Istanbul, Please

Oh SO much to update. I'm going to split it up with dashes (---) so it doesn't just look like a massive block of endless text.

Here we go...

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Saturday, May 10th
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Started out the day in a lazy way, not waking up until 11 a.m. and lounging around until Jess (one of our hosts) returned from work. I then set out with her to meet Josh (other host) and grab a light lunch of lahmacun (pronounced 'lamajun', as a 'c' in Turkish sounds like our 'j'), which are wood-fired oven baked flatbreads spread with diced tomatoes and peppers. Mmm. We ate our lunch on a terrace overlooking Kadikoy's fish market, then headed back to meet up with Max (who'd spent the afternoon wandering on his own) and start our night on the town. We caught a dolmus (taxi-van, fits seven bodies) near the Kadikoy ferry and drove across the river to Taksim, the 'party district' of Istanbul.

The drive turned out to be quite an eduaction in in Turkish driving ettiquite, the main point as I understand it being that there IS NONE. Our driver cut other cars off, nearly plowed down scores of jaywalking pedestrians, and often invented his own lane if the ones available didn't suit him. To make matters worse, the seatbelts were neatly tucked away, knotted tightly to make sure the pesky things didn't bother the driver's passengers. Thankfully there was traffic to slow him down a bit, and we all arrived safe and sound, if not a little dazed.

In my wide-eyed (slightly terrified) state, I was not prepared for the great crowds of people filling Taksim's cobblestone streets. Imagine Bay Street at 17:00, then add a couple thousand more commuters and you might be close to understanding the vastness of the crowds last night. I didn't realize how huge Istanbul was - between 12 and 15 million people depending on who you ask - and it seemed as if most of the city was out and about while we were there. Add a few hundred big-eyed tourists and you have one hell of an experience.

It was also the night for Turkey's futbol (soccer) finals, so a large number of fans roamed the streets proudly displaying their team's colours (mostly red & yellow, the colours of one of Istanbul's three big football teams), waving flags and singing team songs. There were even cars and the occasional tram forcing their way through the masses, honking with little to no effect on the stream of people. We finally worked our way down the main street and turned onto a side alley (only slightly less packed) and found what Josh calls Istanbul's best pizza (I agree with him wholeheartedly). After a lovely dinner we set out to have a few drinks before the show we'd gotten tickets to (more on that later). At the first bar I finally tried cay (imagine the little curly-q under the 'c' and pronounce it 'chai' and you have traditional Turkish black tea), a ubiquitous drink that's served in small glass cups and can be found on ferries, in markets, anywhere you might want some steaming hot caffeine. The stuff is delectable, so I drank two cups before we moved on to a terrace bar, followed by a bar called Montreal, which had a Canadian theme and amused me greatly.

Then came what will go down as one of the highlights of the trip - seeing Broken Social Scene, a very Torontonian indie band, in Istanbul! They played in a miniscule club called Babylon that is, for those who know, about five times smaller than The Phoenix. No, I'm not joking - the place fits maybe 500 people, but only if you really pack 'em in. I'll spare my non-music-nerd readers too much unintelligible babble, but rest assured this concert would have rocked no matter where I saw BSS play. Amy Milan was with them (VERY exciting) and she sang 'Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl', only my most favourite song of theirs (plus I had a moment where they were stage-bantering and she made eye contact with me and it was awesome). By the time the show ended it was 2 a.m. and I was all danced out, so we caught another dolmus back to Kadikoy, but not before we worked our way back through the chanting crowds (Taksim's team had won the top title in the league) and waded through a sea of yellow taxis, all honking their little horns right off (honking seems to be a Turkish national sport).

Quite a day my friends, quite a day!

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Sunday, May 11th
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Quick roundup of my day first (point form style), then some more thoughtful stuff about Istanbul's culture.

-Took ferry back to historic district
-Wandered until we found Topkapi park, a lush oasis in the middle of Istanbul's honking, exhaust-filled main streets
-Ate roasted corn from street vendor
-Met Josh & Jess at nargile (nar-gee-lay) bar, decided to immerse self entirely in culture by smoking nargile (hookah), felt like caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland then coughed a whole bunch
-Stared in wonderment at slightly run-down mosque beside nargile place
-Headed home on ferry again
-Bartered (via Josh & Jess) my way into a pair of new, red and black plaid Chucks! Only YTL32 (about $25 Canadian)
-Now relaxing at apartment, about to eat dinner

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Now the (hopefully) thoughtful bit, transcribed from paper-journal.

More culture-wonderment over the differences between North American and Turkish society. Most of them are superficial - the lack of seatbelts in taxis, the tendency of pedestrians to wade into moving traffic, the tendency of cars (and buses) to keep driving as if the pedestrians aren't there...

And then there are the more noticeable things. Positive ones, like staying up until 5 a.m. and hearing the first call to prayer echoing over the Kadikoy rooftops, or the way cay-and-coffee vendors with their trays of sweet, sweet caffeine are everywhere, and the street food - simit (Turkish bagels), roasted chestnuts, whole roasted ears of corn, and strangely marshmallowy ice cream all abound.

The negative? Really the only thing I've found during my stay is the fact that smoking might actually be Turkey's top sport. It's not only practiced outside as it is in Canada, but sneaks in EVERYWHERE. Restaurants, bars, ferries - all of them seem to be filled with folks exhaling great clouds of noxious smoke. I'm quite sure that at the concert last night I inhaled the equivalent of a pack of smokes over the course of the evening, as the audience around me was full of hardcore chain smokers puffing away like antique rail engines. My lungs are still feeling the effect today - I seem to have become quite smoke-sensitive in my old age.

Tomorrow we hop an overnight bus to Thessaloniki, then a plane to Corfu, where my story will pick up next.