travel lightly and carry a big stick

Istanbul, the name of course has a mystique. Our apartment, although perfectly functional, however is sadly lacking in this department. It’s many times better than our London slum, and after all it’s the people that’s important, not the place, right? Mystique may not be the word, on the other hand drama certainly is.

It’s all about Rula. A Greek ex-pat, once of Manchester, now a Harrison-Jones housemate. Rula is 30+ but with the social skills of a twelve year old. The only person who has ever told me without a trace of irony that she ‘doesn’t want to learn manners’ and gives lectures on why we ‘can’t tell her what to do’ before leaving little notes around instructing others on household behaviour. A request to turn down music and her penetrating laugh at four in the morning was refused. Rula eloquently illustrated her point by dropping to her hands and knees and yapping like a dog in a bizarre demonstration of free will. Use her pots and they will fly across the kitchen with your dinner in them, creating spinach frescos that adorn the walls for a couple of weeks. She successfully drove her last set of housemates to distraction and out of the building and this bunch is showing signs of dropping. Tanya and Ronny are in actual fact leaving anyway. However, Thelma a softhearted Californian flower child is being swiftly wilted by Rula’s pesticidal personality and we are weighing up the choice’s of a war of attrition or moving to a different flat where our bedroom wouldn’t have a balcony…. We really love this balcony…

Domestic issues aside, our part of Istanbul is on the Asian side, 20 years ago there was nothing here but trees, beach and a few holiday apartments, of which this is one. Now the city has sprawled in style, stretching in urban earnest to here and several more miles down the coast besides. It is reckoned the cities population is around 20 million, a good 10 million up from the seventies. Ours is an affluent area, minutes from the sea and ‘Bagdat Street’, the Beverly Hills Drive of Istanbul, a palm lined thoroughfare with designer boutiques and slick new restaurants. Reaching the old town is a 40 to 60-minute trip by bus and ferry, and that’s where the mystique very much kicks in.

The ferry docks in the shadow of the mosque of Suleyman the Magnificent, (of siege of Vienna fame). Nearer the water is the ‘New Mosque’ no prizes for guessing that it’s not too much of a spring chicken. Squeezing your way off of the ferry and following the crowds past the numerous kebab and grilled fish places, perhaps pausing to munch a fresh muscle stuffed with rice and a twist of lemon, you’ll soon find yourself at the station where the Orient Express rolled into town. Continuing up the hill, past the carpet shops positioned for maximum tourist grabbing potential and tracking the high walls of the Sultans palace you reach the heart of Sultanahmet, an open park surrounded by the palace gateway, the 1500-year-old Aya Sofya and the Blue Mosque. It would be easy to bang on about all the ancient buildings and history of this place and really there is so much it’s not worth attempting it. Just to realize this place was a pulsating metropolis when London was a couple of shacks in a swamp gives some measure of the history of the place.

We divide our time between teaching, seeing the sites, the gym and the tea gardens. I’ve been brushing up on my history of the crusades courtesy of a fascinating book I hitherto didn’t get around to, now I’m delving into one of Emma Harrison’s international relations text books, also interesting stuff, if a little dense. Liz has been studying for a law school entrance exam, which she has passed in the top 25% of takers, which gives her a shot at most of the best schools.

Well I’ll leave this entry there and let the pictures do the talking. Enjoy.

ahhh!