Istanbul

 

Nearly a week on and in the streets of Istanbul and we are starting to get a feel for this incredible city. Our apartment is in a steep one-way cobbled street of mostly old and tired four storey apartments which are accessed by winding marble staircases.

 

We were respectfully ignored when we arrived but I suspect we were closely watched as we passed by the smoking men sitting on chairs in the street, the barber waiting for customers outside his shop and women leaning on sills in windows. Our words now sound less like a guttural clearing of a smoker’s throat to something resembling a greeting in Turkish and we can elicit a smile and a greeting in return. Home is comfortable and I suspect more so than many of the houses nearby. One across the road is held up with steel scaffolding which is not for its repair but to prevent imminent collapse.

A few hundred metres walk places us in the main shopping thoroughfare, Istiklal Caddisi, a long pedestrian boulevard with an ancient tram running down its centre. I’ve yet to determine the rules regarding permission to drive in this street. Sweepers, rubbish trucks and delivery vans weave and beep their way through the throngs but occasionally large expensive saloons drive through the crowds as well.

Many grand residences front the street, the impressively gated Russian and Swedish Embassies are two of them and their occupants probably have special access. The buildings here would not be out of place in any large European city and are all in a good state of repair or undergoing restoration.

On Sunday we took the tram to the top of the street to the busy Taksim Square where large crowds of Galatasaray football supporters were celebrating their win that afternoon in an important local derby. As we walked down Istiklal Caddisi, they sang their way up, in small and then increasingly large groups till we were drawn to a rectangular group around a large supporter’s flag. Uniformed followers were chanting, singing, shouting and punching the air as they held the edges of the flag and shook and tossed it in rhythm to their song. They were very passionate. I’m glad they won.

 

 

 

Our days are spent walking, the best way to discover, but the size of the place necessitates public transport which fortunately runs close to where we live.

Our morning routine takes us to the small shop in our street where we buy muz, bananas.

The shopkeeper teaches us new words each day. Day one it was greetings and goodbyes, yesterday it was numbers. He cheekily refused to speak in his good English withholding my muz until I understood the amount to pay. “Uc,” he said. I took a guess at four liras to which he shook his head and proceeded to give me a lesson in counting, holding up his fingers as he went.

“Bir, iki, uc”

Lessons complete we coffee in Istikal before the day of traipsing begins.

The Istanbul card allowed us entry into the major attractions, some busier than others.

 

 

The Blue Mosque continues as a place of worship and our queue for entry snaked beside worshippers performing ablutions prior to prayer.

Aya Sofya was a highlight as was the Museum of Islamic Arts, Topkapi Palace and the Harem, the Basilica underground cistern complete with large fish,

the Sultan tombs and the Archaeological Museum which reminds me of a story.

Hygiene is important when travelling. Who wants the Turkish trots when there is no tuvalet in sight.? And when you have to go and there is one in sight precautions have to be taken. Now what I am about to stay gets a little personal but you will understand later that it is essential for the whole story be told. The Archaeological Museum of Turkey is a grand building of stone and the toilets paved and walled in great grey marble slabs gave confidence that this facility would be clean and safe to use. All the same, precautions need to be taken. A line of toilet paper on the seat always gives added confidence that what might be lurking there cannot permeate through this somewhat flimsy layer of protection. That’s as personal as I will get but to tell these facts is essential to the story.

It is said that teachers have eyes in the back of their head. It is a tale told by those who have never had a 60 centimetre piece of toilet paper hanging from the back of their jeans for an hour or more while walking the marble halls of the grand Archaeological Museum of Turkey.

The rooms of carved sarcophagi were dimly lit to preserve the ancient works or perhaps the security guard viewing the CCTV felt sorry for me between fits of laughter and dimmed the rooms for my sake. Either way, the visitors who thankfully were few in number, were either too polite to say, couldn’t find the words between giggles or were too interested in the displays to tap me on the shoulder and say,

“Excusame sir. Did you knowa thata you havea pieca toilets paper longa than your arma hanging froma your arsa? Now I know none of that sounds Turkish, but you get the idea.

We walked up the grand marble staircase into the brightly lit halls displaying the artefacts from ancient Istanbul.

Here the light was strong and the fans were comfortably breezy which no doubt caused my flimsy attachment to wave provocatively as I bent to view the Roman fertility statues unearthed near the harbour.

Where you might ask was my my good wife during this hour and a half of archeological pleasure? We are after all in a strange country where customs are unfamiliar and looking out for each other is important. Not once did I hear a whisper of warning,

“Pssst! You’ve got Sorbent unravelling from your jeans. Psst! you’re waving a white flag of surrender.”

An hour and a half of viewing exhibits found us outside in a large courtyard around which sat many people on seats resting their weary feet. Most looked tied and drawn until Sharon called from behind me in a somewhat loud voice interspersed with splutters of laughter.

“You’ve got…ha ha…a long piece…ha ha…of toilet paper…HA HA.. hanging out of your pants! HA HA HA HA!”

I now know that many people in Turkey understand English. You know the sound of those old digital clocks that have metal plates that flip over to count the hours and minutes. At Sharon’s call that was the sound of hundreds of eyelids flipping up to catch me grabbing at the trailing paper. My good and watchful wife couldn’t speak for she was bent double in what looked like a happy case of Turkish belly. I scanned the crowd. Turkish people are very polite. Most hid their hands behind their mouths but their eyes told a different story. One woman in a colourful head scarf had a straight face but her chest and stomach jerked convulsively under her robe. Another grabbed at her mouth as if to prevent food from spurting out. Two young men began to laugh loudly. Bloody tourists!

There was only one way out of this.The paper thankfully looked clean but for the crowd, I gave it a sniff and wrinkled my nose. The woman spat the food into her hand accompanied by a laughing fit.

Sharon had recovered enough to have fumbled for her camera so I tucked it back in and posed.

Beggars are not common but we have seen some who hold their Syrian passports open and ask for money. Democracy is healthy. We saw a large crowd of mostly black robed women protesting in the large parks near the mosques. They were being addressed by a man who led them in chants and flag waving, fist thumping and finger stabbing. There was little aggression with many women between chants taking the opportunity to chat and laugh. Perhaps the chance to speak as a group in the open was a liberating and pleasant experience.

People are friendly, especially those men who want us to visit their shops selling carpet, jewellery, food. But that is good, because it allowS us to start a conversation and then that leads to me asking them for a photograph, some of which I’ll include here. One man asked me if I wanted to visit a carpet shop and after I said I wouldn’t waste his time, we chatted. Another young man in a pink t-shirt came up and the first introduced him as his girlfriend kissing him on the cheek. Another friend joined in for this shot.

 

On our first morning, I took a walk through the streets of our neighbourhood joining the street sweepers and sleepers, bus stop leaners, beeping taxi drivers looking for a fare and Komy, the nicotine tooth-stained barman. He asked me where I was from and when told, began to wave his cupped hands around his chest and smiled longingly. For a laugh I pointed to my chest and raised my hands in question. He shook his shocked head and began to indicate I didn’t have long hair.

“You drink?” he asked.

As it was just 7:00am, I was about to spring, “It’s a little early for me, but if you’re having one, I’ll have one too,” but he continued counting on his fingers till he got to seven.

“Australians they drink, you drink?”

I counted to two and like every good barman who knows all, he began counting to seven again.

Turkish rule number one when talking to a tourist. Never part without a request.

“Do you have a cigarette?”

Cigarettes sell in the corner store for 6 Turkish lira which equates to 3 AUD.

Sharon has been unable to resist the silver shops and her unwillingness to haggle causes me no end of grief.

“What? You don’t haggle?”

“It’s a fair price. I just want to pay the money.”

“But…

We’ve been dragged into carpet shops, had a shoe shine, bought funny hats, ordered food which we had no idea what it was before we ordered and had the same feeling after we ate. We cruised the Bosphorus to the entrance to the Black Sea and ate fish on the Asian side of the country.

I asked a waiter what testi kebabs were on the menu and after I explained to him what a similar word was in English he was shocked to hear me speaking such things in front of my wife. He good naturedly spoke of Turkish culture where men speak of anything with each other and only some things to women and was surprised to hear that Sharon had been with me for close on 40 years.

We arrive home each night around sunset and this sight greets us a we enter our street. Holidays are good.