The Only Man in Istanbul

I was the only man in Istanbul, though I did pick up a stray cat outside a mosque. As the sun rose, more and more people filtered out onto the streets. Before long there was a call to prayer, and they all looked toward Mecca.

I think that's when I realized this place had little left of Constantinople in it. Even the great church ordered built by Emperor Justinian to celebrate his reign--and his admittedly tenuous reconquest of the Italian peninsula--is a mosque now. True, it's also a museum, and the curators are kind enough to refer extensively to the church's Eastern Orthodox past on the placards.

But I'm hardly the one to ramble historical about a place; after all, I'm still on leave--indefinitely--from a master's program in history (specifically, in the history and philosophy of science, which is full of relevance here in Turkey, near the cradle of Arabian civilization.)

So, before I run out to wake up my travel-mates, both of whom are still sleeping soundly, I thought I might share a few moments from the trip out here. A word of warning: few of them are actually improbable. That will come later, no doubt, after I cross the border into the former Soviet Georgia tomorrow afternoon.

* * *
On the Vienna Airport:

The escalators start as you approach them. This kind of technique might save power in California, but some reason no one has implemented it over there. Many of the women in their late teens and early twenties have red and green hair; they remind me of my sister circa 1995, though she favored purple and a half-shaved look.

* * *
On the Turkish Economy:

I knew something was wrong when I tried to change $200 into Turkish money.
"What is Turkish money called?" I asked the green-haired woman behind the counter (still in Vienna Airport.)

She licked her lips. "Turkish money," she repeated, as she ran her fingers over the wad of bills I had handed her.

"Yes," I said more slowly, resisting the urge to speak Spanish--for some reason, in other countries, even in Japan, I always need to resist shifting to my mother tongue. I wish sometimes the Spaniards had colonized more of the world, to make travel easier for me. Darn that Papal Proclamation that gave them only lands west of Brazil.

"What is it called?" I asked her again, holding onto my English.

She shrugged. "Just Turkish money."

"Ah."

Now she dipped her hands into a large box beneath the cash register, kept them there for a few seconds. "I do not have enough," she said finally, sadly. "I have only adequate to change 120 dollars."

"Okay." I glanced toward the departure gate. "That's fine."

She counted the Turkish bills out loud. "One million, two million, three million, four..."

I took the first bills. Each had six zeroes on it. I blinked.

I suppose that in Turkey, as in Silicon Valley, it is easy to be a paper millionaire.

* * *
On Oil Magnates:

I used frequent flyer miles to upgrade to business class en route from Washington to Vienna. Since I took up DemiDec, writing, and working for half-hearted Japanese companies, instead of becoming an investment banker or a lawyer, I generally fly Priceline-style, in the back of a plane. This was a nice change.

However, in my backpacking outfit, tope hiking boots ill-matched with a pair of black nylon pants, I didn't quite look the part--most of my fellow business class passengers could have been on their way to meetings or black-tie receptions, as far as I could tell.

The man next to me was very personable, until he realized this was my first time in business class on Austrian. What tipped him off? He seemed willing to accept my outfit, but when I asked the flight attendant to help me with the personal video monitor, thus evincing my ignorance, he fell silent. No matter. In an hour I had already learned all I needed to know about the oil industry in Kazhakstan, and I turned my attention instead to the Legend of Bagger Vance.

"Do you have a lot of money to throw around?" he had asked me, soon after I first took my seat. I had shrugged--maybe if I had already converted to Turkish currency I would have been able to answer in the affirmative, and a friendship would have been born.

I noted as I left the plane six hours after Bagger Vance disappeared into the sunset and Matt Damon won his golf tournament, that the man had manged to go one-quarter of a day without saying another word--even to the flight attendants, who communicated with him in a back-and-forth series of grunts.

* * *
On Water Pipes

Nothing of note here, except that I've never smoked anything before, so this was a pleasant and fragrant first experience. I kept referring to it as the peace pipe, because we sampled it as we debated our itinerary and tried to find a compromise that would please us all.

As for me, I'm rooting for Georgia, a bit of Baku (in Azerbaijan), and a dash or two of serendipity along the way.

Well, that's all from me for now. I better go wake them up and see if the peace pipe left them with a positive hangover. Internet-wise, I'll probably write again from Tbilisi. I hear it's the culinary capital of the former Soviet Union, and I imagine it has computers, too.