Istanbul: The Preface

Most of you probably didn't know it, but until Saturday night, most of your Islamic neighbors were fasting for Ramazan. At sundown in Turkey on Saturday night, the last night of Ramazan, all practicing Turks broke their Ramazan fast with the three-day Bayram holiday. Most cities closed up shop, restaurants closed, people left town to go home to be with their families and celebrate. Since I knew nothing would be going on here, I headed up to Istanbul to spend time with a friend of mine who was staying there.

I've decided to make my trip to Istanbul into separate posts by day, with separate slide shows. I took the overnight bus to get there, a ten-hour trip, broken by two stops where they forced us to wake up and walk around in a rest stop for a half hour. The rest stops are pretty cool though, I must say, because they have little cafes to eat at, lots of locally-crafted food like honey, preserves, and dried fruits, and people making fresh Turkish delight. They're also clean and very well-lit, which is always fun when you're stumbling out of a bus and your eyes haven't adjusted to light.

But I digress. I stayed in Istanbul with my friend Leanna, one of my American counterparts, who is based in a much more conservative city in the east called Ezurum. She decided to stay in Istanbul and study Turkish before she began her second year at her post, and so I came and crashed in her itty-bitty little apartment. Another counterpart, Patreshia from Denizli, came as well, and we all enjoyed the weekend together. Here's a picture of the three of us (Patreshia, Leanna, then me) at our first dinner in Istanbul, a very special meal I'll tell you about in the next post.