The most pleasant of Atatürk's innovations, personally for me, is the new alphabet. The old one was Arabic script, after all! To understand it, one would have to make an immense effort. But this way, a couple of evenings with the Turkish Alphabet app for the iPhone, and everything is in order.
And indeed, the new Turkish alphabet is almost entirely phonetic – it's written as it's heard. And the best part is that almost all the sounds exist either in English or in Russian, meaning that mastering a pronunciation a Turk can understand is no trouble for someone who knows these languages. The app, basically, isn't even necessary, it's enough to know the correspondences of Turkish sounds to Russian ones, and that is on Wikipedia. If I had known in advance, I wouldn't have bought the app – but I'm lazy, and I didn't check. The funniest thing, by the way, is that Turkish has the letter “Ы”. Here it is: “ı”. It looks like i and l in writing, which constantly causes confusion. [more text=Read more]
Why am I writing all this? Because after packing the bikes, I started testing my magical communication skills on a cleaner – asked him where to put the boxes. Obviously, "asked" is a strong word. From the long explanations, I only understood tuvalet, where we successfully took the packaging. There was another cleaner there, to whom I said "Iyim?", which means "Is this okay?". He somehow wasn't thrilled by this, but since I wouldn't have been able to understand the answer anyway, we quickly bailed and finally climbed out of the airport into the light of day.
And a good thing too, because inside, many workers were walking around in respirators – clearly not for nothing. By the way, if you still believe in various myths about swine flu, like that it's transmitted by pigs, but you fiercely crave to expose the conspiracy theory and find out the truth, then you have a chance.
The runway at Atatürk Airport, by the way, is worse than in Latvia. On the other hand, from the plane we observed some rather nice high-rises, which you have the pleasure of beholding in the photos.
Turks, by the way, looked just like I imagined them, that is, like Turks. Not to say they're super handsome, but normal – not as repulsive as Indians. (I can't stand Indians). I think Sergey (the doctor) later said that he likes Turkish women, but not Turkish men. To which I replied that it would be weird if it were the other way around. (That's a gender-sex joke, if anyone missed it).
And so these very same Turkish baggage handlers were tossing our poor bisiklets with all their might, so much so that I even got sad. Bisiklet – that's not me cleverly mangling English (as usually happens), that's bicycle in Turkish. By the way, people here have been asking about transporting bikes by plane. It costs 20 Ls ($40) one way, the bike is considered oversized cargo, and you check it in separately – either onto the belt for such cargo, or onto a trolley. In Latvia it's a belt, and the box with the bike barely fits in there. In any case, you always need to find out from the airline in advance how things stand – with airBaltic, fortunately, there's a separate option with a separate price in the ticket booking form, so there's almost no need to worry.
Despite the negligent attitude of the airport proletariat, the bikes ultimately turned out to be fine. But riding this very same bisiklet around Istanbul is a dubious pleasure. The traffic in the city is brutal, it doesn't stop morning or night, and the air pollution matches. I have bad eyesight, my sense of smell and hearing compensate for it, and so from the exhaust stench and noise I somehow don't feel too great.
In case anyone happens to not be in the know, Istanbul was called Constantinople for quite some time, and was the capital of the Byzantine Empire (aka the Eastern Roman – here you'll already have to strain your brain and remember your school history course).
In Istanbul, we had three main goals – to buy gas for the stove, to find a campsite for our return, and to depart by ferry to Bandırma, which is located across the Marmara Sea.
We searched for gas and the campsite in parallel. We rode a bit along the embankment by the Marmara Sea. It's nice there, but the city is too close, just like on the beach in Chicago. On the bright side, there are people selling nuts and sunflower seeds walking around. Because of this, part of the embankment is a habitat for gopniks – the most natural kind, in tracksuits and with seeds. I didn't take any photos, so they wouldn't ask to make a phone call from my camera.
As for the gas, either there wasn't any at all – or they didn't understand us. On the first day, I still hadn't fully unlocked my innate abilities for Turkish, so I couldn't even figure out how to correctly say "gas for a camping stove". Later, though, it turned out that it wasn't so simple. And as for gasoline, which would also have worked for our multifuel stove, they wouldn't sell it to us. Why – remained just as much a mystery to us as the question about the gas. But the answers will only be in the next part.
We didn't find the campsite either. Or rather, we found something with the inscription "camping", but inside was something like our cıty center – that is, an entertainment complex. We also found some park, but the young security guard just blinked confusedly at my attempts to communicate in English, and in Turkish, it was me who couldn't understand him. In the end, he uttered the incomprehensible word düş, which supposedly means "dream". Why, I never understood. Navigator Igor (not the boss) had a hypothesis that he said "zero", but zero in Turkish is sıfır, that is, syfyr. Doesn't add up.
While we were riding, our first and second stops for technical reasons took place – first, Igor Shchukin's bike bag straps got caught in the spokes, then Navigator Igor's rear fender fell off. Fortunately, there were no casualties. In guidebooks, by the way, it's written everywhere that in Istanbul, at every turn, böreks are sold, which are flaky pastries with cottage cheese or cheese. We, however, only saw pretzels – and eventually we even tried them, albeit in another city. Also, it's funny how the tiles shift under the wheels on the embankment – just like in the game Prınce Of Persıa. Luckily, traps don't open up after that. But you do feel the antiquity.
In the next part, there will be something about scows full of mullet, and ferries full of passengers. And the promised answers to the riddle about ears popping and the sale of gas/gasoline, too.