Turkey March 2011
Istanbul, Turkey
March 2011
Hello from the other side! Or as they say in Turkey, Merhaba diger yandan! Observations from beyond the Pond:
This trip started off in Bologna, Italy. Bologna, as you probably guessed, is best known around the world for that famous deli meat, salami. Ravenna was my base in Italy. Ravenna is a smaller town that sits on the Adriatic Sea. Actually it sits next to the Adriatic Sea. One Sunday I took a train to Venice. Venice sits ON the Adriatic Sea. Except during seasonal tides when it, quite literally, sits IN the Adriatic Sea. The San Marco Square, 3-4 acres in size, has one corner devoted to storing platforms, so in high tide, they can be linked together and creates a platform floor that covers the entire square raising it about 2 feet above the stone floor of the square that will be under water. Tsunami warnings go off in Venice when someone skips a rock out into the Adriatic and the ripples are headed toward town.
Italy is very nice. The food is good. Although I had pizza for basically every meal. (The other major food groups: burgers, Mexican food, Jack-in-the-Box tacos were not available.) My favorite was diavoli pizza with salami and picanti. That is exactly what we would refer to as pepperoni pizza. Ravenna streets are very narrow. Few people have cars, with most walking or riding bicycles. Walking is on the narrow streets between the centuries old buildings and if a car comes while you are walking, you have to flatten yourself against the wall for the car to pass. At 50 miles per hour. If you hear a city bus coming, the recommended procedure is to kneel and say a prayer. I fully expected to come upon a city bus one day stuck in the road scraping the buildings on each side and unable to move forward or backward. The door to my ancient hotel was directly across from the tomb of Dante. Dante, like others who use only one name, e.g. Cher, Madonna, and Billgates, is clearly famous. For those of you more barbaric in nature, who did not take classical literature in college, Dante, is a poet who wrote the Da Vinci Code, or something Italian.
Finally, it was time for me to depart from Italy to continue on. At the airport in Bologna, I saw the most unusual thing in the men’s restroom: a realistic fly stenciled on the bottom of each urinal. I took a photo. On an unrelated note, if you whip out a camera in a men’s restroom, it is probably best to ensure you are alone first. This is probably good advice outside of Italy as well.
Next stop was Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul is a cross roads of many cultures. It use to be called Constantinople, after Emperor Constantine, when he relocated the Roman Empire capital there around 500 AD. It became Istanbul when the Muslims took it over in the late 1400’s and was the capital of the Ottoman Empire (Literal translation is “The Empire of Footrests”) for several hundred years. I had to conduct some training sessions in various offices here, so we spent a couple of days analyzing traffic patterns in Istanbul. Searching for the last office we got hopelessly lost. We finally called got someone on the phone from the office we were trying to find and to our surprise, the office was actually in the Asia portion of Istanbul. For those of you who may not know, Istanbul is the only city in the world that is on more than one continent. We needed to get to the Asia part while the psychotic taksi driver had gotten us lost on another continent, Australia. We spent 4 hours in the car for a 30 minute meeting and the ransom was $125.
We had several taksi (actual spelling) drivers in Istanbul and there are some rules you need to know about Turkey taksis: 1) it is OK to smoke in the taksi while driving as long as you offer the customer a cigarette first. He does not have to accept or even agree. Actually, I’m not certain that smoking in a taksi isn’t mandatory. 2) If you don’t know where you are going, drive fast in a random straight line. There is a 1/360th chance you chose the correct vector. If you missed, more money! 3) Don’t speak any language, including your own. It increases the odds of you not knowing where you are going and, more money! 3) The exact fare to any location is “how much do you have”, but there is room to negotiate up from that with credit facilitates being what they are. All kidding aside, as much as I complain about the taksi drivers, when I had Saturday off and wanted to go see the Blue Mosque, the Harley Davidson Dealer, and other historical sites in Istanbul, I took, as you can probably guess, the train.
My next stop is the capital of Turkey, Ankara. While Istanbul has ancient remains and old buildings everywhere, Ankara appears more modern. Ankara, because we know no city outside of New York can keep it’s original name, use to be known as Angora, named after the mother-in-law on Bewitched. Or was that Endora, I’m only sure about Aunt Clara and she doesn’t have any cities named after her. And I just remembered that New York use to be New Amsterdam until 1664, so apparently every city in the world use to be called something else. So while this modern metropolis could pass for any city in the Northeastern United States with it’s glass and steel structures, all major retail chains, and a complete lack of taksi drivers that speak English, it actually has it’s roots in Angora sheep and rabbits, which originated in this region. So with that planted in your subconscious, the next time you put on a sweater, you’ll think of Turkey. And then wonder why cashmere caused you to think of Turkey.
Tomorrow, I will leave for a very brief stay in Tel Aviv and then onward home. The scary part is that it was cold in Italy when I started this trip and I brought a large jacket with me that won’t fit in my suitcase. Going into Israel carrying a large jacket is like wearing a flashing sign that you intend on being a suicide bomber. There will probably be an unfortunate incident involving rubber gloves before I am able to get out of the airport.
May all your taksi drivers treat you fare,
Mustafa Keith