if the last day is anything to go by, interest-wise, we certainly are not going to be let down in turkey. it was a travel day so antics were bound to ensue. antics love when you have a nineteen kilogram pack to lug around and absolutely no upper (or lower or any) body strength to maintain carrying it around on a foreign public transport system. the paris RER really cemented itself in my mind as the worst transport ever after getting stuck in the bicycle carriage on the forty minute trip to the airport with no air circulation and no windows and people squished in from all sides as tightly packed in as the six weeks of clothes packed into the bag on my back weighing me down and contributing only negatively to that feeling you get just before you pass out and vomit at the same time from a lack of oxygen and motion sickness. i was wearing jeans too which is always a mistake on travel days. always wear shorts. being cold is so much better than being hot. i missed the freedom of my havaianas, but of course, one had snapped that morning and i had wandered around the marais district of paris looking for any shoe shop that might be open to purchase a replacement pair of thongs from. but of course, it was sunday and everything was fermée. thank you, the rights of man, for establishing the roots of the thirty-five hour french working week.
by the time we got on the plane to istanbul at orly airport, eating crepes at five in the morning on our way home from rue oberkampf seemed like a distant dream world. the paris we had spent a week in seemed like a different place altogether to the one that was bidding us adieu with what seemed like a slap in the face. it reminded me uneasily of the parisian woman who had used the men's bathroom in charbon and then slapped all the men who were waiting in a queue outside the bathroom as she left. that is another story though.
we were thus, not in top form when we arrived in istanbul at 11pm. we had at least researched the best way to get to our hostel, but assumed a taxi driver would know the exact location. incorrect. he was a sweet, old man though and kept pointing out turkish points of interest to us as we drove and asking our permission to take a different bridge or do a u-turn. at least, from what i gleaned knowing no turkish whatsoever.
one hour and several detours later, we arrived near taksim square. if it weren't for a long stop-over on the side of the road asking some policemen for directions i don't think we'd have made it. the two policemen our sweet, old man asked at first did not know the exact address and called out two others for help. the only place we had the address for where we were going was on my phone, so out the taxi window it went, passed around between these four turkish policemen as they pulled out their phones in turn and started making phone calls to ask others for directions.
as we got out of the taxi, the fare was kindly calculated for me and patiently pointed to on a piece of paper so i would understand how much i owed. i wanted so much to say thank you for all the old man's help but had no idea how. it's a bizarre sensation being in a completely foreign place. i can't remember the last time i was in a city where i didn't know any of the language at all and was completely unable to communicate verbally. but here i am, in istanbul, and i don't even know how to pronounce the turkish for thank you. it's bizarrely debilitating being unable to be polite in the most basic way.
in my pre-flight-from-sydney-to-london freak out of changing money and washing clothes and packing bags a few hours before departure, a kind friend told me it would be ok and that it was good to do hard things. i have no idea what these next three turkish weeks are going to be like but i can already tell i'm going to be taught so many things about the world and the Lord and my heart.
