Blogs from Beşiktaş , Istanbul, Marmara, Turkey, Middle East - page 2

Today was a long walk day. I'd planned to get to the Rumeli Fortress on the west coast of the Bosphorus. Typically, I had intended to walk there and find some public transport back. From Sultanahmet I followed a hugely circuitous route down the hill via the Grand Bazaar (open today) and beyond that all the little shops that sell belt buckles, beads, mannequins, taps, cleaning equipment and garlic-crushers. From there it was a gravity-filled walk to the waterfront of the Golden Horn and a noisy walk across the Ataturk Bridge with all the buses and trucks. In a misguided attempt to avoid the backstreets, I followed the main roads up and down the hills (and there are many many hills which give an inclinometer a good workout) with a side trip along the boulevard to ... read more

School has begun! The streets near my apartment are bustling with young adults and the obscene amount of photocopying stores lining the block now make complete sense. I'll begin with where I last left off. Registration was the headache that many warned us about for everyone except me. Mine was exceptionally easy. Honestly, the Gods are smiling upon me. So the way it works is the 20,000 students attending Bogazici are all given IDs and passwords. For us exchange students these won't even work until registration opens, so all we know of what the website looks like is the screen shots that the school, aware that this is a really stupid idea, provides. At 10:00, ready or not, the system opens. The 20,000 students attending do a virtual scramble for classes. At Purchase, my home university, ... read more