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| View over the city on the way to Asia |
1. Don’t
take pictures of the tanks.
Seriously. The police in Turkey have TANKS. And apparently if you take a
photo they will arrest. I was sneaky and took a photo while our bus drove by so
they couldn’t catch me.
2. People
just don’t wait in line
No matter where we went, people just seemed to decide that waiting in
line was not for them. From passport control to bathrooms, sometimes people
just straight up decided they were not going to wait and would just step into
the middle of the line.
3. Don’t
make eye contact
In turkey, eye contact is a serious matter. Between men it implies
direct aggression and between sexes it implies “let go to bed”. I wore ray bans
and people watched anonymously.
4. You
can pet the cats
Seriously. Turkey has cats EVERYWHERE. I have never seen so many stray
animals. Denmark doesn’t even really have domestic animals. I mean it’s
definitely rare enough that its worth your time to play some zitch dog. However,
in Turkey not only are they everywhere, they are also well taken care of. They
are fed by random people and are tagged by the government so that you know they
are safe and accounted for.
5. Be
prepared for the bazaar gauntlet.
I have travelled many places where sellers yell at you out of their
shops, and even follow around your Moroccan tour. But I have never seen the
effort put in by the sellers in and around the grand bazaar. Maybe its 500
years of practice and tradition, but damn they know how to hassle. Basically
you’re walking through a maze of scarves, Turkish delight and glass eye jewelry
and you have to look at the ground and try to ignore “Lady! Lady! Pretty
lady!”, “Teenagers”, “Alemanya?! You are Alemanya?”, “Best Price!” and whatever
else they come up with. I definitely walked two stores past some guy yelling
“Pouf!Pouf! Lady you want Pouf?!!” before I realized that damn it, I wanted a
pouf. I was trying to so hard to ignore everyone that I almost walked right
past a leather tuffet that I am so excited about.
6. Stop
for the call to prayer
Ive never been super into Islam. In fact. I had never seen a mosque in
real life until coming to Istanbul. They’re actually beautiful and now I will
visit them whenever I travel to countries that have them. The call to prayer is
one of the most beautiful things I had ever experienced. It begins with the
blue mosques, and then the rest of the mosques in the city echo it. It so
amazing, the same things up and down the hills all across a city of 17 million.
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| Th Blue Mosque |
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| Suleymaniye Mosque |
7. Visit
the Hagia Sophia
It’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. No pictures do it
justice. But its seriously my favorite thing ever.
8. Wear
underwear in the Turkish baths
Chandler and I went to the baths on the last morning in turkey. It was
my favorite thing ever. We went in and you can just bath yourself out of these
500 year old basins and sit in warm pools and lay on a hot stone and just
relax. I was sooo happy in there and could have stayed for hours and hours.
However, when we got back to the hotel Chandler pulls out a little bag and
she’s like oh the receptionist lady gave me candy. Turns out, they were panties. So while everyone else in the
baths was wearing the black underwear they give to everyone, Chandler and I
were just straight up naked in there without even noticing that it was weird.
Good thing we are such hippies and didn’t even care. But that might have been
weird for everyone else. Oops haha.
9. Eat
the street food
That’s all. Just eat everything.
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10. Don’t
let DIS rent me nightclubs
For our final dinner on our last night, DIS rented a rooftop nightclub.
We had dinner with free wine and then they took away the tables and brought in
a DJ. My professor had 5 long islands, and needless to say the rest is history.
Though history implies that it has been remembered, and for the majority of my
class that is not the case. I do remember what happened that night, but I of
course went home at a reasonable hour.
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| The bridge to the Other Side |
