That Time I Went to Asia (a.k.a. Istanbul)…

Day 4 (The “Do I really have this many lira left?” Day)-

The next morning we got up and looked in our wallets and realized that we had grossly overestimated our living expenses in Istanbul and withdrawn too many Lira from the ATM on our first day. As a result we decided to just spend the day shopping and haggling with the persuasive merchants. So we headed down to the Grand Bazaar and the spice bazaar and bought scarves and tea and souvenirs.

We also walked back down to the waterfront where a man selling boat tours tried to convince us to take one. After Tessa successfully haggled with him to lower his price we “decided” to do it (we were always going to do it- but it was fun pretending and making the guy nervous). So we got on the boat and spent a good 30 minutes bobbing up and down and watching the boat guys convince other people to take the tour. We got sort of tired of waiting and eventually Sarah decided to go and buy some sesame bagels for lunch. The minute she got off the boat, however, the captain came on and started the engine. Tessa and I, who were still on the boat, started gesturing at Sarah to forget the bagels and come back but she didn’t see us. It wasn’t until the boat was starting to pull out of its moorings that she came back and couldn’t get back on the boat. Tessa and I started gesturing wildly at the driver and the guys on the shore and despairing that we would never get to eat our bagels (J). Luckily the boat came back to the shore and the bagels (and Sarah) were able to come aboard. We were all very relieved. Then we spent two hours chugging up and down the Bosporus looking at assorted bridges and Ottoman palaces and very nice houses and Asia. It was nice and sunny although it gets pretty chilly out on the Bosporus. Good thing we had all just bought new scarves.

After getting back to the shore we decided to take a tea break. This was mostly uneventful except for when I went to use the café’s bathroom and discovered that it was the nicest hole in the ground that I have ever had the pleasure of … using. The door to the bathroom was also very sharp which I discovered when I accidentally hit my head on it and then went back to the table and Tessa asked me why I was bleeding. It didn’t hurt (except my pride, I suppose) and the nice waiter gave me some disinfecting wipes. I ended up with a nice little cut and the opportunity to tell people that I had been in a knife fight with a door and lost… in Istanbul. Kind of a cool story I guess. Oh well.

Oh and before I forget, Here's a video of the call to prayer at the Blue Mosque...

Then we walked back to the hostel, stopping at every single shop that we past and slowly dispensing our bundles of lira. We bought some provisions from the Turkish version of Seven Eleven and once back at the hostel I tried to get some sleep since our flight leaving Istanbul was going to depart at 3:40 AM. At midnight we caught an airport shuttle. As we left the hostel, Cha-Cha ran out in to the street after us and yelled “Always be happy!” That was hilarious. And oddly appropriate as an ending to our bizarre trip. We also soon learned that 12:00 to 3:00 AM is apparently a popular time for flights out of the Istanbul airport since when we got there it was busier then when we had arrived at 2 in the afternoon on Tuesday. Our flight was happily uneventful. I even managed to sleep for most of it!

The Day That Did Not Exist

We arrived in Cologne at 6:00 AM and proceeded to sit in the Cologne airport for 13 hours. This was remarkably painful. Especially since we couldn’t get to the part of the airport where there was a Subway because of security. I really wanted a meatball sub. We consoled ourselves and passed the time by moving from bench to bench for the change of scenery, eating Burger King, taking a Ben and Jerry’s break for our sanity, buying lots of pretzels, reading, sleeping, playing Sudoku/doing crossword puzzles, and finally congratulating ourselves for surviving the 13 hours (14 since our flight was delayed) by going Duty Free shopping and buying 500 g bags of Haribo candy (I love TropiFruiti!). Basically we spent a lot of money buying a lot of over-priced airport food and keeping ourselves in a perpetual sugar-coma. I hope to someday forget that those 13 hours every existed. Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote that “Hell is other people”. What a naïve food. Hell is fourteen hours at Cologne-Bonn airport after 3 hours of sleep and no meatball sub.

But we finally flew to Paris and after taking a train and 2 metros and getting slightly lost we finally found our hostel and were able to collapse in our beds and pass out.

Praise for Istanbul:

In conclusion, I have to say that Istanbul was probably the coolest place I’ve ever been. The sites were all beautiful and full of interesting history (and we only visited a fraction of the sites). Of course I was a bit start-struck but the fact that half of the city was in Asia, but I wasn’t at all disappointed. But what really made the experience amazing were the people. I don’t normally like making generalizations about groups of people but all of the Turkish people I met were remarkably welcoming and friendly. From the people helping us with directions on the street, to the hostel staff who made an effort to get to know us and joke with us and always offered us free tea, to the bazaar merchants who were aggressive, charismatic, and sometimes annoying but never disrespectful, the whole city seemed to be full of welcoming people. After our experiences with vulgarity in Lisbon, I was a little concerned about security. We made sure to stick to touristy neighborhoods and we didn’t go out at night. But even when we were the only tourists (and sometimes the only women) on the block, I always felt safe. Instead of attracting negative attention as a group of three girls, it only seemed to prompt people to be more courteous.

Anyway, I would highly recommend Istanbul as a vacation destination. It is a great city.

Shout outs:
City of Istanbul.
Sultan Hostel (bring your own earplugs though).
Germanwings Airline. By far the best discount airline I’ve flown. And I’ve flown quite a few. Fastest baggage delivery I’ve ever experience, discount or otherwise.