First impressions in Istanbul

I've been in Istanbul with my fellow SPEAN Roberta since Sunday. That's five days with a lot of first impressions. Here are a few (my apologies for the poor video quality):

The people:

During my first few hours in Istanbul, the cab drivers couldn't find the apartment our colleague booked for R and me and overcharged every ounce of my sweaty, American body. So I spent the night in a less-than-luxurious hotel near Taksim Square. Around 10 p.m., R and I met at Taksim and walked down one of the many streets branching off the square to find dinner. Apparently, some sort of football championship match took place Sunday, so Sunday night looked like this. Everywhere. First impression of the people of Istanbul? They're crazy soccer hooligans, and they're gonna trample us.

The food:

  

Çay (pronounced like "chai") is amazing in Turkey. For my 18th birthday, my mom paid to have my teeth whitened because my family loves tea so much that my teeth were yellow. Looks like she'll have to do the same for my 25th birthday because the way this country brews tea is incredible. And our internship orders it from a café about 5 times a day. 

Same goes for the coffee. Silky and rich and full-bodied and a ton of other coffee-describing adjectives I'm not fit to use. I couldn't finish my first cup—mostly because I don't drink caffeine, so when I do, I go nuts—but also because it was so thick and strong that 3 sips were plenty. I need to finish a full cup soon, though, so one of my colleagues can read me my fortune with the empty cup, Sybill Trelawney style.

Baklava. *hearts in eyes emoji* The sugar, the pistachios, the honey, the filo dough. Perfection. By the way, if you're interesting in watching a Spanish woman try and fail miserably to make baklava in a very awkward setting, I highly recommend "Turkey 2", a travel special starring Adela Úcar. Why a dedicated Turkish baklava baker would agree to have some inexperienced foreigner fondle his filo is not clearly communicated by the film and will leave you feeling uncomfortable. But it's worth watching to appreciate the hard work behind this magical pastry.

The internship:

As mentioned, our internships are with İdema, a consulting and economic development team. Our internship director Ercan (pronounced "Air-John") and colleague Emircan ("Eh-meer-John") translated to R and me the highlights of the Responsible Cities Conference, which we attended Wednesday. Very relevant to a SPEA Master's degree in economic development, what with all the emphasis on public-private partnerships, sustainability and government accountability. Except for the complete Turkishness of it all, we might have been sitting in one of the second-floor lecture halls in SPEA.

The rest of the internship has been spent in the office (playing with cute babies), the metro (to buy our one-month, all-access passes to the public transportation services in Istanbul), and the shoe stores near Taksim Square. Yes, shoe stores—because yours truly stupidly wore sandals on her first day of Internship, and they broke within 20 minutes of following Emircan to our office. So E took us shoe shopping and began to question his director's decision to allow two American girls to intern with his company. (Talk about good first impressions.) The new shoes gave me 3 new blisters, so it'll be sneakers every day for the rest of the internship. No shame.

The city:

 

Orhan Pamuk writes in his autobiography Istanbul: Memories and the City, "If the city speaks of defeat, destruction, deprivation, melancholy, and poverty, the Bosphorus sings of life, pleasure, and happiness." Ugh Orhan. He always portrays Istanbul in this way—derelict and decrepit on the one hand and beautiful and enchanting on the other. I think it's partly due to his own childhood, which was full of paradoxes. And partly due to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, which left things derelict and decrepit. (But he is a beautiful writer, so check him out. I especially loved The Museum of Innocence.)

In my first few days in Istanbul, I've seen what Orhan means about destruction. Old, Ottoman buildings literally crumbling next to new, modern ones. It's as if the city built the new right on top of the old. I have only been in the city a few days, so I'm going to wait to decide what I think about the rest of Orhan's view of Istanbul, which he always seems to describe as cold, wintry and sad. It's clear we agree on one thing, though. The Bosphorus is incredible.

 

Our internship's office is located 2 minutes from the Bosphorus in Beyoğlu ("Bay-oh-loo") District.

Stray cats are EVERYWHERE in Istanbul. The lot next to our apartment is home to about 8 kittens. The neighbors, R, and I take turns feeding them. How could you not??

"#Hasthtag", a restaurant near Taksim, hosted a "special party", from which R and I were expressly prohibited. So we had to eat our French Fries and sulk in the corner.

The city reminds me of other European cities in which I've lived in the past, like Madrid. I love the wide, cobblestone streets and endless windows of shops—not that I'm into consumerism or anything.

As Istanbul and I get to know one another better, I will post new pictures and videos. I've only been here 5 days, and there is much, much more to come.

XXOO