Istanbul, Day Two

Day Two

I woke up about 9ish, after nearly 11 hours of sleep, which were sorely needed, and met up with the others at 11. We met Alex, another American student from Illinois, and walked to the Güney Kampüs (South Campus), which is a 10-15 minute hike from the Superdorm. Along the way, we passed lots of little shops and restaurants, and finally saw the Bosphorus. (For those of you who don't know, Istanbul is divided by the Bosphorus Strait which connects the Black Sea in the north with the Sea of Marmara in the south, and beyond the Marmara are the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. Istanbul is the only city in the world which sits on two continents.) Across the water we could see Turkish flags flying on the Asian side. Asia! We're barely a couple miles from Asia! That was a delicious startling thought, and all of us laughed at that. Registration took only a few minutes, and there we met Nadine, Verena and Ernesto all from Germany, Karel from the Netherlands, and a couple others whose names are currently escaping me. We decided to find the swimming pool, which is on the Hisar Kampüs, and unfortunately it requires a membership fee so I don't think I'll be swimming there.

After that, we went all together for lunch at a local place, all 10 of us sitting down together. Ordering was fun – only Nadine really spoke much Turkish so with translating help from her, referring to pictures on the menu, a little pointing and a little random choosing, we all got lunch. We swapped bites so we could all try everything. I can't remember now what I ordered, some kind of wrapped burrito-like thing with hamburger sausage, lettuce and tomato, but it was very tasty. A little dish with spices and peppers, not unlike a dryish salsa was served, and baskets of puffed bread that was big as a person's head. Seriously. We joked about taking a photo of the bread next to someone's head just to get a size comparison. (I'll be learning all the Turkish words for these things sooner or later) We drank water and tea. Oh, this is definitely one thing that you notice about Turkey. Bottled water and tea are everywhere – every store, every restaurant, nearly everywhere you go. You can't drink the tap water here, so everyone drinks bottled water and it's cheap, about 90 kuruş (kuruş are comparable to American cents), which is maybe 75 cents. Tea is of course absolutely ubiquitous in Turkey. It's so much a part of Turkish culture, and it is drunk very simply with şeker (sugar), but no milk. Apparently this is just not done. There are two kinds of milk even, süt and ayran, which is more like buttermilk and is drunk with salt and pepper sometimes. The yoghurt (I'm not going to translate this one – surprise! You already know some Turkish) is also different, not flavored and eaten as a side with meals. I mixed a little with the salsa-like stuff and it was a reasonable Turkish mock-up of my beloved Mexican.

We spent the afternoon walking, and decided to make our way down to Bebek which is on the water's edge. We made our way down a long hill, along a steep narrow road, dodging crazy drivers all the way. Oh! The drivers in Turkey are unbelievable. They park their cars every which way, even on the sidewalks as the roads are often narrow and many of them cobblestone or brick, and they drive all over the park, honking at anything, and they will barely slow down to let you pass. We kept joking today that one of us was going to end up dead, and here I am, over 6000 miles away from my favorite mortician! So needless to say, this isn't a city that I'd want to drive in. Turkish drivers are downright ruthless! But the walking, oh, the walking may kill me. I think we must have walked 5 miles today, and between having a cold and being stupidly out of shape, I had to stop a couple of times to take a breather. But to be fair, coming back up the hill was more than a bit of a workout. So yeah, Turkish food is delicious, but I think I'm going to lose a bit of weight being here.

The waterfront was quite pretty, again lots of little shops and restaurants, and many people fishing along the water. Mostly they were pulling in silverly little fish which they put in plastic buckets of water. We even saw a small clutch of men huddled around a portable grill, eating their fresh catch with lemons, cigarettes dangling from their fingers. Here's another constant: everyone seems to smoke, and they smoke everywhere – in restaurants, on the street, on their mopeds (minus helmets too) and smokes are cheap apparently, not that I'm interested. The girls and I took it all in, including strolling beneath the grey rock towers of Rumelihisarı, which is a fortress that was built between 1451-1452, back when Istanbul really was Constantinople.

It was seeing that majestic fortress looming over us that I really had that “OhmiGod, I'm really in *Istanbul*” moment. America is old and has lots of very neat buildings, but there are no real fortresses or castles there. This was a fortress, built nearly a century and a half before Virginia was first founded, over three hundred years before America was founded, even forty years before Columbus sailed for the Indies. Constantinople, y'all. 1451. That's old. Now to be honest, we've all been having these little OhmiGod, I'm in Istanbul” moments at various points, but seeing those towers really drove home the fact that I'm now in Europe.

Oh... another long day, and it's late as I'm writing this. We Americans went back to the Superdorm, rested for a bit, and there I met Katie, my roommate, who is from Boston. She just got in from many long hours driving from west Europe and was suffering from the same jet lag the rest of us had the day before. We ventured out, and I introduced her to Erin, Emily and Olivia, and we had dinner at a local hole in the wall restaurant, where we ordered our food by again a lot of pointing and smiles. I had something like a Turkish beef stew and the others had dishes that resembled chana masala, chicken pot pie and mousaka, which was the one dish we all recognized. Tea, bread, salad (lettuce, carrots and red cabbage eaten with olive oil and lemon juice) rounded out the meal. And the the very handsome waiters (Oh, girls, let me tell you that the men here are so pretty!) even gave us free dessert, including a baked apple in syrup with heavy whipped cream, a caramelized milk pudding (like flan), and a dessert that had the consistency of grits or polenta but was sweet. All in all, very tasty. We will definitely be going there again!

So that's my road less traveled so far. I'm very happy to have met other Americans, including ones who are from Virginia, no less! I've made some good friends pretty quickly, and I'm looking forward to meeting more. Every hour I spend here I learn or see something new. We're all happily fumbling our way through the language, and even going to a restaurant minus a Turkish-speaker has not daunted us. We're all in this together. Tomorrow we have plans to brave the public transportation and go to Taksim, near the downtown area, to see what we can see, buy Turkish cell phones and do a little shopping. I promise more updates soon. :)