We sauntered into ‘Old Stamboul’ and caught the world’s second-oldest subway (after London’s). We did the entire system, which is all of one stop. It did save us a walk up a very steep hill, though. When we stepped out of the station, we were immediately swept up among the throngs of revellers roaming up and down the traffic-free main street.
‘All the foockin’ idiots from the suburbs come into town after Ramadan,’ John declared. We headed off the main drag and down a quiet narrow cobblestone lane, which was lined with hip bars with tables spilling out into the street. We grabbed an outside table and ordered large mugs of Efes Pilsen (on this trip alone, I think I’d sampled enough different beers to rival Smári’s impressive list).
Over the next hour a whole gang of friends turned up to join us, including John’s two new best friends from his short military stint. Neither of them lived in Turkey, though. One was German and the other lived a few kilometres away from me in Melbourne. Buyruk emigrated with his family to Australia when he was eight and he’d come back to live and work in Turkey for twelve months. For that privilege he had to do his military service and pay AU$8500.
‘We had an American guy in our regiment who did military service so he could get his father’s inheritance,’ John told us. ‘He didn’t speak a word of Turkish, so the guys in our regiment taught him complicated swear words. He couldn’t ask where the toilet was in Turkish, but he could say “I’m going to pour concrete into your mother’s pussy, so I can’t fuck her and neither can your father”.’
Clearly, compulsory military service is a character-building experience and bolsters national pride.
‘Did they do the fasting thing in the military?’ I asked John.
‘Nah, we’d be foockin’ knackered if we did.’
The danger of becoming knackered seemed to be the main reason why most of James and Aylin’s friends didn’t fast during Ramadan. ‘I did the whole Ramadan thing when I was young,’ Aylin said. ‘But not anymore. I’m too busy working too hard. You can’t work without eating or drinking anything for twelve hours, you have no energy.’
‘New Year is really the biggest day in Turkey,’ James said. ‘People put up Christmas trees with Santa Claus decorations and the devoted Muslims hate it.’
All the bars in the street were now busy with locals boozing up with abandon.
‘I thought Muslims didn’t drink,’ I said to James.
‘We are Muslim,’ James shrugged. ‘But we like to drink.’
‘Turkey even has a ban on women wearing a burka,’ Aylin said. ‘It is forbidden by law for female politicians, lawyers, public servants and tertiary students to wear the veil in their place of work or study.’
The Muslim women of Turkey may not wear traditional veils, but they seemed to follow the Muslim doctrine of staying at home. When we went to another bar I noticed that at least 80 per cent of the people roaming the streets were men.
By the wee hours in the morning, only James, John and I were left as we sipped raki in a lovely rooftop bar looking out across the city. ‘Let’s get something to eat,’ John suggested when we finished our drinks. We were in the right city for the perfect fodder after a few beers. And it wouldn’t matter how drunk you were, you wouldn’t have any trouble finding a kebab. Every second shop in Taksim Square was selling them. ‘I know someone,’ John said, tapping his nose. ‘So we can get freebies.’ I was quite excited as I took in the delicious smell of grilled meats that permeated the square.
‘Here ya go,’ John said. Much to my disappointment, John had come back with hamburgers.
I didn’t get to try out my luxurious ‘couch’ at James’s apartment because his mum’s apartment was easier (‘and a lot foockin’ cheaper’ John said) to get to. James gave me his old bedroom and it wasn’t until I woke up in the morning that I realised what a lovely gesture that was. James had slept on the floor in John’s bedroom on a pile of lumpy cushions.
‘This is our office,’ James announced as we stepped into the courtyard at the back of a cafe. ‘They have wireless connection here and this is also where we do most of our interviews for the magazine.’ The cafe was below their old flat and James told me that they spent more time working at the cafe than at their real office.
‘This was an expensive area in the seventies,’ Aylin said as we grabbed a table. ‘Then drug addicts moved in and it became rundown. Now it’s cool again.’
Too cool, according to James. ‘All the Sex and the City wannabes are moving in now.’
I burst out laughing. ‘The guy I stayed with in Chicago said exactly the same thing about where he lived.’
We had a traditional Turkish breakfast, which James and Aylin had most mornings. I was surprised James and Aylin were so slim when I saw how much food came out. We were served an array of plates that were piled high with cheeses, sucuk (spicy Turkish sausage), olives, sun-dried tomatoes, green peppers, reçel (a preserve made with whole fruits), cucumbers, tomatoes, simit (a circular roll with sesame seeds) and a huge omelette for each of us, served in a sizzling pan with cheese and tomato.
After our morning feast we went to the less-cafe-style offices of bant, which they shared with the same computer games magazine they’d been working for when they first met. James and Aylin had five full-time staff: an illustrator, advertising sales rep, designer and two writers. I left James and Aylin frantically typing away to go do the tourist thing. James did have one of piece of advice for me. ‘Beware of men wearing fezzes,’ he warned. ‘If you go to a restaurant or shop and they are wearing fezzes then it’s only for tourists.’
Only a short walk from the bant office is the most visited site in Istanbul: ve Ticaret Merkezi—in English, the Cevahir Shopping Centre. It is also the biggest shopping mall in Europe (and third largest in the world after South China Mall in Beijing and West Edmonton Mall in Canada). Yes, it was a mammoth mall of monumental proportions, but it looked like any other mall in the world, with the same mega-global brands. And like malls the world over, the place was teeming with teenagers—guys with an overabundance of hair product and girls with an overabundance of makeup— loitering about eating Macca’s and texting each other. Naturally I got lost in there, and in hindsight it probably wasn’t such a good idea to come to a shopping centre with hundreds and hundreds of shops when all I wanted to buy was a pack of chewing gum.
I caught the incredibly crowded Metro into the city. Public transport was free throughout the three-day holiday and, as John put it, ‘All the foockin’ idiots from the suburbs go on public transport just for the hell of it’. The tram was even more crowded. So much so, in fact, that the impatient folk at the tram stops didn’t even wait for passengers to get off as they pushed and shoved their way aboard.
At every stop, more and more people somehow squeezed on until my face was rammed up against a fellow who could very easily have been mistaken for a gorilla. I was getting to experience a real Turkish bath as sweat dripped off everyone squished up against me. At one point the tram got so packed that the driver couldn’t shut the doors. He tried and tried, and in the process kept slamming them into people’s faces. The gorilla next to me began freaking out a little and started screaming and ranting at the driver and shoving people around. When the driver finally closed the doors, he kept on abusing him. The driver soon got his revenge, though. He suddenly slammed on the brakes and sent everyone surging forward. There was more abuse, so he slammed on the brakes again even harder. It was like some sadistic amusement-park ride. I got off one stop after the one I wanted, and even then I only escaped because Mr Gorilla pushed me out.
I devoted the rest of the day to the Istanbul Tourist Trifecta: the Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia and Topkapi Palace.
The magnificent Blue Mosque (which was grey, but I won’t bicker) is a mass of domes and arches topped with six slim minarets pointing heavenwards like defending rockets. James had another name for this famous place of worship: Kokan Ayaklarin Büyük evi Kokan Ayaklar Konagi, or The Grand House of the Smelly Feet. I adde
d to the smell somewhat when I took off my sweaty boots, thanks to my time on The Grand Tram of the Sweaty Commuter. Inside the mosque was a huge open space with no pews, no icons, no ornaments, just acres of soft carpet and rows of devout people kneeling and praying. And not-so-devout Turkish teenagers. They were all taking photos of each other with their mobile phones underneath large signs saying NO PHOTOGRAPHS.
When we non-believers were ushered out for the official prayers, I saw the same teenagers slouching on steps under a huge sign which read: SITTING ON STEPS IS ABSOLUTELY FORBIDDEN.
The Hagia Sophia, which was built in the sixth century, was the largest enclosed space for more than a millennium. When I was there it happened to be housing a huge, and world-renowned, sculpture that travels extensively around major historical sites throughout Europe. Amazingly, and almost eerily, I seem to catch it a lot in my travels. I’m not sure of the exact date of the sculpture, which filled up about a quarter of the space inside and reached all the way to the top of the dome roof, but I’m guessing probably late last century. That’s when I think most modern scaffolding was built. Admittedly, it was up there with the best when it came to nice scaffolding. It had a rather fetching matching orange staircase and fence around it. The Japanese tourists seemed to be impressed. They were taking lots of photos of it. I wandered past Thai, German, Italian, Spanish and French tour groups who were all undoubtedly talking about the intricate detail in the joinery work of the scaffolding.
Topkapi Palace was the administrative and erotic centre for the rulers of the Ottoman empire. I won’t go into too much detail, but it is big, opulent and has lots of old stuff. It also gave me the chance to collect another site whose name has become generic, like Geysir in Iceland. Topkapi Palace was home to the many wives of successive Turkish sultans. The wives slept in a hall called ‘Harim’, which then began to be used as a generic name for the home of many wives. This famous harem typically housed at times up to a thousand women. That’s a lot of nagging about leaving the toilet seat up.
I watched the sun set majestically over the Blue Mosque from the tram stop. I had to wait almost an hour for a tram that wasn’t bursting at the seams with ‘foockin’ idiots from the suburbs’.
Back at the bant offices, everyone was still working hard. ‘I’m so sorry,’ James lamented. ‘We’re not very good guides.’
‘That’s okay,’ I said. ‘It can’t be helped.’
‘We’ve just got some dinner, if you want some.’ James said.
Dinner was tuna sandwiches, Doritos and bottles of Diet Coke, but it wasn’t quite the traditional Turkish cuisine I was hoping for. When I asked where I might find some traditional Turkish fare, James recommended a restaurant around the corner.
Külünçe Sofrasi restaurant was a traditional Turkish restaurant (but minus the belly-dancing show). The restaurant didn’t serve alcohol, but that was fine by me. I was having an AFD (Alcohol-Free Day) anyway. Not only was it nice (and nicer for my liver) to take a night off from drinking, it was also just nice to have a night out by myself. One of the problems with couch surfing is that, as a guest, you feel obliged to be constantly ‘entertaining’ your hosts. You can’t just sit back at your host’s house and say ‘pass me the TV remote and keep the noise down will ya’. Although maybe I could cater for that market by starting up my own website: GlobalCouchPotato.com.
Külünçe Sofrasi restaurant fitted my ‘no English menu’ criterion, but there weren’t any English-speaking staff either, so ordering was a little more tricky. I had one of those uneasy exchanges you experience whilst travelling where you ask for something with a mix of English and charades (and it’s not easy doing ‘What’s the specialty of the house?’), then the waiter speaks for five minutes in their own language pointing at something on the menu that you can’t read anyway.
For all I know this guy was saying that, since you are a stupid tourist who has accidentally wandered into a restaurant where the waiters do not wear fezzes and you can’t understand a word of what I am telling you, allow me to recommend the least popular and most expensive dish on the menu.
I just nodded my head and said, ‘Yes, that would be lovely!’
I think I may have ordered ‘the banquet for ten’. My ‘entrée’ of bread and dips was a meal in itself. The flat Turkish bread was the size of a placemat. The main course was a platter piled with chicken wings, köfte (meatballs), shish kebabs, pizza, various böreks (savoury filled pastries), large grilled green chillies, grilled tomatoes and salad. When my waiter served it up, he spent a good ten minutes explaining everything that was on the plate to me in Turkish.
When I waddled back to the bant office, James said, ‘I rang some friends and they will take you out for a drink if you like.’
‘Um . . . I’m actually happy just to hang out here,’ I said. ‘Plus I’m having an Alcohol-Free Day.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ James said two hours later. ‘You must be so bored.’
‘I’ve been out every night for the past five weeks,’ I said. ‘I’m so happy to be bored.’
I was so happy to be bored, in fact, that I fell asleep at one of the desks. James and Aylin finally called it a day (or night in this case) at 12.30. ‘Shall we go out for a quick drink?’ James asked.
‘What about my Alcohol-Free Day?’
‘It’s after twelve, so it’s technically the next day,’ James said.
‘Yeah, okay.’
James had a very romantic morning for two planned: picking up the wedding rings that James and Aylin had helped design at a jewellers in the Grand Bazaar, and then having a massage together. Except it wasn’t that romantic, because it was just James and me.
Istanbul is not only the home of Europe’s biggest shopping mall, it’s also home to Europe’s oldest shopping mall. The very grand Grand Bazaar is made up of 60 covered streets with more than 4000 shops housing stalls that have been selling the same wares for centuries—gold and silver jewellery, copperware, pottery, carpets and Viagra. Near the gold jewellery section was the spice market (as in spice-up-your-marriage market). Rows of stalls were selling, amongst other things, Deadly Shark Power Delay Spray (for your premature ejaculation); Super Stay Delay Spray; mega-packs of Viagra; and an impressive collection of porn DVDs. The fellow selling Deadly Shark Power Delay Spray was holding up a box and bellowing out in Turkish, which James translated as something like ‘Go like a ram all night’.
Most of the stalls in the Grand Bazaar were closed for the holidays, but there were still more than enough merchants to pester us. Thankfully, having a local with me meant that I was mostly left alone. And when we did get hassled by a couple of persistently insistent shopkeepers, James said something to get rid of them very quickly. I’m not sure what he said, but I guessed it was ‘I’m going to pour concrete into your mother’s pussy, so I can’t fuck her and neither can your father’.
James still had a lot of work to do on the magazine, but he very kindly offered to spend the morning with me and try to squeeze in as many quintessential Turkish experiences as we could into a couple of hours. After we’d sprinted around the market, we ducked through a tiny doorway leading off the street, to a large open courtyard that was decked out with colourful carpets, low tables and glass cabinets filled with water pipes that lined the walls. ‘The locals bring their own and leave them here,’ James said. ‘You can’t come to Turkey and not have a water pipe,’ he said as we perused the water pipe menu, which came in flavours of banana, strawberry, cappuccino, chocolate and apple.
‘We used to come here every day when I was at university,’ James said as we sat back, puffing away.
‘Did you study journalism?’ I asked.
‘No. Spanish,’ he shrugged. ‘And most of my friends from uni are now Spanish tour guides.’
The last stop on our whistle-stop tour was the Çemberlitas Hamami, a Turkish bath house that was built in 1584. We booked in for the full-service grease and oil change.
‘You. Undress. Now,’ the locker attendant bark
ed at me. ‘Go in locker.’
‘In locker?’ I asked incredulously.
The locker, which was actually a small cubicle, even had a bed.
‘You remember me for tip, okay?’ he winked.
After I’d barely covered my naked body with a tiny towel we headed into the steam room (the hararet), which had a high-domed ceiling with walls and floor of silver-grey marble. We were instructed to lie on a massive heated marble slab where I promptly dozed off to asleep. I woke with a fright to howling and moaning. It was James being pummelled and pulled apart by a gorilla. My masseur, who I’m guessing was once part of the Turkish wrestling team, approached me with a rough mitt on one hand and a bucket of suds in the other. He then began singing lustily as he exfoliated my skin, or more like tore it off, while he poured boiling water and soap suds all over me.
This was followed by a massage, which involved my large friend mounting me and trying to tear my limbs off. It was my turn to howl and moan. He finished off the ‘relaxing’ massage by throwing a bucket of ice-cold water over my head.
‘You remember me for tip, okay?’ he said. That wasn’t going to be easy. All the staff looked identical with their dark curly hair, hairy chests, long droopy moustaches and bulbous bellies.
After our greasing, it was time for the oiling. A different, but identical, masseur oiled me up for more stretching, bashing, pummelling and howling.
Admittedly, after a lovely hot shower, I felt incredibly relaxed and refreshed. Then we got on a packed tram and in less than a minute I was hot, bothered and stressed again.
James went back to work while I went to a restaurant that James had suggested for lunch. Hamdi et Lokantasi Restaurant was on the rooftop of an apartment building that overlooked Galata Bridge and the Golden Horn. The view was outstanding, although I was put in the corner with an outstanding view of the waiter’s station. At the top of the menu it had: ‘Hamdi—The same taste and address since 1970.’ The time-warp effect went further than that. They had also retained the same plates and cutlery and the same waiters wearing the same uniforms.
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