8 september 2004

9-8-04, 9:57 pm
Istanbul, Turkey: day 1

it sucks to fly with a cold. my ears were stuffed up from pretty much the moment we took off, and the landing hurt. boo. running around istanbul with a snotty tissue constantly on your nose sucks too. if i had a box of tissues, i probably would have used them all up. instead, i had to use paper towels, which made both me and my nose very unhappy.

mary (a program officer at OSI) and i sat next to each other by pure coincidence. we had probably one of the worst seating arrangements on the plane: the bulkhead seats were right in front of us (which means crying babies), and the emergency exit row was right behind us (which means the seat doesn't go back). all that, on a 10-hour overnight flight means not a lot of sleep, despite the taking of nyquil, and a quite cranky sai. ugh. had to be one of the worst flying experiences in recent memory.

aside from that, turkey is pretty fucking cool. we landed at 10:25AM (5 of us were on the same flight) and got picked up by a bus and dropped off at the plaza hotel in istanbul. pretty nice digs - a double room to myself, a mini-bar paid for by OSI (the water comes in much more handy than the vodka), and free meals for just under a week. at 1:30 rox, mary, virginija, and i walked (uphill!) to taksim, one of the main town centers. on the way, i noticed that some of the traffic lights have green numbers above the signal that count down the seconds until the light turns yellow. traffic in istanbul SUCKS. the city was built for about a million people, and now it's inhabited by around 15 million. FIFTEEN! of course, they didn't really keep up the infrastructure work along the way, so the roadway capacity just isn't there for all those cars. add to that that people drive like maniacs and you have disaster just waiting to happen. i slept for most of the cab ride home, but the portion that i was awake for terrified me, given that i could pretty much reach out and touch another car (or bus, or truck) at any given moment.

in taksim, the there is a long stretch of road blocked off to car traffic for pedestrian use only, called the istiklal. we went to a kebab (they spelled it kebap) house and had yummy lunch, then window shopped our way down the street for the next couple of hours. after a while, we stopped at another restaurant to get some tea. turkish tea is very strong and very hot. because my tolerance to hot fluids is on the low side, i called the waiter over to ask for an ice cube to put in my teacup. unfortunately, he interpreted "ice" as "ice cream" and brought us a bowl of different flavors of turkish ice cream. the texture is different from ice cream you find in the US; it's more stretchy, and has a different kind of sweetness. i think they maybe add gelatin to it, but i'm not sure. anyway, mary and i nibbled at it until we were rested enough to continue on.

we walked to the end of the strip before catching a cab home to the hotel. i peeked into one of the shops - if you could call it a shop, it looked more like a little alley/nook! - and the floor and walls were covered in clocks. plastic, wood, metal, mostly analog, some ringing. and at the end of the shop (or hallway, whatever) was a guy holding a little red clock and just shaking it like crazy! it was making strange noises, and he seemed quite frustrated. i really wished i had a camera, so i could capture that moment and keep it.

tomorrow is the first day of meetings, and i get to take notes all day! i know that sounds like just SO much fun. i can't wait.

goodnight.