On our drive out of Luxembourg, Joris announced, ‘I’m going to take you to Luxembourg’s most famous site.’
The ‘famous site’ was the largest petrol station in Europe, which had more than a hundred petrol pumps. ‘Isn’t this great?’ Joris exclaimed as we walked past a cigarette machine that was the size of a small house. The machine dispensed cartons of cigarettes. Joris brought a giant pack of rolling paper to go with his giant block of hash.
Joris was dropping me off at Brussels airport, but halfway through Belgium he suddenly said, ‘You can’t leave Belgium without having a Trappist beer!’ The fact that I had a plane to catch and it was 9.30 in the morning didn’t seem to faze him and he turned off the motorway towards the town of Rochefort.
I knew that Trappist beer is a beer brewed by Trappist monks, but I didn’t know that only seven Trappist monasteries in the world produce beer. There are six in Belgium and one in Holland. The road to the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Saint-Rémy wound its way through a forest of huge oak trees, while the abbey itself—which was founded in 1230— is a magnificent cluster of showpiece buildings from different eras where medieval stonework stands alongside antique brick buildings covered in ivy. Crates of freshly brewed beer were stacked up next to a wall of the ancient church, although there was no beer for sale in the abbey complex. We found that out when Joris asked a brown-robed monk who was solemnly wandering past us before he jumped into a sporty new VW and zoomed off, spinning the wheels and spitting gravel all over us.
We drove into the village of Rochefort and grabbed a table at Brasserie de Rochefort, where a few of the patrons were already downing beers. I was glad to see that we weren’t the only drunkards drinking beer at ten in the morning. There were three Rochefort Trappist beers on the menu. The beers didn’t have names, they were simply numbered: Rochefort 6 (7.5 per cent), Rochefort 8 (9.2 per cent) and the daddy of them all, Rochefort 10 (which was a whopping 11.3 per cent). ‘If we’re going to have a Trappist beer, we may as well do it properly,’ Joris said when he came back with two tall glasses of Rochefort 10. The beer was a dark reddish-brown colour with a creamy white head that was so thick it was like drinking beer-flavoured soup.
When Joris dropped me off at Brussels airport, our parting was quite emotional. We had slept together after all. We gave each other a hug knowing that there was a good chance we might never see each other again. Then again, I’ll probably bump into him while he’s riding his bike across the Gobi desert or some other dusty place that he likes to frequent.
TURKEY
13
‘I can take you around the most unknown and interesting parts of the city. Which, I imagine, will be a lot of fun.’
James Hakan Dedeog lu, 30, Istanbul, Turkey
CouchSurfing.com
‘Ey oop, lad. Let’s gaw t’ poob!’ my Turkish host said when he greeted me in the middle of the incredibly crowded Kadiköy wharf and bus station.
Okay, I may be exaggerating a little, but I was taken quite aback when my Turkish host had a broad Yorkshire accent.
‘Me moom’s from Bradford,’ James told me when I commented on his accent.
Although James’s moom was born and bred in Bradford, Yorkshire, James was born and bred in Istanbul. James didn’t look very Turkish (well, apart from the fez he was wearing). He was slightly built, with brown hair, a ginger beard and blue eyes.
On the short walk to his apartment, he told me that his parents met at university in Birmingham in 1972 where his dad was studying economics and his mum was studying to be a teacher. A year later they married and moved to Istanbul, which was then a relatively small city with less than 2 million people (there are now more than 15 million residents). Just to confirm that they were trailblazers, they settled on the Asian side of the city. The two halves of Istanbul, separated by the Bosphorus River, are in different continents. In those days the Asian part was mostly made up of holiday houses for people from the European side. ‘After a few months,’ James said, ‘me dad asked me moom if she wanted to go back to England and she said “No, sod that, I want to stay here”. She’s never been back to England since. Me dad passed away four years ago, but me moom won’t go back to England because Istanbul is her home.’
James had two names—an English one and a Turkish one. His mum and English relatives call him James while his Turkish friends call him Hakan. James also had a split-personality brother: John and Batu.
James was one of a number of people in Istanbul who I’d emailed to ask for a couch. There were certainly lots of couches to choose from. Istanbul is the sixth-ranked city for couch-surfing membership. The number one city is Paris—and who said Parisians were rude and inhospitable. The top ten couch-surfing cities from the 20 000 cities represented are in order: Paris, London, Montreal, Berlin, Vienna, New York, Istanbul, San Francisco, Melbourne and Toronto.
As usual in my search for a host, I was looking for someone who sounded ‘interesting’. This turned out to be quite easy, because some people hadn’t waited to be asked. They knew just what people like me are looking for in a host:
I am a very interesting person, but please do not disturb me with stupid ideas.
Okan, 29
My visitors should be interesting like me, honest and respect the ordinary home regulations such as throwing out the bins. Anil,
32
I’m a interesting man. u can learn all mafia history from me. give me a hug
Can, 23
I did find one host who was very interesting without feeling any compulsion to tell me that he was. Serhat Bilgiç must be the King of Couch Surfing (or the King of HospitalityClub to be more specific). A 36-year-old retired banker, he has had waves of surfers through his door. I don’t know who holds the record for the most couch-surfing guests, but Serhat must be right up there. In a space of less than two years Serhat had hosted 327 travellers from 38 different countries. As I write, his record for the number of guests staying at the one time is thirteen, while Jasmina from Macedonia holds the record for the longest stay of 42 nights. His oldest guest (so far) is 61-year-old Wolfgang from Austria and the youngest is Eric from Estonia at only nine months.
In the glowing online references for Serhat, he is dubbed the Sultan of Istanbul. He certainly loves his city: ‘Istanbul is Queen of all the cities because Istanbul is a dancing lady of the Bosphorus. She is a salsa dancer during the day and a belly dancer during the night; always ready to hug you and kiss you.’
Serhat was away when I was in Istanbul, which was a pity. With 327 people giving him such good references, I imagine he must have a pretty fancy couch.
At the other end of the hosting numbers scale was James Hakan Dedeolu. I was to be his first couch-surfing guest. The reason he’d not had a guest before was the very reason I thought he would be an interesting host. James was often too busy to host because he was the founder and Editor-in-Chief of bant, a hip monthly magazine which featured music, cinema, art and general arty stuff. ‘I can take you around the most unknown and interesting parts of the city,’ he told me in an email.
I was actually looking forward to seeing even the known parts of the city. I’d been to the Turkish coast before, but not to the city that was once capital of the Byzantine empire, the Roman empire (they even changed its name to New Rome for a few years to silence the critics) and the Ottoman empire. The history of the city reflects the whole amazing story of Western civilisation, religious conflict and kebabs.
Mind you, I saw most of the city on the way to meet James. I had to go all the way from Europe to Asia—on a bus ride that cost less than 2 dollars. The airport bus whisked me through a modern if somewhat grubby city, across the huge span of the Bosphorus Bridge where rust-streaked cargo hulks loomed up out of the Golden Horn, and on to the expansive Taksim Square in Europe. The square was teeming with locals wandering around with kebabs in one hand and Cokes in the other. I had to fight my way through hordes of people just to get across the road to catch the Kadiköy bus.
Even on t
he walk through the suburban streets of Moda on the way to James’s apartment, we occasionally had to step onto the road as the crowd squeezed us off the footpath.
‘Today is a holiday,’ James explained when I asked why the entire city’s population was out and about. ‘It is Eid ul-Fitr, or the Festival of Breaking, which is the first day after the end of Ramadan. The next three days are also holidays, called Bayrami. Everyone puts on their best clothes and visits relatives and friends and eats lots of food. Today is also the most important day to go to the mosque and pray.’
‘So you are Muslim?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Ninety-five per cent of Turkish people are Muslim.’
‘Did you go to the mosque this morning?’
‘Um, no. I am a Muslim, but I don’t really do the Muslim things,’ James said irreverently. ‘I only go to the mosque for funerals. We do the family thing at end of Ramadan because we get lots of good food and when we were young we used to get presents.’
‘I’m exactly the same,’ I nodded. ‘I’m a Catholic and I only go to church for funerals and I celebrate Christmas so I can get presents and have an excuse to drink a lot.’
‘Most of my friends are like me,’ James shrugged. ‘I have a Canadian friend who is living here and he is more of a Muslim than all of my friends.’
That reminded me of something that puzzled me at the time.
‘Do the Turkish have something against Canadians?’
‘Um, no. Why?’
‘At the visa payment counter at Istanbul airport, there’s a large sign on the wall which lists all the countries and their relevant visa fees. Most of them were around twenty dollars, but the Canadian one was sixty dollars.’
‘That’s strange.’
‘Yeah. Why the Canadians? They’re nice enough.’
‘You’d think the American one would be most expensive,’ James said. ‘No one likes them.’
It was almost as strange that there were only three countries whose citizens were exempt from having to pay for a visa: Kyrgyzstan, Bolivia and Macedonia. They must have just pulled their names out of a hat.
‘It’s a pity that you won’t be here in ten days’ time,’ James said as we traipsed up the stairs to the fourth-floor apartment. ‘I’m getting married and you could have come to the wedding.’
I’d spent less than an hour with James and he was inviting me to his wedding. The hospitality and generosity of the couch-surfing folk I’d met so far was quite astonishing. So much so, in fact, I wouldn’t have been surprised if James asked me to be his best man.
James and his fiancée Aylin had only just moved into the apartment and were still in the process of unpacking boxes. James had been living with Aylin in her small rented apartment in a nearby suburb. James and Aylin’s new apartment was huge. Well, it seemed huge after Smári, Joris and Cecile’s tiny abodes. Although the apartment building looked rundown, the apartment itself had recently been renovated. There was parquetry floor throughout and a new kitchen and bathroom. Their rent was US$1200 a month (as a comparison, Smári paid $2000 a month while Bob’s three-bedroom flat was $780 a month).
The lounge room alone was bigger than Smári’s entire flat. Besides a few unpacked boxes, the room was almost empty. The only furniture in it was a new leather lounge suite, a new coffee table and a new LCD TV. James told me that they also had a new fridge, new dishwasher and, of course, a new toaster. ‘We are already getting wedding presents,’ James smiled. ‘That’s why we had to move to a big apartment.’
Sitting on the couch busily typing away on a laptop was James’s fiancée Aylin. ‘It’s my day off and I’m still working,’ she said, flashing me a gorgeous smile. There were also two other laptops on the coffee table and a clutter of mobile phones. James and Aylin set up bant magazine together after they’d met working for a computer games magazine. They were up to their 25th issue and were just about to launch a bant television show.
James gave me the apartment tour, which took in what I instantly imagined would become the highest-ranking ‘couch’ so far. I had my very own bedroom with a huge double bed and my own bathroom. Aylin’s mum and sister (who were both in town from Izmir for the two weeks leading up to the wedding) were busily baking, blanching, braising and boiling away in the kitchen. ‘Mum has been cooking for three days,’ Aylin said.
Aylin’s mum told me that I had to eat. ‘Just a little bit,’ I groaned, patting my ever-expanding stomach. ‘I’ve eaten so much food on this trip.’ (Although my bulging waistline was probably more of a consequence of beer rather than food.) My ‘little bit’ was a plate piled high with spicy meatballs in tomato sauce, baked stuffed eggplant, pasta and rice.
‘So, are you nervous about the wedding?’ I asked Aylin with a mouthful of stuffed eggplant.
‘A little bit,’ she said musingly. She then showed me a red rash and splotches all up her arm. ‘This is from the stress,’ she sighed wearily. ‘We really have made it hard on ourselves. As well as the wedding to organise, we’re moving into the new flat and, to top it off, the deadline for the latest magazine is in three days.’
I asked Aylin what happens at a traditional Turkish wedding and she said that theirs wasn’t going to be very traditional at all. ‘There will be three stages,’ Aylin said. ‘First there is an official ceremony which is very short. It is so short that I missed a wedding a few weeks ago. The official ceremony started at seven. When I arrived at three minutes past, the ceremony was over. After the ceremony we will eat a meal with the family and then we’re having a party with two hundred guests and we’ll all get trashed.’
‘Then we are having our honeymoon in Iceland,’ James said excitedly.
‘Oh, I was there a week ago,’ I said.
‘Do you have any recommendations?’ Aylin asked.
‘Yeah, double the limit on your credit card.’
After lunch we all squeezed into a taxi to go to James’s nanna’s place for a family get-together—except for Aylin’s mum, who still had a little bit more space in the fridge to fill up with meals.
‘We used to love this day when we were kids,’ James said. ‘When you kiss the hand of a relative, they give you money and we used to make loads.’
James also had an ulterior motive for making sure he caught up with all of his relatives. ‘We want to be in the good books,’ James said with a cheeky grin. ‘So we get good wedding presents.’
It sounds like they do all right in the wedding gift stakes. Aylin said that she would also get gold pinned to her dress on the wedding day. ‘It used to be money,’ James said. ‘But the Turkish Lira devalues too quickly.’
James’s mum Julie (or Jool-ay as she pronounced it) met us at Nanna’s door and there were hugs and kisses all round. Julie had a broad Yorkshire accent and she jumped effortlessly from rapid-fire Turkish to ‘Ey oop’. As each relative greeted us, we were given handfuls of chocolates and sweets.
James introduced me to his brother John who was hanging halfway out of an open window smoking a cigarette. John’s accent was even stronger than James and Julie’s. He had been working in Leeds for the past three years as a stonemason for a Turkish company that also had an office and factory in Istanbul.
The only reason he’d moved to Leeds was so he didn’t have to do a long stint in the military. ‘If you go to university, like James did,’ he said, ‘then you only have to do five months instead of fifteen months. I didn’t want to do fifteen months, so I had to work abroad for three years. Then I only had to do twenty-one days military service.’ John hadn’t been able to come home to Turkey in that time. He returned to Turkey three years to the day after he’d left.
‘I also had to pay for it, though,’ he grumbled. ‘To only do twenty-one days, I had to pay four thousand pounds.’
When some more relatives arrived, they stared at John in wonder. ‘Everyone keeps staring at me,’ he said. ‘Before I left to do my military service I had long hair and a beard.’ John, who had only finished his service the day before, was now cl
ean-shaven and sporting short-cropped hair. ‘I also lost a stone in weight,’ he said as Nanna handed him a massive slice of cream cake. I think John may have been on a mission to put it all back on, though. When he’d devoured the cake he had a second serve that was bigger than the first.
‘Are you going to move back to Turkey?’ I asked John.
‘No, I’ll stay in England,’ John said. ‘That way I get the best of both worlds.’
I didn’t want to be rude, but I wasn’t sure how Leeds could be the best of any world.
‘So, are you ready to go out?’ James asked after I’d finished my third cup of tea.
‘Right, let’s go out and get fookin’ pissed,’ John said, rubbing his hands. Yes, I think John had turned English.
‘Asia is boring, so we’re going to Europe,’ John said as we jumped in a taxi to the wharf. We were catching a ferry from Asia back to Europe.
‘The city goes a bit crazy tonight,’ James said aboard the ferry. ‘There will be a million people in the streets that haven’t had a drink for a month.’
The view from the ferry as we chugged across the Bosphorus was striking. Under the blanket of night the modern city took on its historic mantle as ancient mosques, including the imposing Yeni Cami mosque (which James informed me means New Mosque, even though it was built in 1663), and the old city walls were spectacularly illuminated with not quite so historic coloured lights.
We walked over Galata Bridge, constantly side-stepping the crowds. Scores of men were selling silvery fish displayed in baskets, while hundreds more lined the railings of the bridge fishing between the ferries. At the far end of the bridge, along the water’s edge, a long line of charcoal barbecues was cooking the fresh fish that had just been caught. Not sure ‘fresh’ is the right word, though, and I think the fish themselves are probably thankful for their release from the dank and polluted waters of the Bosphorus. There were also folk cooking kebabs, pretzels, pancakes, mussels and corn on the cob.
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