Looking East
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2007
1
6
15
Trip End
Jul 31, 2007
Istanbul, Turkey
Saturday, June 30, 2007
It's been a little while since Evrim has posted and I haven't posted yet at all. Time moves in strange ways in this city. It stretches on indefinitely and then slips through your fingers and it's gone. Istanbul is powerful, immense, sprawling, chaotic, and beautiful. We've spent countless hours walking her steep hills and crowded streets, on boats crossing the Bosphorous, and in cafes and tea gardens working on our keyif or digging deep in the mire of Turkish identity politics (more on that later, perhaps).
I like it here.
All of the women in Istanbul are attractive, even the ones that aren't. Crazy (maybe more on that too).
There are fifty Starbuck's in Istanbul. McDonald's serves a McTurco sandwich (I'm not kidding). Party boats cruise the Bosphorus at night disrupting the calm with bass heavy dance hits encouraging women to shake their breasts in Turkish. Normally these things would depress me, and they do . . .a little, but Istanbul endures. This place has been here a long time and will stand (maybe in a different form) after all of this bullshit collapses. Powerful.
We've been staying up pretty late most nights. Our view over the Bosphorus looks across to the Asian side of the city. We'll be heading east soon and are ready to travel. There was a mishap with the camera and hopefully it will return to us soon. Everyone likes pictures.
Rick
