February 22nd, 2006 | The lowdown by Xing Zhao

Midnight Express 1

It was stupid of us to fly to Istanbul from London instead of Edinburgh. It turned out we had to take the train from Edinburgh to London in the morning, wait overnight for the flight at Heathrow till the next morning. After flying from Heathrow to Frankfurt, we changed a flight to Istanbul. The whole flying time was only 5 or 6 hours, but we made the trip a journey: 36 hours of traveling, transferring and waiting.

The flight from Frankfurt to Istanbul was full of tourists from North America. This old lady was talking to my travel partner Josie, “I’m retired and studying Middle-Eastern architecture, and we’re flying to Istanbul to see the real thing”. There were lots parents with their kids. When I told my parents I was going to Turkey, they asked me where Turkey was. I said it was in Europe. They would totally freak out if they knew it was sort of in the Middle East and next to Syria.

After living in Scotland for so long, I was dying for the sun. It was early May, and the temperature was 25 degrees when we arrived. Turkish flags were flying everywhere at the airport, and with the sun, it was almost dazzling as our plane was landing. A lot of nationals needed a visa to go to Turkey. People were queuing to get a green sticker on their passports.

I changed 30 pounds at the airport. A pound was about 2.5 Turkish Lira. Turkish money is one of the most confusing currencies in the world. It has too many zeros. Lira is the newly reformed currency, and the old one, which is still used, has the zeros. If the new one is called 1 Lira, the old one would be called 1 million Lira.

At the airport, we got on the metro heading to a stop called Aksaray in the city. On the train, the most exciting thing happened. Before I set off for the trip, my flat-mate Jose told me that the Turkish loved Asian people because they didn’t have many Asians there. And here, it was actually happening. We put our backpacks down, and sat in a corner of the train. People kept coming into the train as it went closer to the city. I started to notice that lots people were looking at me. The eyes, I saw their stares, and then I felt them. Just like the heat, I felt my body was burning. Man, what’s going on! The train had more men than women, and they were all looking at us. Josie was looking outside the window. She occasionally pointed at something out of the window, saying, “look at this, look at that, they have water melon!”

“Have you noticed that people are all looking at us?”
“Yes, of course I have. That’s why I’m looking at the window all the time.”
There was a middle-aged man standing about 5 feet from me. I noticed that he was looking at me since he got on the train. A few minutes later, he came closer, asking me “what is this?” He was pointing to my necklace from Barcelona. He couldn’t really speak English, and my Turkish was almost zero.

“Are you from Japan?” He asked.
“No, I’m Chinese” I said.
“Oh Cin Cin” he said. The Lonely Planet’s language section had names of a few different countries, including Japan. I was disappointed it didn’t have China on it. Now I learned how to say China in Turkish.

Off the metro, we had to take the tram to Sultanamet. We were totally lost because there was no sign telling us there the tram was. We asked some policemen, they pointed us a direction. To cross the road, we had to pass an underground tunnel, which was very shocking to see. It was dirty, greasy, and full of people. Vendors, shoppers, and shops selling things from a small lighter to women’s underwear. Pirate CDs, cheap shoes, food, and there was people and noise everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

Out of the tunnel, we passed a mosque, reached another street. There, we saw street fighting. One Turkish guy was running, the other chasing him, swearing, and he was coming the direction towards us. “Let’s go Josie, let’s go!” We were scared out of shit, ran very fast, up to a cross-street bridge. We were so paranoid.

A tram ticket was the same price as the metro: 1.10 Lira, which is about 40 pence. The city itself has some wider roads, but tram goes through the narrow ones. It was amusing to see people crossing the streets--- there were very few traffic lights, people cross the streets whenever the tram’s not around. And it is very easy to take the tram without buying a ticket because the tram is just right on the street, and there’s no fence or anything to force you to buy a ticket, though everybody buys tickets.

At Sultanahmet, right after we stepped out of the tram, two guys came up to us. “Where are you going?” they asked. Though the answer in my mind was “why are you asking?” I told them we were looking for Sultan Hostel. I had been to places where people always try to take you to their hotels, restaurants or travel agencies, and they always start with “where are you going”. I was a little annoyed. “Here, follow him”, another guy turned up from somewhere. We followed. I looked back to the two guys, and they laughing, especially the Japanese guy. They must be thinking “another two stupid foreigners. The guy took us to a travel agency a few feet away. Shit, travel agency again, I knew it! But nobody tried to sell things to us, instead, someone pointed us a direction to the hostel.

The hostel was right behind the Blue Mosque, and we were walking towards that direction. It sounds so much like a cheesy movie or something, one person turns up after the other, and they disappear quickly and quietly. At that time, a comparatively important character entered the stage-- a bony blonde Turkish girl.

“Where are you going?” she said. It was quite funny every Turkish person likes to say, “where are you going” right in your face. Well, what should I answer? Tell her, or tell her not? “Sultan Hostel”, we told her. “I’m taking you there!” She said, like a general, giving her order. Meanwhile, four or five Turkish teenagers jumped out from the middle of the air, each of them had a camera in his hand. The girl spoke something to them in Turkish, and she told us they wanted to take photos with us.

My mind went blank. Why? Well, perhaps not. It was a little too weird that some strangers wanted to have photos with us, and they all had their cameras handy. So I said no. The girl told us she was studying English at a university and she wanted to meet some foreigners. I asked her if it was Istanbul University. She didn’t seem to understand me. Sometimes I think the Lonely Planet books are full of shit. It tells too many stories of tourists being mugged or drugged, and Turkish people are maybe a little too friendly. All these make you suspicious.

We eventually found the hostel. The girl said, “My cousin lives very close. I can meet you at the gate of the Blue Mosque at 5-tomorrow afternoon, and I can take you to his place. We can offer you some tea and coffee.” It was very nice and we didn’t know how to refuse it. So I said, “we don’t know our plans yet, can we call you tomorrow if you are coming?” She said, “I will always be there at 5 anyways, no matter if you come or not.”

There’s this book named Strolling Through Istanbul that I browsed a bit before my trip to Turkey. The first place that the book suggested to see is Calata Bridge, which offers the best view of the whole city. So the next morning, we decided to see the bridge. The bridge was crouching over the Sea of Mamara, obviously it was a good choice to see the city for the first time on this bridge. An Istanbul that you could see in almost every film about Turkey could be seen here. The big mosque over the hills, the sea, the ships, the incredible crowd of people, and the eye-blinding sun; the Istanbul that I saw in the first scene of the movie Midnight Express was right in front of me.

There were a bunch of shoe-shiners sitting on the bridge, and they all had their own spots. One guy said hi to me when I was passing him.

“Hi, can I borrow your lighter?”
“Sure.”
He lit a cigarette with my lighter, but he wasn’t giving it back to me. Instead, he said:
“To thank you, I can give you a shoe-shining, for free.”
I looked down at my shoes. I was wearing my The North Face hiking boots, and there was no way of shining shoes like that.
“No, thanks. I don’t need it.”
“No, it’s OK. Sit, sit.”
“No. Can I have my lighter back?”
He gave it back to me after a hesitation. And I left. One minute later, I was still around the bridge. I looked back to this person, and he was asking another foreigner for lighter. The foreigner lit the cigarette for him, and left. The shoe-shiner put his cigarette out after the foreigner walked away, and waited for another customer to come.