The world loves Guns ‘n Roses, but not as much as it loves Bon Jovi. It’s a universal truth. I write this as “It’s My Life” wails from my roommate’s cell phone he listens to while taking a shower.

This is not an isolated event, and it is not just because Spanish Bryan (pictured above, second from the right) was actually part of an exceedingly awesome Spanish hair band called “Crom XXL” that played for 11 years and got a good bit of media coverage. Everywhere I go there is universal love for Bon Jovi; on the radio, in karaoke bars, in regular bars, private parties, whatever. South America, Central/Eastern Europe, and Turkey. Don’t let me down, India.

Here’s your Flickr set.

Like Nas said when he was in Istanbul, “I never sleep ’cause sleep is the cousin of death.” This place has turned in to quite the nocturnal city for me. There is constantly action, activity, and a bunch of people out late. I don’t go to sleep before 3:00 in the morning here, and it’s often later than that.

So what am I doing with myself on these late nights in Istanbul? How about an easily digestible list and a bunch of pictures?

1. Accompany Franz to Photo Shoots

I’m working on a video project for a club here called Indigo. This means that I go there on Friday and Saturday nights with Franz and “help” him shoot video. Essentially this means that I get in for free, hang out, and try to point out things that would make good video. Here’s Indigo:

We also go to a place called “Dogz Star” on occasion. Despite it’s stupid name, it’s a cool place — even when the music is eardrum-splittingly loud metal or electro-goth DJ girl. Three levels with the top level playing cool old American rock and some genuinely different music acts on the stage downstairs. We saw a guy called called “Art Dictator” who played guitar over pre-recorded drum tracks, and screamed with misogynistic comics he drew projected on the wall behind him.

This is Art Dictator along with some other Dogz Star shots:

2. Buy Flowers for my Turkish Mom

Roommate Hatice’s mom came to stay with us for five days. She was incredible. An unstoppable Turkish force of delicious cooking and thorough cleaning. She actually arrived at our apartment with bags of pastries. She baked a cake and brought it. She cooked us dinner every night and served breakfast in the morning. She cleaned places in our apartment that I didn’t know existed. I thought to buy her some flowers and Bryan told me how to say, “I love you, Mom” in Turkish, though it certainly doesn’t compensate for her awesomeness.

This is her and Hatice along with some examples of the delicious:

3. Enjoy my membership in the Spanish-American City Exploration Club

We’ve currently only got two members in the SACEC, but it works out well. Bryan and I go all over the place here. An architect, he’s like a kid in a candy store at construction sites or places with interesting architecture. Dude can talk serious shop when it comes to structures.

One day, we went to have tea during an open gallery at a contemporary art organization that is only two blocks from our apartment. The current gallery installation is a kitchen. Just a kitchen. It looks like a kitchen and works like a kitchen. It has tea. But this kitchen is special because it’s art. …. Eh.

After the disappointing art and uncomfortable conversation with the girls working at the gallery, we decided to just get on the Metro and take it to the end of the line. Fun and city exploration ensued. We do something like this every few days. We dubbed our first outing “Leventate!” (sorta like “levantate” en espanol) thanks to the name of the last Metro stop, Levent.

The SACEC also enjoys evenings on the town on weekends:

4. Listen to the Sounds of the Street Sellers

People are always walking down the streets with carts or baskets of stuff. Usually food, but occasionally random junk. They yell out whatever it is they’re selling and you just yell back at them from your window if you want them to stop. My favorite, though, are the gas trucks from the gas company Aygaz. They play a 4 second jingle on every block with a female voice that sings, “Ayyyygaz!” to announce their presence in case you need a new tank of gas for your stove. America has musical ice cream trucks, Turkey has musical gas trucks.

5. Hang Out with the Roommates

This takes various forms, but involves things like playing games, watching Hatice (who is truly the Turkish version of my sister) try on outfits and giving her feedback, taking in stray cats and then kicking them out upon Bryan’s allergic reactions, and home improvement tasks (with or without ninja garb):

6. Miss Colombia

Colombia remains tops for me on my trip. As my friend Steve put it, “Some places just fit.” It was just a place on a map until I’d been and now care about people that live there.

Flipping through the headlines on CNN yesterday, I got goosebumps when I read about a bomb blowing up in an area I used to hang out in Bogota and killing two people, one of them a 25 year-old girl. (The bomb was actually placed inside an ATM that I had personally used while in Bogota.) Despite the fact that the odds were minuscule that Mafe (pictured below in a photo taken a few blocks from where the bomb went off) was affected, I didn’t really feel at ease until I heard heard from her.

It’s interesting to reflect on the way I felt about headlines like this before I left and after visiting Colombia. Before leaving, headlines of this sort almost elicited a Devil-may-care laugh from me. That changes when you’ve got friends in a place and remember what it looks like because you actually walked around there. … And used the damned Citibank ATM that the FARC blew up.

… That’s all for now, y’all!

Here the Flickr set link again. I added a picture of Fantom Bar in the previous post, too, for the curious.

Or: How I drank the most expensive beer of my life and pissed off a Turkish prostitute.

The prostitute threw her leg up on some sort of platform behind the bar in a huff, perhaps to suggest one last opportunity at the goods before she summarily kicked us out of the bar. “Go,” she ordered. Her English is absolutely awful, but it was the most comprehensible thing she said the entire night. “No drink, you go.”

We went. With the place actually starting to fill up and the bouncer obviously eyeing us angrily, it seemed prudent.

That was about 20 minutes after I had an actual, physical tug-of-war fight with her over a $13 plate of pistachios. I will repeat that: a thirteen dollar plate of pistachios. That I managed to muscle away from an angry Turkish prostitute. A plate sparsely covered with a single layer of pistachios, that I quickly grabbed and held on to when she tried to steal it away from me. A vain attempt to assert control over a situation by a man who had long since been bent over and taken to the cleaners.

Let’s go back for a minute first, though…

“That place has to be a whore house.”

That’s what my Spanish roommate, Bryan, said as we walked past Fantom Bar on last Wednesday night. It’s only 2 blocks from our apartment on a dark street. The exterior of the place is also dark. Red lights, red bricks, no windows.

Against Bryan’s wishes, we actually walked in on that Wednesday night after a couple beers at a restaurant full of 50 year-old+ Turkish men. I wanted to see what it looked like on the inside. There were a couple guys inside and all women working behind the counter — definitely not Turkish standard operating procedure. I asked how much a beer was and they said 10 Lira — about $7.50. It was too rich for our blood, so we left. It was intriguing, though. What’s the point of this place?

The first thing I did when I got home was Google it. The search lead me to find out that Fantom Bar and the two other bars like it on our street (Bonjour and Golden Gate) are called pavyons. The internet told me that a pavyon is a seedy Turkish bar with a scantily-dressed all female staff that caters to strictly male clientele. The girls sit around, possibly dance, and you can buy them drinks — assumably for the privilege of their company. However, it did not give much overall detail, nor did it explicitly say if pavyons are actually whorehouses or not. How divey is divey? Are these places just for hanging out? Buying women? What’s the point?

The internet had failed me. Actual research was in order. And I couldn’t wait: this had awesome written all over it. Mysterious dive bars playing Turkish pop music. Old Turkish dudes likely chocked full of good stories sitting around smoking cigarettes and nursing expensive beers. The seedy underbelly of Turkish nightlife awaited mere blocks from my flat!

Bryan was not convinced.

Three days later, after a wrench got thrown in my plans on Saturday night, I came back home to find Bryan in his pajamas; comfortably sitting at his laptop and relaxing. I grinned at him. “Okay, Bryan. This is it. It’s Fantom Bar night.” I declared.

Bryan clearly had little interest in the endeavor. “Man, I don’t know. I’m all relaxed. I don’t want to go there.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to come. I can go by myself. I only want to have one beer there just to see what this place is actually like. We’re not staying. We’re certainly not paying for any ‘services,’ if they even exist. I just gotta know. It should at least be funny.”

He grumbled. “Just one beer,” I goaded.

“Fine. I’m only going because you shouldn’t be going there by yourself.”

Turns out it was a damn good thing he came with me – I might have ended up washing dishes (or something worse) otherwise. We went in thinking we’d get out for 20 Lira for two beers; expensive, but worth it for some answers and laughs. That, however, is not how it went. I even brought 60 Lira to be safe — about $40 and WAY more than my dwindling daily budget allows for food and drink.

“Don’t buy drinks for the girls,” he said to me as we left our flat.

“Oh, don’t worry. Absolutely not.” I said confidently.

The red door loomed. We waited for the door guy to come back across the street to the entrance and open the door for us.

In we went.

The only room we could see is small. There are two bars, red lights, and thick clouds of cigarette smoke in the air. Stairs in the back lead up to the a second story. The DJ stands next to the door with a CD player and an electric keyboard in front of him. A couple guys that work for the bar mill around in nice pants and dress shirts. The smaller of the two bars had three or four old guys sitting at it with plates of food and drinks in front of them and five women behind the bar. The larger bar had two other women behind it. We walked about six feet and sat down at the corner of the smaller bar.

The range of women working was all over the map. Some were older and fat, most were average, and some were cute-ish. It was in line with the 30-second walk-in preview we’d seen on Wednesday night. Except for one.

She was silly hot. A beautiful face and curvy body to match. Prostitute-suggestingly tight black top and black shorts. Playful, sultry smile — when she wasn’t pissed off, at least. Yadda, yadda. I glanced wide-eyed at Bryan and mouthed, “Good grief.”

Within ten seconds of sitting down, the hot one was leaning over the bar directly in front of me making eyes and introductions in some of the worst English I’ve experienced on my trip. We’re still not sure what her name is; she definitely said it, but she is almost impossible to understand.

“You, Turkey,” she stated, pointing at herself. Then pointing at me, she asked, “You?”

This took me until much later in the confusing conversation to figure out. When she meant to say “I,” she would say “you.” She also said “you” when she actually meant “you.” It was a muddled mess and the only way to figure out who she was referring to was to look at where she was pointing.

“America,” I answered.

“AMERICA!” With dollar signs in her eyes, she giggled and got closer, leaning further over the bar. “I will not be had!” I thought naively. We would get our beers, chill for a bit, get some answers, and that would be it.

We ordered two beers, which were brought quickly. They put a plate of pistachios next to us. Bryan immediately said, “Don’t eat the nuts. We’ll surely have to pay for those, too.” Some girl was attempting communication with him (he always initially gets mistaken for Turkish), but she spoke no English and his Turkish is minimal at best. In the mean time, the hot one was flirting with me like it was, well, her job.

They kept asking us for drinks, as expected. We kept saying no. 20 Lira, tops. Stick to the plan. Attempts at conversation by hottie continued. Her average sentence length was two words. Typical questions were thing things like “You dance?” “You from?” “You hotel?” “You home?” Several times she stood up and gestured to her body asking, “Turkish girl good?” or “America girl good?” A new record! 3 words in a sentence! If you didn’t think broken, pre-K retard English could actually be flirty and sexy, you should probably check this place out. She manages.

Eventually, holding an imaginary glass in her hands, she pretended to clink my beer saying, “Cheers!” Not sure by this point what to talk about that she could actually understand, I turned to an old stand-by: language. You can keep a conversation going for hours asking, “…And how do I say XYZ in your language?” Repeat answer, laugh at mispronunciation, discuss, rinse, repeat. Simple. Thus, I asked her, “How do you say ‘Cheers’ in Turkish?”

“Cheers?” she asked.

“Yes. How – to – say – ‘cheers’?” I slowly repeated.

Somehow, some part of this meant that I was buying her a beer. I attempted to say “no,” but with a flash of her hand, a cold glass of beer was brought in front of her. Great.

If she was flirty before, she really turned it on now that I had “agreed” to buy her a beer. Her face was typically touching mine as she leaned impossibly further over the bar and blathered utter gibberish in my ear. She would touch my hand or my arm. Bryan tells me I looked mostly cool and relaxed, but I felt awkward.

Bryan’s mute girl wanted a beer, too, but Bryan had smartly sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. The international “Fuck off, I’m not buying you a beer” stance. I could feel her staring at me. She came over and asked for a drink. I kept saying no. Turns out Bryan, who had brought zero Lira with him, had told her “Ask Nathan; he’s the money man!” Bastard. Not aware of this, I tried to deflect her back to Bryan. She eventually left.

By this point, “my” girl was standing up on a bar stool behind the bar, holding on to the glass rack for stability, and dancing. In these situations, my rasied-by-mom Indiana upbringing typically goes on auto-pilot and I make it a point to only look at a girl’s eyes. I know I’m supposed to be ogling her tatas, but even in a damn whorehouse, I’m self conscious about being that guy. Maybe I look cooler for it? Doubtful. Probably just gay.

Hot girl kept cheersing me – an obvious “drink faster, whiteboy” tactic. I tried to take baby sips of my beer. She said again, “You hotel? You home?”

“What?”

“You hotel?”

“No. I’m not staying in a hotel. I live near here.”

She didn’t get it. Vocab was too advanced. She plowed unflinchingly forward, adding a word. “You, me, home.”

Ah-ha! There we have it. Finally. The proposition. “No, no,” I said, attempting a friendly smile. Bryan helpfully chimed in, adding, “He doesn’t pay for it.”

“You, me, home!”

She threw back the rest of her beer, took the last cigarette without asking, and I looked at her a moment then spoke with Bryan in Spanish about the situation, ignoring her. She kept touching my arm and eating the pistachios. There went the plan to avoid paying for them by not eating them.

“You, me, home!”

“No, I’m not taking you home.”

“You drink,” she said, pointing at herself, “You drink, then home. One drink. Then fuck. Home.”

This went on for a bit. I think she was implying that she was mine for the price of buying her one more drink. Riiiiight. Dangle that carrot, girl. I believed her as far as I could throw her.

“No. No. Not gonna happen.”

“No? No turkish girl good?”

Attempting conversation with her was pointless. More Spanish talking with Bryan. She interjected again, this time pointing at me, “You drink?”

Bryan told me how to say “no money” in Turkish again, which I repeated to her, “Para yok.”

What a difference two words make. She changed from a warm and sensual face to one that read like, “How dare you waste my time, you lowlife cheap son of a bitch.”

She walked away and stopped looking at us. Our drinks were finished by this point. Within a few minutes, she came back and forcefully slapped the bill down on the bar in front of me saying, “Money.”

It was 80 Lira. Holy shit. That’s a bit under $60 for three beers and one plate of pistachios. That’s about a fifth of what I’m paying for rent for an entire month. Our beers were 15, her’s was 30. The damn pistachios that we had not eaten were 20. With a now dwindling trip budget, it stung.

I had only brought 60 Lira with me and Bryan had no money. “It’s 80, man. I don’t have this much money. Shit.”

Fortunately, our apartment is literally two blocks from Fantom Bar. Bryan went home to get money while I did my best to hold down a fort that was getting increasingly cold. The bouncers eyed me. The girl only spoke with me to say the word “Money!” or ask about Bryan, “He where?”

While I waited for Bryan to return from what seemed like an impossibly long walk home, I tried my best to look amiable and relaxed. A big diesel dyke-looking woman, the only female patron in the bar, had sat down in the seat next to me and she started talking to me in slightly less deplorable English.

Pleasantries were exchanged with the Diesel Dyke and then, at length, I understood that she was trying to ask me what I was doing in this place. (Good question.) Why hadn’t I told the hot girl my name? (I had – we just can’t talk.) I tried to explain simply that I was just curious to see the place. Not here for sex. Upon asking what she was doing at the bar, she told me that one of the girls working is “her girl.” I don’t know if that means she is the girl’s pimp or that the girl is her girlfriend, or some combination of both, but I thought it best to not ask for further details, smile, nod, and say, “Wow! Very nice!”

Wondering what the hell was taking Bryan so long, I ate a pistachio and wished the hot girl had not smoked my last cigarette. The Turkish guy at the end of the bar who had been yelling “Viva Espana!” earlier starting gesturing to the pistachios. “Oh, sure!” I said, offering him the plate of pistachios. Hot girl saw this.

He took some pistachios and I set the plate back down in front of me. Hot girl came back and angrily said something about the pistachios and then said, “Money!” again.

“Just wait. He will come back.”

She gave some angry retort in Turkish and then made for my $13 plate of pistachios. I acted fast, grabbing the other side of the plate. A test of wills ensued as we pulled harder and harder on the plate of pistachios.

“Hey! These are 20 Lira!” I yelled at her. She yelled something back in Turkish.

With one final pull, I yanked the plate away from her, pointed at the bill and set them back down in front of me. With sharp, angry movements, she grabbed a handful of my pistachios from the top of the plate and threw them directly in the trash can. Viva Espana Guy and Diesel Dyke laughed.

Finally, Bryan returned with money and a pack of cigarettes he’d bought to get change. “Here,” he said, offering a cigarette. “Thanks.” I felt like Walter in The Big Lebowski. “I’m staying. I’m finishing my coffee. Enjoying my coffee.”

We paid the prostitute her 80 Lira and sat there as I told him what happened while he was gone. We lit another cigarette and sat at the bar, ordering nothing. More old Turkish men were starting to come in.

I assumed the plate of pistachios was the last straw with the prostitute, but then she surprised me when she asked, “You phone?” She wanted my phone number after the pistachio-tossing hissy fit? Really? I didn’t have a phone, so I said, “No. Email?” “Yes,” she replied, handing me a pen. Wonders never cease at Fantom Bar. The bouncer was right there the whole time eying me suspiciously as I was writing my email address for a prostitute. Maybe he thought we were trying to make a deal outside of the system. Sorry, buddy, this one is only out of sheer morbid curiosity and probably a bad idea to begin with.

Bryan and I decided to test the system; sit there and smoke until they made us leave. The hell with ‘em all. It didn’t take long.

We talked to the door guy on the way out for a bit – nice guy – then went home, laughed, and reflected.

In the end, I’m still not one-hundred percent sure if it’s a whorehouse or not, 99% sure, but under no circumstances am I willing to actually test the limits to find out. Nor do I have the cash or inclination to go to the other ones for more research. Speaking Turkish is clearly a prerequisite for not getting screwed in a place like that.

Ultimately, my part was 45 dollars for two beers — one of which I did not order or drink — and some bar nuts, which I also did not order or eat.

The opportunity to fight with a Turkish prostitute over a plate of pistachios? Priceless.

Editor’s Note: Due to a good bit of socializing and the lack of a quiet place to work at the hostel, I’m a bit tardy in posting an update. Apologies. Moving on, here’s the lovely Flickr gallery.

This is an old fat Turkish guy on my street in Istanbul who cooks and sells meat sandwiches out of the back of a minibus from about 10:00 at night until 4 or 5:00 in the morning. Spanish Bryan is on the right.

The bus never moves during the day, the grill sits in the back, and it’s doubtful that he pays any taxes for the “restaurant.” When it’s time to cook, he just smiles, opens the trunk, and cooks. Half the grill smoke goes out of the van. He’s called a köfteçi, though I’m not sure what his name is. My roommate, Bryan, assures me he will always be there with grill at the ready when I come home late.

We talked to him last night and he said he lived in Oregon for a while until he had to leave the country because he got in to a knife fight and cut some guy up real bad. The cops were after him and he fled back to Turkey. He is both useful and awesome.

New Apartment!

I’ve just moved into an apartment in Istanbul with a Spanish architect named Bryan, a Turkish reggae DJ and English teacher named Hatice, and an American named Rebecca who works in some manner of human rights something-or-other.

It’s on the top floor of a building in an area called Osmanbey. My room is small, but the living room is great and huge and the roommates are cool. It’s gonna be good. There’s even a washing machine! And floral wallpaper to go with my pink room.

Bryan and I tried to go out to a bar last night in the area (he hadn’t really been out around here before) and found that our street is chocked full of these Turkish dive bars called “pavyons.” They have all-female staff and all-male patronage. We’re not sure if they’re whore-houses yet or not (they certainly look that way, but the internet implies otherwise), but I have faith that they will be their own blog entry in the future after some more research. Stay tuned…

The Kids are Alright.

That’s Bryan on the left and Hatice is below. We’re making a table for the apartment out of an architect’s table that Bryan got from a roving junk-seller guy in the street outside the apartment for five dollars. We’re also painting the fridge red. I might help Brian with an architecture contest.

What about Istanbul, though?

I spent the first couple days in Istanbul walking around to the tourist must-sees. It’s incredibly beautiful and energetic here. Certainly feels different than Central/Eastern Europe. The mosques play the call to prayer thing on loud speakers 5 times a day. There was a prayer spire (that is not what they’re called. Minaret maybe?) right next to the hostel that did it’s best to derail my afternoon naps. Probably what I get for being an infidel. That’s the wake-up spire on the right. Here are some pictures, featuring some of the aforementioned F-ing delicious food:

Plenty more to see in the Flickr set.

The last week has been a whirlwind of apartment searching, job searching, and international out-hanngery at the hostel and various places around town. The World House Istanbul hostel was a lot of fun. The guys working there, including Turkish Joe Monical (pictured), were quite cool.

The German Luke Skywalker Photographer

I met a 24 year-old German photographer named Franz von Bodelschwingh who has lived in Istanbul for the last year. Not only does he have arguably the best last name I’ve ever heard AND look remotely like Luke Skywalker, but he is the weekend staff photographer at a posh club called Indigo. We’re going to make a video together to play on the screens in the club, featuring a logo animation. Franz has a Canon 5D Mark II, which shoots amazing HD video.

My job tonight is to go with Franz to the club and help him shoot the video that we’ll use. So I get to go to an expensive Turkish club for free and shoot video of cute Turkish girls dancing all while gleaning inspiration for my animation from the club atmosphere. Better leave the New Balances at home and put on the Chucks. Way hipper.

The Iranian Connection

I met Amir at the hostel. That’s him on the left side of the picture with a German dude form the hostel. He is from Tehran, Iran. Nice guy. The best part of meeting Amir is that he opened my eyes to the possibility of potential overland travel to India via Iran and Pakistan. While not exactly the route that the State Department would suggest I take, it sounds really cool. Visa requirements to get in to Iran appear a bit prohibitive, though. Apparently I’d need to travel as part of a tour group through the country and the tours are quite expensive. We’ll see how it shakes out, though it seems way less scary and dangerous than CNN has led me to believe.

Psy-Trance Night

I met a crazy and quirky Turkish girl at the hostel who makes animal sounds during normal conversation and invited me to with her to a “Psychadelic Trance” party. She said she knows a bunch of people that work in production here that I could meet at the party. Done and done.

I misunderstood her and thought that the party was at someone’s house. After a confusingly cryptic phone call to her, I managed to get the name of the event: The Mind Manifest Project. I was able to Google it and figure out that it was at a club on Taksim’s main drag – not in a house. This is the damn flier for it:

I went and it was lame. Really expensive drinks, not too many people, and mm-tss-mm-tss trance music playing out of an admittedly killer sound system.

The most memorable part of Psy-Trance Disappointment Night, as it is now known, was meeting some Turkish dude wearing sunglasses inside the club that insisted I get on the floor and D-A-N-C-E. “Hey, man! Come on! Let’s dance!” Did he want to dance with me? Or did he just want me to dance?

“Okay, hold on. Let me just enjoy my beer for a bit, okay?”

“Okay! I’ll be right out there!” he gestured excitedly at sparsely populated dance floor.

Out he goes. He dances like there is no tomorrow. Flailing his limbs in a psuedo-cool raveboy flair, a wide swath forms around him.

I eventually find Animal Sound girl who is excited to see me. We talk for a little bit, and she introduces me to some of her Turkish friends. They are aloof and the place is too damn loud to talk anyway.

“Oh well,” I think. I continue milling about, talking to Animal Sound Girl on and off. I was good at milling before I left on a year long trip alone. After 7 months, I’m an expert.

Sunglass Raveboy comes back. “Hey! MAN! You aren’t dancing!”

“Yeah, I know, I’m talking to my friend here,” I say as I gesture to where Animal Sound Girl is, thankful for her presence.

“What? Who?” he shouts back at me.

I turn to look at Animal Sound Girl, but she is gone. I am abandoned with this nut.

Without missing a beat, he continues, screaming over the bone-thumping trance, “So are we gonna meet some CHICKS tonight?!?”

“I don’t see why not,” I reply non-challantly. Where the hell did that come from? At least he didn’t want to dance with me.

“Yeah! We need two chicks! We’re gonna meet them here! Then we take them home!”

The club had no more than 50 people in it. Lots of empty space. How could this plan possibly fail? Meet them, take them home. Bag ‘em, tag ‘em. About like buying groceries. “Sounds fail-proof to me.”

“Yeah!” he continues without catching the obvious sarcasm.

“Do you have a place we can take them to?”

“Nope. I live in an 8 person dorm room. Do you?”

“No, man! Dammit! This sucks! I think we’re going to need a hotel! Do you have money for a hotel?”

“Nope. You’d better find us girls with their own apartment, okay?” I tell him, talking to a child.

“Okay! Hey, look, you gotta start dancing, though!” Back off he flew to his place in the middle of the dance floor.

Fifteen thumping minutes of milling and random conversations later, he returns. “DUDE! Come here! Meet your GIRL!” I look over to where he’s pointing and, sure enough, there are two women there looking at us. There’s a guy standing behind them. All three look annoyed.

As we approach them, he goes to his girl and starts talking to her. I made cursory introductions with “my girl.” It is obvious this plan was doomed before Raveboy even started talking to these poor girls. They have zero interest in talking to Raveboy or me, just by mere association with him. I wish I could have warned them.

Raveboy is a goddamn freight train of enthusiasm. He’s not unattractive, either, but it’s no use. The pooch has long been screwed. I walked away, leaving Raveboy and his three Turkish victims to simmer for a bit. I spent the rest of the night talking and dancing “with” (trance dancing really doesn’t involve much touching or interaction with your partner, though you might look at each other occasionally) a spacey raver girl who calls herself “Crystal.” I felt stupid.

Animal Sound Girl was all over the place. “A fart in a skillet,” as my old boss would say. Her friends didn’t give a shit about me and she was just confusing. Raveboy was annoying and persistent. The drinks were more expensive than back home. Finally, the camel’s back was broken when a trance version of the Imperial Death March song from Star Wars came on. I left.

Upon return to the hostel, things immediately perked up. There was a huge group of French exchange students hanging out (see below), including a Mexican and a Colombian. The rest of the night was fun.

The Turkish Connection and my first steps in Asia

I met Meral indirectly through Jacqui at the hostel. Jacqui met French-Canadian professional pupeteer Anne and her brother at some other hostel while traveling in Turkey. Anne met Meral through Couchsurfing. Anne was going to spend the night at Merals, Jacqui was meeting up with them, and I was tagging along for a night out on the Asian side of Istanbul because I had nothing better to do. These are the girls, Jacqui, Anne, and Meral:

Turned in to a great night! Meral let all four of us crash at her apartment after we went to some cool bars in the Moda neighborhood. I challenged Meral to a sunflower seed-eating speed contest that was ridiculously lop-sided. She completely spanked me. I think I was on my second or third sunflower seed when she was finished her tenth. Jacqui apparently has video of it.

Moral? The Turks are friendly and giving. Don’t try to out eat them on sunflower seeds.

Once again, here’s the Flickr set! Enjoy! Gotta jet. I’m off to Franz von Bodelschwingh’s club for booty-shaking and video-making.

I am in Istanbul and I love it.  Enchanting. Charming. Seductive?  Awesome, at least, and chocked full of delicious in the food department.

I’m looking for an apartment and have lots of pictures and stories, but let’s start with a video, shall we?

This is footage shot on the trusty Canon Powershot from a day of walking around in Istanbul (and a bit in the plane from Bucharest).  After a bit of fighting against it, I finally crumbled and picked the song.  Feels almost obligatory. Enjoy!

A Walk Around Istanbul (not Constantinople) from Nathan Shipley on Vimeo.