Istanbul

[tenaciousdeedee]

Istanbul is a lot of things: breathtakingly beautiful; humid; dusty; bursting with history, people, and noise; where East meets West; and where old meets new. Cars and storefronts blast American pop songs and Arabesque. Mosques compete with their calls to prayer. Cats hiss, dogs howl, seagulls squawk. Car horns erupt in a cacophony of sound, cut by the Bosphorus' gentle breeze. The Bosphorus and the Marmara Sea sit calmly in the distance, ferrying across freighters and ferryboats to and from Istanbul's Asian and European sides. Pictures and statues of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (the first president and founder of the Turkish nation) are everywhere: in classrooms, above hallways, lining streets, on the currency, in restaurants. Street vendors of all ages line the streets, selling Turkish pretzels and bagels, mussels from the Marmara Sea, tissues, American movie posters, and bottled water. Meat--kebaps, döner, köfte, and dürüm--is everywhere here. Cooks display their rack of spinning, cooking, oily lamb (döner) in shopwindows, yelling "döner" or "buyurun" (here you are) while banging together their knives. The drink of choice here is çay (tea), served in the tiniest of glasses, or ayran (a salty, yogurt drink), preferably enjoyed over a hookah (nargile) or a game of backgammon (tavla). Old women and children, covered in rags, ask for money by crying, muttering a few words between sobs, and shaking their cans. Squatters play drums on street corners, setting the foot and street traffic to a beat. Taxi and dolmus drivers hassle passerbys and live out their friendships and rivalries on the street--challenging each other to a race, yelling, honking, informing others' passengers that they've been cheated.

Since I've been here, I have been to Ortaköy, Taksim (very close to the dorms at ITU), Beskitas, and places on the Asian side. It's been fun, but tiring.

I have lots of field trips this weekend. Go