On the Road with Julie

Time to Read:

Anyone to whom I relayed the 2-day duration of my upcoming stop in Istanbul as it approached had the same reply. “Too short!”.

I can’t disagree. 

But I can say, if you have a chance to go to Istanbul and all you can grab are 2 days – do it!

This will be my longest post of the trip so far. For a place I was only in for just over 48 hours, I think that says it all. And, like every post, there is so much worthy of telling that I’m leaving on the cutting room floor.

Two days may not be enough to even scratch the surface of Istanbul, but it is more than enough to get a rich, unparalleled experience that will stay with you for – actually – I guess I really don’t know how long it will still with you. I’m writing this from the plane about 6.5 minutes after taking off from the Istanbul Airport. So, I know it stays with you at least that long.

And, actually, I’m finishing the post about 15 hours later…yup, still very much with me.

My guess is, I’ll have the feeling of Istanbul laced in the threads of my memory for years to come. Two days is short. It’s not nearly enough to try even a portion of all of the mouth-watering flavors you pass by in just a block or two of most neighborhoods you might find yourself in.

But it’s enough to give it the old college try.

It’s enough to find yourself really grateful that you got a chance to steep in the sea of 15.7 million official residents (plus 20 million yearly tourists and another million or so estimated unofficial residents), somewhere between 3,000 and 8,000 years of human history (depending on how you are counting) and absolutely countless sights, sounds and smells – all that beg exploring.

When I first arrived in Istanbul under the lights of a bustling city around the hour of my average early bedtime, I found myself very aware that I was in the most populous city I have ever been in. I love cities. I love the movement. I love the activity. I love how much is happening so close together that it doesn’t seem like ti should work, but somehow, it does. I know some folks don’t like crowds. I do. (though I will tell a story later in this post of where even my appreciation for crowds was tested). I know there are cities with much higher populations and population densities than NYC, the city I most often visit, but this was my first time being in one. And I felt it. I felt it on my skin. I felt it in the air. Even when I was in places that weren’t all that crowded, I still had the feeling of being in a place that was so much bigger than what I’m used to.

There is a big difference between knowing that there are a lot of people somewhere and physically being in a place with so many people. Since I am on my way to India and China both, and the final stop of my trip in Tokyo, I expect to find myself crossing the bridge from intellectual knowledge to the revelations of physical experience more than a few times. So much of this trip is about the difference between intellectually knowing something and actually breathing it in, in all four dimensions. The more I travel, the more I realize they are not just slightly different takes on the same fundamental thing – knowing and experiencing are two different universes.

Speaking of physical experiences, let’s talk food. I do my best to eat quintessential fare in each place I go based on what I can find, what I have time for and what I can physically eat thanks to my lovely (read – annoying) food allergies.

I left unfathomable amount of enticing cuisine untasted in Turkey, but I got my hands on enough to fill my belly and satisfy my hunger for culinary exploits.

I partook of the roasted chestnuts and grilled corn that could be found at countless cart kiosks throughout the city.

I had beef döner. And then I had chicken döner. 

I never actually had enough time for a proper sit down meal, so these were fantastic on-the-go feasts that scratched my gustatory itch for local fare within the constraints of all you might imagine I attempted to pack into 2 days.

And, the crowning culinary achievement of my short visit –

I found gluten free baklava.

And I found it fairly close to my apartment. 

And it was good.

I was so proud of myself for not overdoing my order when I got into the baklava establishment with rows and rows of delicious treats – 95% of which I couldn’t eat. I love baklava. I haven’t been able to eat it in a really, really long time. I was pretty excited to get my grubby little hands on a few (or more) pieces of it.

As I was waiting for my flight to India at the Istanbul airport Sunday evening, I was talking on the phone with Ryan, reporting my remarkable discovery and bragging about my self-annointed spectacular restraint.

“How many pieces did you get?” He asked.

“12” I responded, proudly.

“12?!”

“Wait – is that a lot or a little?”

I figured it out by the silent pause. It was a lot.

Listen, I wanted to order 20. Or…50. Restraint is relative. Oh, and, also – yea – that was 12 to go. In addition to the 2 that I ordered to eat immediately.

In my gluttonous defense, I looked around and saw a lot of Turks with full plates of baklava. I think, back home, we generally have it just as a small desert after a full meal. If I am correct in what I observed, it seems in Turkey, it is acceptable to treat it as a worthy breakfast.

In the spirit of “thou dost protest too much”, to bolster my argument, I was also anticipating my upcoming eight and a half hour flight. This isn’t gluttony. This is just good planning. Good, hungry, gluttonous planning.

At the time of this writing, we are 20 minutes into the flight. 

There are four pieces left.

And, actually, I am finishing up this post now from my first hotel in India about 12 hours later from when I wrote that last sentence. I would like to announce that I just finished the last piece of baklava while editing this very section. Isn’t that poetic? Probably not, but man, it was delicious.

But, we’ll get to India later. Well you’ll get there later, I got here at 4:30 this morning.

Back to Turkey!

My Turkish adventures started off with a little bit of excitement. Istanbul has two main airports. One, SAW, is about an hour and twenty minutes away and, in my short experience of it, I would say it is a bit of a mad house. Listen, it is a solid airport. It gets the job done. It is used primarily for the budget airlines. But the scene around it stands in stark comparison to the Istanbul Airport (IST) from which I flew out on Sunday. IST is a state of the art facility more akin to a luxury mall than an airport. If you forgot to make your stop at Tiffany or Cartier in the city proper, you can be sure to grab you ten thousand dollar diamond necklace for your flight on your way out of town. I decided I had enough Prada and Gucci for my personal tastes (meaning, zero) and stuck to a fruit smoothie and getting to my gate.

I had been recommended ahead of my arrival in Istanbul not to take a taxi from the airport into the city, but to get an Uber. In Istanbul, Uber actually hooks you up with taxis rather than private drivers, but it does it through the Uber app, so all of the payment is taken care of without you having to worry about any tricky price negotiations or price gouging. 

When I arrived and entered the frenzied scene just outside the airport, I was having trouble finding the sign for where the Uber pickups happen. There was a good reason for that. While looking between my phone to message my Uber driver and inquisitively scanning the area, I was approached through the chaos of the crowds making their way from various “here”s to myriad “there”s, by an airport official. He was saying something I didn’t understand. “English?” he asked. I nodded. He held up his phone with the Google Translate showing me what he wanted me to know.

“Ubers are not allowed to pick you up here.”

I nodded in willing compliance, noting the mild peculiarity of such an encounter and walked out towards the parking lot where it appeared that my taxi was waiting for me, according to the map on Uber. The odd thing was not being told that someplace was the wrong place, but, the absence of being told where the correct place was. And, the precision of the approach told me this was a regular hunt of little mousey travelers walking through the wilds of these criss-crossing crosswalks and roads by hawks that knew exactly what they were searching for.

So began 10 minutes of mild airport intrigue. 

I got the “I’m here” message from my driver. I messaged, “I am trying to find you. I’m not sure where you are.” He responded, “Go to the blue post #16 and await my further instructions.”

Mysterious.

I called Ryan just to keep him in the loop – just in case.

So far, this was sounding to me like the beginning of about a thousand action movies, many of which do not end up well for the wild-eyed traveler in the opening scene.

But, despite the oddity of the scenario, all of my other observations together with my good old spidey sense told me that all was well.  

I followed his directions. “Go to the entrance to the east parking garage. Go up the elevator to the departures. I’ll meet you at the elevator.”

Up? I thought. This is strange. Why am I going up?

I got to the second floor and there he was to meet me and we began our journey towards the next unlikely spot to pick up a ride out of the airport – the departures drop-off area. 

Then things got really fun.

“Scusi. Parli Italiano?”

I turned and looked at a nice young couple with a similar, “just-got-here-and-trying-to-figure-out-how-to-get-out-of-here-is-weirder-than-I-expected” kind of vibe. It seemed like a bit of random luck that she was asking me if I spoke Italian. How did she know? Not a question I expected to hear in Turkey. As for my answer, I mean, only as of recently – but, heck yes! I was pretty excited to have my first opportunity to use my newly acquired Italian in the wild.

“Si, un po.” I responded with an eagerness to see if I could actually help someone in Italian overriding any potential intimidation based on the reality that, I only have 2 weeks of Italian study under my belt and the question “Do I speak Italian?” is not, truthfully, an unequivocal yes. But, it was a very productive 2 weeks, so I was ready to take my new linguistic toy out for a spin.

“Sto parlando con il mio autista Uber e la situazione è un po’ strana.”

“I’m talking with my Uber driver and, it’s a bit strange.” She said, pointing to her phone, also open to the Uber app. She was in the same action movie I was, and just as concerned about being the character in the opening scene that the audience is screaming at going, “Don’t follow him, you idiot!”

“Che ha detto?” I asked, as I was doing my best to keep up with my driver that was racing ahead of me, that I was following lord knows where at that point, while the couple was following me with the same hopeful gate. “What did he say?” I asked her.

After a bit more back and forth in Italian, it was clear that she was getting a similar message as me and she was concerned because, yea, it was weird.

But, despite the futile screams of my imaginary audience, I felt safe with my driver and I trusted my instincts. We also weren’t in any creepy locations.

I was starting to find it hard to continue to access my limited Italian, while my brain filled up with the task of navigating the bobbing and weaving and street crossing at a busy airport departure drop off and continuing to gather as much info I could to constantly monitor the safety or potential danger of the situation. The more things I was trying to split my attention between, the slower my Italian got. 

My Uber driver sent me another message. He only spoke Turkish, but he could see me talking with this couple and trying to help them. He messaged me and said, “This couple is supposed to come with us. We are grabbing a shuttle to an outer parking lot.”

Ah, the first piece of information to the puzzle. Like many answers to puzzling questions, it introduced the need for more questions. Why is this driver leading two separate groups? I don’t think I selected Uber share. “Outer parking lot?” I don’t love the sound of this.

I relayed the message to the woman in continuously degrading Italian that she was supposed to come with us. I think we, whether wisely or not, found ourselves feeling more confident together that, despite the oddity of the scenario, if we were going down, at least we were not going down alone.

But still, despite my head staying on a swivel, I continued to calculate the risk and safety factors together with my ongoing gut instincts, and I continued to evaluate this as “strange, but safe”.

We all finally arrived at the spot where the shuttle would pick us up. We had just missed one, so we had 15 minutes to wait until the next one came along. 

At this point I was apologizing for my Italian as it was becoming less and less fluid the more I was trying to keep track of what was going on. She mentioned something about Spanish and I said, “Español?” She said, “Si!” with an accent that made it immediately clear that I was talking to a Spaniard.

“Ah, perfecto!” I said, “Mi español es mucho mejor que mi italiano.” I said it, without being entirely convinced of that fact. As soon as we started speaking Spanish, I ran into something I pretty much always find when I speak Spanish. For some reason, among the languages I have some grasp of, it is the one I have the hardest time just popping into. With echoes of Russian still ringing in my ear and having just reanimated the Italian swimming around in there, I stopped for about 5 seconds to remember the word for “always”. Eventually, I found it.

“Lo siento,” I said, “No sé por qué, pero cada vez que empiezo a hablar en español, necesito unos minutos para calentarme.” 

A quick aside…I know what I just wrote is what I said. I remember in that moment noticing the teeniest little response in the faces of my listeners. So, just now, I thought – maybe I should look up the correct way to say what I was trying to say. I wanted to say, “I don’t know why, but every time I start speaking in spanish, I need a few minutes to warm up.” Google translate says the better way to say warm up in this situation is, “para entrar en calor”. So, with mild trepidation, I looked up, “how is the verb calentarme usually used in Spanish”. Google has informed me of the following. “As a stem-changing verb ((e \to ie)), it is used reflexively to indicate warming one’s body, or informally to express becoming angry or getting sexually aroused.” Oops, I did it again. (This would be a good time to reference my prior post of the same name.)

As with all linguistic mistakes, my listeners were generous and forgiving and never even let me know what I actually just said. They got what I was trying to say. But, man, if that didn’t add to the creepiness of the situation for them!

And, by this time, the mystery of the “Do you speak Italian?” was also clearing up. I had forgotten that I was carrying my things in the bag I received from the Scuola Leonardo Da Vinci, where I studied Italian. That’s why she had asked me if I spoke Italian!

I was pretty excited about the linguistic adventures of my first few minutes in Turkey. 

“No he pensado que cuando he aterrizado en Estanbul, tendría l’opportunidad a practicar mi italiano y mi español!”

“I didn’t think that when I landed in Istanbul, I’d have the opportunity practice my Italian and my Spanish!” I exclaimed.

You can imagine, as the language nerd I am, I was pretty jacked about the whole thing. I had been anticipating Turkey as a stop where I might have little language practice opportunity. What a perfect way to get welcomed to my final stop in Europe. 

At some point, I turned to my Uber driver and tried to use what I could remember of my newly acquired Turkish. As I mentioned in another post, he was very generous in indulging me and had the kind of look you have on your face when there is a kindergartner in front of you trying their best. You want to be encouraging and support the effort, regardless of the quality of the result. This was an appropriate look. 

With a little help from him, I got out, “Hello. How are you. I’m good. I’m American.”

Hey. It’s a start. I remembered a lot more from my lessons, but not with a sharp enough blade of memory to be able to actually cut the air in the right way to make the right words come out. So I left it at that.

By this point, the Uber driver explained to us the whole of the situation. And, it was quite an introduction to Turkey.

“The airport police are mafia and they work with the taxis to charge exorbitant prices. Because of that, they are trying to keep the Uber taxis from being able to pick up passengers. They can charge up to 30,000 Turkish Lira for a ride into the city.” By the way, that translates to about $660. My Uber ride was going to cost me under 2,000 TL. So, about twenty bucks, give or take.

Even as we left the airport under the disguise of the airport shuttle, we passed a police checkpoint. Our driver pointed at it and told me through the translation of the Uber app, “That’s the police checkpoint to stop Uber rides. It’s a big problem.”

He made it clear that this only a problem at this airport, and not a problem in Istanbul itself, nor at the other airport. 

But, yea, that was a lot of excitement for my first few moments in a very foreign-to-me land.

It was also the last moment of anything strange for the next 48 hours, when I found myself surrounded only by kindness, generosity and tremendous warmth.

Well, there was a teeny bit more excitement before getting to my AirBnB. May 1st, International Worker’s Day is a widely celebrated holiday in Turkey and includes street closures in Istanbul, including the streets required to get me to my place. My AirBnB host was amazing in anticipating this and asked me to have the taxi driver call her so she could explain the situation. I immediately felt extremely taken care of as the two strangers worked together to figure out how to get me safely where I needed to go. It was very clear to me that, certain airport police notwithstanding, Turkish hospitality was of the warm and welcoming variety. I did need to show evidence of my reservation to some police guarding the road closure, to be able to walk up the insanely steep steps towards the street that was currently closed to cars, where my apartment awaited me. After that, the action movie I thought I might be in became much too boring for any audience to enjoy – thank goodness.

It was all smooth sailing from there.

When I arrived at my building in the cool night air, I must say, I was quickly taken with Istanbul. I was in a fairly trendy neighborhood on the European side. The buildings hugged the streets with an elegance that blended classic style with modern flares. There were lilacs climbing the outer facades, telling the story of a culture sturdy in shape and rich in color.

Before I even reached my front doorstep, I noticed the cats.

In Tbilis, it was dogs. In Istanbul, it’s cats.

Cats, cats and more cats.

It was clear who ran the place straight away. Every outdoor table that is available for you is only yours if the local cat deems it so.

If you are hearing a squabble around the corner, it is more likely to be feline than human.

The are crossing streets, curling up on any flat surface that just out from a wall and laying anywhere they dang please.

I would learn more about Istanbul’s cats in my tour the following day.

I gave my local neighborhood street a quick walk up and down, ordered a fresh juice before hitting the sack.

I had 2 days in Istanbul in front of me. One full day and one half day before needing to hop in a cab to the airport around 2PM on Sunday to catch my plane out of town.

As you might imagine, I was eager to stuff as much as I possibly could into that time while also attempting to relax, catch up on blog posts for Georgia and take care of the next set of travel logistics that needed tending.

At first, I thought I’d play it cool, just plan on scheduling one guided tour, leaving my morning and evening open for wandering.

That plan didn’t last long.

Once I realized that boat tours on the Bosphorous were a thing, I decided to schedule one.

Those who know me are not surprised to know that I had my Saturday filled to the minute.

I had a relaxed morning in bed filled with writing and logistics. Even though I didn’t need to leave the apartment until noon, I found myself using every last minute and needing to cram a few pieces of fruit in my face for a quick brunch in order to hit the streets in time to make it to Asia for the 1:30 PM tour start.

I had originally hoped to do some casual wandering. My casual wandering would have to be high-paced focused, walking, navigating the sea of activity between continents on the 50 minute walk from my apartment to the heart of Istanbul’s historic peninsula, Sultanahmet Square, where my afternoon tour would begin.

I was committed to walking there so that my eyes could drink up as much of Istanbul as I could gracefully shove into them. Boy was that a good call.

The weekend weather forecast called for seasonally uncharacteristic rainy, grey skies the whole weekend. The firmament decided to open up on Saturday and I lucked out with the most perfect sunny, blue sky peppered with white clouds kind of day to take in the sights.

Despite the actual journey from Europe to Asia consisting of a 10 minute walk over a spacious bridge, it actually ended up being almost as harrowing as “walking from Europe to Asia” sounds like it should be.

At the end of the bridge, I needed to get to the other side of the street where all of the winding roads of the old town were lined with shops and bizarres of all kinds.

Well, it was me and a couple hundred other people that needed to make that journey through the underground passageway that traversed under the traffic-clogged main roads. I climbed down the stairs and my attempt at quick walking, that had already been constantly curtailed by the need to acquiesce to the natural flow of pedestrian traffic ground to a screeching halt the further into the tunnel I found myself.

Remember when I said I like crowds?

Well, I’ve been in a handful of shoulder to shoulder, or, in my case, face to butt, crowd situations on this trip. This is the first one that was in a “moving” passageway.

We were one huge mass of people, inching our way together as a unit, shuffling one little step at a time. There was no room to bob, nor to weave.

It is this moment that I remembered that I am not fond of being in spaces that I cannot get out of. This was one such space. I was completely at the will of the crowd. There was no where to go but forward and no pace to go but the pace that a couple hundred people crammed into a space that could only fit half as many were going. I just breathed deep and did my best to enjoy it as the delightful, mildly suffocating, but also tremendously entertaining experience that it was.

It was one of those moments where I gotta give it to humanity. Listen, we mess up a lot of stuff. And there are a lot of times when the product of group action does not swell one’s heart with pride. But there are as many, and, I think, more times, when it does. This is a situation where there were more than enough people in an uncomfortable situation for at least one person to cause trouble. This could have been a survival of the fittest trampling experience. But, nope. It was just a couple hundred strangers, all self-managing for the best group outcome, all moving with common patience in recognition of the situation we all found ourselves in. Being one of the most diminutive and easy-to-trample members of this sloth-like mob, I was feeling farely grateful for this.

Well, this blog post is already at least 30% longer than my longest post and I haven’t even gotten started in describing all that is worthy of description.

The rest of my walk to the beginning of my tour was a walk that deserved leisurely savoring. Stall after stall of delicious or fascinating looking goods being pedaled.

I can’t fault the people jamming those streets full at such a leisurely pace. If I had planned my day differently, I would have joined them. I found myself in an interesting dance with one other stranger who was also attempting to move purposefully through these tiny streets littered with casual meanderers. We both made herky-jerky ess-like movements as we tried to keep a steady pace moving through a crowd that had no interest in such things.

I wanted to eat every edible thing I saw.

I am so glad I did this walk. On this one hour and fifteen minute long 50-minute walk is when I got to take in the most of Istanbul. Even though I was moving fast and focused, I absorbed every micron into my being.

I had left myself an hour and half to get to my tour, just in case, so I got there 15 minutes ahead of time, just when we were asked to arrive. If you know me, you know that precision scheduling is one of my favorite sports and I was pretty proud of myself for my on-time performance and maximum juice squeezed out of the day.

Well, I could write just as much about the 8 hours of my day as I already have written. I will choose only a few quick stories and let the pictures tell the rest.

My tour was to go to three of the most famous sites to visit in Istanbul, The Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia and the Basilica Cistern. Each are worthy of the fame.

I learned so much from our tour guide. I learned that the Blue Mosque’s architecture has many markers of the number 16 because the Sultan that built it became Sultan when he was 16 years old and because he was also the 16th Sultan. I also learned that he died at the young age of 27, from a fate that befell many Sultans in the Ottoman Empire for a reason that I found to be quite profound. Diabetes and gout. Why is this profound to me? I think it is a statement on any human tendency for self elevation or elevation of another. A significant amount of Ottoman rulers died of metabolic conditions due to a rich palace diet consisting of kebap and baklava and a very stagnant lifestyle that consisted mostly of sitting while others did their bidding. No matter who you are, no matter how powerful you are, no matter what level of import a human may think themselves to be or others think them to be, at the end of the day, we all must succumb to the rules of the human body. Modern medicine, of course, affords more freedom from these rules, and those that can afford more of it have more freedom, but no matter what, there is never complete freedom from the humility of our human form. Diet and exercise seemed like the most mundane and common things in the face of this profound and grandiose piece of architecture and place of divine worship. But at the end of the day, we are bound to our common humanity and what is common to us all has the final word.

The Blue Mosque itself was a thing of beauty, as was learning about the religion that is practiced in it. Our tour guide shared so much with us about the Mosque and about Islam, a religion about which I was previously fairly ignorant.

Among the many things I learned was the answer to the cats that roamed the streets. I learned about the importance of cleanliness and cleaning in the Muslim faith and that cats are seen as the cleanest animals. Just as the Muslims are called to prayer 5 times a day, everyday, a cat will clean itself 5-6 times a day. A cat will also clean the town and the Mosque – ridding it of mice, rats, bugs and snakes. I learned that, in the Muslim faith, they also see cats as the only animals that remember who their true creator is. Unlike dogs, they do not follow the will of other animals, like humans. Anyone that has a cat or has encountered a cat knows that this is a 100% accurate description of feline behavior. They are not the least bit interested in what you do or don’t want them to do. For all of these reasons, cats are not only welcomed in the city, they are encouraged and cared for. They are also allowed freely inside of the Mosques.

Just as Tbilisi monitors and cares for its community dog population, so does the city and community of Istanbul take care of its 150,000 – 300,000 feral cats. They are marked with a small notch or clip in their ear to show they have been vaccinated and neutered. Istanbul is often called “Cat City” or “Catstanbul” and it is clear that the cats are a welcomed, loved and cared for part of the community.

After The Blue Mosque, we went to the Hagia Sofia. Another stunning piece of architecture and history.

One of my favorite stops was the Basilica Cistern. I learned that there are at least 51 other such cisterns built by the Roman Empire under the streets of Istanbul (not Constantinople) and, likely more.

I recognized the Basilica from my recent viewing of the movie Inferno with Tom Hanks. They can also be found in From Russia to Love. Actually, they can be found in neither, being a UNESCO World Heritage site were filming is not allowed. What you see on the screen are studio replicas.

I’ve already told a bit about my boatride on the Bosphorus.

One more story that I can’t seem to close up those bloated post without including is of the last activity I crammed into my schedule. When I was in Tbilisi, one of the main things on my list of things to do was to go to a Georgian bath – not just to have the experience as a person that quite enjoys such things, but because it is an important cultural experience. Alas, having traded my second weekend in Georgia for one in Turkey, I would not have the time.

Turkey is also famous for it’s baths. I knew I wanted to visit a Turkish Hammam. I went to Get My Guide and selected one with decent reviews without doing much research. I signed up for the full massage, steam room, sauna and hammam experience. It would take 2 hours and give me exactly enough time (precision scheduling, baby) to get back to my apartment, pick up my bags and catch my taxi to the airport.

Now, before I tell a story that will have any reasonable person wanting to punch me in the face, let me be clear. I am so grateful I got a spa day! How lucky am I?

Okay, now ready to want to smack me? I was a bit disappointed when I arrived at my location and found that I was basically in a hotel spa. (Feel free to throw things at the computer screen. I’m even annoying myself right now.) It was delightful. And I was appreciative. But, so far, I was having the same experience I could have anyplace in America. Meanwhile, all of Istanbul was outside the door. I know, cry me a river. Poor baby had to get a massage and relax in a steam room and sauna. I hear you. You are not wrong.

My experience did end with a Turkish Hammam and this was DEFINITELY something I have never experienced before. It is basically taking a great bubble bath and shower BUT where someone else does the bathing for you. You are in this beautiful, stone tiled room with ornate stone or marble sinks and one big slab upon which you lay. The attendant covers you with about a foot and a half of soapy, soft bubbles. Flip over. Get covered again. Then, they pour water over your head. Then, the scrub you down with an exfoliating glove.

I have never felt so lazy in my life. I loved it.

So, in the end, I did end up having a cultural experience rather than just a pure pampering one. I’m sure you are so relieved.

Also, even though I would have preferred to be in a more classic Hammam setting, I did somehow end up receiving this service, out of all of the spots in Istanbul that I could have been directed to, at The Beethoven Hotel. It brought back fond memories of Vienna and I took it as a gentle encouragement to keep going with my compositions.

Okay, the last story that I will tell is a linguistic one. After all, that is the main engine for much of this trip. As I described in my post about talking Turkey – I did take 90 minutes worth of Turkish lessons before arriving in Istanbul. I probably retained at least 15% in an actual usable form.

On my way home from my full day on Saturday night, a day in which I planned almost zero time for food, I was pretty hungry on my way back to my apartment at 8:30PM. I stopped at a small döner joint around the corner from my apartment. The welcoming gentleman that greeted me and took my order spoke to me in English. He asked me where I was from. I said, “the States”. I could tell this was outside of his limited English vocabulary. I expanded it. “The United States”. I could relate to the blank look on his face. Then I remembered, wait, this is one of the things I learned how to answer in Turkish!

“Amerikalıyım.” I said. “I am American.

The man’s face lit up. Not because I am American. But because I told him that I was in Turkish. He reached out with an enthusiastic and warm open hand to shake mine. I grinned from ear to ear. I put my hand in his to shake it and he wrapped his other hand around it in the universal sign for, “I am shaking your hand, and I really mean it.”

Gosh, if that was not the highlight of my trip.

There are so many reasons I love studying languages. One of them is that I find it is the quickest way to say to someone that speaks another language, I see you and I respect you as my fellow human. And when I see that my desire to show that respect has landed in a real place, it is the greatest rush in the world for me. That man absolutely made my day. And I had already been having a pretty amazing day. I had seen remarkable works of architecture, moving acts of worship and faith, obelisks erected as monuments of powerful rulers, grand cultural events and celebrating history lasting thousands and thousands of years. But, to me, there is no higher mountain, no taller building and no feeling more powerful than that of two people shaking hands in mutual appreciation and respect given and received.

And, the döner was delicious.

I left Turkey on Sunday night with my senses aflame, my belly fully and my spirit content.

Sağol! Thank you, Turkey. It has been an absolute delight.