, a little English, and a little Arabic, the other spoke only Turkish and Arabic. Out of the three of us, we all spoke English, Tim and Greg spoke a little Arabic, and Greg and I spoke French. (and yes, it was just as confusing in my head at the time) I couldn’t understand about 85% of the conversation, but I did catch the topics of where we all lived, what we were doing in Istanbul, and Hilary Clinton. The man who spoke no English referred to her while making a rather descriptive hand gesture, which made me laugh. I noticed an interesting cultural feature of Turkish conversations; every time the man wanted my attention, he would tap my forearm. A little odd, but not creepy.

Afterwards, I asked Tim what the man had been saying about me. He told me that the man kept saying “but he must be Turkish, look at his beard”. That was the start of it. I have never had so many people ask me for directions in my life, and all of them speaking Turkish. Seriously, what about me made everyone on the street assume that I was one of them? I should work for the CIA, as I seem to be able to fit in anywhere. This chameleon like ability did have an advantage though. Downtown Istanbul is about as commercialized as it gets, and their touts are very aggressive, however, I found that if I walked with a simple look of disinterest people would leave me alone. It was actually kind of funny. The three of us would be walking single file through a crowded marketplace with me in the lead. I’d walk by and be ignored, and then Greg and Tim would get pounced on.

Any way, during our stay we were able to visit Hagia Sofia, Topkapi Palace, Galata Tower, Remnants of the great wall, the grand bazaar, Süleymaniye Mosque, and the Basilica Cistern. Also, we saw twirling dervishes and went to a Turkish bath, which was, well, really gay. If someone had told me a year before that I would one day pay good money to be scrubbed, slapped, de-toweled, and meowed at by fat old Turkish men, I would have told them that they were nuts.

Looking back, it’s surprising how well we did. No one got lost or robbed. And since a lot of the names for food are the same in Arabic and Turkish, we got by at restaurants too. It must have been an amusing sight to see two westerners shouting out the names of random vegetables in Arabic to their Turkish waiter.

On Monday afternoon, I left Tim and Greg and took the train back to the Airport. From there I flew back to Toulouse by way of Frankfurt again. I arrived after midnight and let myself in without disturbing the family.