Metropolis, part two

First update in quite some time. Wrote this when I was pretty drunk, so it gets cheesy and a little confusing in parts, but here it is.

We wake up at 9 am on Saturday. On my way to breakfast I run into Onur. Our conversation goes something like this: “Hello, how are you?” “I’m good, man, how are you?” “I am fucked”. Turns out he lost his wallet at the bar last night. Tough break for the guy. I take some time at breakfast to have a nice and very interesting conversation with Emran and Fuat, because how often is it that you room with a Bulgarian and an Azeri? They prove to be very interesting characters, but as we finish up our meal, the natives head to a nargileh spot while the exchange kids move in the direction of the Blue Mosque.

Fairly soon, we meet with the travelers with the other hostel and take the tram to Sultanahmet (lit. District of Sultan Ahmet) to hit our first destination of the day. The mosque is quite imposing, and the active service taking place during our visit certainly adds to the atmosphere, but nothing will compare to what we are about to see. We exit the area and leave through the outer gate. The view upon exiting is one that I will never forget: the 1500-year old Hagia Sophia dominating the landscape. It immediately reminds me of the glories of the twelve-hundred year Christian capital of Constantinople: the Ottomans changed nothing except adding four minarets and painting over the interior mosaics, so the entire place is very nostalgic. It is really impossible to grasp the full scope of the building without seeing it with your own eyes, but one can certainly forgive Justinian for his statement that “o Solomon, I have outdone thee!”. Inside you can still see sights such as the circular floor relief where the Byzantine emperors were crowned for over a thousand years. You can also see the Ottoman-Arabic calligraphy dissolving in some places to reveal the original Byzantine Christian paintings, which is also a sight to behold: the side exhibits in the upper levels of the church show some of the existing portraits of Byzantine emperors, which makes me really curious to have seen the pre-conquest citadel and the 1000+ years of emperors that were painted on its surface. Nonetheless, we snap some good pictures and grab some long-overdue lunch at a nearby kebapci. In the afternoon we hit the bazaar again and I help Luis out with some bargaining. On the way back to our hostels we see a “help Kyrgyzstan” poster on the metro, which as a political science student I am all over. We also see a communist demonstration on our way back, which is also something that piques my interest quite a bit. Eventually in the evening we clean up a bit and decide to predrink at our hostel before at night on the town.

We grab some extremely cheap 50cl (the most common format) beers from the next-door liquor store and get to work on our drinking. Bilge (who is staying with us) is intent on holding a discussion on domestic politics, and although I try and change the topic several times to accommodate the left-out Cathy, Clint is surprisingly interested in the subject and I thoroughly enjoy our talk. Eventually the girls and Turks meet us, and despite the less-than-receptive proprietor, we manage to drink a fair amount before heading to an Istanbul club. We arrive and get the free drinks we are accorded, and I discover that Turkish guys are much more akin to Europeans than North Americans in terms of dancing, in that they inherently enjoy the activity rather than just the girls that are associated with it. Make no mistake, though – probably around half the Turkish guys I have met here are really just interested in ****ing the foreign girls and not much else, so it goes both ways. At this point my memory becomes fuzzy, but it involves dancing on the upper floor of the open-air club before heading down with Jill and Sarah at separate times to do shots before there are almost no memories left at all. At this point in time I apparently told the girls that I was going downstairs to “find myself a Turkish girl” before disappearing.

I awake. It is 10 AM. Cathy and Yun are finishing their preparations for the day at the foot of my bed. I notice that I am wearing the same clothes and contacts as the day before, and have not even bothered to pull a sheet up over myself before passing out. Through others’ stories and my own vague memories, I ascertain that I spent most of last night with some Belgian girl on the dance floor. I hazily remember her saying that she would host me in Belgium and me trying to write down my email address, but that’s about it. Common rumor includes me “getting to know her” on the dance floor, so I happily accept that as part of the night’s events. We head out to Topkapi Palace, the 400+ year seat of the Ottoman sultans, where the extremely haggard picture of me in the Turkish cap is taken. I see a number of people donning the fez and wonder why this particularly fine piece of Turkish headware is not worn anymore. At length we make our way through the area and end up making our way to the Roman-era cistern.

The ruins prove to be more impressive than one might think for an area than essentially comprises a subterranean cavern of pillars and water. On the way through the metro, the girls decide to stop and shop at Eminönü, so I get out and head over to grab one of the region’s famous fish sandwiches. They are served, freshly caught and fried, on one of many boats floating on the edge of the pier for four lira apiece. Standing there solitarily (rocking the aviators, of course), on the edge of the Galata Bridge, gazing out across the Golden Horn next to about two dozen travelers of very different ethnicities as the sun closed in on the horizon in the distance, the ageless metropolis of Constantinople really hit me. It was at this point that I really realized that this was by far the most interesting city I had ever visited and that it was somewhere I could certainly envision myself spending a more significant portion of my life. The whole scene took maybe five minutes as I finished my sandwich, but it was an event that I found very profound and one where I found myself certain that two months in this country, and especially merely three days in this city, would be nowhere near adequate, and I knew that I would have to return in the future. Soon enough I returned to the group and we headed back to gather our things from the hostel.

After checking out, we realized that our bus was only a couple hours from departure, and we decided to catch as much of the final World Cup match as possible before deporting. On our way down Istiklal Street we passed the Dutch consulate, which was immediately identifiable by the two-hundred-plus orange-clad fans massed outside. We reached the bar, and were served by a very outgoing, somewhat English-speaking waiter. At one point, when it was just me and four girls at the table, he came up and asked me which one of the lucky girls was my girlfriend. I responded that they were not pretty enough, which he (and I) laughed heartily at. The girls were taken quite aback initially, but they warmed up to the joke soon enough. We managed to see most of the game (a scoreless draw heading into extra time) before departing for an unavoidably hellish overnight bus. At some point Monday morning we stumbled into Ankara, (the cool ones among us) still far from satisfied with Istanbul, but with at least some of our curiosity sated. Likely my favorite weekend here thus far. I have been to New York, Paris, and London in my time, and Istanbul easily tops all three. A definite stop to be made for any world/European traveler.