So, I visited Yerevan Armania last year. I swore some allegiance to Mother Armenia, pledged to never hurt the country of my heart. Then I was invited to visit Turkey. I kinda forgot my new found Armenian heritage, and flew to Istanbul. Regardless of the statistics: www.truthandgrace.com/Armenianholocaust.htm (this website is blocked in the uae, so I don't know exactly what it says) and in light of the fact that I had fallen out of love with the Armenian proprietor of the woodcutting museum and her little dog (she was broken nosed hot, and I mean that in the best possible way. I would have given up everything to pet her dog and kiss her to sleep each night), I didn't think much of the flight to Istanbul, because I was surrounded by Turks. As I was disembarking the plane, I remembered I had that Armenian Visa on my passport, and the alert Turkish border guard would certainly put up a fuss about my switched allegiance. Trouble, I was sure. But $20 later, I strolled onto the the sovereign land of The Islamic Republic of Turkey.
Mother Armenia, may I remind you, has statues regarding the ethnocide delivered by the Turks (I'm coining the word 'ethnocide" here and now):
See? Sad Armenia.
The first thing I noticed about Istanbul was the chill. It was quite cold (well, cold compared to the arid climes I'm used to). It's really one of the unheralded wonders of this modern world to be able to walk from a desert, sit down for a while, and walk out into a cold world. Amazing. Really. Anyway, I successfully navigated the currency exchange, the taxi stand (which wasn't as daunting as the one in Thailand), and the tittering Eurotrash who were dressed for the weather better than I, and found myself on the way to The Sultan Eyes Hotel.
Now, I didn't (don't) speak Turkish, and my driver didn't (doesn't) speak English. All I had to go on was my journal entry regarding my hotel. We got along famously.
My taxi driver knew where Old Town was (and like it's name, it really was old), but he refused to acknowledge that the car he was driving had a clutch. If you've ever had to listen to the squeal of gears and brakes and revving engines, I'm assuming you've heard Indian music.
Anyway, we finally found the hotel, and I was shown to my room. After the initial shock of how small it was (I could brush my teeth and take a shower, and if I needed to I could also evacuate my bowels...at the same time, in the same space), I opened the window and set out for the hilltops.
I thought this was the Blue Mosque, because I was unaware of the way the invading forces had ruined a architecture (invading forces=koraninites--I'm coining that word too).
From another view, I thought this was a really beautiful mosque. Then I realized it used to be a real church, without the battle stations errr... minarets. That being said, I don't blame the m*dians for desecrating this place, and I don't blame them for erecting an even better architecture, the Blue Mosque.
After swooning because of the gorgeous architecture, I decided that perhaps I should walk around a little more (as I tend to do). I saw this wonderful alley lit by green lights, and immediately after I walked past it, I got accosted by a guy who wanted to show me "pretty Turkish girls who no say no."
After that, I headed toward the Sultan's Eye's Hotel, but got caught up in the lights, the smiles, and the Australian coeds swarming the streets. But then I saw this, found a great meal of goat and cream cheese and finally went to sleep.
The next day, I had my meeting with the owner of TPR, Istanbul. It was pretty boring, and he didn't offer anything other than the chance to be an illegal worker in Turkey. Not the sharpest move for someone of my advanced age. Anyway, it was a pretty boring meeting. Afterwards, I went to Taksim square in search of adventure (you would think that, by now, I would be adverse to adventure). Not true.
I found statues
.
I found Churches
And , of course, I found the guy who robbed me. Istanbul is quite hilly, and so I was walking down the hill from Taksim Square (because I'm not normally one to walk UP a hill), in search of the underground train to lead me to the train which would then take me back to Europe (I was on the Asian side of Istanbul). I found the Underground, but because I couldn't understand how much the trip cost nor where to get off the train, I decided to let gravity take control, and I started down the hill towards the bridge back to The Sultans Eye hotel. So far, so good. I managed to semi-stumble my way down the hill and I was on the precipice of the final, unsteady staircase when a shoeshine boy, trudging up the hill, dropped his shining brush. Because I'm not smart, I picked it up and called out "You dropped something." Then I continued on my way. Just as I was about to take that first step onto the perilous staircase, a wooden stool, a boy, and the brush appeared at my feet.
"Sir, please," I heard.
"These shoes don't take I shine," I said. I didn't say it because I was being cheap, but because I was wearing sneakers, and historically, Nike's just don't take a shine. Before I stopped speaking, the boy was assiduously scrubbing my right sneaker with a toothbrush. In my head, I was telling myself the whole situation was bad, but in my heart I was convincing myself that "he's really scrubbing hard, and who cares about wet shoes?" Like a sucker, as soon as he tapped my left calf, I switched feet on the stool so I could get my left food drenched as good as my right one.
Less than a minute later, he straightened up and said "25." I thought the price was slightly excessive, but I wasn't in the mood to argue so I pulled out my wallet from my front pocket (a little lesson learned from Thailand) and handed over 15 lira. (The US dollar is about 1.6 Turkish Lira.) Then I started thumbing through my wallet for another 10 lira. I couldn't find the 10 I thought I had, so I produced a 50 lira bill and asked if he had change. He shook his head sadly and said "Only 15." I'm magnanimous to a fault, so I said "Ok, 15." He gave me 15 lira and trudged his way up the hill, and I took my change and carefully navigated the stairs down to "street" level. Halfway down, I realized exactly what had happened:
Me---->Shoeshine boy: 15
Me: Looking for 10, Shoeshine boy doesn't return my original 15
Me---->Shoeshine boy: 50
Shoeshine boy---->No change, only 15
Me: Happy-ish with 15 change.
It was only while I was walking through the open air cheese market (it exists...it exists) that I realized I got rooked, and paid the kid 50 lira (approximately $27) for the honor of having wet socks. And I realized that I had been taken by the oldest game in the book. For a while, I thought I should just pin money to my shirt and walk around, thus dispensing with all the formalities people have to go through to take my money away from me. But looking back, I really admire the innocent face, the ease of working a mark, and the fact that he at least worked on my sneakers for a minute each. This again reinforces the thing my friends tell me (which I try to disagree with at all times) that I still believe in the better nature of people. I guess I could be doing worse.
After getting rooked, I walked across the bridge which connects Asia and Europe, and I saw one of the main attractions (which I had been standing at, prior to the shoe shine debacle) of Istanbul, Galata Tower. Neat.
On the bridge, there were a lot of folks with fishing poles in the river:
And I could see the Imperial Mosque:
And the Marmara Sea
A statue
A Roman Arch
The first thing I noticed about Istanbul was the chill. It was quite cold (well, cold compared to the arid climes I'm used to). It's really one of the unheralded wonders of this modern world to be able to walk from a desert, sit down for a while, and walk out into a cold world. Amazing. Really. Anyway, I successfully navigated the currency exchange, the taxi stand (which wasn't as daunting as the one in Thailand), and the tittering Eurotrash who were dressed for the weather better than I, and found myself on the way to The Sultan Eyes Hotel.
Now, I didn't (don't) speak Turkish, and my driver didn't (doesn't) speak English. All I had to go on was my journal entry regarding my hotel. We got along famously.
My taxi driver knew where Old Town was (and like it's name, it really was old), but he refused to acknowledge that the car he was driving had a clutch. If you've ever had to listen to the squeal of gears and brakes and revving engines, I'm assuming you've heard Indian music.
Anyway, we finally found the hotel, and I was shown to my room. After the initial shock of how small it was (I could brush my teeth and take a shower, and if I needed to I could also evacuate my bowels...at the same time, in the same space), I opened the window and set out for the hilltops.
I thought this was the Blue Mosque, because I was unaware of the way the invading forces had ruined a architecture (invading forces=koraninites--I'm coining that word too). From another view, I thought this was a really beautiful mosque. Then I realized it used to be a real church, without the battle stations errr... minarets. That being said, I don't blame the m*dians for desecrating this place, and I don't blame them for erecting an even better architecture, the Blue Mosque.
Meaning, this.
After swooning because of the gorgeous architecture, I decided that perhaps I should walk around a little more (as I tend to do). I saw this wonderful alley lit by green lights, and immediately after I walked past it, I got accosted by a guy who wanted to show me "pretty Turkish girls who no say no."
After that, I headed toward the Sultan's Eye's Hotel, but got caught up in the lights, the smiles, and the Australian coeds swarming the streets. But then I saw this, found a great meal of goat and cream cheese and finally went to sleep.The next day, I had my meeting with the owner of TPR, Istanbul. It was pretty boring, and he didn't offer anything other than the chance to be an illegal worker in Turkey. Not the sharpest move for someone of my advanced age. Anyway, it was a pretty boring meeting. Afterwards, I went to Taksim square in search of adventure (you would think that, by now, I would be adverse to adventure). Not true.
I found statues
.
I found Churches
And , of course, I found the guy who robbed me. Istanbul is quite hilly, and so I was walking down the hill from Taksim Square (because I'm not normally one to walk UP a hill), in search of the underground train to lead me to the train which would then take me back to Europe (I was on the Asian side of Istanbul). I found the Underground, but because I couldn't understand how much the trip cost nor where to get off the train, I decided to let gravity take control, and I started down the hill towards the bridge back to The Sultans Eye hotel. So far, so good. I managed to semi-stumble my way down the hill and I was on the precipice of the final, unsteady staircase when a shoeshine boy, trudging up the hill, dropped his shining brush. Because I'm not smart, I picked it up and called out "You dropped something." Then I continued on my way. Just as I was about to take that first step onto the perilous staircase, a wooden stool, a boy, and the brush appeared at my feet.
"Sir, please," I heard.
"These shoes don't take I shine," I said. I didn't say it because I was being cheap, but because I was wearing sneakers, and historically, Nike's just don't take a shine. Before I stopped speaking, the boy was assiduously scrubbing my right sneaker with a toothbrush. In my head, I was telling myself the whole situation was bad, but in my heart I was convincing myself that "he's really scrubbing hard, and who cares about wet shoes?" Like a sucker, as soon as he tapped my left calf, I switched feet on the stool so I could get my left food drenched as good as my right one.
Less than a minute later, he straightened up and said "25." I thought the price was slightly excessive, but I wasn't in the mood to argue so I pulled out my wallet from my front pocket (a little lesson learned from Thailand) and handed over 15 lira. (The US dollar is about 1.6 Turkish Lira.) Then I started thumbing through my wallet for another 10 lira. I couldn't find the 10 I thought I had, so I produced a 50 lira bill and asked if he had change. He shook his head sadly and said "Only 15." I'm magnanimous to a fault, so I said "Ok, 15." He gave me 15 lira and trudged his way up the hill, and I took my change and carefully navigated the stairs down to "street" level. Halfway down, I realized exactly what had happened:
Me---->Shoeshine boy: 15
Me: Looking for 10, Shoeshine boy doesn't return my original 15
Me---->Shoeshine boy: 50
Shoeshine boy---->No change, only 15
Me: Happy-ish with 15 change.
It was only while I was walking through the open air cheese market (it exists...it exists) that I realized I got rooked, and paid the kid 50 lira (approximately $27) for the honor of having wet socks. And I realized that I had been taken by the oldest game in the book. For a while, I thought I should just pin money to my shirt and walk around, thus dispensing with all the formalities people have to go through to take my money away from me. But looking back, I really admire the innocent face, the ease of working a mark, and the fact that he at least worked on my sneakers for a minute each. This again reinforces the thing my friends tell me (which I try to disagree with at all times) that I still believe in the better nature of people. I guess I could be doing worse.
A statueA Roman Arch
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