Istanbul - Part I

24th August 2011
Istanbul, Turkey

Having a hilarious time so far in Istanbul. The tone of the journey to come was set by the taxi ride to the airport Tuesday morning. Our flight was at 06:30 out of London City and so E. told me that the cab would arrive at 3am to pick me up before going to her house. We would then meet J at the airport. The taxi arrived right on time, complete with crazy, smelly, oily-haired driver who thought it fitting to clean out the trash in his vehicle by taking it out and throwing it on the sidewalk in front of my flat. He also seemed to think that playing crazy Indian music (India Indian, not Native American Indian) at full volume was appropriate. He then proceeded to audition for Formula 1 on the way to E’s house.

We arrived at the airport around 04:00 after a level of crazy driving that left us both white-knuckled and deep in prayer. We walked in the sliding doors at London City only to be called over immediately by the woman at the information desk who told us that sorry, the airport was closed until 05:15 am, but we were welcome to wait on the benches with rest of the wayward travelers. Seeing as how I had a grand total of 3 hours sleep, and E had just arrived from a long trip to the U.S. at midnight, and hadn’t slept at all yet, we were both horribly disappointed. Nothing was open - so no coffee, no tea, and certainly no sausage roll for E. :(

J. arrived shortly thereafter, at which point we all found it hysterical that we got to hang out in London City airport for a good hour or so before check in. We did manage eventually to get some tea and coffee and sustenance before making our way to the gate. We wandered through Duty Free, sampled free Pimms (at 6 in the morning) and then made our way to the gate. Only to find the door to our gate closed. And the sign - when we bothered to look at it - said “Wait in Lounge”. We were off to a brilliant start.

The flight to Zurich was relatively uneventful - horrible muffins, free chocolate, bouncy whirry little plane and we managed to connect just in time. The flight to Istanbul offered a dubious lunch and a screaming little Turkish boy who managed to hit upper registers of sound only seen by world class sopranos.

Upon arrival, we went to get our visas, where I impressed the non-English speaking border agent with my three words of Turkish: Hello, Thank You, and I Love You. The hotel had offered us a taxi for 65 Euro, but we found a shuttle service for 24 Euro and decided to take that. Big mistake. Huge. It took us three hours to get from the airport to our hotel - three hours for what should have been at most a 40 minute journey. Granted, we hit horrendous traffic and stopped at three other hotels along the way, but we’re also pretty sure the driver was lost. About two hours in, E. wondered aloud if we were even still in Turkey or not.

We finally arrived at the hotel, which ended up being really nice… save for the pond-size pool outside. We decided to drop our things and then go out for a nice dinner. We all wanted to walk after hours on planes and in the bus from hell… which turned into a game of human frogger. Traffic in Istanbul is horrendous - basically gridlock and no respect for lights, lanes or pedestrians. We had to cross about six lanes of traffic and regardless of the lights, cars just came anyway. By the time we made it to the restaurant, we were all a bit traumatised. We ate at a nice brasserie in the Astoria building and our waiter was really funny and nice. We asked him for suggestions on where to go out, and when we left, he handed me a note that said:

“semi professional guide. Ozhan.” and his phone number.

We could not stop laughing, and J and E keep calling him my semi-permanent guide. We walked back to the hotel and prepared for an early night in as we were all exhausted. J and E brought ear plugs and so they missed both the strange drumming sounds and the 1am porn movie that was being filmed apparently in the room next store. (I didn’t think they would believe me… until it started up again at 9am this morning)

The best part of the evening was that we kept trying to find our hotel on the map in the Lonely Planet guide - we asked like three people - with no luck. J. spent a good half hour before throwing the book aside and declaring that our hotel must apparently not exist.

__

Breakfast this morning was… interesting. There were scrambled eggs (runny), hard boiled eggs, soft boiled eggs, chicken sausage, veal sausage, lots of crazy cheeses, real honey on a honeycomb, amazing bread, yoghurt, figs, apricots, Nutella… Most of the food was really good but the combination was so strange. I ended up having two hard boiled eggs, some dried apricots, a slice of cheese, fruit salad and bread with Nutella. We played a game at breakfast by trying to figure out which couple it was that was making the crazy donkey noises the night before. Based on the choices available, we really hoped that whoever it was was still sleeping.

We took a taxi to the Grand Bazaar for a bit of shopping. On the way, our driver gets into a road rage argument with another taxi driver. The two taxis were riding alongside each other and the men were screaming at each other in Turkish - while weaving around traffic.

Today was absolutely hilarious. I could write for hours - and probably will - but E’s netbook battery is low, so I’ll try to summarise:

• The minute we got out of the taxi, we were greeted by two Turkish store owners who wanted us to look at carpets. I asked them if they were magic, and he told me he had some of those at his other store. They were very nice though, and took us to a good money changing place


• We got to see an old Turkish man standing on a milk crate yelling and screaming (in Turkish). Turns out that he hates the government… a lot


• The vendors in the bazaar are hilarious and very aggressive. They were enthralled with us - but seemed to think E and J were Australian, Italian or if they were from Barnsley or Manchester. No one guessed London. They were excited I was from America, but no one knew where Ohio was (typical)


• One man followed E and said, “Where did you learn such good English?” to which she answered, “Because I’m from England!”


• One of the vendors insisted on getting a picture with me, taken with his cell phone camera. He also sold E a purse for £7, which was awesome


• We were offered tea, coffee, and from one particulary strange vendor, whiskey. We didn’t partake of any, but we did buy scarves from Mr. Whiskey.


• The joke of the day was the vendor who got mad at me for implying that his wall of celebrity photos was photoshopped and so he then asked me, “Are you pregnant?” and when I stared at him in shock, he made a big belly symbol and yelled, “Baby?” I had no words - just stormed out of the shop. J turned to him and said, “You’re lucky you’re still alive”


• The baby thing became a running joke throughout the day, but I’m still not too happy about it. I wanted to lift up my dress and yell “Does this look like pregnant to you, playa?” - but considering we were getting all kinds of depraved offers already, I wasn’t encouraging the situation.


• J got propositioned to go to a Ramadan celebration by some kid’s granddad while the kid stood behind her and made thrusting noises


• In one store, an old guy grabbed J and kissed her on the cheek and then started grabbing and touching. For no reason at all.


• The bargaining was the best part. “How much?” “300 lira”. So E says “I’ll give you 1 lira”. When challenged she tells us “Well, everyone says you start low!”


• “Goolay goolay” means bye-bye in Turkish … or, as I found out because E and J wouldn’t stop laughing, “testicle testicle” in British English.


• I’m pretty sure that one man had me say something like “I’m a dirty heathen” when I asked him how to say “I’ll be back”. Only because the word Allah was in there three times.


• They loved my Turkish until I learned how to say “How much is that”. Also funny was that I would ask “How much is that, please?” in Turkish and then they would answer me in full Turkish… fully knowing I didn’t understand a word

After all day at the bizarre bazaar aka where E wants to spend the trip, sweaty smelly men notwithstanding, we wanted to take a taxi to a waterfront hotel. We finally tracked down a taxi rank and settled on the W because we thought W’s are always safe. And so began the taxi ride of death.

This driver was on crack. First we had to sit in horrible traffic in which there were vendors selling bottled water and flowers. Then, as soon as there was a break in the gridlock, our driver took off like a rocket. He wasn’t just driving fast - he was aggressive to the point of us having at least ten near-death experiences. I’m not exaggerating. I probably didn’t help the situation by screaming “Oh, help us Baby Jesus!” a bunch of times. He drove towards oncoming traffic, tried on purpose to clip a car to clip a car because they were driving too slow for him, weaved in and out of parked cars, seemed to try to hit pedestrians on purpose and was constantly accelerating and slamming on brakes. At one point I almost lost control of my bladder. By the time we reached the W, I had developed an amazing level of religion. At one point, E was like “Should we throw up our hands?” (like on a roller coaster)

We paid him exactly the amount on the meter. I don’t think he was too happy but there was no way we were going to tip for that experience.

The fun continued at the craziest W I’ve ever been to. No one really spoke English. I ordered a glass of champagne - pointing to the name of the champagne on the menu - and got a glass of rose for my trouble. I then got the one English - speaking person there to understnad what I meant and finally got my bubbly. J. went to the bathroom and got stuck in the stall because the door didn’t work correctly. I then went and got stuck in a different stall. We ordered “risotto balls” which ended up being fried ricotta cheese balls…and horribly inedible. We were all shocked that somewhere liked the W could have such crazy inconsistent service.

We braved a taxi ride back to our hotel - which was fine, save for the fact that the taxi was almost out of petrol and a police motorcycle followed us for about a mile with its flashing lights on… for no reason. We got out of the taxi… and ran straight to the Popeye’s across the street.

Yes, there is a Popeye’s in Istanbul. Brilliant. After much sign language, laughter and a mistake involving something called a Pop-Roll, I got my chicken nuggets to take away. I also got a picture with the staff of Popeye’s, which seemed to be the highlight event of their year.

And now, it is off to sleep, perchance to dream, perchance to be woken again by freaky noises. This time, though, we’ve promised to make the noises back.

Don’t mess with England and America when we get together ;)