IstanBlue

I think there's something funny about a guy smoking in a jogger's park. And it gets intriguing when you find most men and women doing the same. And then you realize, for most people in Istanbul going for a walk in the park is no different from taking a stroll down the bustling city markets, having a cup of tea or smoking a waterpipe at one of the numerous joints in the side streets of the city. They are just going about their life doing what they like to do - and the list is not long - having tea or coffee, chit chatting either among themselves or with travellers, playing backgammon(arguably Turkey's national game), smoking and finally either buying something or selling it (depending on we are talking of a tourist or local) usually in some combination of each other. And if you happen to be in this park that I am sitting in at the moment (Gulhane Park - the city's largest and most popular park by the way) add making out to the list as well!

It's a Monday afternoon and I wonder how do so many young Turkish men and women manage to be in a park. It does say something about the employment rate or the attendance level in the Istanbul University! The park reminds me of the Central Park in New York City - prime location, very green, beautiful landscaping, well maintained - not as big but then Istanbul isn't as big as NYC either. The similarities between the two cities go a little further than the park. Both are very popular tourist destinations, Istanbul surprisingly is quite cosmopolitan and liberal as well, both a shopper's paradise and both quite expensive! (yes, that's right, gone are the days when Istanbul used to be the poor tourist's destination in Europe).

Turkey is often referred to as the most liberal Muslim country but you have to see it to believe it. Take a 360 degree look around you anywhere in the city and for every woman draped in a head scarf you will find three wearing a mini skirt, and its not just tourists I am talking about. What surprised me is that women can wear almost anything even to a mosque though to enter the prayer area they have to cover themselves up (the mosques provide scarfs and drapes to women). Even women who choose to wear scarves in public are very comfortable holding hands of their partners, cuddling and sometimes kissing in public (otherwise they have this park!).

It's my fourth day in the city and I am still struggling to assign a theme to the city, or at least to put it in words. I have so many, sometimes conflicting, characters of it ever since I stepped out of the Ataturk airport. For the first 20 minutes you drive along an international class 6 lane highway full of modern expensive cars, Mercedes and Volvo buses (there are too many buses in Istanbul by the way!) and you think well it's a pretty modern looking city and all of a sudden your bus makes a left turn to enter Sultanahmet, the main tourist area and you are greeted with a maze of narrow cobbled streets that has Europe written all over it, a maze only your driver can decipher (you will eventually get the hang of it in a couple of days). My driver happened to break the side mirror of a parked car while manoeuvring a tight corner on one such street.

Sultanahmet is full of mosques and monuments of religious and historical importance that cut across religions, countries, empires and centuries. Cross the Ataturk or Galata bridge and come to Taksim and you will be forgiven to think that you are in SoHo (without the sky scrapers). You will find a nostalgic tram in Taksim and a state of the art metro train service elsewhere in the city. No matter what you want to buy, Istanbul has something to suit your taste - from high street shopping in Taksim to haggle your way to death in the Grand Bazaar, and various intermediate options spread across the city. Grand Bazaar is unique in itself - over 5000 shops in 60 streets, it's a jigsaw puzzle daring you to take a shot at it. It will take you days to see them all but fortunately you don't have to as many shops sell similar stuff. Be prepared to bargain shamelessly and don't ever make the mistake of thinking that you found an original Gucci bag for a steal! The stuff looks nice but if the price is too good to be true, it most certainly is a fake. Leave the expensive stuff for authentic stores, Grand Bazaar is for trinkets and souvenirs, in other words, things that if you end up over paying for, won't haunt you in your sleep :) Most of what you find here will be available elsewhere in the city at a more reasonable price but you may have to look a little harder. But if you really like something at a shop and decide to check out other shops for a better price, make sure you have a way to make it back to the shop, as I said it's a maze - I got lost multiple times and in one case kept coming back to the same shop no matter how hard I tried to get away from it!

There is so much more to talk about Istanbul - the spice bazaar, the numerous mosques, the food (not necessarily in a positive way), belly dancing, backgammon, the special treatment meted out to Indians along with some other third world citizens at the airport, the beautiful weather, the cruises along the Bosphorus river, the carpets, the single tourist guy scam (topic for another blog!), the history and so on. But just like I had only 4 days to spend here, I am sure most of you have a limited time to read my blog so I will skip some of these for a later day. As I said before, I am not going to be able to do justice in characterizing the city but one thing is for sure that as much as the Bosphorus river tries to separate the European Istanbul from the Asian one, the cliche of West meets East finds its true meaning in Istanbul.