Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one. [Istanbul, Turkey]
"Take it from someone who's read the Wikipedia entry: this is how the Ottoman Empire was won: mad horsemen fueled by lethal jet-black coffee-mud.”
--Cory Doctorow, Little Brother
This Christmas I went to Turkey with Amanda Wozniak on an ultra-low-key sightseeing vacation, no adventuring or anything but perfectly amiable. European/Western Turkey is absurdly safe, unexpectedly modern, and unreasonably hospitable--I make no claims for deeper Anatolia because we didn’t go anywhere ten thousand monthly Germans hadn’t been before, but it seems like a worthwhile place to investigate.
I arrived in İstanbul via Frankfurt on a Sunday, but that is the last time I am going to spell it correctly because I don’t know the keyboard macro for capital-I-dot! Atatürk airport is a nice efficient airport, and I’m not just saying that in compliance with lèse majesté laws about being nice to Father Kemal, it actually is. Public transportation is well-signed and reliable, there’s a post office in the domestic terminal, the second layer of PKK-proof security at the entrance is relatively unintrusive. Christmas season in the Mediterranean means roasted chestnuts at all the pushcarts and freshly-brined olives in all the homes, so you can see why a lot of the expats here never intended to stay, they just get “stuck”.
Monday morning I was up with first azan (Prayer is better than sleep!) and eventually we fought our way past the queues for the 45 million/trillion lira new year’s lottery and got döner. Woz has not yet figured out how to don a headscarf in respectful-yet-secular Benazir Bhutto style so visiting Blue Mosque in the afternoon took a million tucks and tugs, and we did not end up buying a carpet from the seller with the cousin in LA because we didn’t want to carry it yet. We pushed through the Spice Bazaar grumbling about counterfeit saffron and acrylic pashminas, but I was happy enough with my Turkish Delight because obtaining it was my first conversation of any substance.
Istanbul is nearly identical in latitude to San Francisco (39 vs 38 degrees N) so the sun goes down around 5pm in December. We took advantage of the long evening to play backgammon in a nargileh bar near Sultanahmet, learning numbers one through six with great fluency and drinking Anatolian pinot noir. I was struck by just how aggressively secular things were, with men determinedly puffing on their marlboros and ordering another eres lager upon hearing the evening call. Eventually we walked home the long way around the waterfront, caught a tram to Kabataş and the funicular from there up to Taksim and our apartment in Beşiktaş.
--Cory Doctorow, Little Brother
This Christmas I went to Turkey with Amanda Wozniak on an ultra-low-key sightseeing vacation, no adventuring or anything but perfectly amiable. European/Western Turkey is absurdly safe, unexpectedly modern, and unreasonably hospitable--I make no claims for deeper Anatolia because we didn’t go anywhere ten thousand monthly Germans hadn’t been before, but it seems like a worthwhile place to investigate.
I arrived in İstanbul via Frankfurt on a Sunday, but that is the last time I am going to spell it correctly because I don’t know the keyboard macro for capital-I-dot! Atatürk airport is a nice efficient airport, and I’m not just saying that in compliance with lèse majesté laws about being nice to Father Kemal, it actually is. Public transportation is well-signed and reliable, there’s a post office in the domestic terminal, the second layer of PKK-proof security at the entrance is relatively unintrusive. Christmas season in the Mediterranean means roasted chestnuts at all the pushcarts and freshly-brined olives in all the homes, so you can see why a lot of the expats here never intended to stay, they just get “stuck”.
Monday morning I was up with first azan (Prayer is better than sleep!) and eventually we fought our way past the queues for the 45 million/trillion lira new year’s lottery and got döner. Woz has not yet figured out how to don a headscarf in respectful-yet-secular Benazir Bhutto style so visiting Blue Mosque in the afternoon took a million tucks and tugs, and we did not end up buying a carpet from the seller with the cousin in LA because we didn’t want to carry it yet. We pushed through the Spice Bazaar grumbling about counterfeit saffron and acrylic pashminas, but I was happy enough with my Turkish Delight because obtaining it was my first conversation of any substance.
Istanbul is nearly identical in latitude to San Francisco (39 vs 38 degrees N) so the sun goes down around 5pm in December. We took advantage of the long evening to play backgammon in a nargileh bar near Sultanahmet, learning numbers one through six with great fluency and drinking Anatolian pinot noir. I was struck by just how aggressively secular things were, with men determinedly puffing on their marlboros and ordering another eres lager upon hearing the evening call. Eventually we walked home the long way around the waterfront, caught a tram to Kabataş and the funicular from there up to Taksim and our apartment in Beşiktaş.