istanbul

the blue mosque all done up for Ramadan

Just got back from Istanbul, where they're having Ramadan. I went with Julie, Jean and Uzra. I've traveled with Jean and Julie before, they're both so great to hang around... really like sisters. Uzra joined us this time as well, and she fit right in, I feel a lot closer to her as well after spending a few days together, even though we went to school together all year without talking to one another very much!

Phase 1: Sheraton-Stylee

I met up with the girls at the Istanbul Sheraton, where we stayed a first few nights. This place was really nice, with huge comfy beds and nice rooms. We hung around the hotel the first night because we were all so tired from travel, etc. The next day, we got up and went to Taksim Square, which is a kind of central hub for the city. The first thing I noticed about Istanbul is that it is HUGE. Apparently there are 11 million citizens, about half of which seemed to be trying to get me to buy something. We went down to the Grand Bazar the first day, and bought souvenirs, which was lots of fun, though very exhausting. The shop keepers are very aggressive, and will jump in front of you yelling that you have to buy something, keep pushing even after you've said no 10 times, etc. They also play the haggling game, which is fun, to a certain extent. Going back to the Sheraton at night was nice, but felt a bit unauthentic.

Phase 2: Hosteling (again)

The girls had booked the 3rd and 4th nights at a Hostel near the Blue Mosque. After my previous hosteling experience I figured that I would never be in one again, but when you're traveling with other people, you don't always get your first preference of venue, dining, activities, etc. We had a room with 4 beds next to the bathrooms, which seemed reasonable enough. Also, the Sheraton rooms cost €158 per night, and this place was €40, quite a difference. When we got to the room, we noticed that someone was still staying in it... clothes were hanging from a bed, there were suitcases in the room, and there was a bunch of toiletries in the cupboard. We checked with the desk, and they informed us that the tenant had left her stuff, but they would move her stuff. 10 minutes later, they had taken some of her stuff, and then threw a towel over the rest in a corner. We figured that we could just move in, the rest of her stuff would be gone shortly, and it would all be cool. WRONG. It turned out that this woman just kept using the room, and would walk in at random times to get her stuff, change, whatever, WITHOUT SAYING A WORD. By the next day, we were fairly annoyed with this, and complained again, but she just kept coming back. The owner expressed total shock that this woman was still in the hostel, and always promised to have her right out. I later realized that he was TOTALLY lying when I saw the woman working in the hostel cleaning the floors! We would bitch about this woman staying in our room, barging in at all hours, and the owner would always pretend that he was shocked, and then never do anything. My guess is that she lived and worked in the hostel, and didn't have anywhere else to go, but the owners just pretended otherwise so they could rent out the bed space. The hostel was problematic in other respects as well: the showers were combo shower/bathrooms... like a normal single toilet bathroom with a shower head coming out of the wall and a drain in the floor. They STUNK, and I swear you could see the athlete's foot clawing up at you from the floor. I didn't bring any flip flops, so in an attempt to avoid foot infection, I tied plastic bags around my feet while showering. So much for my highbrow upscale English life at Oxford! Of course the bags filled with water and I was sloshing all over the place. Sigh. The hostel also included free breakfast, which was equally funny, if for no other reason because we got to observe our fellow hostelers in the element. What a bunch of dirtbags: total euro-hippie-trash. The owners put out bread, cheese, jam, hard boiled eggs, olives and sanka for everyone, and of COURSE the hippies ate all the eggs. There was just one left when we got to breakfast, so the four of us split it. Totally absurd, I know.

notice 1/4 egg at the top of the plate

I'll never forget seeing one of the hippies' backpacks, waiting in the luggage storage area, with a half crushed hardboiled egg sitting of top of it. Fucking hippie. He HAD to steal the egg, didn't he? In the end, we didn't care enough to move again, so we just dealt with it. This is OFFICIALLY the last chapter in the book of Ean's Hosteling Adventures. Period.

Culture Shock
There were lots of things about Istanbul that I had never experienced before. Women in headscarves everywhere, huge mosques, ancient buildings, call to prayers broadcast over the city 5 times a day, totally crazy traffic, etc. But probably the most strange thing was what Julie referred to as the "developing nation effect". Bear in mind that the per capita income in this country is $7400 USD. Julie lived in Africa for quite a while, and experienced this same effect there. Basically, the idea is that in a developing nation (ala Turkey) people are very poor, and are aggressive about getting your money on the street level, ostensibly because you represent a big meal ticket relative to their normal income, if they can close the deal. This manifests itself in the vendors that jump out at you shouting as you walk down the street, cab drivers that mysteriously never have any change, falsely inflated prices on everything ($50 USD equlivalent for a bottle of Turkish wine???), etc. As bartering is generally possible for any purchase, there are plenty of opportunities to get a better deal, but it requires constant work. You have to be willing to argue hard for your price and have to be willing to walk away from any transaction. This is mildly interesting at first, but quickly becomes a bore in my view. I don't mind haggling over pashminas in the bazar, but who wants to argue with a waiter over the price of a bottle of wine at a restaurant where you're trying to relax? I know that this effect is exacerbated if locals detect that you're a westerner, and I fit the mold perfectly: big doughy white guy wearing cargo shorts, running shoes and a hat. It couldn't be any clearer if they broadcast it:

EAN: (to traveling companions) now this looks like a nice little street...

PA SYSTEM: now hear this, now hear this, a big fat American with stupid shorts is coming down the street, his dirty imperialist pockets are full of money and he will spend all of it with you, just yell at him!

VENDORS: Right on, let's get him!

SINGLE VENDOR: (after a pause) Let's hope he has British pounds, that American junk isn't worth shit anymore!

VENDORS: Yeah!

Casa de Cenk
Cenk (pronounced Jenk) is a fellow 2007 MBA grad, and he was kind enough to take us around in Istanbul, which is his home town. As with anywhere else, Istanbul is 10 times better when you're friends with a local, you find out about more stuff, don't get hassled as much, go to better restaurants, etc.

Jean, Uzra, Cenk at dinner

Cenk took us around the Blue Mosque area just after dark when all of the locals were just starting to break the Ramadan fast. The short version of this is that during a couple of weeks at this time each year, Muslims don't eat or drink during the daylight hours, then they all get together at home or at street fairs to chow once the sun goes down. It's very festive, and people are psyched to be eating and drinking after a long day. Cenk says they are more crabby and traffic is shittier during the day during Ramadan, but I didn't have anything to compare my time to, so we'll have to take it at his word. Cenk also took us to a hookah joint, which is where Turks go after hours to hang out, drink tea, smoke hookah pipes, and relax. This time, they were watching the football game, but when the game's not on, people do this just to hang out. Alcohol is way less common in Turkey, I suppose because of the heavy Islamic influence, and so no one in these joints is drunk. This is actually a nice change from Oxford (and I suspect the UK in general), where everyone is drunk after 5pm daily. The hookah joint vibe is mellow and chatty, with lots of comfy chairs to sit on, and I didn't see one person get bottled.

late night hookah joint

Uzra doing the exhale

I didn't smoke, because of all the lung trouble I've had after having pneumonia a few years back. This kind of surprised Cenk, but I just couldn't risk it, PLUS the last think on earth that I want to do is pick up smoking again. So, I just settled for secondhand smoke and ambiance. On the last night of my part of the trip, we went to Cenk's family's home for dinner. This was a really special treat: being allowed into a Turkish home for a Ramadan meal, and they really treated us like family. Mom and dad didn't speak a lick of English, so there was a lot of smiling and nodding which Cenk translated. The meal was DELICIOUS, by far the best Turkish food I've had. I can't name a single dish, but it was similar to Lebanese food and Greek food, with that same Mediterranean flavor, but also with some pretty unique Turkish elements. They went out of their way to make stuff that we could eat: two of the girls are vegetarians (uncommon in Turkey) and I'm allergic to nuts. In the mideast, which Turkey is closely tied to, people eat nuts on everything. I don't think there is a dessert that isn't made of or covered in nuts. A lot of non-dessert dishes are that way too. Anyway, Cenk alerted mom to our picky western food issues, and she bent over backwards to make a lovely meal that fit our diets. The Ramadan effect is interesting to observe in a home: the food gets prepared, set out even, but no one eats. They watch the TV where one channel had traditional Turkish singing, inspirational photography, and commentators while a video countdown shows what part of the country is now able to eat. There's a list of towns, and the name lights up as it gets to be night in each one... sort of like a Muslim new year's countdown except nobody watches to see the ball drop because they all want to get down to eating. Around this time, the call to evening prayers goes out over the loudspeakers, and in Cenk's neighborhood at least, all the dogs start howling along with it! Pretty funny. Once the hour strikes, everyone drinks a glass of water, as they are parched after not drinking water all day. Then a several course meal begins, and it was great.

Cenk, dad, mom, Uzra, Jean, Julie

After dinner, we chilled in the living room, talked about politics and culture and school, and then we went back to the Sheraton. PHEW! That place sure was awesome after that f*cking hostel. The girls crashed in my room for a few hours while they waited to leave at 3AM for their 6AM flight to Hungary (I think?). I caught a 11AM flight back to London.

In Summary

This trip was great because I got to see all sorts of ancient buildings, a fabulous ancient city, a new culture during a festival, eat new strange foods, and spend time with the girls, which is always fun. It was also cool because I got to know two people that I hadn't really spoken to much over the course of the MBA. Uzra and I got lots of great conversations in, it was particularly interesting to learn about the consulting lifestyle, which sounds pretty neat, at least in the way that Avanade does it. I managed to get Cenk to talk for a number of hours about Turkish politics, religious and ethnic conflict, military constitutions, limitations on free speech, coups, EU membership, economics, culture, history, linguistic tradition (he claims ural-altaic, but given the controversy around that, I'd probably just go with uralic), the MBA, cyprus, and sketchy neighbors like syria, iran, iraq and the ex-ussr. Turkey is a complex place to say the least. It's physical position between Europe and Asia is perhaps cliched as a metaphor for it's social, political and cultural positions, but not unreasonable once you are familiar with the issues. I felt really good about learning all this stuff, seeing this place, and about making some new connections.

More photos from Istanbul

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