Sunday, September 20, 2009
Somehow, I can't keep up with writing… I guess I'll have to add my little sightseeing tour later. But for now, it's Bayram! :-) Also known as the Sugar Feast. You know, the end of the fasting month and all that… Murat went home to his family for the occasion, so I have the whole house to myself! Yeah… how boring.
But I don’t think religious customs and holidays are celebrated that intensely here anyway. So far, I’ve only met one person who actually fasts (a Muslim Erasmus student from the U.S.), and even the host family I visited (very nice, but I probably won’t move in with them) ate cake and drank tea with me. The only thing that really sets today apart from other days is that many shops are closed, and traffic is much more relaxed. The latter is quite an experience! Everything that happens on the streets of Istanbul makes me a little uneasy, and I’m always relieved when I actually arrive where I wanted to go.
But sitting on the bus earlier, I had the feeling that everyone was driving a bit slower than usual, and people seemed calm and content… :-)
Anyway, in a little while, I’ll visit a Turkish friend—maybe he can enlighten me about what this day is really about.
While I’m writing this, it has started raining quite heavily… So actually, I can take the chance to quickly talk about my city explorations so far. At some point last week (I can’t keep track of what happened when anymore), I met up with an Erasmus student. Our plan was: All you can see! We wanted to visit as many sights as possible.
In the end, we only made it to the Grand Bazaar. :D We had decided to walk there from the city center, but, well… we underestimated the distances a bit. But the bazaar itself was really nice! Shockingly nice, actually—I had imagined it to be much scruffier. I even bought myself a little wallet, which I heroically bargained down from 3 to 2.50 lira! I think I need to practice that a bit more…
The rest of the day, we just strolled around, and in the evening, we took the ferry back home. I think it’ll take forever before I’ve seen everything here…
