Turkey

Well here we go again – this time the victim is Europe!

Tub says she can’t be arsed to go on holiday again and would prefer to stay in London watching telly and eating sausages and beans with people she knows, but Europe’s not going to discover itself and the holiday is already paid for so lets go!

We are starting with a big one. Istanbul. Its an amazing city in a very interesting country. It started out as Byzantium back in the year oatcake then became Constantinople and finally Istanbul. Its the only city in the world that is in two continents (Europe and Asia you Palestines) and is the biggest city in Europe and the 6th biggest in the known universe with 16M people. That’s like the population of Australia minus the Swan’s supporters. Yes, I am copying all of this from a guide book but that doesn’t make it any more true.

They don’t speak a lot of English in Turkey although you can get by fine in the touristy bits. The last time we were in a place with this little English was Alabama.

Turkey is a secular country even though 99.6% of the population are registered as Muslims. Until very recently they had a ban on wearing religious clothing in schools and government offices. The fact that the ban has gone now may be a sign of changing times but it still feels like a very tolerant rather than a religious place. In the time we have been here I’ve only seen one woman dressed as a postbox and that was in a Mosque. It is safe, friendly and very interesting as well as having been shat on from a great height with a ton of historic stuff.

Istanbul is not the capital of Turkey funnily enough. That is now in Alaska, but it was the capital of the Roman Empire for a while as well as the Ottoman Empire so maybe it was just a bit tired.

Turkey borders a few countries including Syria, Iran and Iraq, so it is only one Google map glitch away from the Americans nuking it back to the dark ages, but as the most important city in the world a few centuries ago, maybe it won’t mind.

Here endeth the sermon. Now on with the trip.

By the way, if you are doing Movember and don’t know what to do with your left over moustache, you can send it to a hairless man in Turkey. Depending on body shape, everyone here looks like either:

• Freddie Mercury
• Borat
• Saddam Hussein

We arrived on Monday evening at the airport and tried to get a shared bus to the city. This is usually a good way to scam a free tour of the city while paying less than a taxi. On this occasion Borat wanted to charge us $50 and despite him smiling and saying “Hi five!” we decided to try something else. We found a bus full of locals who didn’t speak English and as we didn’t have a map we couldn’t work out where it was going. We hopped on anyway and left the airport, as it turns out in slightly the wrong direction.

When they kicked us off we found the nearest hotel and asked them for directions to our hotel. We had our winter coats on and that plus our poor English led to the concierge asking which bit of Russia we were from. He told us our hotel was “fucking miles away” and that we would need to get a taxi. He then tried to haggle with a bunch of taxi drivers at the door but couldn’t get a deal he was happy with so told us to get a train instead.

“That taxi driver only wanted $10.” said Tub as she dragged the luggage up and down the street trying to find the train station. Apparently if I mention something being “good for the blog” again she is going to push me under a train. Good luck finding one.

After a train, a tram and asking 17 people where the hotel was, we eventually found the world famous “Gerbil Hotel” where the G had fallen off long ago.

It is functional rather than beautiful but has the only known 8” flat screen TV in the world. It’s not much bigger than an iPad Mini.

Turks can’t spell for shit. I can’t make out a word of this.

In fact they have to get Yoda to help them with the hard signs.

We went to have a look at all that culture and shit but it was a bit dark and over run by dogs.

Unfortunately we met an English woman in a pub. Actually she was very nice as English people go. For some reason we got on to Poppy Day and wars, which was a bit unfortunate as we had only just escaped the insanity of London and Poppy Day. I saw a guy on the Tube being beaten by an old woman with a stick of broccoli for not wearing a poppy. “Honestly. It was there a minute ago!” he shouted, “It must have fallen off.”

Our new friend in Istanbul said, “Its a real shame about all of these young soldiers losing their arms and legs  but we’ll have some cracking paralympians in a few years.” (that is word for word, I wrote it down immediately. Even before I managed to get my jaw back up again).

Tub wanted to listen to the call to prayer from the Mosque at 5am so we tried to sleep with the window open. We heard a lot of drunk people going home at 2am and then the bin lorries and by 5am Tub was sound sleep adding the percussion to the noise from the Mosque while I lay in bed admiring everything that religion has contributed to the world. Its a really wonderful sound if you are a tourist, but fuck – 5 times a day!.

Tuesday

Today was all about culture. The stuff growing in the shower was only the beginning.

This guy proved that however nice the people are in a country there is always one complete cunt who parks in the tram lane.

Here is an ancient radiator that they have in the museum.

This one is only slightly newer.

These lion wall tiles were already 2,000 years old when the Mayans started stacking their rubble with no safety rail in Central America. But they didn’t get Guacamole in Turkey until 1951 so it all depends upon your definition of advanced society.

One of the buildings in the museum was a new one that they had to build to hold some of the relics that they found… in 1892. That is older than anything we saw in America apart from I Love Lucy re-runs.

Here is some culture stuff that we went to. They have two big Mosques. One is called Hagia Sofia and the other has been turned into a museum. Its a bit tough for the folks who build the second one only to find it museumed just because it only has 4 chimneys and the other one has 6. We did go into Hagia Sofia but only into the outside bit as there was a kids party or something on in the main temple and atheists had to wait outside. I picked up a lovely pair of boots coming out of one of the smaller temples though, so all up it was a good day.

They have a long tradition of coffee drinking in Turkey and produce some of the finest coffee in the world, which they sell at Starbucks.

In the afternoon we went to the Grand Bazaar. I really was expecting a big souvenir shop with some rip off handbags but you have to remember that Istanbul has been the centre of world shopping for thousands of years and they are pretty good at it. There are 60 streets inside this thing and 3,000 shops. It is all quality with leather, silk, gold, jewels and spices. If it wasn’t for the guy selling selfie sticks you could imagine it hasn’t changed for centuries.

In the evening we wandered around the back of the Hagia Sofia and ended up in the commuter traffic with people trying to get ferries, trams or buses to go home. Most of the world is now one homogenous lump with the same Gucci and Adidas stores on every corner but Istanbul is different. Watching the sun set over the dome of the Mosque and hearing the chants broadcast from the speakers while listening to all of the Turkish people talking while trying to get home I only wished I’d bought a decent camera to capture it. One sleep ago we were in Croydon eating Worcester Sauce crisps and watching Libby and Lexi at Roller Derby, now we are hopelessly lost in fuck knows where. Whoever said that England was a nation of shopkeepers had never been to the back streets of Istanbul.

Having watched white people try to steal a car in San Francisco I was impressed with the skills they have here. These two blokes nicked this 2012 Ford Fiesta in less than 2 minutes and had it up on EBay within half an hour.

For our last evening in Istanbul we decided to stay in and watch Dave Allen on youtube. If you haven’t watched it you should at least watch this one.

He holds the record in Britain for being the comedian to have the most complaints about his TV shows.

Well, we’d had enough culture and we needed a laugh.

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For our last day in Istanbul we opened the window and listened to the 5am yodelling from the Mosque. Then we fell back asleep and didn’t wake up until 10am.

This tour goes places that most other European tours don’t go. Like Asia.

We took a boat tour on the Bosphorus. We had to choose one that doesn’t actually stop in Asia as Tub said she wasn’t going back there any time soon.

Getting herded around like sheep brings out the best in people.

I caught Tub trying to bite a Japanese tourist but that would have been a minor offence compared to some of the sculduggery going on in the scrum as everyone fought to get on first for no apparent reason. Bismarck de Plessis would have looked like a polite queuer in there.

When we finally got on and the seriously wounded had been attended to, we headed out on the water. These two aresholes were upwind of us and chain smoked for the whole trip. If you look closely you can see the no smoking sign just behind them.

It doesn’t matter how subtle you try to be, if you are taking a selfie in a crowd you will look like a twat.

Remember if you are into selfies, always wear a hat and sunnies so nobody can recognise you if you get caught.

It is quite beautiful in Istanbul.

So that is it for Turkey. Off we go with our much cut down luggage collection.

We had to use all of our scrummage techniques from the boat to get onto the tram. We had to do this a few times as the first tram suddenly decided that it would turn around and go backwards.

Eventually we got to the airport and managed to find a bar where we drank exactly what we had left in Lira.

Now. Where the fuck is Bulgaria?