Istanbul Reflections

I wrote part of this in Istanbul, part of it a few weeks ago, and part of it yesterday. I feel mixed about it; I’m no longer in this headspace and am struggling to capture the essence of the experience. I’ve learned my lesson: write in the moment. Oh well… Sharing as is so I can move on to what’s happening now!

P.S. I have so many photos to share, but I’m having a lot of technical difficulties in this space aka I KEEP GETTING ERRORS WHEN I TRY TO UPLOAD AND THE WIFI KEEPS GOING DOWN AND MY COMPUTER KEEPS CRASHING (HAHAHA totally not super frustrated!!! :DDDD).

I intended to fly directly to Nepal until Jessika told me about Touristanbul.

Similar to Icelandair’s free stopover in Reykjavik, Turkish Airlines offers free accommodation in Istanbul if you have a connection of at least 20 hours. You have to book a roundtrip ticket to be eligible, and since I don’t know where I’ll be sleeping several days from now, it’s not hard to imagine why it didn’t work out for me. (If you do choose to use this program, a little birdie told me that you can find the shuttle service after going through customs in the baggage claim area.)

Free lodging or not, the suggestion was enough to pique my interest and I started researching. And by that, I mean I Googled a couple of landmarks and listened to “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” so many times that it’s guaranteed to show up in my Spotify Wrapped.

By all means, feel free to give the song a listen while I set the scene:

Straddling the Bosphorus Strait, Istanbul is the only city to span two continents. It’s home to 15.6 million—the most populous city in Europe. The predominant religion is Islam and the main language is Turkish. US citizens do not need a visa to visit (or at least, I didn’t); the customs officer didn’t even make eye contact with me as she stamped my passport.

The city has many names: Istanbul, Byzantium, Constantinople, Stamboul, New Rome, Kostantiniyye, Islambol, Lygos… most famously, it served as the capital of both the Byzantine Empire and the Ottoman Empire, and you can see undertones of both: Byzantium’s Christian motifs, and Roman and Greek structures; and Constantinople’s Islamic tradition and Turkish roots.

It didn’t occur to me that I could fly somewhere else. Enough people responded, “I’ve always wanted to go there,” when I mentioned it, that I didn’t think twice about it.

There was symbolism to it too; Istanbul is dubbed the “gateway to the east,” and I was in fact going east. Plus, I wanted another point of reference to compare my experiences in Asia to (in addition to the US) and a Muslim-dominant European/Middle Eastern city seemed like the best bang for my buck.

I arrived late in the evening, borderline catatonic from an 11-hour time change and 12 hour plane ride. Those first few hours were dicey. I didn’t realize the last bathroom I’d see would be in the baggage claim area or that I wouldn’t be able to connect to the airport WiFi, thereby naively committing to navigating the Istanbul transit system based solely on vibes while potentially giving myself a UTI.

Fear not, the security guard let me jump the fence and take what might’ve been the blurriest photo of the transit map possible.

Three train switches later, I arrived at the wrong hostel. Oops!

There was not an ounce of stress in my lifeless frame, not even when the ATM didn’t work. Or the second one. Or the third. Or when the fourth only gave me American money (still haven’t wrapped my head around that one). The last working brain cells in my sluggish noggin’ could not muster an ounce of reaction if they tried; I was too tired to care.

I slept hard that night and inadvertently developed my Turkish sleep routine: pass out in the early evening, wake up around 4:00 am, read until 7:00 am, and, if I was lucky, fall back asleep for another hour or two. Some mornings I would get out of bed and walk the streets before sunrise. My favorite photos are from this time.

Something funny about hostel travel is that you become the de facto local after you’ve been in the city for a few days, showing the new arrivals the lay of the land before departing a day or two later. Call it what you want—the blind leading the blind or telephone tourism.

That first morning, I walked up the four flights of stairs to the dining area for breakfast. There, I met several other travelers and found myself a tour guide: a 26-year-old German named Manuel. He guided a handful of us through the Grand Bazaar and up the hill to the Suleymaniye Mosque.

(I already forgot this guy’s name, so please don’t ask me who he is… Sorry to this man.)

I don’t know how it happened, but one moment I was putting on my headscarf in the mosque and the next we were at the Islamic Cultural Center posing in traditional garments, learning about the light of Allah from a man who goes by “Falcon.” I couldn’t stop laughing when he insisted we take photos.

Later that afternoon, we walked along Galata Bridge, up the hill to Galata Tower, and along Istikal Cd.—the main shopping strip.

I wandered through the markets, listened to live music in the plaza, rode the ferry. One day, I explored Beşiktaş. Another, I walked from Sultanahmet to the Walls of Constantinople, then back through Balat and Fener. I explored the street art around Cihangir, watched people chase the birds in Taksim Square, and went for drinks on French Street.

Later in the week, after a morning walk through Beyoglu and Karikoy, I sat on the pier eating corn on the cob. The sun parted from the clouds and I thought, “I want to get on a boat.” I stood up, tossed my corn, and walked onto the docking ferry. Within minutes I was on my way to the Asian continent.

Buses, trains, ferries—they always seemed to be arriving right when you needed them.

My most decadent experience was the Turkish bath or hammam. There are great articles online about the experience that you can look into if you want to learn more. There are lots of places in the city, so compare prices beforehand. Try to go to a historic hammam if you can.

Istanbul is a fun city to get lost in. I went to several of the main tourist attractions, namely, the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque, and they were lovely. But I enjoyed exploring different neighborhoods more.

So, my one piece of advice would be to have a wandering eye. Turn down the side streets, view the street art, have coffee or tea at a small café, and—whatever you do—stop and pet the cats.

You have to watch the documentary Kedi if you want to understand what I mean when I say that the cats are equal members of society. They are consistently fed and cared for by strangers… There are hostel cats, restaurant cats, bookstore cats… No one was spared from them; even the tall, stoic Turkish men would kneel down and whisper, “psst psst.”

The dogs are loved too. Food scraps and water are left out at regular places, and shelters are made of cardboard and blankets. They all seem to walk with a lopsided gait as if they’ve been hit by a car or two… Stray is a documentary about the dogs.

Both movies are offered for free with your library card if you use Kanopy. Highly recommend you check them out.

At the time, I thought Istanbul had quite the hustle and bustle. Now that I’m in Kathmandu, it seems calm.

I think it was a good start for me.

It’s what you—or at least I—envisioned when I originally thought about how one might travel backpack for an extended period of time. You arrive in a city, stay at a hostel, explore the sights, talk to traveling Europeans, and pretend to know enough about America to speak about it on a national-level.  

The first couple of days, I felt like an acrobat, trying to find a balance between keeping my basic needs met and doing enough activities to both inspire and distract myself.

I was tired from everything that happened before I left and, as I wrote in my journal, “I’m craving a vacation from my vacation.” In retrospect, I think I wanted to be non-verbal on a beach, not talking about the political climate of the US over complimentary coffee.

There were bouts of homesickness. I craved a familiar bed, familiar food, and familiar conversation, but I quickly realized this would happen when I was hungry or tired. Funny how that works.

All in all, I felt unsettled.

Excited, interested, stimulated, and enjoying the simplicity, but simultaneously displaced and struggling to sink into place.

I wish I’d written more about how I was feeling at this time in my journal, but I was too shut off emotionally for that. I threw myself into photography, food, and conversation, taking notes as if I were some kind of city-hopping digital nomad rather than, well, me.

Ya girl cheesin’ at the Hagia Sophia.

Ya girl at the Blue Mosque, obsessing over the tilework.

It’s a great city. A wonderful welcome to my journey and a place I encourage you to visit if you’re interested (please reach out if you have questions), but by the end of the week, I was eager to move on to Nepal.

I did, while cosplaying as a digital nomad city profiler, write some interesting things about Istanbul that I don’t want to delete but don’t know how to weave into what I’ve written above. I’ll leave it below…

I was introduced to the term timefulness by Marcia Bjornerud, a Professor of Geology at Lawrence University. She defines it as, “the habit of seeing things not merely as they are now, but also recognizing how they evolved—and will continue to evolve—over time.”

Istanbul makes it easy to embody this mindset.

To keep with the geological metaphors, Istanbul’s history isn’t layered like the sequential deposition of sediment but a conglomeration of Greek, Roman, Ottoman, European, and Turkish, that’s eroding, cementing, and being filled in by the smaller finer-grains of minority populations such as the Kurdish, Armenian, Jewish, Circassian, and Levantine (although you have to look carefully under the aggressive attempts at Turkification to see it).

Istanbul has a stark contrast between religion and daily life. Gigantic mosques, over 3,000 in the city alone, tower over the winding, narrow cobblestone streets. The call to prayer, or adhan, is broadcast loudly five times a day from the speakers of the thin minarets, bathing the streets in rhythmic waves of Arabic prayer.

Over time, like all things, you get used to it. The call to prayer becomes a subtle demarcation of the passage of time, and the towering mosques shrink in prominence. As a fellow traveler said to me, “The first day I stopped to take a photo of every mosque, and now I forget they’re there.”

Favorite sign award goes to ^

En route to Istanbul Airport!

Dead inside and out after flying from Istanbul to Dubai to Kathmandu.

I’m interested in coming back to this area to explore neighboring Romania, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Greece, among others. But for now, I’m taking my newfound interest in tea and appreciation for scarves with me into Nepal.

Lots of love,

R

Are you planning a trip? Here’s the logistical info I can think of to share:

• Lines for Hagia Sophia can be long, so go early. A ticket gets you access to both the Hagia Sophia (~45 mins to view) and the museum (1/2 guided; ½ at your own pace). You can go to either one first, but the ticket expires in 48 hours. Around $55 USD.
• Blue Mosque is free but is often closed due to prayer times. Check, check, and check again.
• Plan on a visit to Topkapi Palace & Harem taking at least 5 hours. It’s around $60 USD.
• Female-presenting people need a head scarf or hood to enter mosques. They have extra scarves available. There are dress codes for everyone.
• Buy an Istanbul Card from Istanbulkart vending machine (next to all metro, tram, bus stops). You can also swipe to enter with your credit card to use the lines–cheaper if you plan to use it less than 10 times total. The card works for public restrooms too.
• You pay once for each metro line, regardless of when you get on or off.
• There are two major airports. They’re on different continents so make sure you know which one you are flying into and out of. Arrive early at Istanbul Airport (and probably the other one too, but IST is massive).
• I can’t imagine the crowds in the summer. Even in February, it was busy and the lines were long. Keep in mind that almost all of the main attractions are indoors. Consider going during shoulder seasons.
• The east/Asian side of Istanbul is more “European” and the west/European side of Istanbul is more “Asian.”
• Where to stay:
  • Sultanahmet is a convenient place to stay. It’s flat and within walking distance to the main attractions. Everyone speaks English, used to tourists. A little more expensive.
  • Cihangir or near Bogazkesen Cd. will give you a more “authentic” experience and feel less touristy, while still being near the action. It’s hilly.
  • Consider proximity to trains and ferries.