- Istanbul airport is Asian more than Western, and shows what type of people are expected to travel by plane in Turkey. The more I travel outside the US the more American airports resemble Greyhound bus stations, which, good for the US of A!
- Turkey used to be where you went for shopping at bargain-basement prices. Not any more, at least if your main currency is the dollar. Either the Turkish Lira is overvalued or the USD is undervalued — or why not both? — but nothing in Istanbul felt like a bargain.
- The above doesn’t even take into consideration the differential pricing for museum entry, whereby foreigners pay an order of magnitude higher prices thank someone with a Turkish ID card. This is generally fair and I consider it a “domestic discount” rather than a tourist markup.
- Per my hosts — I am too lazy to verify but do feel free to check — the city doubled in size in the last two decades and stretches across more than a hundred kilometers. The unfortunate souls who live on the Asian side but work on the European (broadly working-class) or vice versa (broadly middle and upper-middle class) both face hours-long commutes even with enviable (for American standards) public transport.
- This rapid increase in population is due in part to quick-and-dirty builds that aren’t necessarily earthquake-proof, and everyone is waiting for the next big one to hit the city and decimate it. Draw your own conclusions on how that may affect the citizen psyche.
- The underground Basilica Cistern should be counted as one of the Wonders of the World, more so than Haiga Sofia which has clearly seen better days. See also Belgrad Forest, about which I learned while visiting the cistern.
- Talismanic shirts.
- We did not have a bad meal, each one in a typical “Turkish” restaurant with meze and some seafood but each with a completely different array of dishes and ingredients. Pursley (sic!) was a revelation.
- The beer was mediocre — though at least one more Western-leaning place had Duvel on the menu — but I liked raki (with a bit of water and plenty of ice) more than I expected considering I am not a fan of anis.
- Surprising number of infants and toddlers out on the street playing past midnight. Napping during the summer heat and using the cooler night air for some outdoor time?
- Serbian language is full of turcisms so I expected to recognize at least some of the written signs, but those were few and far between. Then I realized the words I know as “Turkish” were imported centuries ago thousands of kilometers away from current-day Turkey. Indeed some of them my hosts recognized as what the very old people living in far-away provinces might have once said.
- Four days weren’t nearly enough.