Istanbul (Constantinople), part deux

The conclusion of my Istanbul (Constantinople) adventures.

But first, a cultural note: Greek people freak out when you call the city I was in Istanbul. To the Greeks, it will always be Constantinople– the name it had before it fell under the rule of Ataturk (the guy responsible for the Greco-Turkish war). Evidently the name of my Facebook photo album, which came from the popular song, Istanbul (not Constantinople), caused some controversy, and probably some cursing in Greek. So, sorry Greeks. I like you more than the Turks, anyway. Promise.

So, when we left off, we were getting ready to go to dinner and a bellydancing show. We walked there through a slightly sketch part of town, led by our slightly sketch bus driver who elected to walk us instead of drive us, which was a little weird. We arrived at the club, had some okay food and some okay wine, and watched some decent bellydancing and some awesome Turkish folk dancers. There was one act where they chose an audience member, who happened to be a guy from our group, and balanced a wood block on his chest as he lay on the stage, and threw knives into it. It was pretty awesome– for those of us who didn’t have sharp objects chucked at us, at least. After all of the dancing, a couple of singers took the stage, including one who looked suspiciously like Kenny Rogers. Much Greek dancing ensued.

The next day, we got up and had breakfast, then headed to the port for a boat cruise of the Bosphorus Strait, the narrow waterway separating the Asian and European sides of Turkey. It was gorgeous– a beautiful day to be out on the water. I took about a million photos, which of course are up on Flickr. After the cruise, we headed to the market, a cavernous indoor maze of what must have been hundreds of stalls, all with their own loud, boisterous Turkish merchants. As we would walk past the stalls, the guys would yell after us, “Hello. I am here. You have found what you have been looking for all of your life.” And, “Here! Here! I will help you spend your money!” My favorite was the guy at the shop where my friend bought a hookah– a water pipe for smoking flavored tobacco (just flavored tobacco, Grandma– I don’t want you getting any ideas about the people I’m hanging out with ). He was also selling daggers, and when we wouldn’t agree with his prices, the merchant across the way would grab him and hold the dagger to his neck, and they’d put on a little routine about what body parts were going to get cut off first if we didn’t go with his price. We spent a few hours there, making all kinds of new Turkish friends– at least the ones who we gave our money to– and then headed back for a delicious McDonald’s dinner. Side note: McDonald’s is mediocre everywhere. Just in case you were wondering. But, I’m not going to lie, American food was pretty attractive after some of the Turkish food we had sampled the day before. After hanging out and testing the hookah, we headed to bed.

Our last day in Turkey was pretty dreary. It drizzled all morning, until we had to go outside to wait on the bus, at which point it actually started to rain. We got a late start after having to wait on the bus for an hour in the rain, and then we got sidetracked from our final stop– the “Vatican of Greek Orthodoxy” when we couldn’t find it and weren’t willing to walk in the rain to get there. After getting back on the bus, significantly wetter and crankier, we figured we were on our way home. But, we didn’t realize that we had one last stop: the leather fashion show.

You might ask, “Why? Why would a double-decker tour bus full of poor study abroad students stop at a suspicious building in God-Knows-Where, Istanbul, Turkey for a leather fashion show?” And that would be a good question, because none of us knew either. Aside from the fact that one of my friends got to serve as a guest model in the show, it was pretty pointless and frankly, really weird. But, finally, after the show delayed us another hour, we got back on the road. The trip home was definitely much more eventful than the bus ride there. We got pulled over twice. We came to a construction site where they were building an overpass where there were no paved roads– we got to pick our way around 10-12 foot deep holes and ginormous puddles in a double-decker bus, slogging our way through the mud while the Turkish people in the nearby businesses all came outside and laughed. It took us like half an hour to go maybe 100 yards. Then, on our way back into Greece, we had to sit at the border for what seemed like forever (but was only probably like an hour and a half) while they processed our passports. I heard two rumors about why it was taking so long: first, that the computers were down; second, that since we were re-entering Greece from Turkey on Greek Independence Day– the day where Greece celebrates independence from Turkey– they were just being slow because of where we were coming from. Who knows which one it really was. In short, we were delayed a total of like four hours, bringing the grand total of hours spent getting home from Turkey to a little more than sixteen hours. That is a long time to sit on a bus, folks. So, in summary: Turkey was gorgeous. Go see the historical stuff. Skip the leather fashion shows. Don’t take a bus.