Talkin Turkey

As I look through these pictures I realize that they say a lot about friends. Friends saved my trip to Turkey: meeting new people on a tour through the countryside, then getting together again in Istanbul. Or getting to spend time with Ozlem, who not only seems way happier now that she's in Turkey, but her overwhelming hospitality more than makes up for the constant barrage of Turkish scam artists.

My post two days ago was about my time in Istanbul. This is about a trip around the countryside in Turkey: the extensive Roman ruins at Ephesus; swimming in a thermal spa at Pamukkale with ruins under foot; sleeping in cave house in Goreme; and surveying 20,000 years of human artefacts with Ozlem at the the Anatolian Museum in Ankara. It was action packed week, what with two nights accomodation on a bus, but it was also more relaxed and friendly than Istanbul. If you're going to Turkey, don't forget to get out of Istanbul.

My last day in Istanbul I made the sketch above of the Blue Mosque. I gave the sketch to Cigdem, who works at the Hotel Sultanahmet, for all of her help to me. While writing and sketching in the park, Ibrahim, an elderly gentleman sat down next to me and struck up a conversation. For some reason the accursed carpet came up, and as we were talking about it, Emre, the man who sold me the carpet, showed up with his American girlfriend Maureen. I asked Maureen when they were getting married. This was news to her. Emre had never proposed to her, he only used this line as a sales pitch on me. Immediately after this Ibrahim suggested we go to the Grand Bazaar and change some dollars into turkish lira. He knows someone who sells lira at a great rate. I could exchange the dollars, then change them back at a regular currency exchange and make a neat profit. If Ibrahim thinks I don't smell a scam here, then he's even more naive than me. And why he felt he needed to add his own scam on top of the carpet story, well, that's just pathological.

I'm going to have to face the fact: my trip to Turkey may have been great because of friends, but it was also heavily scarred by the constant scheming.