Turkey

Everyone I know and all the strangers I don't know had told me the same thing, that Turkey was the worst country ever, so I was doubtful about going there. But at the same time they all had been to the tourist destinations like Alanya, which I don't consider "the real Turkey" and I was going to Istanbul, which is the cultural and historic center of the country. 

I had always had a fascination for the city since one side of it is Europe and the other is Asia, two continents within the same city, only a bridge apart. 

My friend Christofer and I hadn't seen each other for a long while since he now lives in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, while I still live in Gothenburg. We were 3 hours away from each other by train but we were also 3 hours away from each other by plane to Istanbul, so we chose the latter one and met up at the Atatürk Airport. 

We arrived late at night so we took a cab to go to the hotel called Alilass to get some sleep so we could go up early the next day to explore the city. The driver had a problem with finding the hotel and I could understand why because it seems like Istanbul has as many hotels as Dublin in Ireland has pubs. Eventually we found it and when we had checked in and went up to our floor we noticed that the door to our room was open, we thought it was strange but we also just wanted to go to bed so we didn't care. When we had been in the room for a while suddenly the door opened, but there was no one to be found outside. We locked it from inside and went to bed and when we woke up early the next day I had realized that the door will open itself after a while if you don't lock it from inside, because it was broken. So we couldn't leave our stuff in the room and go out because then it would open. I went down to the receptionist to check in for the flight to Moldova that we were going to catch in the evening, and to change room even though we would check out in just a couple of hours. The check in for the flight wasn't very smooth so the receptionist had to call the airline and he was so helpful that I didn't want to bother him with changing the room anymore. So we just asked him to store our luggage while we went out instead. 

Our first stop was The Blue Mosque and it was a grand view both from outside and inside.

We had to take our shoes off to go inside and the lush red carpet was so soft that I wanted to sleep on it.

Then it was time for the first real Turkish bath in my life at Cemberlitas Hamam and we looked for an old building since it was built in 1584. We couldn't find it as we passed by it a couple of times before we found the little sign outside what looked like an ordinary store entrance. We had brought shorts but they told us to wear a peshtemal instead, a small traditional cotton towel, and it actually added to the primal experience that you felt naked even if you weren't. We went inside the hot and steaming bath which consisted of a gigantic heated marble platform in the middle with small rooms on the sides of the circular room. 

I wasn't allowed to take a photograph inside the bath but here's a picture of what it looked like if you erase the women

The light from outside shimmered down through the small holes of the dome and when I lied there sweating in the middle of the marble stone in complete silence and looked up at the ceiling I felt something I had never felt before. I got in touch with my inner ancient spirit and it felt as if I was alone in this Arabic dome in the middle of a desert in the year of the birth of humanity. Outside almost 15 million people were running around doing their usual business in Istanbul but I had no clue about that, I was million of miles away in my mind. Since I and Christofer were the only visitors it was so quiet that the only noise you could hear was the water dripping and occasionally a noisy yet beautiful sound from the keys to our locker room touching the marble stone as we moved our arms a bit. It was a surreal moment and one of the most magical things I have ever experienced. It was like living inside the song called Svefn-g-englar by the Icelandic band Sigur Rós, my all time favourite song by the way. I laid there for so long that I almost burned my behind, but I couldn't manage to leave this magical place.

We went outside in the real world again and went to the Basilica Cistern, the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city of Istanbul. It was built in the 6th century and I hoped for a new ancient experience since it's referred to as the sinken palace. Instead we were greeted by 500 school kids and tourists running around the underground tunnels making noise.  I believe it can be a beautiful yet quite empty place if you go there alone, because it's a nice place but I also don't see why the big attraction to the place is, because there's nothing much to see. It's pillar after pillar and in the end there's two pillars with Medusa heads on the bottom, which seems to be the main event. The school kids were so bored that they started taking pictures of me and Christofer instead because they thought we were more exotic. 

We walked without direction and found the beautiful Gülhane Park before we ended up walking beside a motorway with the fumes from the cars as our only air to breathe. That's the beauty of walking without knowing where you're going, you can find both beautiful and worthless places, and you never know what you will find. Christofer saw a shoeshiner dropping one of his tools by the motorway so he picked it up and gave it to him. The shoeshiner was very greatful and we walked on, when he called at us to come and get our shoes polished by him. I think it's degrading for him to polish my shoes so I wouldn't let him, but Christofer got his shoes polished and at first we thought he did it as a kind gesture since Christofer had helped him, but then I thought again and understood that he would probably charge for it. It was so disturbing to see him taking advantage of Christofer after he had helped him, and the shoeshiner just kept asking for more money, no matter how much he had already gotten. In the end Christofer's pockets were almost empty of money, and I wished that we both weren't so helpless that we just stood there and let it happen. 

We went to pick up some more money from the luggage at the hotel to go eat some food and the hummus was the best I have ever tasted. Then we ended the day by having a couple of beers at the roof top terrace of our neighbouring hotel called Amiral Palace Hotel. It was a magnificient view and I already longed to be back from Moldova again when we would stay at another hotel in Istanbul with our own balcony at the top with a great view over the city. 

A couple of days later we arrived back in Istanbul from our brief visit to Moldova and we took a cab into town again but we couldn't even get to our destination. We got stuck in a traffic jam that was so slow that we just gave up and told the driver that we would walk the last kilometres to the hotel. It turned out it was because of the Istanbul Marathon, the only marathon in the world to include two continents in one race. Every time we saw an old building we thought we knew where we were, but it turned out every other building in Istanbul is ancient so it took us a long time to arrive at the hotel. Mostly because the streets were packed with people so in the end we started walking in the middle of the road where the tram usually goes, but it had ocassionally stopped because of the marathon. 

When we finally arrived at the hotel with the weird name called The And Hotel we were being taken to the room in an elevator by a bell boy. When he stopped at the second floor I thought something was wrong because we had paid extra to get the top floor with our own balcony with a great view. He showed us the room and I told him we weren't satisfied beacuse of this. Then he took us a floor up and showed another room and I told him once again that we had paid for the top floor. He said it was full and that we couldn't stay there, and I started to get angry, because I hate when they trick you like that. Why should we pay for something we don't get? He took us back to the second floor and showed the room again and when I still wasn't happy he called the reception and made me talk to him. He said "Sorry but the top floor only has double beds so you can't stay there", but when I told him it was no problem for us, then we finally got the room at the top and it was as amazing as I had hoped for. The ignorance about us not being able to sleep in the same bed as we were two males left a sour taste though.

We had no time to enjoy the view because we hit the streets almost immediately and we walked across the bridge to Karaköy. Christofer had been looking forward to this but he got disappointed when the bridge was just a long walk of stench from fish, from all the fishermen who occupied the bridge. At Karaköy we walked up the beautiful Camondo Steps to arrive at the Galata Tower, but first we had a falafel break and once again I ate some of the best food ever, so I couldn't help myself to buy another one. 

We went to the Taksim Square and we walked through the busiest shopping streets to get there, I don't think I have ever seen so much people in one place before. The perfect spot for a terrorist attack which are quite usual in Turkey nowadays, but I just thought about getting out of there because of all the people. I can't stand so much people at once when you almost can't walk without walking into someone else all the time. 

We walked down to the seaside of Beşiktaş and understood that we were walking the route of the football teams of the city, before we had been to Galata (where Galatasaray is from). The only team we wouldn't pass by was Fenerbahçe, they are from the Asian side and we never got there. After walking almost half of the marathon in the opposite direction we arrived at the bridge called Bosphorus that leads to the Asian side. 

It's not possible to walk over so we had a break at a café close to the bridge instead and the sun was setting. When we had arrived at the bridge it was sunshine and when we left the café it was completely dark and it felt as a perfect ending to our trip to Istanbul.

Now we just had to walk all the way back again, so we took a quick pit stop halfway back at something as strange as an Irish bar in Turkey. It was called U2, as the Irish band, and when I asked the Turkish owner why he had opened an Irish bar he said "I was drunk" and that was the spirit of the pub. It felt friendly and without taking itself too seriously, there was an anything goes-attitude to the place and I liked that. We decided to bring the party back home to our hotel balcony so that we would have a final chance to enjoy the view. It felt kind of fun to be drinking beer in front of the Hagia Sophia (which used to be a mosque and still looks like one) and the Blue Mosque, when drinking is a terrible sin and the symbol of evil for some muslims. I didn't care about religion that night though, and I saw the mosques as the castles of Disneyland instead. It was a magical sight with the stars above and I could imagine Aladdin coming swooping down on his magical carpet at any time. Once again I had a magical once in a lifetime experience in Istanbul, a total of two in two days. I never wanted to leave the balcony to go to sleep even though we were leaving early in the morning the next day to go back home to Sweden. I went back home with a desire to explore the Arab world, something I had never had before. 

* Best things about Turkey – I will never forget the experience at the Cemberlitas Hamam when I lied sweating on the hot marble stone with the light shimmering down the small holes of the dome and I got in contact with the primal man inside of me for the first time, the experience at the balcony the last night with the view over the mosques was another life changing moment since I got really into exploring the Arab world by watching the amazing view that felt as a Disney movie, the food was some of the best I've ever had and the bridge between Europe and Asia is amazing in two different ways, both because it's a bridge between two continents, but also because of the beautiful surroundings of it

* Most mediocre thing about Turkey – The Basilica Cistern is a beautiful place but there's also not much too see, and when we were there, there was 500 school kids running around destroying the experience

* Worst things about Turkey – the trams are so overcrowded sometimes, just like the whole city, the best part of the day is the morning when everybody is still sleeping, they also need a course in LGBT rights and that awful shoeshiner needs a lesson in karma

Best countries in the world according to the nerd (will be updated with every post):

1. Croatia

2. Montenegro

3. Andorra

4. Cyprus

5. Turkey

6. Greece

7. Italy

8. Spain

9. Monaco

10. Malta

11. Netherlands

12. Iceland

13. Denmark

14. Sweden

15. Lithuania

16. Macedonia

17. Portugal

18. Slovakia

19. Slovenia

20. New Zealand

21. Ireland

22. United Kingdom

23. Belgium

24. Poland

25. Estonia

26. Czech Republic

27. Switzerland

28. San Marino

29. Kosovo

30. Romania

31. Finland

32. Latvia

33. Moldova

34. Norway

35. France

36. Bulgaria

37. Luxembourg

38. Liechtenstein

39. China

40. Serbia 

41. Bosnia And Herzegovina

42. Albania