Tracking Istanbul

Large. Beautiful. Motley. Antique & modern. Being just in the middle between east and west, it combines and melts both of it. At this point I am very assured: you can find nearly everything in this city, nonetheless of the topic: people, food, music, architecture, prices, you tell. Let’s see what I’ve found so far.

No matter which airport you arrived at, first thing you notice is price for a taxi ride. No, this country is not pricy at all, and taxi is actually cheap as dirt (we will talk about it’s availability later though), yet distance is very unusual. You will travel roughly 50-60 kilometres on your way to hotel or apartment, assuming you booked something near the city’s center. Which is very broad term in this place. Fatih district is essentially historic center of Istanbul, but geometrically all Besiktas, Sisli, Kadikoy, Beyoglu districts can be considered being center too.

While Istanbul has pretty developed public transport infrastructure, traffic is very heavy. For comparison, I have lived in Moscow for nearly 10 years and still it impresses me how heavy is the traffic here. Moreover, streets here are pretty narrow, and height is constantly changing. Taking a taxi ride is basically Disneyland every time.

Sure, here are some modern districts with wide open avenues, high buildings and far less heavy traffic, but those districts are so far from the core of the city, which I am speaking about in this post. I don’t think it is necessary to even visit those outer districts: they’re pretty common Turkey overall.

Okay, now let’s get to the streets. As you might’ve expected, they’re very crowded. Facades are very crowded too: there is no place on them left, everything is buried under poorly matched banners of all shapes, colours and even brightnesses. Something you would expect from eastern city. Motley. This is the word.

Cars on the roads vary too: from eastern-ish old cheap bikes to brand new German premium cars. So far I haven’t seen Rolls Royce, but Lambos, R8s, Cayennes are very popular here. Somehow condition of particular vehicle doesn’t depend on it’s price segment: I seen cheap cars in good condition as well as pricy cars with a lot of scratches here and there. This is what you get in such heavy traffic, I suppose.

You might have not been prepared for all this hills and descents while travel on your feet. Luckily, Istanbul has to offer countless places where you can rest, drink some Turkish tea or coffee, or eat something.

I still have no idea how to choose nice one, but they all are usually very cheap compared to western countries and even Russia or CIS countries. Bad thing is, higher price doesn’t get you better service, food, or even cleanliness. You may face very clean simple place like just bistro with self-service, where personnel is genuinely welcoming you and pricy one with shining waiters who don’t like you at all and don’t bother if you are having great time at their place with astonishing view on Bosphorus…

Speaking of food, everything is basically… Turkish, or may be it’s just eastern? Sure thing, here are plenty places, where owners know what they do, yet the others are way out from what can be safely called done right.

What is surprising for me, there are desserts everywhere and most of them are delicious and cheap, from local ones to obviously western. The other thing, the desserts look fresh every morning, so I suppose, all these cakes, tarts, cookies and other stuff is completely destroyed day after day by Turkish people. These people really like oil in they food, bread, hummus, cheese and other not-so-healthy food. Yet they still look very slim in general — it’s rare to see chubby local person here.

Touristic spots

Sultanahmet is probably best known, or, at least, first heard of district among tourists. Ancient mosques, museums, hotels, rooftop restaurants & cafes. Quality to price ratio is very questionable at least, but views are definitely amazing, and hotels are so close to all these sightseeing spots. Though, I’d recommend to live somewhere else, because you can pretty easy reach them using metro, taxi, or boat.

I am not a fan of Islamic culture, so can’t really tell you about all these mosques, but architecture here is adorable. If one ever been to Jerusalem, it pretty much rings the bell, only this time it is in much larger scale. To my taste, the best way to see old city is be here at night, after the burning sun has settled down, intense traffic has vanished and streets are empty from tired tourists. This way you’ll be able to walk through silent, ancient city alone (almost), see Fatih clean & empty (almost), which is actual old city, from where Istanbul has begun.

The thing is, I came to this city initially to consider it as a place where I can live at, for at least 1 year, so that’s all I can say about city’s attractions. I enjoyed the buildings and views from rooftops in Sultanahmet, but that’s all.

Transport and traffic

Okay, so from very beginning you’ll notice that taxi is basically broken here.

Über is banned, but some drivers still use it. I have no idea how they receive their funds, but sometimes they agree to use bank card as payment method. Usually they don’t, though, and force you to pay in cash.

City’s government launched BiTaksi app, which seemed hopeful at first glance, but it turned out, drivers usually won’t drive to you at all, even if you allow to turn on the counter while they are heading your way to pick up. The app has 3 payment options: cash, bank card and Istanbul card. Bank card option is a bit weird, since you have to proceed through 3d secure workflow after each ride, that’s inconvenient.

On the paper there are 3 classes of the cars, but I haven’t seen nothing higher than economy. Sometimes I see “Tortoise” cars on the streets — it’s kinda "economy plus" class, but they never arrived to me by request. Business class here is Mercedes V-class vans and I don’t see a reason to use it in Istanbul.

Sometimes drivers have POS terminals in their cars, supposedly it is for bank card payment in case you just caught up a car on the street. Though I’ve never used it so far and can’t say anything, they always seem to be turned off. Be aware of a comission atop of the price when paying using these POSes.

I had no chance to check out Istanbul card in taxi, but it is essential to have it for public transport. They have those yellow machines which sell Istanbul cards, one ride tickets and allow you to refill your Istanbul card. Probably it has subscription too, but I did not look for it. Metro, funiculars, buses, trolleys, boats — every kind of transport is very cheap and allows you to travel within the city with comfort. Buses, for instance, have air conditioners, while taxi has not. May be business class taxi & transfer have it, but as I said, I’ve never managed to use it.

Renting a car here is purely insane for me. I mean, I’d like to take a car for a ride over the country, but not in the city itself. Streets are very tight and narrow, it’s very common to see straight slope followed by a huge uphill. In fact, you can literally broke your legs here when surface is glaciated, not to speak about cars. But even on hot summer day it seems to me very dangerous, stressful and uncomfortable to drive a car here. Wouldn’t recommend to anyone, surely.

Traffic is… heavy, of course, but it becomes even worse when you realise the fact, that drivers don’t actually follow the rules. Here is some road markings, traffic lights, signs, etc., but real power has traffic controllers only. And even them has to use whistles, gestures and angry faces to have people follow their instructions.

People

Oh boy, surely my impression quite unrepresentative here, but I’d like to share some. My first time in Turkey was Antalya, and it was a place where I seen only welcoming, kind and caring people. Probably most of them was not even middle class, but they was very honest and helpful. Istanbul has the other ones too: greedy, despising, unpleasant. The ones who’s only way to interact with you is to do some scam. The ones who anyone has heard about, but me personally has never met before.

Of course, scam can happen to you everywhere, but be advised to recheck everything in districts which are either pricy or touristic. Or both. Usually it is European side of the city, when Asian one is way more pleasant in both people and places.

Nature

Okay, we definitely start here with the cats. Cats of Istanbul are probably most popular ones in the world. You will see them everywhere on the street: I suppose, warm climate and food availability allow them to spread over the city very well.

Also, in opposite to, let's say, Tbilisi, people here seem to really like them, and often you can see bowls of cat food on the ground and inside buildings which belong to every type of businesses: from huge brands like Nike to local fast food chain.

Someone might say, in such a big city like this, you can't enjoy the nature. I'd like to make an opposite statement, because sea, sunsets, seagulls are calming, enjoying and pretty ubiquitous here. Like everywhere in this region, weather is mostly sunny, and it combines with all the hills and downs. I like to walk, I do this very often, usually every day. And this is exhausting here until the sunset. Actually, for me under this conditions, everything is exhausting without A/C.

Even though you can't relax on a city beach, since they are practically don't exist here, and I refuse to count a couple of really bad ones as a legitimate "beaches", you still have an option to visit Princes' Islands (or "Adalar"): there are some greenery areas, the sea is easily accessible, and taking a walk is a pleasure. Also, vehicles with internal combustion engine are prohibited, so the air is much cleaner.

I've been not in a much amount of city's parks, but ones that I've seen looked nice and cozy to me. Sadly, they aren't spacious at all, probably because I've lived always somewhere near the city's center.

Observations

And for last, but not least, a bunch of just my observations and overall impressions. Istanbul is ancient, large, eastern city: that sums up pretty everything.

If you ever been at Jerusalem, you'll meet me here. The only thing, Jerusalem is, without a doubt, a small fraction in terms of square compared to Istanbul. All these ancient buildings take much more place in Istanbul, and historic legacy of the city is a big deal.

The other most noticeable thing is eclecticism: everything is mixed up in a fabulous eastern blend, where traditional food collides with western fast food, eastern bazaars exist near the big shopping centres, skyscrapers rise above decrepit huts of local elderlies...

Nonetheless, younger generation absorbs western culture pretty well. Despite of locals being muslims, bars are full of them. McDonalds here is quite popular, a lot of large graffiti's on buildings, Apple devices everywhere...

There is one more thing from the west. The Big Brother. Police and cameras are everywhere, and even when you have a ride in a taxi, there is camera faced towards you, and the lights in the backseat are on. You can not use any public Wi-Fi spot without a mobile phone authentication (which, obviously, linked to your ID document).

By the way, as a foreigner, you have only one available cellular plan, no difference which carrier you did choose. I recommend Turkcell, though, since they have best coverage around whole country. But probably it will make no difference to you, because in a month all those touristic SIM cards will be deactivated, and not available for use anymore, which leads us to a destiny of buying new SIM card almost every time when visiting Turkey. Another inconvenience related to all this mess: in BiTaksi you may use bank card within only one account, so I highly recommend to use virtual card and do not delete the app.

And one thing bothers me a lot: local cuisine is pretty high in calories, but you can rarely see local people exceeding healthy weight. I really like the cuisine: köfte, pide, lentil and other soups, iskander, numerous desserts! Nuts, dried fruits, and so on, and so on... But only caveat is you can gain some weight on this diet, and not in a healthy way. How Turkish people manage to avoid such a consequences is a mystery for me.

Food, entertainment, shopping

Let's speak money first. At the moment, there is a sky high inflation rate in Turkey, so prices are mostly very low for food, clothing, transportation and even electronics. But be aware, in some cases, business, like Apple Stores, increase their prices in advance, which can lead to very bad deals. For instance, iPhone price in Turkey, measured in US dollars, is the highest in the world at the moment.

Cafes and restaurants here are quite a roulette. While they feature overall tasty and cheap food, it's hard to find a decent place with foreign cuisine. What else is hard to find, that's cleanliness. Honest reviews on TripAdvisor. Place, which doesn't close at 11 p.m. Well, sometimes it's hard to find anything at all: probably locals discover new places through a word of mouth, not an internet services. I'd suggest also not to trust to reviews from Turkish people when it comes to food or service. But again, during my stay, I've discovered enough places with good prices, nice kitchen and pleasant service, so it's just a trait of a region.

At some point I found myself thinking about big international brands and guessed that they have to be great at cleanliness, service and many other things. That was completely wrong: Starbucks here is probably worst I've seen, Hyatt was almost same bad, you got it. So, if you don't want to spoil the impression of brands you like, consider do not use their services here. Goods, though, are worth buying in most cases.

It was a huge mistake to start this blog with such a big post. I know it must be not as good as I imagined it at first, and there was a lot of struggle. I hope next time my choice will be wise, so I can actually enjoy when doing all this.