Thursday, December 10, 2009

Even Old New York was once New Amsterdam

The only problem with retrospective blog posting is that the amusing stories get forgotten. Never fear — more moments from Istanbul!

  • The first night at our hostel, we made friends with one of the Turkish guys working there while waiting for the promised belly dancing show (it didn't happen). He asked where we were from and when two of us responded New York, he said, "Oh! I'm going to Harlem soon." We asked why. He answered, "Because sometimes I feel black."
  • We made friends with another Turk while on our boat ride from Asia back to Europe. When we introduced ourselves and I said my name was Emmy, he asked, "Like the Emmy Award?" Glad to know my spelling reference is international.
  • Courtesy of Time Out Istanbul, we found ourselves at a very legit and very authentically Turkish restaurant filled with locals. The waiter came over (quickly realized we were foreigners) and simply asked, "liver, lamb or chicken?" After we each answered, he pointed back at each of us, repeated the orders back, and when he figured out that he had gotten it right, he yelled "Yes!" (in a style reminiscent of Borat). He came back for drink orders and again, we got the "Yes!" Suddenly plates were delivered to the table — vegetables, leaves, sauces, pita bread. And then long skewers filled with meat were plopped in front of each of us and we got to work! We managed to make it through the meal without too much messiness.
  • Because we're so used to eating dinner at 10 pm (and had to adjust), we wound up with some free time. So we found a movie theater showing films in English and sat down to for the apocalyptic 2012. Midway through the movie, the lights suddenly came on. We thought it was a technical error — turns out it was just the intermission. It gave us a good opportunity to discuss what we'd seen so far.

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