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Has anybody ever wondered why it’s called an Ottoman? I always associate Ottomans with Laz-E-Boy chairs, but now that I have arrived in Turkey this association seems grossly incorrect. Because if Turkish work ethic benefits at all from the perseverance with which Turkish men pursue foreign women, their economy could very well be the only one to withstand the recent global meltdown.
The flight from London to Istanbul at three and a half hours is as long as the flight from Hong Kong to Bali, but doesn’t it seem so much further of a trip? At least to me, it seems you should have to fly much longer to experience the drastically different cultures here, but I suppose this is the beauty of Europe. My flight is delayed nearly two hours because apparently they couldn’t find the pilot and had to bring in an impromptu crew at 7am. BA, go figure. I am annoyed at first for getting a middle seat, but turns out I have the whole row to myself and also have a very dashing flight attendant named Jamie, although there is a strong possibility he may be gay.
So perhaps this is me switching gears from
‘vacationing’ to ‘traveling,’ from ‘off-shore bank’ to ‘piggy bank’ (ha ha, that’s funny.) And no more friends except for my trusty backpack which hasn’t gotten this much use since I was near this region two summers ago backpacking through Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. Except instead of frolicking with kri-kri goats through olive groves in Greece, I’m now across the Aegean ready to baklava my face off on magic carpets. Apparently everybody else has already been here, a few friends have gotten engaged here, I am shamefully behind the times.
Turkey straddles Europe on one side of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmar, and Asia on the other. The European side is further divided north and south of the Golden Horn. My Lonely Planet says that it is often referred to as the “Barcelona of the East.” Really? Is this like Buenos Aires being the Paris of South America, or are they making this up? Or is this another bad tourism slogan being pushed for Turkey, like Korea and the “Seoul of Asia” or Malaysia “Truly Asia.” (Marketing efforts in Asia really need to be revamped.)
I’m not sure what kind of “little cuddly wide-eyed Asian girl” vibe
I put out walking around by myself, but I definitely think one has developed somewhere along the way. I mean, everybody talks to me and I don’t mean that in a 9th grade popularity contest sort of way. Everybody of all sorts, not just men giving me free crap on the street. Old Egyptian women in the Aya Sofya, old fortune tellers in Notting Hill, maybe some transvestites in between, tourists asking me for directions or the time. This happens when there are plenty of other people around OK, I’m not exaggerating. I think I must have a look on my face that either reeks of desperation or I just look friendly and naive slash gullible. Also I guess it’s always easier to approach a lone person who doesn’t have any noticeable tattoos or facial piercings, and the shorter the better. Maybe the age of 23 is prime for this - old enough to have an answer but young enough to not be too weary of strangers? This isn’t faring well for me.
As soon as I get on the metro on Monday from Ataturk Airport into Sultanahmet I am asked if I have the Lonely Planet by a
very lost looking Indian guy. He is wearing plaid board shorts and a wife-beater, and after hearing his super-American accent he is definitely not Middle Eastern. However I think it was a good thing that Amyn was dressed so, because walking next to him in my bright green Puma hot pants perhaps it seemed like we just arrived from some tropical island together and I was at least a town whore coming back from vacation with my equally underdressed husband. Amyn is from Anaheim Hills, CA and currently lives in Hawaii doing his doctorate, took a year off to rack up even more debt and has been traveling since October, what a hard life. I had the impression that Turkey was a little more lax in terms of dress than the rest of the Middle East when I left London so Amyn had a good laugh while all the older women stared me and my very bare legs down.
Turkish men get kind of a bad rap in the guide books for being very aggressive. The first day then, I walked around with Amyn and experienced mild harassment. I mean these guys are worse than your cocky bastard at
the swanky club, but for every lame credit card the cocky bastard flashes, the Turk comes out with another ridiculous line. Maybe this is better than the bastard at the club though, because at least this was entertaining and yeah, I was getting a lot of free stuff that is actually liver-friendly. One time we stopped at a baklava shop and while I was eating some free baklava (in a skirt down to my ankles) the guy looks at me (with Amyn right there easily looking like a boyfriend) and I say, “Mm this is delicious!” ... “As delicious as you?” Oh, my. I don’t think my Father would be happy with you, sir. So goes the days, basically the only time you aren’t getting approached by a man is when you are already being hit on by another. Take 5 steps away, I swear another one has popped up. It’s like I’m at a churascuria and I have my little card on “Red: I’m full and don’t want anymore,” but the waiters just keep coming by with a very unappealing rack of some sort of roadkill. When I was alone like on Tuesday, wow it is about 8 times
worse. But then again, I get about 8 times the free stuff. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.
This is how I meet Tolga the Treasure Hunter. No joke. I am getting lost alone somewhere on Tuesday and I get pulled aside by this guy, let’s call him Jack although it was some very ethnic Turkish name that I think started with a B, who invites me over to a table in a sidewalk cafe where there are 2 other Turkish men and a large blonde Aussie girl. They invite me for tea and some lunch (at 3:30 pm) but what the hell, it was broad daylight and Turks probably know how to order Turkish food better than the crap I had been eating. Well this Tolga, I put him at 28, says he is a Treasure Hunter and found some Roman gold at Ephesus - and there is more, a coffin with jewels all around it and more gold. I call Bullshit, he insists. I ask why nobody else has taken it, he says Curses on treasures. I say why don’t you care about the curse, he says he knows how to “break” them. OK whatever.
I obviously don’t believe this but the Aussie girl does. Turns out this Aussie girl found Tolga in some bar and had been in Istanbul now 5 days longer than planned to just laze around and have sex with him. Whatever floats your boat, honey. I sit and hope that Jack doesn’t expect the same from me now that I am hanging out with them. We talk and they find out I am trying to do some more travel through Turkey so they want to take me to their travel agent friend. I’m reluctant to spend more time with these people as it’s nearly 5 now, but they insist on walking me and wait for me while I figure my routes and bus schedules out for the next hour. It makes me uncomfortable that they are sitting there and I hope they leave. Finally after a couple hours they do leave, and by this time I have become pretty tight with Kursat and his friend Onur who I actually do like. Jack and Tolga kind of give me the heebie-jeebies, and I find out later Onur hates them for reasons I don’t feel like going into.
Onur owns two
bars, a cafe, and an inn all in Sultanahmet. Kursat and Onur tell me to come for drinks at one of Onur’s bars if I feel up to it later. A few hours later, I take Amyn with me to Sah, one of Onur’s bars, and there we meet a couple other Americans of all people. One of them is named Brandon, he is actually from Dallas and has been working in Hyderabad for a couple years. There is a VERY bountiful Iranian girl there too, and Kursat educates me on what Turkish men like in women. He says she is not the standard, and that if he “had one million penises, he wouldn’t even give her one.” It’s a funny scene later as by now I’ve gotten to know their group of about 5 or 6 Turks, (Ferhad, Mustafa, and crew) and we’re all kicking it pretty easily, Brandon will draw me aside and ask if I am OK, to let him know if I need help. Then Kursat will come over and draw me aside and ask if the American is bothering me. And I know this sounds all very dodgy on my part, but it wasn’t like
that with any of these guys and they all knew the deal. The Turks I trusted like big brothers, and Brandon definitely checked out as a normal guy just on vaca. Some of the Turks need to peace out earlier (they actually have jobs the next morning) and Kursat tells Brandon when he leaves that I am fine, Onur is taking care of me and not to worry, Turkey is a very hospitable country. Yikes! Amyn thinks I am trouble with a capital T.
The next day Wednesday Kursat takes me for this traditional Turkish dish from Kapadocya for lunch which he just refers to as “pottery kebab.” They bring out this clay urn or something coated with salt and on fire, then proceed to hammer it til it breaks open and all this meat in sauce flows out. It is of course delicious, and over lunch somehow Kursat convinces me to stay another night in Istanbul (I was scheduled to take the night bus to Selcuk that night) to watch the Turkey national basketball championship final, go to dinner with all of them, and party in Istanbul out in Beyoglu. He makes some calls, all my tickets and
bookings have been changed with a snap of his fingers. So I stay another night and put off Ephesus for another day. You can always buy a ticket to the ruins for x day, but when can you plan to be adopted into an awesome crowd of locals when you are traveling?
That night we watch the game over some beers at Onur’s bar then head out of some sort of Turkish BBQ (similar to Korean BBQ) but instead of kimchee and bimimbop on the side, you have yogurts, olives, pita, etc. Delicious, check. Kursat’s ex-girlfriend shows up and I even get a peek at Turkish love dramas. It doesn’t hurt that I’m riding in Onur’s BMW around Istanbul all night, sometimes public transport at night in a foreign country gets old. I have to sadly say goodbye to Onur on Wednesday night as he flies to Amsterdam early Thursday morning, and to Kursat, Mustafa, and Ferhad when I leave for Ephesus, which was sad because they had really taken care of me like a little sister.
The next day I meet up with Matt, this guy my age(!) from Perth I met in the hostel, to explore
some. So Matt just finished working a few months sailing yachts and giving sailing lessons in Greece and is milling around Europe til September when he heads back to Oz. He thinks I know where I’m going, I think he knows where he is going, well this doesn’t turn out well but we just meander around the other side of Istanbul which is nice in itself because at least we have fun together. It’s always such a find when you meet somebody that you can hit off with right away, especially if you are traveling alone. Anyhow, Matt is 6’2” and when I get asked “Where you from? Do you want carpet,” Matt can say “No thanks, my wife and I have plenty of carpets already” and they actually do leave me alone! I like walking around with Matt.
Late in the afternoon Kursat has set me up for a boat cruise down the Bosphorus from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, since it’s an extra day I hadn’t planned to stay in Istanbul for. My whole boat is elderly German tourists. I decide that the cruise could turn to disaster unless I
tapped deeper into my social repertoire. As I braced myself for the worst, the cruise guide motions me over by his side at the front of the boat, and noticing my camera tells me that the shots will be best from his vantage point. So I stand next to him the whole way and he gives me little tidbits on the river that unfortunately our German friends weren’t privy to. Soon an Iranian man and his wife join us at the front and I end up talking to the Iranian man for the second half of the cruise. It was a seriously fascinating conversation, he was so happy to answer all my questions on their current culture and traveling to Iran. I in turn answered all his questions about America as he had never been, he hasn’t been able to get a visa. His wife is just thrilled to be on vacation and wearing short-sleeved and no headscarf. We exchange emails and now I have a host in Tehran when I do finally get there!
I ended up spending 4 days in Istanbul, so I apologize for the length but it has been such a whirlwind of stories, I
decided to even write only about my favorite bits which re-reading I realize are all about people. For the historical backgrounds and site descriptions, you can Wikipedia that yourself this time and I will try to at least caption the pictures... In the end though, I think the Lonely Planets of the world have gotten at least the Turkish men a little wrong. Yeah, I got approached very often. Yeah it was annoying. However it was just that - annoying. Not once did I feel I was at risk for actual harassment or rape. Sometimes I think we need to see things from their point of view. If all you knew was tourism and that alone was your bread and butter, what would you do? Wouldn’t you solicit outside your shop while your competitors did the same? If you were in a country where English was becoming increasingly important, wouldn’t you try to speak to the foreigners to improve your English? And is it so wrong to want to do it with a pretty girl instead of a squat bald man? I can’t blame them. So what if they ask you where you are from, how do you like Turkey?
OK, some of them are creepy, but percentage-wise not any more so than any other country I have been to. So I just smile, nod and put up my hand to wave hello as I pass. Hey man, I know where you’re coming from. Look at all these pretty exotic girls who dress like floosies, maybe they want to buy my perfumes and my Turkish delight? She doesn’t look very happy with that man anyways, I may as well try..
If that means that deep down I am a dirty old Turkish man, then so be it.
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Stephen
non-member comment
Nice post
Sweet stories, good to know you're making friends and connections. Have fun, see you soon, sis.