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Istanbul, 1982
Istanbul, 1982
Dougburnett2003-11-22 10:56:21
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I was surprised how dark the streets got at night. There were very few streetlights and absolutely no glowing windows to illuminate the way. I knew we were lost and was beginning to worry that we weren't going to find our hotel at all.
We had lingered a little longer than we meant to at the Galata bridge. It was the old floating bridge, the one that sat on pontoons. There were a variety of cafes and restaurants below the roadway, next to the water. We had been drinking tea on a pleasant, starry evening. The sound of the water and the view of the boats moving slowing on the Bosporus had been seductive.
I was with a German couple I had met on the train from Greece. They told me they were medical students on holiday. "We are trying to get as far away as we can," Peter told me. He was tall and lanky and whenever he sat his long legs splayed out in front of him. Petra, his lovely companion, continued the theme, "We just want to ride, smoke and look out the window." They were burned out from the exams they had just finished.
The only thing I remember about the train ride itself was the border crossing. In the middle of the night we were awakened with a crash and a scrape as our coach was detached from the train and pushed into a no-mans-land between the borders. We sat there in the darkness and silence for what seemed like hours but was probably just minutes. The car was then jostled again as we were attached to the Turkish train. Next, we were pulled into a small station where we got out and went through the border formalities - it was probably 2 or 3 in the morning.
When we arrived in Istanbul, I followed Peter and Petra to a small hotel they knew. After cleaning up I visited some of Istanbul's best sights with them: Hagia Sophia, the giant domed church later converted to a mosque; Suleymaniye, probably the best mosque in all of Istanbul; and of course the Grand Bazaar.
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See photographs from:
Turkey Gallery
