We had a drink and a chat, we watched Turkish TV together, didn’t understand any of it, but had a lot of fun.  Sometimes we went with some of the family members to a wedding party or a cultural event in town.  Sometimes these people also guided us around town…

These people always had a lot of family and friends that had a restaurant or café or shop, or they knew the taxi driver – they also posted your postcards if you wanted… Of course, all this service was for a small fee, and that is how the whole system worked, everybody helped everybody – but it was at times very convenient, especially because our knowledge of Turkish was very limited. Like in the situation that I got sick, and needed to go to the doctor. When he gave me a prescription, he called a little girl (maybe his daughter or another family member ?) and she accompanied me to the pharmacy – of course she got a small fee from the pharmacist…

Living for a couple of days with these people, learned us more about Turkey than any guidebook.  And I will always remember the last day of our holiday, we had to leave at 4:00 AM to go to the airport, and the whole family of the pension was there to say goodbye to us – as if we were good friends that were leaving…

We visited the site of the historical Troy – basically only city walls are left, and you need to be an expert to see all the different layers – the acropolis and fortress in Bergama (Pergamon),  Pirene, Didymea, Efes… the array of interesting sites is large – some of them no more than a collection of stones, others well preserved and restored…  It is a travel through Greek and Roman culture.

Sometimes we had to take a bus to a remote site, and we were dropped of in a place that was only large enough to visit for half an hour, not for the whole afternoon, the time we had to wait till the next bus arrived to bring us back.  But when this happened, we always found an interesting café where we could watch the old man play cards and drink tea – or there was always a carpet shop where you could spend a couple of hours….
At other times, the sites were really impressive and you felt like being in a time warp…walking on the same roads as the Romans did, sitting in the same theatre…
I also remember that often we were the only tourists around, and on the bus, mostly overcrowed by locals – the bus stopped everywhere –  the landscapes were always great and the farmers still used mules and horses.

But let’s return to Istanbul, this fascinating capital, where the adventure starts and we meet another culture.  After our first disputes with taxi drivers, we decided to take the bus into town…. Finding a place to sleep for a couple of days was not difficult, there were vacancies in most of the places.  We stayed in a budget pension, in the middle of the old city, next to a mosque… as we found out the first morning at 5:00 AM when the muezzin called for the first prayer of the day from the minaret.

History and prayers

The first days we visited all the classics : the blue mosque, suleyman mosque, aya sophia, topkapi palace, mausoleum of the sultans, etc…  It was quite an eye opener to the great history of Turkey and to the present time muslim culture… at several occasions, we could witness the prayers in the mosque, and it was always crowded.  We also visited the bazaar, the many (black) markets, … Everything was very cheap, there was a lot of space, and people were constantly asking for our attention, to sell carpets or silk, or to invite us into their restaurant or café…- “Shoeshine” boys on every corner… – we all were wearing sports shoes, but that didn’t matter to them….
We ate kebab, corn, and simit (a doughnut-shaped sesame bread) from the food stalls – or fresh fish in a restaurant on the Gatata bridge – the old one , that collapsed some years ago, now replaced by a new one.

We had a great time, and we were all millionaires… – every time we changed our US $ into Turkish Lira, the exchange rate went up… inflation was 70 percent or more over here.

Fresh fish

One of the following days, we went on a boat trip on the Bosphorus, the gateway to Asia…. Along the river, many interesting buildings and sights… but this was not a tourist-only boat, as it was also used by turkish vendors, people going from and to work, or for shopping into town. This boat trip was also a place to experience day to day life in Istanbul.

We spent a couple of hours in the little town Anadolu, on the coast of the Black Sea.  We had crossed the border with Asia.  Again fresh fish and calamares… !  But also little streets and poor housing.  This was different from the splendors of the historical old city of Istanbul.

When we arrived back into the city, I remember the abundance of fresh fish from the many fishermen – the fish were still alive when sold !