Istanbul
August 6, 2007.
By Dan

We entered Turkey on Monday afternoon (August 5, 2007) after a non-stop drive through Bulgaria.
“Where you go?” asked the border guard.
“Cambodia.”
“Where?”
“Kam-boh-dya,” I tried pronouncing the word in a dodgy kebab shop voice.
“Cambodia? You funny. Have nice Istanbul.”

Immediately I noticed a major difference between the skylines of Eastern Europe and Turkey. While the Bulgarian and Romanian cityscapes are dominated by huge chimneys reaching out from usually derelict factories, the Turkish horizon is punctuated by the minarets and spires of thousands of mosques reaching for the clouds.
The Soviet investment in the industrial contrasted with the Ottoman affection for the spiritual. Or something like that.

Istanbul is a true wonder. Every corner I turned, my breath was taken away by another emergence of history, culture and religion, laying like geological formations, complete with tell tail signs of their period.
I spent the first day walking with eyes fixed firmly at the sky, stunned by the architecture so that I kept bumping into passers by. I would instinctively touch my wallet through the canvas of my shorts before offering my apologies. Istanbul is amazing – but entirely human.

We negotiated a good price to sleep on the roof of a hostel, and set up a bar tab on the promise of a group discount. Turns out two beers cost the same as our accommodation, but we didn’t find that out till many, many beers later.

Although thoroughly impressed by the city, the Grand Bazaar was something of a disappointment. It is vast, 4,000 shops along 58 covered streets, but I guess I was hoping for something more Turkish, more medieval even. It has been a market for more than 500 years, and over time merchants began covering the aisles between the stalls to ensure all-weather trading. Eventually the perimeter was walled off and gates installed that could be locked at night. I was naïvely expecting this sort of Arabian nights atmosphere, but was mistaken.

“You want perfume – this best, you like it. Good price. Where you from? Make you good jiggy jiggy. I love England. Take this, have perfume, you like it – best jiggy jiggy. You lots jiggy jiggy this,” claimed the hawker exchanging a knowing wink with another trader and trying to thrust perfume into my hands.
It is claimed by some that in advertising sex sells – but in the Grand Bazaar, the merchants have gone so far as to insist that buying some knock-off copy of Calvin Klein aftershave will ensure you cop-off with anything that moves.
Unmoved, we ploughed on, not an easy task in the bazaar’s crowded aisles, but the pimp followed us, uttering his sales pitch like a hermetic chant, rising to a crescendo as he finally got frustrated – “good for jiggy jiggy, Good For Jiggy Jiggy, GOOD FOR JIGGY JIGGY.”

The products of globalisation were fully on show – Adidas, Nike, Christian Dior et al, I had no idea whether it was fake or real and avoided eye contact where I could.
“Where you from?” seemed the traders favourite opener.
“Er… Surrey…”
“Ah, Surrey very nice place.”
“So you’ve been?”
A blank stare.
“Surrey very nice place. You like T-shirt?”
Wherever I said I was from, I was always told it is a very nice place before having something cheap and badly labelled waved at me.

The ‘grander’ part of the bazaar was essentially a modern mall, with monitors hanging from the roof, and a familiar tanoy system sending out messages.
There were the same sorts of goods that must have been sold there for centuries- jewellery, leathers, pots and ceramics, beautiful hanging lights, sitars, carpets, pipes, hookahs, along with modern electronics and camera equipment – but every other shop seemed to be selling the same stuff, as if it all came from the same factory.
I would hate to be a trader in there, knowing you were flogging identical goods to every other stall and relying entirely on your ability to persuade people to buy from YOU, as a person. A tough job.
I bought a memory stick for a reasonable price, but there was little else of interest/value.

By the evening I was sick of company. Travelling in a group this size means constant compromise, and debate, and I wanted to go at my own pace. So I made a vague excuse and split from the group. It was refreshing to have a few beers with my own thoughts. I ate a meal alone at my table, past midnight, surrounded by locals.
An old man with a cigarette strained voice played the sitar gently and a drunk Italian woman giggled loudly, as if being courted, though I didn’t turn to look. It was comforting not to have to make any more group decisions and I retired early to the roof, where the sea breeze cooled me to sleep.

Ends
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