Istanbul. Aşkım. Canım. Seni Seviyorum.

Although a picture is worth a thousand words and I have what amounts to 100,000 words uploaded onto facebook, I'd like to write about my recent trip to Istanbul so I can look back one day and remember all the little things.

• We took an over-night train. We being Katelyn, Evan, Nichole, and I. The man in charge of the non-sleeping section of the train was Bulgarian, the man in charge of the sleeping section (our section) was Turkish and knew only a few phrases such as "15 euro" and "no problem" and "OK?" which made things equally frustrating and hilarious. Nichole spoke to the Bulgarian man in order to translate for another passenger who only spoke English. She was doing really well except for our drunk Turkish conductor who kept interrupting her with "no problem, no problem" - he was such a mess and later asked one of the other passengers to buy him a bottle of Johnny Walker at the border. 

• When we got to the border at 1:00am, we had to get off the train and get onto a bus because Turkey is remodeling its train lines. Great. Then, the bus wasn't working and we had to wait 2 hours for someone to come fix it. Fantastic. Then, after about 30 minutes of travel, it broke again and we had to wait for a new bus. It was pretty terrible but we finally made it to Istanbul and immediately took very long naps before going for dinner, tea, desert, and then beers. We made up for the time we'd missed.

• We made a scavenger hunt for ourselves to complete by the end of the trip. We had to find:
• 5 hipsters
• Neon pants for each color of the rainbow (purple turned out to be the hardest to spot)
• a group of 30 children or more (they were everywhere)
• 2 men on one Vespa
• 2 people walking together wearing the same outfit (we saw that 3 times)
• a mosaic
• a viewpoint with at least 5 mosques visible at the same time
• a Whirling Dervish
• a PCV
• an American
• a hooka (shisha, nargile, water pipe) bar
• and other things I can't quite remember

• We made up a game called "friendly men" because Turkish men are very friendly towards each other and enjoy linking arms and putting arms around shoulders while they walk and talk. We got one point for every "friendly men" couple we pointed out. I believe the total tally was around 30.

• We made educational videos about Turkey, particularly Hagia Sofia, which I hope to upload to facebook if my internet will let me do something so fancy. They star Katelyn as the tour guide and Evan as the curious tourist. She explains the artifacts, culture, and tradition of Istanbul in six very entertaining specials. They involve giants, mashed potatoes, rectangles, and Santa Claus, among others.

• We drank a lot of Turkish tea. We even played a game of backgammon with a bunch of men in business suits while drinking tea (now that I think of it, that was on the scavenger hunt list - backgammon).

• We loved the hostel staff: Can (pronounced John), Gulsum, and Memo. We talked about men with Gulsum and she imparted some wisdom about Turkish men while we told her what we knew of American men. We smoked shisha with Memo and Can and played a game where I gave them a theme and they had to smoke the theme. Can's theme was shy. He's pretty hilarious so needless to say we all laughed hysterically and then he went on to tell dirty stories about foreigners smoking hooka for the first time and we laughed some more. Memo's theme was sexy and he made the most of the hooka's shape. We also had a dinner at the hostel that involved Turkish dancing at the end and we taught them how to horo. Then we did the limbo and learned that Turkish people can really bend. We stayed up all night talking and laughing and playing games. I also learned, from Memo, some romantic phrases in Turkish like "my love" - "my soul" - "my one and only" - "I love you" while Can taught us all dirty words and phrases in Turkish that I won't repeat here. 

• On our one night to go out on the town, we started off with 7 guy friends joining us. Before we actually made it to the bar, we had 0. Nichole joked about how pathetic that was but we ended up dancing all night to very strange music at a very strange bar and having a great time. Nichole dances really well and, at some point in the night, the bartender pretty much forces her to dance on the bar top and she insisted that Katelyn go with her. Katelyn, my friend who's deathly afraid a fire, joins her to dance on the bar which the bartender then lights of fire. Maybe one of the funniest things I've ever seen. Evan, seeing what the bartender had in mind, begged him not to do it. He said not to worry, lit some alcohol on fire, Katelyn froze in panic, eyes wide, and then jumped off the bar followed closely by Nichole. Epic.

• A very cute Turkish boy proposed marriage to Evan and then asked her out for tea (natural progression). She went. It was very cute.

I think that's all. It was a great trip.

-Age