My metro
adventures successfully landed me at the steps of the Grand Bazaar! It is a
pretty impressive place, with so much energy and history wrapped into it.
Luckily, though, when I arrived I was on my obligatory phone call with my
mother so I was able to just walk past many of the vendors with no problem.
When I got off the phone and realized that I was suddenly lost in the middle of
the bazaar, they DESCENDED. Given that I was still three days from my final
destination, I just didn’t have time to be told that I need a new rug or to be
offered the “friend price”. So I put my bitch face on and got out of there as
quick as I could.
After a few rushed minutes, I found myself on the steps of a
university. It also looked beautiful (I would soon learn that EVERYTHING in
Istanbul looks awesome) and more importantly…it looked QUIET. So I let myself
through the gates (the guard didn’t seem to care) and started aimlessly
wandering the campus.
At some point, an older man came up behind me and asked if I
was a student. I was really on edge about being Taken (too),
especially because my dad is awesome
but he’s no Liam Neeson – so I quickly assessed the situation and figured it
was best to at least reply than to come off as too bitchy and risk being Taken
out of revenge. I replied that I was just visiting. The charade of “from where”
“Ahh..America! Obama!” followed, and he even added that his brother lives in
Louisiana. Siblings/friends in America never live where you’d expect them to
(i.e., desirable places).
We continued chatting for a bit until I decided that, since
I found a seemingly nice person who speaks English well enough to talk with me,
maybe I could have him help me get a Turkish SIM card. I figured a Turkish SIM
would be helpful when I returned to spend 4 days in a city with no local
contacts. This started an adventure…he quickly grabbed some guys that were
hawking stolen phones on the sidewalk and asked them about SIM cards. It seemed
that the only route to do it would be the legal route, which required going
back down through the Grand Bazaar to the Turkcell store. I figured he’d leave
me here, but instead he showed me all the way there and then translated the
whole interaction with the agent. A copy of my passport and $25 later, I was
activating a Turkish SIM on my African Nokia. Success!
As we walked out of the Turkcell store, he told me he was
hungry and motioned that he was going to order from a street vendor, asking if
I wanted any. My answer was ABSOLUTELY. The food in the area all smelled SO
GOOD, but I had no idea how to go about ordering anything, so I was psyched
that he offered to help me out with this as well.
Then it got awkward…because I offered to pay. I figured I’d
try to avoid the imminent request for money for all his help by buying his
sandwich. He kind of accepted my offer, but then insisted on buying me tea in exchange.
This sounded like a good idea to me…I mean…it was 7pm…the touristy sites were
shutting down…I had nothing else to do before going back to the airport in 2
hours…and Turkish tea sounded like a thing to do. I also figured that this guy
was pretty harmless…I had met him on a university campus, he HELPED ME GET A
SIM CARD (I mean…if his plan was to Take me, he wouldn’t want me to have a SIM
card) and he spoke better English than anybody I had yet interacted with in
Turkey, airport attendants included.
Off we went to get tea…
 |
| A nice vista en route to the tea place. Which was REALLY NEAT...it was this seemingly hole in a wall that opened up into a large garden, FULL of people drinking tea and smoking hookah. Apparently on Saturday nights, they project a movie on the side of one of the walls. So a lot of people were there waiting for sundown for the movie to begin. |
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