Below Belief

This morning I manage to sleep through the 5.30am wake-up call of prayer from the minarets outside and feel cheated. I feel my day is not complete until someone has shouted at me in haunting monotone from across the city. Catherine, Ingrid and the others in our room complain there was a huge street cleaning truck in the street outside last night making a noise. I have to say I missed that too.
In the rooftop bar for lunch, Chris orders a fried chicken sandwich but while we wait for it, two police officers come in for their lunch and it is clear who takes priority. They have the last two chicken sandwiches served to them and Chris has to settle for the steak instead. Police men in Turkey seem to do nothing but play backgammon and eat. We head off with Dan to the ferry terminal in search of a boat tour of the Bosphorus. One salesman tries to con us into crossing the bay instead of having a tour round it, but we’re not so stupid. End up on a suitable boat, albeit without a sundeck, with a round trip for 400,000 lira.
As we board the boat we are handed glasses of fresh orange juice and decide we definitely made the right choice. Later, we’re not so sure. The chubby waiter comes round and demands 250,000 for the orange. We look at him incredulously. He has pulled the oldest trick in the book on us and we don’t intend to pay. I pretend to ignore him, while Chris argues with the ‘Chef’ but manages to secure only receipts. Dan, of far too weak a disposition for a Cambridge man, pays for all three of us. It turns out the price is 200,000 lira so not only is the boat company ripping us off for orange juice we were given free, but the chubby waiter is adding on a commission too. They have well and truly stuffed us. We could have probably got away without paying but getting a refund now Dan has, is nigh on impossible. However, the value of our expenditure soon makes itself apparent. An American couple who also fall for the same trick only pay 100,000 lira for two and refuse to pay any more. The Chef comes out to protest but he gets nowhere and soon all the passengers are rising in glorious rebellion, whipped into fury by our shouting of ‘Don’t pay. Don’t pay.’. The beauty of it is that the orange juice was not to be the last entrepreneurial stunt pulled by this company. We get a succession of Turks through the cabin pedalling jumpers, watches, yoghurts, tea, beers and every one of them falls foul of our protest.
We pretend to haggle with the tradesmen, offering them ridiculous sums for their wares and then backing down, claiming they are shoddy and cheap. Quite what any of the passengers would want with a saggy yellow jumper or a fake watch, I really don’t know. Our action has all the Turks shouting in anger at the Chef who they think has queered their pitch. They protest even more violently when we take photographs of them and it turns out we never spent 200,000 lira in a more enjoyable manner.
At the end of the Bosphorus, we disembark at a small fishing village turned tourist town with expensive-looking fish restaurants. It has a ruined fort on the top of a wooded hill and offers great views out over the clear Black sea. We sunbathe for an hour before returning exhausted to Doy Doy’s for another impressive meal. Later in the bar we meet two English guys from Shrewsbury – one is going to Oxford, the other Kings College, Cambridge. As we say, we just can’t get away, Bed at 1.25am. Sleep is prevented by the Turks and their unbelievably noisy street cleaning hoover revving up and down outside our open window.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 31st, 1996 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Europe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.