Day 20: Istanbul to Rome

(Will post days 20 and 21 without photos for now and will add them later)

Day 20:  Istanbul to Rome,   Thursday December 30^th

We are sitting at Ataturk airport in Istanbul, waiting to fly out to Rome via Athens.  All is right with the world as I am sipping the first Cappucino in a week  (Gloria Jean’s)  and we have successfully passed through the first of two security controls with no hassles.   We discovered the hard way when we flew from Cappadocia back to Istanbul, that at Turkish airports there are two security controls – the first is when you enter the doors of the terminal and the second is when you prepare to go on the plane.  This caught us completely on the back foot at Cappadocia and the hassling of the attendant for Roger to hurry up had catastrophic results – say no more except thank goodness for  the Turkish translation of a medical letter I was carrying!

This mornings’s  trip to the airport was an adventure in itself.  We booked on a minibus shuttle service which left from our hotel door.  It then spent half an hour going around several of the hotels in the Sultanamet region, picking up passengers.  This was a fascinating ride through the narrow lanes -it’s an overstatement to call them streets – of this, the old part of Istanbul.  At every turn there was a traffic jam: horns honking, the bus carefully manoeuvering its way so as to avoid colliding either with another vehicle or with a stone wall and men out of their vehicles directing the traffic in order to clear the way.

This seems a good opportunity to write a few reflections of Turkey.   At the risk of sounding like a writer for Lonely Planet, I will write a few observations of some of the interesting aspects from a traveller’s point of view.   Also, as I have found quite a few differences since I was here last, I will write a bit about these also.

Petrol:  We were astounded to see that it is equivalent to around $3.20 per litre, which of course makes our 6 day tour with One Nation Travel even better value.

Shopping – Markets:      I have talked in some of the recent blogs about our experiences in various markets.  You simply cannot stop to ‘window shop’, which is most frustrating.  The second you stop to look at something, the trader is pointing out the various colours or styles of the item – aspects which are blatantly obvious because of every item there are multiples – not just a few, but a few dozen on display.  Apparently tourists are expected to haggle, but as we are not comfortable doing this, we happily paid the asking price in most cases.   However, at the Grand Bazaar, I had admired a handbag with crewel work on it and was told it was 55 Turkish Lira.  Asing for a smaller one, I was told it was also 55 TL – clearly unacceptable in my mind.  ”Oh no,  too much, ”   I said and was asked how much I wanted to pay.  I said that I would pay 20 TL at the most and he immediately started coming down,  but still not to my price.   Then his offsider said something about liking the lady so let her have it for 20TL.  Having read in Lonely Planet that it is bad form to not buy once a price has been agreed on, I now have a rather nice crewel work handbag which I can use as a tax deduction as I need to show crewel work as a fabric application to my Interior Design students.

Shopping – Leather/jewellery/carpet outlets:  These I have also described in some detail on blogs.  There are common factors in each of these experiences.   Always we were offered apple tea.  There seemed to be a plethora of salespeople, all of whom could speak English.  It seemed that each victim – I meant tourist – had a salesperson allocated to them by some surreptitious signalling system and that person clung like a limpet until either the tourist bought or it was aptently obvious that the salesperson was wasting his/her time and energy.   There was always the offer of a special discount owing to the low season, but I am led to wonder if the same discount will not apply in June because it is the high season.   Wthout doubt however, the goods have always been beautiful and of very high quality.

Drinks:    Apple tea – how many cups of this vile, sickly sweet drink were we offered?  They will sometimes offer Turkish tea, which is just like out tea, drunk black, but they make it so strong!  It seems that noone understands the concept of ‘weak’ when it comes to drinks.  I would often show with gestures that I want a little tea and lots of water, and they would look at me as though I was totally bonkers!!  Roger quite enjoyed the apple tea, so he didn’t have the same hassles.

              Coffee – We were only drinking tea because their coffee is simply undrinkable!  Turkish coffee you can stand a spoon up in.  They obviously realise that this is not a universal taste, so they also offer Nescafe.   The problem is that they make a cup of Nescafe with no fewer than two full teaspoons of coffee in the small cup!  Colin and Bob would both find this fine, but we just went without coffee.

Bread:   Noone does bread like the Turks.  I knew that their bread is beautiful and so all through Austria and Hungary, where the bread was heavy and very doughy, I was hanging out for the Turkish bread.  It is just like our bread – soft and fluffy, with plenty of air through it.   They bake it in large cobs with a beautiful crisp crust.  They don’t offer butter with it, but that doesn’t matter as the bread is delicious just on its own.

Christmas:   Now Christmas and Muslim Turkey don’t really go together I know, but it seems that the rest of the world (at least this part of it) that doesn’t celebrate Christmas, or that celebrates it in a different way or at a different time, really  wants to cash in on Christmas western style.  Everywhere in Turkey, we saw Christmas tree style trees, decorated with baubles, which are there to celebrate New Year.   Then, as I was typing away a couple of nights ago, sitting in the hotel lobby next to the TV, I was amazed to hear ‘Jingle Bells’.  I looked over and there was a sleigh flying through the air, being pulled by reindeer, but instead of Santa in the sleigh, there was a young woman and a smaller figure (child?,  bear? elf?), both dressed in yellow costumes trimmed with fur.

As we went through the airport in  Athens on our stopover today, Santa was wandering around giving out ‘gifts’.  We heard Christmas carols in both Athens and Rome airportsso it seems Christmas hasn’t yet finished.

Toilets:  It was a pleasant surprise this time to find many more western toilets.  In fact, there was only one occasion on which I used an eastern toilet in the whole week we have been here.    The toilet experience is worth writing about as I think the Turks have got it just right!  I may be wrong, but I don’t know of any other place in the world that has this toilet experience, so as delicately as I can, I will describe what happens.

On first appearance, the western style of the toilet in Turkey is no different from what we are used to.  But there is one big difference – the little tap.   This is on the wall behind the toliet and it supplies a small, narrow outlet which sits towards the top of the toilet bowl.  Once one has finished the ablutions, a turn of the tap delivers a stream of water to exactly the right spot where it is needed for washing the affected area.  Toilet paper is always supplied, but this is intended for blotting dry one’s nether region, rather than for cleaning the same.  The used toilet paper is then deposited into a bin beside the toilet, thus saving the sewerage system from being clogged up with paper.  We were amused (and still bemused)  to see signs which requested saving of water by flushing the toilet twice!

Now, for the benefit of those who have not visited Turkey for several years (and for those who are interested anyway), I want to note a few of the things I found to have changed over the last decade.  The Turkish people themselves talk of the great changes that have happened in the country over recent years.  Apparently there was a change of government in 2004 and they talk about pre 2004 Turkey and post 2004 Turkey.

There will no doubt be many things that I have not noticed, but now the tourist experience is quite different.  They are really geared up for western tourism now. 

It’s just a minor thing, but in 2000 there were no kettles in hotel rooms and I relied on an immersion boiler to make a cup of coffee my style.  No need for the immersion boiler this time, as there was a kettle in each room we stayed in.

Turkey seems to be much more western and noticeably less Muslim.  I think it seems as though they have made a deliberate move to distance themselves from Islam since 9/11.  Among the young people, there is a noticeable western appearance in dress and behaviour.   I saw very few pairs of young women in full Muslim dress strolling through the streets of Istanbul arm in arm.  In 2000 this was quite a common sight, but this week, I have seen it only once.  The young women of Turkey commonly wear western clothes, including the tight jeans and excluding the headscarf.  The call to prayer was noticeably less obvious.  Even with our hotel being only a hundred metres or so from the Blue Mosque, the call to prayer did not dominate to aural landscape.  I talked in Tuesday’s blog about the very few men at prayer in the Blue Mosque – only 6-8 of them. 

The queues, even now in the low season, are testamony to the popularity of Turkey as a tourist destination.  Queues were hundreds of metres long at Sancta Sophia and Topkapi Palace, both destinations which had short queues in the height of summer ten years ago.

Speaking of Sancta Sophia, as I wrote in my Day 19 blog, this magnificent church/mosque/museum is now beautifully lit, as opposed to the gloomy light in which I had previously seen it.  I am so glad that they have done this, because the beauty of the building, which is most certainly one of the world’s predominent architectural marvels, can now be fully appreciated.

Smoking is certainly on the wane here.  I saw no women smoking at all, not even the young ones.  Few younger men were smoking and it seemed confined to the older men.  Most venues were non-smoking or they offered a separate smoking room/area.  None of our bus drivers smoked while driving.  I remember Joe in 2000 smoking much of the time he was driving.

When visiting Cappadocia in 2000, evey roadside cluster of souvenir stalls had at least one which sold tacky replicas of the Roman (?) god, Pes.  I think he was the god of fertility and is characterised by an oversized erect penis.  This figure was a good companion for the fairy chimneys in Cappadocia, many of which take a shape much akin to Pes.  I was, of course, expecting to again  be bombarded by this figure at every turn.   However, to my surprise, he was nowhere to be seen!  I can only conclude that at some point  in the last ten years, an edict has been made that Pes was not a good image for the promotion of tourism in Turkey and therefore the sale of this figure has been discouraged or even prohibited.

We have now successfully made it to Rome and have settled in to our very italianate hotel near the airport.  We move tomorrow to a more luxurious one in the centre of the city to begin our Trafalgar tour.