I thought Naples was exciting, but Istanbul is just another world! Yes I went to Istanbul, Turkey. I have a very good friend there who was always talking about how great the city was. So, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I’m glad I did.
My friend, Katie, is working at a private University in Istanbul teaching English to a bunch of Turks as part of a co-op program. This is the second time she has been to Turkey, the last time she was teaching in the country’s capital, Anchora. Because she has spent so much time in the country and has so many Turkish friends she knows the language very well. This is very fortunate, because Turkish has more in common with Asiatic languages than it does with English, or Italian. It took me about 3 days to pronounce correctly “yes” and “no.” Turkish does use the Latin alphabet, but it has a number of very different accents, marks, and sounds. My favorite word is Türkleştiremedigimizlerdensinizdir (were you the one we weren’t able to Turkify!)
Anyways, I left from Sorrento around 5 in the morning, flew out of Rome and was in Istanbul by 4 (3 hour flight across one time zone). When I arrived, Katie met me in Taksim square and we took a whirlwind tour of the area right where I would be staying. She helped me check into a nearby “hotel” that cost half what I’d been paying in Sorrento and was in a much better location. When the owners finally asked me for the money after she had left I had a lot of fun figuring that out, because I knew no Turkish and they knew no English. However, with the help of universal sign language and a calculator we figured it out in the end. The good news is that the dollar is stronger than the Turkish lyre, and that one Euro is currently worth two lyre!
So, if you want to know what I did for the next week the answer is pretty much everything. Only stepped foot in one museum (Haga Sophia), but saw practically every part of the world’s third largest city, from the sea of Mara mar, up the Bosporus to the Black sea(which is actually pink). I could go on forever about Istanbul and Turks, about how ignorant I was about their history and culture and how grateful l am to have had the opportunity to travel to this welcoming place. Besides learning a bit of the language, the majority of the culture I learned at the restaurants. Long story short (you don’t need to read anything after this) I ate very well and have fallen in love with a large number of Turkish dishes and pastries, which my dietician should never hear about!
After dinner on Wednesday we went to an café and drank Turkish tea (it is very good and everyone always drinks after every meal. Although the weather was a bit chilly we sat outside next to a huge electric heater and watched the crowd’s go by. On our table was a backgammon board. The Turks love games. They have thousands of them lying around in all the restaurants, from Trivial Pursuit to Risk, but their favorite is backgammon. I can now say that if I have learned nothing else, I have at least become a fairly respectable backgammon player.
On the way back to my room we went through the famed fish market, which is this covered alley filled with restaurants, cheery waiters, and many different musical groups. The city and especially this famed alley is just so alive. The best part was when we saw a waiter walk away from the restaurant to a nearby street vendor to by a fish. Apparently the restaurant had run out, but there was the fish market right there and you know it’s fresh because you see all the fishermen lining the Bosporus every morning!
