Travel Plans

Merry Christmas to all...

It's now been three months since I've been in Europe. So far I've spent most of my time exploring The Netherlands and Beligum, with only one big trip to Turkey.

I was supposed to be going to Berlin and Poland during this week, but I put that off because ticket prices were too high. (Apparently a lot of people travel during this time of year--did you know that?)

So, here are how things are shaping up for the next three months.

Jan 18-20: Vienna, Austria. Already booked.


Feb 15-17: London, England. Possible.


Feb 22-27: Berlin, Germany and Poznan & Warsaw, Poland. Almost certainly.


March 7-9: Somewhere outside the EU...Dublin, Moscow, Morrocco, Tunis...haven't decided yet.


March 26-April 5: Rome, Florence & Venice, Italy. Will be booking flights soon.


April 10-13: Berlin, Germany and Prague, Czech Republic. Just need to buy train tickets.



That will keep me busy! I will probably do Paris in May and Athens in June, although that's still to be decided. A trip to Denmark, where we have a family friend, is also possible and would be slipped in somewhere.

In the meantime, I plan to spend my Christmas break visiting museums in Amsterdam, reading books and writing scripts in coffee shops, watching Team Canada dominate at the World Junior Hockey Championships in Prague, and working on my French for when I finally do visit France.

Dec. 9: Back To The EU

Sunday morning ushered in another blue-skied day. I can't believe how lucky we got with weather.

After a quick breakfast we headed back down to Topkapi Palace grounds because I wanted to check out the Istanbul Archeological Museum. It looked pretty small and was absurdly cheaply priced, so we saved it for the last morning.

Well, we didn't go straight to the museum. We of course had to detour by the Starbucks so I could have a caffeine injection that didn't taste like dirt, which is how all Turkish coffee tastes to me.

We walked into the IAM and found a wide and extensive collection of old statues. They were pretty cool. (The only unnerving part was the fact that there were AT LEAST 3 security guards for every visitor in the museum. I'm telling you, a friggin' police state.)



We eventually realized that we were not in the IAM building, but rather just a wing of the building. After that exhibit was another one, and another one, and another one... In fact, we were only in one wing of one building; it turns out there were two other buildings, which I don't know anything about because we never made it out of the first one.

The IAM is not small at all. It's massive. When Hans was talking about the Turkish Louvre, this was it. And there was absolutely no way, at all, to tell that this was a major museum before going in. From the outside it looked like an afterthought.

Weird.

And disappointing. I love museums, and we only got a sense of this one because we were pressed for time. Oh well.

We got back to the hotel, packed up, and paid for the shuttle back to the airport because it is apparently impossible to know what you are going to get if you call for a taxi.

A strange thing about Ataturk airport: you can't even get into the building without going through security, which means you go through with all your suitcases and everything. I'm not sure if this is standard across the Middle East or not; I guess it's because having a bomb go off in the terminal is a somewhat serious possibility.

We connected through Frankfurt again, which is where I had to get my new EU visa stamp (really, that was the whole point of the trip in the first place). The guy asked me where I was going to. "Brussels. Well, Belgium. No, well, actually I'm going to be going on through to Amsterdam." I was completely unprepared for the question and ended up sounded like a moron. I had been through so many passport checkpoints that it caught me by surprise when the guy started talking to me.

I assured him that I would be leaving before 3 months were up. "Are you sure?" He asked with a German accent, raising his voice a bit. "Oh yeah, definitely." He waited a second, then shrugged and gave me the stamp.

Easy enough.

And so ended the Istanbul adventure. We did pretty well for ourselves; I think we really got a sense of the city over the span of the weekend. I have a certain admiration for Turkey. I admire its commitment to secularism, even though it verges on the side of militarist nationalism now and then. I feel like it's a country we need on "our side".

Since I've left, Turkey has carried out a series of airstrikes and limited border incursions on Kurdish territory in Iraq and a full-scale invasion is still possible. It's suspected that the Americans are giving them aid and intelligence on Kurdish terrorist groups in order to stave off any invasion and shore up support for the wider 'War on Terror'.

However, support for America and its role in the world has seen a sharp decline among the population recently, especially as the Iraq war turned nasty. Attitudes towards Europe have also soured as EU-negotiations drag on. And while the government itself has largely remained on good terms with Washington, they openly expressed outrage when the Senate passed a resolution recognizing the Armenian genocide a month ago, as they did when France passed such a bill last year.

So it's a tough country to generalize or make predictions on.

But there's good reason to feel confident that a large portion of the country's population and leadership, regardless of how they feel about George Bush (not our best spokesman, is he?), will continue to move towards Western-style democracy and reject the Mullah-dominated theocracies that still permeate much of the Arab world. I hope they eventually do join the EU, which will certainly raise living standards across the board and ensure full freedom of speech.

And it would mean I wouldn't have to pay 60 f@#&ing dollars just to get in the damn country.

Dec 8: Istanbul Nights

Dusk in Istanbul:




Before going back to the hotel we returned to the Grand Bazaar to pick up a few souvenirs and such.

Walking back through the streets, which were a lot quieter now that the sun had gone down, I saw a shoe-shiner drop his brush as he walked ahead of us. I jogged up and grabbed it to hand it back to him.

He let forth a big grin and thanked me and insisted on shining my shoes. "This is my cousin", he kept saying to me as he worked, pointing to the older guy standing beside him. After he finished one shoe he asked us to move over to a darker corner, away from the busy area of the street.

If my brain had been working properly I would have recognized the alarm bells.

He went back to work on my other shoe and his 'cousin' insisted on working on Lindsay's shoes. Lindsay told me later that as he worked he told her he was the brother of the guy shining my shoes. After asking me a few more random chitchat questions, the shoe-shiner told me that his kids were in the hospital. It dawned on me that gratitude was not the reason my shoes were being shined.

He finished, and then told me matter-of-factly that it would be ten euros. Feeling a bit awkward, I reached into my pocket and pulled out a few Turkish liras. (In hindsight, I shouldn't even have done this). Not enough, he told me. "This is all I have," I replied. He began to tell me what the regular price for having your shoes shined was, and told me he wanted the "purple money" (Euros). "Don't worry, I can give you change" he said. That's when I lost it on him.

I started railing about how I did a nice thing for him and the only thing he could think about was how much money he could get out of me. There was no way in hell I was going to pay for a shoeshine I didn't ask for. I told him he could keep the liras for his kids in the hospital, not bothering to hide my sarcasm. I grabbed Lindsay's arm and stormed off.

I was in a very bad mood after this. I had only been in the tourist district for 24 hours and I was already sick of being fleeced by salesman on every corner. It was time for something different.

We went back to the hotel and, after taking a few minutes to get off our feet, we talked to the front desk guy about going to Taksim Square, which I had read was the "heart of Istanbul". It was across the water and so was going to take a bit of work to get there.

Turns out that Istanbul has a modern and very nice transit system, which is limited in scope but is growing every year. Luckily, it would take us exactly where we wanted to go.

First by tram...



Then by Metro (which basically went straight uphill).



We climbed up the stairs from the Metro station at Taksim Square and our jaws dropped. I thought for a moment we had gotten off in the shopping district in Amsterdam.



It was a completely cosmopolitan shopping district, jammed with people and bright lights. It couldn't be more opposite to everything we had seen so far in Istanbul.




I knew that Turkey had a Westernized side to it, but I wasn't prepared for how thoroughly Western it was. Again, I'm sure that Istanbul is not representative of most of the country, but it was still a shock. There were night clubs, movie shops, lingerie stores (with those sexy, sexy photos in the windows), fashion outlets, and cafes all down the street. I found multiple book stores that looked like any Coles or Chapters store in Canada.

Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, but this ain't your typical Muslim country. (Typical in the sense of how most Muslim countries in the world are, not on Islam itself). The constitution, brought in by Ataturk in 1923, guarantees freedom of religion and contains a fierce seperation of Church and State. It is illegal to wear any 'theo-politic clothing', which includes the Islamic headscarf, in any school, university, or government building. Faith-based schools are outlawed.

The military considers itself the upholder of Ataturkian secularism and has not been shy about it. Since 1960 there have been four coup d'etats, carried out when the government was perceived to be inching towards Communism or Islamism. The most recent was in 1997. In each case military rule was eventually handed back over to civilians and democracy was restored. This past spring it was looking very much like another coup was in the works, as the military was growing restive--both the current Prime Minister and President have Islamist backgrounds and have wives who wear the headscarf. Calm heads prevailed.

It is due to this secularism that Turkey has toed a Western line. They have been a NATO member for 50 years, are in talks to join the EU, and have formal diplomatic relations with Israel. (I actually noticed right away in the airport that there were flights scheduled to Tel Aviv.) The EU negotiations are going to be lengthy. This is partly due to concern over the military's interference in democratic governance. But Turkey also has a fierce nationalism (note the giant red flag in the sqaure above; this flag was found everywhere in the city) which makes it illegal to insult Ataturk or "Turkish identity", and illegal to acknowledge the Armenian genocide after WWI. Free speech is also going to need some work.

Well, there's also quite a bit of resistance to Turkey joining the EU from countries who already have large restive Muslim populations--France and The Netherlands particularly. They're quite wary about opening their borders up to 72 million more Muslims, many of whom live in the impoverished Turkish countryside.

At any rate, being in the Taksim Square area gave me a lot of hope for the future of the country. There was so much buzz in the air, so much diversity; in the history and politics section of the book store (which is really the only section I ever go to), there was a real battle of ideas and philosophy going on. This could have been any street in any city in North America or Europe. Muslim countries so often bring up a picture of war, poverty, oil, dictatorship, and subjugation of women. It doesn't have to be that way.

In the middle of the square was a large memorial statue to the war of independence. Front and center was--who else--good ol' Ataturk.

[Next Istanbul Post]

In The News

A break from our wall-to-wall Turkey coverage to bring you some opinion on Belgium spotted in the New York Times.

Little Belgium has become too conflicted to rule. It has three regions, three language communities that are not congruent with the regions, a smattering of local parliaments, a mainly French-speaking capital (Brussels) lodged in Dutch-speaking Flanders, a strong current of Flemish nationalism and an uneasy history.

[...]

If it holds together, it will be because Brussels, with 10 percent of the population and 20 percent of gross domestic product, is too mixed to unravel. Like Baghdad, like Sarajevo, the capital is improbable but unyielding glue. Unlike them, it has avoided bloodshed. It also houses a modern marvel, the E.U. — and there’s the nub.

The 27-nation Union has banished war from the Continent and marginalized danger. Belgium fissures even as E.U. leaders sign the Treaty of Lisbon that will ultimately yield an E.U. president who can run things for up to five years (and so become identifiable), a foreign minister and a workable decision-making process. E.U. security makes Belgian instability harmless.

[...]

As for a Belgian government, it would be nice to have one, but not essential. There’s no Belgian franc to go wobbly. There’s no monetary policy to set. There’s scarcely a country to govern, given how far European integration on the one hand and national devolution on the other have gone.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, you remember my comment that war is still on the horizon? Just call me The Oracle. (or Captain Obvious).

Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels Tuesday, two days after Turkey's military launched air assaults across the border, according to the chief of staff for the president of the Kurdish regional government.

Dec 8: Topkapi Palace & The Basilica Cistern

After lunch we trekked down to the Topkapi Palace grounds, the entrance to which is just on the other side of the Haghia Sofia mosque.

Topkapi Palace was built by the Ottomans in the 15th century after they captured the city and served as their HQ for the next four hundred years as their empire rose, at one point stretching from Austria to Morocco to Iran, and as it fell, collapsing in the aftermath of World War One.

The grounds are huge and take up the tip of the peninsula that stretches into the Bosphorus. You can see it as the green area in the center of the map below. (Our hotel is basically at the southern tip of the land).


View Larger Map

Today the palace serves as urban green space and hosts two large museums. Here is one the gateways.

There were police with machine guns posted at the entrances. Here's my naive Canadian existence showing: this was the first time I'd seen this. I don't think I'd make it long in a totalitarian state. Walking by these guards I had a repressible but unmistakable urge to test them--make a sudden movement, shout a snarky comment, see if I could grab their gun, something like that. It just seems like overkill; why isn't a pistol enough? You need a friggin' Uzi to patrol a museum?

Upon further reflection, I've never lived in a country where a terrorist bombing is an everyday threat. Turkey has been fighting a prolonged war with Kurdish separtists in the south for 30 years, but a ceasefire broke down in 2003 and since then 246 Turks have been killed through bombings and ambushes. Bombs have been set off as far north as Ankara. Two months ago it seemed quite likely that Turkey was about to invade the northern Kurdish area of Iraq to go after the rebels--the Americans manage to persuade them otherwise, but war is still possible on the horizon.

So, I guess it's understandable to be a bit edgy about security.

I'm not sure if this is representative of the whole country, but Istanbul felt at times like being in a police state. I've never seen so many traffic cops, security guards, police officers and soldiers patrolling the streets. It could be that this was just because of the heavy tourism in the area, making it a juicy target for bombers. I have to say that their presence didn't make me feel any safer; many of them spent their time standing around gabbing away to each other and most of them looked quite unprofessional. I never felt like I could trust them.

Anyway, here I am with the founder of modern Turkey.



That's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and it's possible his picture is in more places in Turkey than Kim Jong-Il's is in North Korea. For example, after landing at Kemal Ataturk Airport we bought our visas from customs officers standing in front of a large portrait of Ataturk and exchanged some Euros for Turkish liras, of which Ataturk's head is on every single note and coin.

Ataturk is the guy who decided Turkey should be a modern and secular state and many Turks are very happy about this. The military is probably a bit too happy--but more on that later.

Some views of the Bosphorus from Topkapi grounds: you can see why the place is popular as "Lover's Row". Every bench (literally) had a young couple holding hands and necking, and old ladies were walking around selling roses for a few coins.




Before going to the museum we decided to go to an underground cistern which I had read about and really wanted to see.

What is a cistern? Well, I'm glad you asked. Cisterns are reservoirs made to collect rain water to be used for either irrigation or cooking and cleaning. The Basilica Cistern in Istanbul is possibly the most famous one in the world. It was built a whopping 1400 years ago and is capable of holding 80,000 cubic meters of water.

In the 1980s it was made into a tourist attraction complete with boardwalks. With its moody lighting and ugly fish swimming around, it's a quite a creepy and transfixing place to be.

At the far end were two "Medusas", large faces carved into the columns.



One of the Medusa faces is upside down and the other is on its side; nobody knows the reason for this.

Bonus points if you can identify which of the figures below is an ancient greek goddess and which is a 22-year-old girl who refuses to take moving sidewalks in airports because "it feels weird when you get off".



Finally, back to the Topkapi to see the palace museum.


Hans had told me that the Topkapi museum was like a "Turkish Louvre", so I was excited to check it out. We were pretty soundly disappointed. The museum was not that interesting at all; mostly it was a bunch of buildings spaced far apart and largely empty inside. The only nice exhibit was of the Ottoman treasury, which showed off the intricate pottery and expensive jewellery they collected and bought from all around the world. Once you see a jewel-encrusted water flask, you realize that Muslims are just as capable of extravagant imperialism as any other culture!

Below is a gate at the Topkapi where I guess important stuff happened sometimes.



There were some nice views, at least. Below you can see part of the ancient wall that once surrounded the entire city. It's weird to think that it was built out of serious concern that the city could be under siege and captured one day (which it eventually was).





Leaving Topkapi with the Blue Mosque in the distance.

[Next Istanbul Post]

Dec 8: Good Morning Istanbul

The forecasts had been calling for rain for most of the weekend, which dampened my spirits a bit.

However, when we woke up, this is what we saw. (Going from left to right)

Wow! We couldn't have asked for a better day.

To help orient any curious readers, I've painstakingly prepared a map showing the location of our hotel in the city.



The water at the top of the map is the Black Sea, which serves Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia. The water at the South is the Sea of Marmara, which opens into the Dardanelles, which opens into the Aegean Sea, which opens into the Mediterranan Sea, which opens into the rest of the world.

The strip of water going through middle of Istanbul, called the Bosphorus, links the two seas and is the narrowest international waterway in the world. As one can imagine, its strategic importance throughout history has been massive. Wikipedia tells me that it was largely due to Stalin's desire to control it that turned Turkey towards NATO membership in the 1950s. The Bosphorus is also regarded as the border between Europe and Asia in Turkey.

Anyway, in the photos above we are looking out on the Sea of Marmara and back across the western side of the city. If you look towards the bottom left of the map you can spot a large white-ish area; that's the airport.

The hotel provided a Turkish breakfast in its little cafe on the top floor. The view was nice.



We walked back up to the large pedestrian mall called Sultan Ahmet Square. It sits directly over top of the site of the Hippodrome, the chariot-racing center built back when Istanbul was called Constantinople. Today it's only marked by obelisks and columns that poke up through the surface; the rest of it is buried beneath the pavement.

This Hippodrome column was built 1500 years ago and is the oldest standing structure in the city today.



Right on Sultan Ahmet Square and only a few blocks from our hotel is the Blue Mosque. It's the national mosque of Turkey and probably the most impressive by sight. It was built in the 1600s and is marked by six huge minarets pointing up into the sky.




Tourists are allowed inside the mosque but have to keep to one side of a barrier. As we were making our way towards the entrance I was mobbed by a guy who started spouting tourist information at me. He followed us up the path and just before we went inside let me know that "I'll wait for you at the exit; you can come see my shop."

Sigh...




As you can see, the inside is impressive but kind of empty and cavernous. Islam does not allow artwork of its saints and generally frowns on decorations of any kind inside places of worship. Still, it's nice to look at.

I managed to find us a side exit and we slipped away from our tourist guide. It was the last time I let anyone try to help us find our way around.

At the other end of square is the Haghia Sofia, another huge old mosque. (I can't even tell you how many times I tried to call it "Saghia Hofia").

I discover later that it was actually first built as a Christian cathedral in 530, when the city was the capital of the Byzantine empire. After the Ottoman Empire captured Constantinople in 1453 and renamed it Istanbul they converted most of the churches in the city into mosques.

The minarets are an addition, but otherwise the mosque is mostly unchanged externally from its Byzantine days (as always happens when one religion conquers another, all the interior art was destroyed jubilantly).



The mosque is now a museum and therefore costs money to get inside, so we decided to wait and explore a bit before going in. As it turns out, we never did go in, though we both wanted to.

After that we left the square and headed back through the city to the Grand Bazaar. It was a bit of a challenge for my navigational skills, but we made it eventually.

The Grand Bazaar is huge covered marketplace and is a famous tourist destination. There are 4000 little stalls inside and just about any sort of trinket or item of clothing you can imagine is for sale somewhere. The owner of each stall stands at the entrance way and tries to get passerby's into his shop. Most them have an eagle eye for white skin and would start shouting at Lindsay and I in English as we got near--usually something like "Hey Angel", or "Hey Cinderella", which I guess was meant for her.




Many of the aisles are much narrower and chaotic than the one above, but I didn't take any photos of them. In order to buy anything here you have to haggle with the shopkeeper for the price. At one point I was in a shop with a guy trying to sell me a chess board; by the time I left, which took quite a bit of persistence, he had come down to half the price he quoted when I first asked.

Outside the Bazaar it was a short walk to the University of Istanbul. We didn't go inside--by the looks of the security guards the entrance, I'm not sure we could have if we wanted to. Notice the gigantic Turkish flag; it's everywhere in the city.




We decided to make our way back to the main square, mostly because I had spotted a Starbucks and was frothing at the notion of a venti dark roast. It was also time for lunch.

We passed quite a few mosques on the walk back, which isn't surprising: there's over 3000 of them in Istanbul.



[Next Istanbul Post]

Dec 7: Flying To Istanbul

(A bit of a warning: I'm probably going to be pretty long and windy in the next few posts. This is partly because it was my first trip ever to a non-Westernized country, so my mental note-taking was in high gear. It's also partly because I had a quite a few adventures in airports and train stations which don't have much in the way of photos to look at. But mostly it's because this is a blog, and the whole fun of blogging is that I can be as long-winded as I damn well please! However, for those who hate reading, I promise there will be plenty of pictures to come, so bear with me.)

I woke up around 7:30 in Brussels and set off for the train station to catch the airport express.

I sometimes read headlines in Dutch newspapers bemoaning their train system which hasn't kept up with the rising ridership numbers (itself a result of the highways being unable to keep up with the rising traffic volume). Well, all I know is this: compared to Belgium's trains, the system in Holland is utopian.

How do I loathe the Belgium train system? Let me count the ways.

Their stations are butt-ugly, looking as if they were built a century ago with a lacklustre maintenance budget. The signs for the stations are too few and spaced too far apart, making it hard to know where you are during daylight, and they're poorly lit, making it impossible to know where you are by twilight. The Belgians are apparently unaware of computer technology, so you are unable to buy a train ticket electronically at any station.

The train schedule charts are printed out on large pieces of paper and basically tacked to the wall like a bulletin board. Whereas the Dutch schedules are organized by lines and connections, the Beligum charts are organized by times. This means that instead of people looking up the chart for their own destination, EVERYBODY is gathered around the exact same chart (the chart for the current time of day) while the rest of the charts are completely free. Furthermore, the charts are placed near the entrance of the station instead of on the platforms, meaning that if you forget the time or platform info for your train you have to walk all the way back to the front of the station. I can't even begin to tell you how annoying this is.

That morning, I saw from the incredibly small and blurry TV information screens that my train to the airport from Brussels-North station was delayed by 15 minutes, then 20, then 25. This wasn't unusual, I gathered, as every other train was also delayed. Thirty seconds before the train arrived it was announced that it was going to arrive at a different platform on the opposite side of the station. Because I had my earphones in, the only way I became aware of this was because of all the people with suitcases fleeing in that direction.

Sigh...

Anyway, I eventually made it to the airport where I met my fellow traveller and partner-in-crime, Lindsay.

Isn't she lovely? I can sometimes convince her to smile nicely.


And so we boarded the plane for Frankfurt.

The plane was--of course!--delayed. The flight had more turbulence than I've ever experienced in my life, and the pilot eventually announced that the reasons for the delay were the extremely strong winds in the area. He also announced that Frankfurt air traffic control had ordered him into a holding pattern over the airport for the time being, further adding to the delay.

For anyone keeping track: so far my train to Brussels was delayed, my train from Brussels to the airport was delayed, and my flight from Brussels to Frankfurt was delayed twice.

I've never felt more naseous on a flight than I did during the landing of that plane. This was partly due to the turbulence, but probably also had something to do with my awareness that the 90 minute buffer I had booked between our connections was dwindling extremely fast.

By the time we made it through passport control at Frankfurt our flight to Istanbul had been scheduled to leave five minutes ago. I was fairly certain it was going to be delayed, but I ran ahead to find our gate.

Fortunately, the flight was delayed by 20 minutes, although we were the last passengers to board the plane. Finally some good luck!

The flight to Istanbul was much better.

Here's the first poster greeting us as we got off the plane.

It's Turkcell, which I gather is a mobile phone company there, and they are friggin' everywhere. If it's a big event in Turkey it's a safe bet that Turkcell is the sponsor of it. I've heard that the Middle East, Africa and Asia has an explosive demand for cell phones, so I guess it's not surprising.

Ataturk International Airport was big and modern but creepily empty when we arrived. Our luggage made it safe and sound, which was my final concern.

We walked up to the Visa counter where a TV screen displayed the prices for different nationalities. I'm not exaggerating: Canada's was at least 4 times as expensive as any other country on that screen, including America. I have absolutely no clue as to the reason for this.

I didn't ask the guy at the counter why Turks hate Canadians. In fact, no questions were asked at all. He took my passport, barked "45 Euros", and then gave me my stamp without looking at my face. What a scam!



I had arranged a shuttle from the airport to our hotel and we met it no problem, although not before a stop at the Duty Free store to stock up on wine. It was about 6:00 in the evening by now and the sun was down.


View Larger Map

The outskirts of Istanbul by night look similar to the outskirts of any North American city--wide roads and neon-lit retail box stores. The only difference was that no driver seemed to know or care about traffic laws. There were cars and trucks all over the roads, merging and diverging as they pleased. I think every major corner had a traffic cop standing beside his car with flashing lights and I began to understand why.

The highway wound along the edge of the Sea of Marmara. Eventually we passed a huge old wall which marked our entry into "Old Istanbul", and for the rest of way we caught glimpses of some half-standing structures and walls that must be hundreds of years old.

Our hotel was a cozy place, clean and modern but also simple and friendly. I spent a long time choosing our hotel over the internet and I think I picked perfectly, if I do say so myself. (I forgot to take a picture of the outside, so this is from the website).



Unpacking...



At around 7:30 we headed out for our first look at the city by night. We hadn't walked a block before we caught site of the Blue Mosque, one of the feature attractions of the city.



The Blue Mosque sits on a big pedestrian mall that is the hub of the tourist area. Along the center of the mall are huge old pillars and columns that mark all that is left of the ancient Hippodrome, Istanbul's colosseum.



As we were standing outside another huge mosque, the Haghia Sofia, a guy came and started asking questions and giving us tourist information. When he finished, he said "Come with me, I have a family business. Let me give you a card."

I had read warnings about this; carpet salesman prowl the tourist district. If someone starts giving you tourist info it's not for altruistic reasons. But I figured this was something we should experience at least once, so we went with him.

Inside the shop he basically forced us to sit down and then had someone bring us apple tea. After a few minutes another guy came out and, after some bullshit chit-chat, started on his carpet pitch. Before long he was pulling out carpet upon carpet, spinning them around, showing them off. Lindsay was unwittingly egging him on by trying to be polite and show interest.


After about 10 carpets were out on the ground I figured it was time to put a stop to this. He acted very offended, which was obviously how they figure they can guilt Western tourists into staying. Fortunately, I'm un-guiltable. Our conversation went something like this:

"Okay, we really need to go eat."

"Go eat? Why don't you just stay five minutes more. Five minutes won't hurt anybody."

"That's what the other guy said five minutes ago!"

"Don't you want to see the carpets?"

"Look, we're not going to be buying any carpets tonight, alright?"

"Why not?"

"Because we're not going to be making any big purchases right now." (the prices of the carpets were in the 150 Euro range)

"It's not a big purchase, these are nice carpets!"

"It doesn't matter how nice they are, it's still a big purchase."

"Why don't you like the carpets?"

"What's the matter with you? I told you I think they're nice, I just don't want to buy one."

"But can't you see the lady wants one? Ask the lady which one she likes the best."

"If the lady wants a carpet she can buy one herself."

At this point I grabbed Lindsay's arm and dragged her out of the shop while she called out "If we do decide to get a carpet we'll keep this store in mind!"

We then set off to find a restaurant. All the restaurants in the area have a guy who stands outside and won't let you pass without looking at the menu. Seriously, we must have looked at about 30 different menus before I finally chose a place. After a light meal we went back to hotel and crashed.

In a way, I really like the fact that the city interacts with you within minutes of hitting the streets. However, this was clearly the tourist district and unrepresentative of the vast majority of the city, and it was clearly going to get annoying if we couldn't go anywhere without having somebody trying to get us into their shop.

[Next Istanbul Post]