Taksim, Balat and surprises, oh my!

The past few days have been a big rough, but I'm getting through all right. Mostly I've been keeping myself busy so I cannot dwell too much. There is a lot going on at home too that I'd like be involved in or take care of, but I cannot so instead I preoccupy with life in Istanbul. Saturday I broke one of my preset rules for living here and decided to venture by myself into the downtown. (I said before that I wouldn't go anywhere off the campus alone but well, since the "campus" is actually four separate campuses here, I suppose I do that a lot actually). I rounded up my 1.40 lira fare, checked the schedule, boarded the 559C bus, and rode an hour or so down to Taksim, studying my phrase book on the way. I met my new friend Charlotte in front of Burger King (yes, there's a Burger King in Taksim Square. There is all kinds of American food here, but that's another post). Charlotte is a friend of a friend, and is just all kinds of nice. She's a lovely human being, witty, intelligent with a dry snarky sense of humor that just delights me. She is here in Istanbul teaching English kindergarten, and she lives on the Asian side, which I have incidentally not yet had to the chance to visit.

She and I wandered Taksim, ducked into an English-language bookstore there, happily pored over a decent selection of the "classics" (Poe, Shakespeare, Faulkner, Austen, etc), admired the bigger selection of books about Turkey, and drooled over the books about language and linguistics. I didn't see anything that caught my eye to purchase this time, but I noted the store for future trips because I miss reading and it's not easy to find a lot of great English-language books here. (While I know that I'll likely have plenty of reading for my classes, I do love to read other things during the semester, especially right before bed, because that's *my* time to read things that have nothing to do with my degree work. I did bring a couple Bill Bryson books, and don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore Bill Bryson, but a girl needs a little more variety over the course of five months.)

Charlotte then led me to a little restaurant that's off the main street, and tucked in a little side street that I probably would not have found by myself. Parsifal's is a lovely vegetarian restaurant, a snug homey spot which maybe could seat twenty-someodd people, with worn wood floors, classy art on the walls, and rickety wooden chairs and tables. Needless to say, I loved it immediately. (ooh, look, and they have a website! It's all in Turkish but you can still look at the photos.) The food was a bit pricier than other places that we've eaten at already, but it was so good that I didn't care. Charlotte and I got the same thing, a broccoli and cheese au gratin dish, with tea, bread, water, and the bill came to about 42 lira (about $25), so in hindsight, no, not really that expensive. We lingered there for a few hours, slowly sipping tea and chatting. She and I have a lot in common, and we already get along quite well. She told me how she came to be in Turkey, what she loves about it here, what she misses from home, and we discussed our respective educational backgrounds. Come to find out, it may be easier than I thought to actually get a teaching job if I wanted. (more about that later)

Charlotte and I split ways when she went to meet her boyfriend for Valentine's Day dinner, and I braved the rush-hour traffic home. Traveling alone isn't as bad as I thought it'd be. I know which bus to take, I know where my stop is, and I know how much it cost, so I was okay. As much as we are riding the buses, the other international students and I have been figuring out which ones go where, and exploring quite fine all on our own.

To that end, a group of us decided to brave a couple new routes and find Balat, the Jewish quarter of the city on Sunday. It was bitterly cold, far different from the balmy first couple of days that greeted us a couple of weeks ago. I have a winter coat with me, but I didn't bring any gloves, hat or scarves with me to Istanbul. I do have a plan to rectify the situation with the scarves, but so far I've been dealing with lots of layers and keeping my hood up in lieu of a hat. We took a bus down to the tram station, and walked a good distance over one of the bridges to an area called Eminönü (which I keep wanting to pronounce as "E-min-o-yu" instead as "E-min-o-nu" for some reason). There we actually were able to purchase akbils! What is an akbil, you ask? Well, as for most major metropolitan public transportation systems, Istanbul has an extensive system of buses, trams, and trains, and they all use this little tab button thing that hangs on your keychain called an akbil. You purchase one for 6 lira, preload it with money, and then you just touch it to a sensor when boarding, and it beeps at you. This way you can avoid carrying around pockets of change to pay for the bus or tram. (Hey, look, akbil info!)

Unfortunately, we tried following this “45 walk around the Balat and Fener neighborhoods” but ended up getting more than a little lost. We did however find the St. Stephen Church, which is a beautiful Bulgarian Orthodox church that is famous for being constructed entirely of iron. It was actually colder inside than outside, but exploring it (it was free!) was definitely worth it. I'd like to come back when it's warmer – and I find myself saying this about several things actually. There are a number of sites here in Istanbul that I haven't seen yet either because I'm waiting for the weather to get better and/or I'm waiting for my student id so I can get in either cheaper/for free.

After leaving St. Stephens, we walked even more, getting a bit more lost, and the weather just got worse. Just cold, grey and windy. After we finally got back to the dorm, I curled up in my room to warm up for a little while. But the best was yet to come. Not even half an hour after coming inside, I heard a strange sound at my window, and I looked over and saw that it was snowing! Not only snowing, but it was sticking! Big old fat snowflakes, the perfect white fluffy snow that I love so much, and despite the late hour, I just had to dash outside and play. So after a flurry of messages on Skype and Facebook to locals here in the Superdorm, I threw on my coat and ran outside.

So yeah, never the fact that I'm nearly 30, I went outside and played like a kid all over again. But you can't blame me – the snow was just so beautiful. After a few minutes, a number of other students trickled out and we amused ourselves by throwing snowballs at each other, rolling up a couple snowmen and even making snow angels on the Superdorm lawn. On a lark, a few of us decided to walk down to the South Campus. I slid a few times (note to self: smooth-soled Chucks are not the best to wear in the snow), fell a couple times, but seeing the snow was worth it. Well, to make a long story short, the snow truly transformed the campus. Everything was coated in fluffy white snow – the perfect “snowball” snow, might I add – and the Bosphorus looked lovely. A lot of the Turkish students were out playing when we got to the South Campus. We stayed out for a while, my feet got completely soaked, and I was cold and wet, but very happy. All in all, we got about two inches of snow. Sadly, by morning, it was almost all gone, and by the afternoon, you wouldn't have even known it had snowed. According to the Turks, it was pretty rare to see such weather, so we felt very lucky to have experienced it. It was very ephemeral, but at least we enjoyed one beautiful night.