Hitching Istanbul to Prague: Day 1

I didn't think hitching would start off so miserably and end so wonderfully.

I took some online advice and was standing on the side of the road near a bus station on what some may consider the outskirts of Istanbul, but what is still well within its suffocating sprawl.

Two hours of holding a sign and trying to explain to occasional passersby that I wasn't interested in the bus station right behind me, I nearly was ready to give up. Then some cops stopped as they drove by, and reversed toward me.

The young sidekick studied English linguistics. "Why are you hitchhiking like this?" "You can take a bus." I lied and said that I had a bet with friends. I learned from Doc in Cannery Row that people sometimes don't trust someone doing something just to do it. Everyone likes a story with a bet.

The cops were great and brought me to a smaller, quieter road on the backside of the station that they said would be better. Inside their little van/car hybrid vehicle, there were billy clubs swinging on hooks on the side, and a semi-automatic shoved on a shelf above the sun visors.

I stood there for awhile before I saw a western-European looking kid with a backpack and knew he was here to hitch out too. There could be no other reason for a traveler to be where we were. He followed standard hitching etiquette and moved further down road from me, since I was there first and would get the first ride.

Neither of us got rides after more than an hour, bringing my total waiting time up to around three and a half. We decided to get a bus out of town together. At the bus station outside of Edirne, after briefly not knowing which way was towards Bulgaria, we got a ride as we were hoofing it along the highway on-ramp.

And to clarify, when I say highway for this part of the trip, I mean roads that look like the above photo. That's Ville, the Finnish guy I spent the first day hitching with. A total of four rides took us across the Bulgarian border to the capital, Sofia. Each time we got dropped off, we waited even less time than the previous ride.

First was a Bulgarian in a small Ford who drove coaches in Turkey because the money was better. He was big and had a short, well-trimmed mustache. We picked up his wife in a small town and he changed into a track suit, showed us his motorcycle, and gave us coffee.

Second was a pair of young Bulgarian guys in a spacious station wagon. They smoked cigarettes and we listened to Bulgarian pop music.

Third was with another pair of guys in a jalopy they had to push start after they filled up with gas. I involuntarily nodded off a couple times.

Our last ride was as the dusk was falling, and we weren't sure if we'd make it to Sofia that night. After standing for five minutes on a tiny road outside of Plovdiv that led to the highway to Sofia, a long BMW sedan screeched to a halt in the dirt beside us. A young couple brought us to the outskirts of the city where we had a meal in a gas station that tasted better than any other meal I've ever had in a gas station.

Thank god I was with Ville, who had a LP for eastern Europe. That's how we found the hostel we stayed in, after ditching some sketchy Ruskophone who kept saying he wasn't going to rob or stab us. And thank god Ville was with me when we were hitching because he'd never done it before, and I had a European road atlas and he didn't . Our resources complimented each others well.

The hostel was one of the best I've stayed in. It was cheap, the rooms where clean, spacious, and mostly empty. The graffiti, design, and organization lent it a real comfortable atmosphere, and the basement bar had cheap beer, beautiful women, and live music.

I was to find that being tempted to stay in each place I passed through was to become a theme on this four day hitching jaunt.

Hustlers of Istanbul: Part 2

The biggest hustler in Istanbul: the government. I might as well put this out there now, while it's still possible in Turkey. Apparently the Man is about to throw some Chinese-style censorship on Internet access in a couple weeks. People have been protesting this in Taksim like it'll change something; walking up Istiklal Street today I saw "Internet should be free!" in sloppy graffiti scrawled on the side of the French Institute.

But let me regale you with tales of byzantine bureaucracy.

I wanted to get a SIM card for my archaic Lao-bought cell phone to help me organize an apartment to stay in while I was taking classes for five weeks. Plus you gotta have a phone if you want to manage all your dates with hot babes.

I found out about all sorts of fun regulations put on mobile phones, presumably ordered by the government. I don't think the telecom companies would make it harder for people to give them money, so I'm just going with the assumption that the Man is behind all this.

You can only use a SIM for two weeks in an unregistered phone before it shuts down. To register a foreign phone you have to wait up to ten days after signing a contract. Neither option was appealing. When I finally found an apartment after running up a moderate Skype bill, my roommate hooked me up with a Turkish phone. Another ten day wait according to TurkCell. Two weeks later, nothing. They still kept my money despite their inability to make a phone work.

In every "undeveloped" country I've been in, making a phone work goes like this: buy a SIM card, put it in, and viola, your phone works. The rationale I've heard here is that this Kafkaesque process is supposed to prevent illegally imported phone use, or some shit like that. No wonder I never got those dates with hot babes.

On a sidenote, most other foreigners I met didn't have phone problems; maybe I just suck.

Here's the real fun story, also related to sadistic import regulations.

My parents shipped me my laptop from the States, which I needed to do my coursework. It was supposed to arrive at my school. Instead, a notice from the shipping company informing me that the laptop was being held ransom by customs was delivered. Measures to combat illegal importation, once again.

The manager and secretary at my school filled me wonderful reports as to how I had to go about getting it back. In a nutshell, they told me I'd have to jump through several very expensive hoops.

I went with Latife, the school's secretary to the shipping company. It was pouring rain all day, and my socks were wet even before the torment began. In a steamy room crowded with other victims, I had to pay $100 just to get some paperwork to bring to the customs office at the airport. After trying to find an easy way out by talking to some office workers and a manager, I paid the fee and off we went to the airport, where I was set to pay more: a few hundred bucks in customs fees because the listed value of the package was over $100. But before I could do that I was supposed to comb the city in search of the tax office to register for a temporary tax number, which would cost another $100 or so, which would then enable me to pay my customs taxes, so I could get some papers to bring to the shipping company and pick up my package after paying another fee for storage.

All in all, I was looking at around $600 or more for a 2 year-old computer whose only worth had nothing to do with the machine itself, but that it contained thousands of pictures, two years of work, and my audio and video libraries. Basically, the fuckers at the customs office were going to get whatever they wanted because if I didn't pay, the government would literally just take it. Sending it back would've been another $200 for the shipping costs, plus the $400ish in customs fees anyway. What a bunch of lowlifes. My choices were to give into extortion, or let my property be stolen in plain sight.

The only redeemable aspect of a corrupt and predatory (the worst of this debacle was due to the fact that I was a foreigner) system like this, is that you can fight fire with fire. Due to an inconceivable stroke of good fortune, Latife's finacee worked in the customs office at the airport.

As soon as we arrived and she explained the situation to him, he started going through my paperwork, tearing off anything stating the declared value of my package, and instructed me to hide the papers as he handed them to me.

After lots of waiting, watching him chat with coworkers in small circles and hushed voices, more forms filled out, a trip back to the shipping company so he could throw some weight around before heading back to the airport for more paperwork, and an altered value on official documents concerning my computer, I paid about 40 Lira in customs taxes.

I still had to pay storage fees at the shipping company, and only after Latife and her fiancee begged and cajoled the managers to let me take it without a tax number, imploring them, saying that I was just a helpless student who had to start classes the next day.

Having what was rightfully mine had never felt so good. Latife and her fiancee were like angels sent to battle for me. I don't know if I ever would have gotten the obsolete hunk of silicon I'm currently writing this on if it wasn't for those two.

The shoe-shine guy made me think I was getting off lucky by paying him for something I didn't ask for or want, and the government bent me over and made me think I was lucky to pay only two-hundred something dollars for my own property.

Don't get me wrong, I've had a great time here in Istanbul, I just wish I didn't have to re-learn some basic lessons: don't trust strangers, over-friendly pedestrians, or the government.

Hustlers of Istanbul: Part 1

There are touts and hawkers and hustlers anywhere there are tourists. Part of travel is recognizing that anything too good to be true almost certainly is a hustle, and the sort of locals that start up conversations with tourists are almost certainly hustlers.

There are things one comes to expect. The taxi driver that charged me 10 Lira for a 5 minute ride in Erzurum is to be expected. Tourist prices at markets are to be anticipated. One can compile a decent list of common scams after a few months in southeast Asia. But you can always count on learning a new one the hard way after enough time goes by.

I was walking down the hill towards the football stadium in Beşıktaş as a shoe shiner was packing up his stuff. As he got up and set off down the sidewalk, a brush fell out of his case. Being the kind man I am, I picked it up and handed it to him. I was rewarded by a smile of disproportionate gratitude which should have been my first warning.

He promptly sat down, and started shining the thin strip of rubber on the toe of my boots.

"That's okay, I'm not interested" He clearly was going to ask for money.
"No problem, no problem. Thank you"
"How much is this?"
"No problem. Money no problem"
"I don't have any money."
"Where you from?"

He proceeded to do a half-ass job on my boot toes and fed me some story about sick kids, extortionate surgery bills, and a cancer-riddled wife, all while saying "Money no problem." He talked as fast as he worked as before I knew it he was asking for his money, 18 Lira, which is about $12. For a shitty toe shine.

The brilliance of this guy, beside the fact that he made me think that he had accidentally dropped the brush in the first place, was that he ran his scam so quickly and well that I almost thought I had gotten off cheap by giving him 5 Lira and telling the broken-hearted look on his face that I knew it was a good price and that was all he was getting.

The correct response would have been to laugh in his face when he asked for money and walk away, but that's not what happened and that's why he's a professional and I'm a sucker. I was half pissed off at myself, and half impressed at how smoothly the whole hustle went.

I was able to avoid all other scams, especially the obvious ones that I got lots of practice at. Walking alone down Istiklal Street on three occasions I was overtaken by solo Turkish guys who nonchalantly started asking me something in Turkish, then looked surprised when I had a stupid "I have no idea what you're saying" look on my face.

"Oh, I thought you were Turkish!" Helen Keller wouldnt've misjudged me so poorly. Or maybe all the blonde-haired, green-eyed , pale-skinned Turks hang out somewhere I've never been.

I was flattered the first time I got this line, since the dude pointed to the mustache I hadn't yet shaved off. But it wasn't convincing when they started chatting me up and eventually steered the conversation to the point where I was invited to a cafe. On none of the occasions did I feel like getting slapped with a several hundred Lira bill for a couple beers, to be paid under the glare of enormous bouncers. Nor did I want to get drugged, robbed, and possibly raped. Maybe if I didn't have class the next morning, I am a sucker for romance, after all.

The same dude even tried it on me twice. The second time, after he asked where I was going, I said I was going the same place I was going when he asked me two days prior.

"Oh, you...uh..." as he pointed at my hair.
"Yeah I shaved and got a haircut." Dumbass. Apparently we sucker Americans all look the same.

My classmate wasn't quite so astute as he was wandering around the side streets looking for my apartment one night. When he saw that he was lost, some hustler convinced Ayoub to take a look at his "bathhouse". He was plunked at a table that was instantly covered in fruit platters, bottles of alcohol, and surrounded by three Russian hookers.

When he tried to leave, they kindly handed him a 450 Lira bill. He hadn't touched any food, drink, or hooker. After he showed them he had no money, and they searched his clothes and pockets, he only got off because the manager was Syrian and Ayoub pleaded his broke-student case to him in Arabic, their common language. He considers himself lucky the dude let him out easily. I do too.

Next to come, part two: The Biggest of Hustlers in Turkey

A Turkish Shave

Turkey is a fantastic place for male grooming. Dudes here have good facial hair, and as a result, there are barbers, or berbers in Turkish, everywhere. For dudes, at least. I'm told that women's hairdressing is equally pervasive and socially pertinent, but they are hidden away off the street level, mostly 'cause of this being a Muslim country and the bizarre female head modesty that goes along with that.

I got my face shaved twice so far. I even got my haircut once, which was pretty amazing, but that's a different story. There's a barber literally outside my door. I just got back from a shave, in fact.

The cost is five Lira, less than four bucks, and even that is probably a tourist price. The dude has a long white pony tail pulled from his nearly bald dome, and a pretty sweet chin/handlebar beard trimmed thin. The best part of his tiny two-chair shop is the pictures of him when he was young and at the height of early 70s Turkish clothing and hair fashion. Said photos unfortunately not pictured above, among the clearly visible tea try and glasses, mini Ataturk bust, ashtray, and foam lathering brush - all potential symbols of Turkey in their own right.

Maggie got to witness and photograph my first face-shaving. Since she's a foreigner, she might've been the first women in the place in decades, who knows.

First the dude whipped up a warm lather in the sink, painted my face for about five minutes with it, then put a new blade in the straight-edge and expertly scraped my face smooth, then lathered me again, and got any stragglers.

Some might understandably be nervous to to have a stranger take a sharp knife to their neck, especially those in earthquake-prone areas. This dude obviously had years of face-shaving experience though. He was quick and sure with his cuts, turning the blade in to his free palm to wipe the foam off as he went. He cleaned the foam out of my ears and rinsed off my face.The whole thing took about 15 minutes with an obligatory tea break.

At the end, I was freshened up with a spray of citrus-alcohol which stung like hell, but left me crisp and well scented. You can literally find these barbers everywhere. There's a lot of demand with the level of facial hair here, and I must say, Turkey has the best mustaches outside of Azerbaijan - for the plus 30 demographic of course. Young kids now just don't appreciate mustaches anywhere it seems.

Maybe I'll get around to describing how awesome my Turkish haircut was. Depends how motivated I get. Depends how lucky you are.

The Blue Mosque

The Blue Mosque was wicked cool. but less blue than I thought it would be. It was only the second mosque I'd ever been in, the first being next to a huge road in Azerbaijan.

The Blue Mosque is built across the way from Aya Sofia, and the dude who had it built wanted to one-up Aya Sofia, a classic case of keeping up with the Joneses. It's not as big, but it is a mosque, not a church, and many people think it's more beautiful and architecturally impressive than Aya Sofia. One thing's for sure, the dome hasn't fallen in yet.

Basing judgements on the exterior, which is again not blue but an impressive progression of domes and half domes, I thought the mosque would be full of different rooms to wander through, and I would eventually be led into the center beneath the main dome.

Instead, it is one massive open room, with the main dome over the center and half domes and smaller domes around the perimeter. A shitload of electric lights were suspended from the ceiling, making an interesting visual effect with all the wires and cables hanging down. I couldn't decide if it ruined the view of the gorgeous stained glass windows lining the main dome and all of the intricate tile work and Arabic calligraphy, or if they created their own interesting visual pattern in the space the cables fell through.

Most of the enormous room was gated off to infidels like myself, who had to use a side entrance separate from the Muslim entrance. Everyone had to take off their shoes and put them into a bag and ladies were given large skirts and scarves to cover up their foreign immodesty.

Turkey is reportedly 99% Muslim, clearly a number that just represents the fact that only 1% of the population identify as Christian or Jew or whatever, and everyone else just becomes Muslim by default.

There were foreign Muslims milling about on the carpets, Korean tour-groups sitting cross-legged in a circle listening to their guide, exchange students barely adhering to modesty regulations, and plenty of Turkish tourists all craning their neck upwards toward the massive dome and running their eyes over the insanely intricate and beautiful tile patterns in their geometric splendor.

Upon entry, you can take a free pamphlet entitled "What is Islam?" A few of the highlights:

"...the verses of the Qur'an are never found to contradict modern science."
Yeah, I bet it's just as spot-on as the bible.

"Allah is not indifferent to this world."
AIDS, cancer, racism, pain, and war are all part of the plan, don't worry.

Paying tithes is a "a purification of one's wealth."
Funny how many supreme entities need some cash.

Everyone is "naturally inclined toward Islam before birth."
Oh really?

It all makes about as much sense as other religions' claims. One certainly can't argue about religion's ability to construct awe-inspiring buildings though.

This place definitely warrants multiple visits. B,est part of the Blue Mosque? Free entry.

Sight Seeing! The Basilica Cistern

The Basilica Cistern, otherwise known as the Yerebatan Sarnıcı or Sunken Cistern - was number one on my list of tourist sights. I like the idea of cisterns, mostly because I recall playing Tomb Raider and swimming through underwater tunnels and climbing over pillars and jumping into bright clear water lit by crumbing overhead domes.

It wasn't quite like that, believe it or not. The entrance was an unimpressive block with a ticket window and staircase inside. It's an underwater reservoir though, so I don't know what I was expecting. It was built and fed by aqueducts more than 1500 years ago to keep fresh water against any possible siege of the city.

James Bond rowed through the place in From Russia With Love, before there were walkways built through it. I was a little let down with the crowds of people chattering among the dimly lit marble columns perspiring with water that dripped from the brick ceilings. And with the trade show style tables set up at the base of the stairs to advertise other tourist destinations. And with the lovely photos placed here and there among the walkways. I mean, sure they were great water-themed photos of some beautiful place in Turkey with blue skies and bright sun and sunken ruins, but when did an ancient cistern become an art gallery? The final touch of tack was the "Cistern Cafe" at the end of the walkway, signed in diner-esque neon.

But I liked it! Sure, the water was only a foot deep or so, ruining my fantasies of swimming through underwater passageways, but it was still calming and peaceful despite the chatter. They could've chose some classier lighting than orange and red tungsten, but the hundreds of columns in precise rows created a feeling of depth and distance beyond the actual size of the place, which is pretty big anyway.



Where there was enough light, you could watch ripples spread out in perfect circles as the ceilings dripped perspiration, and lazy fish floated here and there. There are mysterious blocks with Medusa's head carved into them at the base of two columns, and I was hit with fat drops of water a couple times, forcing me to clean off my glasses and camera with my t-shirt.

Something else that was particularly impressive was that when I exited up a different set of stairs, I realized I was halfway down the block, and all the buildings and roads and traffic are driving on top of the cistern. I would've liked to have seen the place with less people, and I even went on a Monday, but who am I to complain? I'm a bloody tourist too.

A Big Commie Protestival

After almost three weeks in Istanbul, I've finally got out and saw some of the sights. The first sight was a lot of people.

May Day is apparently a day of protests and communist folk songs. Only the second year since people were allowed to protest in Taksim Square, the place was packed with thousands of commies out of the hundreds of thousands of people present. There were other people protesting too, it was sort of like a protest festival - or protestival - but communists are the most interesting.

I could hear the music from my apartment, which is really close to the square. I headed out with two of my flatmates and one's girlfriend and father.

Roads were barricaded and filled with people rather than cars for a change, people were wearing red, there were banners of Turkish communist martyrs, and even portraits of Chairman Mao on some of the banners. One dude had a Che Guavara t-shirt on.

That's my flatmate's dad in the picture. Apparently my flatmate's parents are still in the communist party and Dad there was really amped to get out and do some protesting.

The highlight of the May Day festivities, after the labyrinthine detour through crumbling side streets just to get into the entrance, was watching people rock out to protest songs from the 70s and 80s that occasionally sounded like Irish folk tunes with some trilling, and later, I ate a really good sandwich of little spiced meat patties and veggies for $2.

I followed up this mind-broadening day out by my first real day of touristy sightseeing. Coming soon.