Numerous shoe shines
Posted in Europe | By tim |
The train clatters on for ages before arriving in the station a full 20 hours after we boarded. When it arrives, however, I am excited and ready to explore Istanbul, the place we have so looked forward to and bolstered our moods with the hope of through Romania. We visit the bank first and Chris manages to extract 20 million from his account. Always thought he was loaded. Realise a little later the rate is higher than we expected and he now has £130 to his name. Split between us, however, it should be about right for our four days here.
We find a great youth hostel – The Orient – with 94 rooms and a fantastic roof-top bar looking out over the bay of the Bosphorus. It is full of travelling types and we are instantly hooked. Chris is clearly in need of a rest after his bad night so I leave him to sleep while I trek off to see what Eastern delights Istanbul has to offer in the early morning sun. I walk down to the edge of the Bosphorus where the water is clear and calm. It is not long before I have my first encounter with the entrepreneurial tendency of the city. I am approached by Ahmed, who asks me the time and clearly doesn’t need to know. He has a toothy grin and asks me if I like Istanbul. Within seconds he has me sat on a wall and is polishing my shoes. I am in no way prepared to resist – I have, as they say, just come down with the last shower. When it comes to the crunch – and he is joined by his friend – he says the shoe shine is for free but that his son is sick and he has no way to pay for a doctor. He demands 1 million lira. I guess it’s just a good way to claim over the odds for a shoe shine and £7 is definitely over the odds. Unfortunately, I have no smaller change than 1 million and he seems to misunderstand when I gesticulate that I only have 1 million notes. There is an awful moment when between them they hold £21 of my money in their hands, but they are not thieves, just Turks working for a living, and I can do nothing except take the notes back and walk away.
I do, however, walk with a spring in my step knowing that I got my shoe shine for free. I take a walk in the sun around the peninsular and then back into the city where I phone home on my Mum’s birthday. It is kind of nice to hear that home is still there. It seems so long since I left it.
In the station I meet the Harris Isles guys for the third time. This random event thing is becoming oversubscribed. They have had a single expensive night here getting wasted but seem to have really enjoyed the place which is encouraging. They are now moving back north towards their Munich Beerfest goal. Evidently their childhoods have at least given them the right idea in this direction. I return to the hostel through wonderfully aromatic streets. There are donor kebabs roasting, spices in huge vats being sold and the general smell of all things cooking.
Back in the hostel, Chris is just stirring so we have lunch on the rooftop. He wants to sleep again this afternoon so I decide to head to the bazaar and wander the streets some more – still full of enthusiasm for this place. I wander without direction – a single blonde Westerner lost in a sea of Turks. I sit down in the middle of a park near an elaborate monument to watch this strange world go by. I see an Arab man come up to the domed monument, which I notice has taps arranged all around the outside. With great precision he removes first his shoe then his sock and stands on one leg while he carefully washes his foot in the cold water. He then repeats the process with the other foot while I look on with fascination. I guess any religion which requires ‘shoes-off’ during prayer must, for the sake of its priests, make adequate provision for foot hygiene. I sit in peace watching the people come and go : the loud American tourists, the quiet Arab women, the running children and the shifty traders. I take what seems to be a fairly main street and am quickly caught up in all the bustle.
It is all I can do to refuse the offers for carpets, leather jackets, lighters, postcards and shoe shines but it’s great fun to experience the industry with which these people go about selling their often shoddy wares. It strikes me that the bazaar is not just a gimmick for the tourists, the majority of punters are Turkish. It truly is a way of life. I wind up lost in some back streets where my blonde hair is definitely not an enviable attribute. I feel more than a little uneasy to be alone here – dark eyes are watching my movements – and so I make my way as quickly as possible back to the tourist areas. There are cars pressing their way arrogantly through the patient crowds but the selling just continues across their bonnets. I feel worn out by the constant pressure and have a weak moment while I sit and drink a fanta on a bench. It is a fatal and costly mistake. Istanbul is the city where you can never pause, never offer a chink in your armour where an enterprising Turk can apply pressure to open your wallet.
Before I know it, I have a shoe-shiner – maybe 12 years old – applying paste to my shoes. He is persuasive, persistent and for the second time today I am unable to refuse. Halfway through I realise that the paste they apply is sticky and critical to the furtherance of their income and expansion of their markets – all the dust of the streets sticks to the shoes, making them appear dirty almost as soon as they’ve been polished. The lad is joined by three of his friends – this seems to be a recurring pattern – and claims that 500,000lira is the price. I say more like 50,000 but he claims this is what you pay to go to the toilet, which is true.
The bartering starts here, but I have not as much experience of the game as he does and wind up learning by my expensive mistake. I pay 300,000lira, about six times too much and feel momentarily annoyed with myself for being so weak. This is reinforced by an old Turkish guy sitting nearby who, judging by his unfathomable shouting, thinks I am to blame for the state of the Turkish economy. I shrug, tell him I don’t understand and walk off, knowing that next time I’ll agree a price in advance.
Chris is still fast asleep – unbelievably – so I sit in the bar, look out over the bay where dolphins are dipping in and out of the water under a beautiful sunset and sip my cold beer. I end up staying there until 9pm talking to two Americans who met on a forestation programme in Albania and have only two weeks left before they return home to find jobs in Alaska. They recommend we head for the Turkish coast rather than the Greek islands because it is nicer and cheaper. Perhaps we will. I go to bed, exhausted but happy to be in this lively city such a contrast to yesterday’s Romania.
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