April 6, Istanbul

Yesterday after my first restaurant meal in Istanbul the thought occurred to me, that one way you know you're in Europe not Asia is when the napkin holders are actually filled with paper napkinss, not facial tissue or a roll of toilet tissue. I was thinking that the adventure in Asia would end when I flew to Dublin, but I think it actually ended yesterday when I left Delhi.

Entry into Istanbul was a bit of a hassle - I think the Turkish Immigration may be the worst I've encountered. They had a long snaking single line marked out (nonetheless rude people kept jumping it) but at the end they dumped everybody into a milling crowd, where you tried to figure out which booth the gravitate toward. It easily set the record for the longest time to get through passport control - over 90 minutes. Since they require even people who are changing plans or even getting back on the same plane to go through an immigration check, a lot of people were worried about missing connections; it turned into a near riot, with people chanting "open another booth! open another booth!" I wasn't aware that I would have to pay $20 U.S. - there was a chance I might have packed my U.S. money in my checked luggage. Fortunately I had it in a carry-on; I don't know what would have happened, since there is no ATM until after passport control.

As I finally emerged, dazed, from this experience Aybuke (a Turkish former student) met me, sat me down at a coffee shop and ordered cheesecake and coffee for me, and the day abruptly got much, much better. After I had recovered my poise, led me to the subway station for the trip to her cousin's apartment, where she is staying while her cousin is abroad. Istanbul has a quite good mass transit system, a combination of subways, elevated busways, and surface light rail, as well as several independent bus companies. Unfortunately, for reasons that aren't entirely obvious to me, these lines don't always connect up perfectly, so changing often means leaving one system entirely, walking a half block or several blocks to the next, then paying a new fare. Cabs are also quite cheap, so, because of the heavy duffel-bag I'm carrying with my hiking gear, we took one from the final stop to the apartment. When I depart I may do the same thing in reverse.

Aybuke's apartment is a comfortable place, which would seem a bit small in Portland but quite roomy in Manhattan. It is in a lovely boheme neighborhood of 3-5 story apartment buildings with various enterprises on the ground floor, including small grocery stores, eateries, bakeries, etc. and a mixture of ages - it reminds me very much of Greenwich Village, North Beach, or the Mission District. Nearby is an urban shopping mall with a full-size supermarket, lots of clothing stores, a whole floor of eateries including some authentic and, Aybuke says, very good Turkish restaurants as well as an array of MacDonalds, KFC, etc. Among its other uses, this mall is well-known throughout European Istanbul, so it is a good anchor for my rambling trips. It also has a couple of exceptionally good sweets shops - as I write, I am munching on a confection that includes pistachios and honey among other good things that I picked up on the way home.

Aybuke's mother is recovering from a recent operation, and Aybuke needed to go to their home, a couple of hours away by bus, but she was worried about my ability to negotiate this huge city (she reminded me a lot of Anne in her worrying over me). Maps are helpful for orienting oneself, but only the larger streets are shown on them, street names aren't always present at intersections, and Aybuke says no-one uses the system. So she took me to a great shopping street, Istiklal, which, oddly, isn't mentioned in the guidebooks I consulted), closed to all traffic except a San-Francisco style cable car, then we walked down to the water-front (the Sea of Marmara), and we took a cab back home, with her all the while impressing land-marks on me (an inveterate map-user, totally incompetent with directions like "turn left at the key shop.") After she left, I went back over to the mall to get some supper, then spent over an hour with my guidebook and the two maps she had got for me, figuring out my plan for today.

I was awakened by a recorded call to prayer from the nearby mosque, a sound I find quite nice. I had breakfast, did a little e-mail work, then set out. I had decided to take a cab to the Topkapi Seraglio, then work out how to get back by mass transit (which turned out to be quite easy). I became quite nervous when the driver apparently wound around all over the place, but it was rush hour, and Istanbul cabbies are known for their skill at avoiding traffic tie-ups - I saw several of them in front of us, above us on an elevated freeway, etc. Since he spoke no English, and the word "Topkapi" refers to the district as well as the palace, and probably to several other things, I was rather nervous about miscommunication, but when I saw a bridge over the Golden Horn in front of us I relaxed.

Unfortunately both the palace and the palace museum were closed, and I will need to go back again tomorrow to see them. However, several other monuments in that area were open, so I managed to spend a full day, as long as I had stamina for. I began with the Aya Sophia, built in the 6th century and converted to a mosque after the conquest. It is a but down at the heels after 12 centuries, but it is easy to envision the grandeur of the place when the colors were fresh in the tiles and frescoes. The dome is huge and the colors in the dome are still lovely. I then spent a couple of hours in the archaeological museum, which has many sculptures and other artifacts (and many reproductions) of Hellenic and pre-Hellenic times. I did not see all of it - that would probably take a day in itself. After the archaeological museum I toured the Blue Mosque, which with its soaring domes and brilliant colors is almost as impressive as the Aya Sophia. Visits to a couple more mosques and a couple of tombs helped fix in my mind a pretty clear sense of Byzantine and Ottoman aesthetics, which are very impressive.

I entered a few steps into the highly recommended Grand Bazar, but quickly decided that it might be great if you love shopping, but for someone like me who orders almost everything on-line, it is overstated. I found the open-air street markets more interesting for commercial madness, and Istalklal much more interesting for people-watching. After climbing the hill to see Sulyaman Mosque, which was closed and apparently under major restoration, I came back the other side through a series of narrow, shop-lined streets, great fun really, and caught a light rail tram back over to the foot of another hill, that I climbed to reach Tacksin, the end of the Istalklal and a transfer point for subway, bus, and streetcar lines. I rambled around Tacksin for a while, then sat down for an early light supper (I wanted fish and haven't seen any fish restaurants in this neighborhood). It was beginning to sprinkle lightly, and I hadn't carried my portable umbrella, so I wanted to start home.

Last night, I ordered a dish with grilled very thin slices of meat. Assuming it would just be the meat with some bread, and wanting a vegetable, I also ordered an interesting looking pilaf with peas and mushrooms and dried mint. The meat did include rice, and the pilaf had no peas that I could detect (but it was quite good, with the mint) so I could eat barely half the two dished. So tonight, encouraged by a picture on the same page in the menu, I assumed the fish (calamari) would come with at least salad and maybe fries. Wrong again - it was more like an hors d' oeuvre. The calamari were good, but they and a glass of white wine ran to about $15, and I still hadn't had salad. So I stopped by the Profile mall and picked up carrots, lettuce, and tomatoes for a salad and the sweets shop to get a dessert for myself, and headed home.

I was a bit worried that it would take some fumbling around and maybe some extensive backtracking to find the Profile Mall, but I mostly walked straight to the mall, and from there it's an easy short walk home.