Our flight from Munich to Istanbul was scheduled for mid-afternoon and, after a delay in trains (thanks to the transport strike), a delay in getting the dog to the sitter, and a whole bunch of other issues, we made it to the airport via a $70 taxi ride with no time to spare. I was a ball of nerves already but the fun was just beginning.
Our flight took off on time and we enjoyed incredible aerial views of the Alps as we crossed over Austria and headed East.
I had just settled into my iPod and was dozing off when suddenly I smelled smoke. I second guessed my senses for a couple of minutes before mentioning this to Scott and we soon realized that it was the unmistakable odor of cigarette smoke, which on most flights would get you bum-rushed, tackled to the ground, and subpeonaed to federal court in a split-second. The bizarre thing was that no one else on this 200-passenger flight, including the flight attendants, seemed the least bit concerned about this! Scott really played the situation down to curtail a complete panic attack that was building inside me and eventually the smell faded and I relaxed enough to doze off.
A flight attendant woke me up just prior to landing to ensure that my seat was returned to the "upright position"...because clearly an open flame in the bathroom is no problem but that 2 degree recline on the seat back is a serious safety hazard! As the plane descended, we were enjoying the twinkling lights of the Euro-Asian border and certainly weren't expecting to bounce down the runway like a basketball. But, alas, we did. The back wheels touched down and then the plane jolted forward onto the front wheel and we see-sawed down the runway for a horrifying 15-20 seconds or so. Most of the passengers were on the verge of full-blown panic by the time all three wheels settled onto the tarmac and we began to slow down. The whole plane began cheering and I began plotting a way to hitchhike back to Germany instead of stepping foot onto another Condor/Sun Express flight ever again.
We flew into a regional airport on the Asian side of the city and would have to take a bus from the airport to the ferry dock, then a ferry to the Old City, and then walk to the hostel itself, a route I had written in painstaking detail. We boarded the first bus and were soaking up the hustle and bustle of rush hour traffic in this strange city when..."BOOOOOM" (and when I say "boom", I mean the 'steel crashing into steel at 60 mph' kind of "boom"). Apparently, as our bus was cruising along in the center lane of a 3-lane highway, another city bus had decided to try to squeeze past us in the far right lane. The driver wedged himself between our bus and a huge rock outcrop and gunned it. He scraped the entire length of our bus and never slowed up! The other passengers on the bus just shook their heads and Scott and I sat there in stunned silence wondering what could possibly happen next.
The ferry ride itself was thankfully very uneventful, although don't think for a second that I hadn't done a mental check of the location of life preservers at this point in the trip. We sipped hot tea (a favorite Turkish pastime) and enjoyed crossing the Bosphorus Straits from Asia to Europe.
Once we arrived in the Old Town, I broke out my walking directions and we headed out on foot in search of our hostel. Easier said than done in a city that doesn't believe in street signs. My directions were completely useless and here we stood in the dark, with our packs on, looking obviously lost. We might as well have been waving flags above our heads that said, "We're lost tourists hoping to get mugged tonight!" Luckily, Turks are some of the kindest people I have ever encountered (granted most of them are trying to sell you something, but that's a blog for a different day), and we spent 3 hours snaking our way through the city, asking for directions in local shops, and then walking a few more minutes before asking someone else if we were still continuing in the correct direction. It was tedious and nerve-wracking but we finally found our hostel, which turned out to be in the most perfect location for sightseeing in the city.
We slept like babies that first night and woke to the Muslim call to prayer being broadcast across the city as the sun came up over the Sea of Marmara outside our bedroom window. At that point, I had convinced myself that Istanbul was going to have to be really extraordinary to make up for the chaos we encountered in getting there. No doubt, it made up for it and then some. More to come later, as I am currently nursing my least favorite Turkish souvenir: the flu. Guten Nacht!
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