I even saw a veiled woman using an iPhone

At the end of what I think is Bill Bryson's book about traveling in Europe--a book which, if nothing else, confirms that Bill Bryson should not write about traveling in Europe--he stands in Istanbul, on the European side, looking out at Asia. This, he says, would be too much: another continent, another trip; another chance to be trapped in his lower-middlebrow skull like you're in that Faulkner novel. Dude, I found myself thinking: it's a twenty-minute ferry. In real-world terms, not "going to Asia" while in Istanbul is like standing on one side of the Cuyahoga River and refusing to visit the rest of Cleveland. It's, like, right over the water. And it takes, I don't know, fifty yards or so before men in fezzes start screaming in Arabic while kidnapping your spouse over a meal of grilled rat testicle. You could have looked.

So, yeah. Istanbul.

Through the wonder of the Internet, I'm currently writing from a bus (and such a bus) driving along the Bosphorus, heading (if you like) back to that exotic continent that so mystified our Bill. I've had the usual range of travel-related freakouts; the man in the bowtie has distributed snack wave one. It looks like I'm going to make it back to Ankara, unless the lady who was screaming about not having a ticket is secretly clinging to the bus next to me, waiting to pounce. She looked fierce.

I've never really seen a city like Istanbul before. I'm pretty sure that, at this point, even writing that it's impossible to write about the city without lapsing into cliche is itself a cliche. (I'm hoping to start this new level of meta-cliche.) But, yes, it was extraordinary. The reason for the cliches in this case is, I think, the intoxicating-ness of the experience: everyone goes and is stunned by various things. So I'm happy to just be swept along by the cliches: old and new, East and West, great-tasting and less-filling. Cats and dogs, living together.

In fact, there are cats and dogs everywhere, some maintained by various universities, others by the city or by local residents. One can reach down and pet a small, furry animal every few steps, which is something I think more major world cities (along with malls and dentists' offices) need. The above is not a posed shot--I'm not entirely sure how you pose cats, really--but simply noon-hour at Boğaziçi University during a break. If I need to be reincarnated as an outdoor animal, I would like to put in a request now to be one of their dogs, who loll about in immense satisfaction during the day and (I am told) run about at night like yelping lunatics. There are worse lives. After a few days, you find yourself making googly noises towards, say, the six kittens who live in a railway terminal, maintained by the staff member who informs you that they are all siblings. I do not know how the entire population of Istanbul doesn't become a cat lady.

As you have gathered from earlier statements about walls, I tend to have sad geek orgasms when exposed to historical sites. And Istanbul is, it seems, one big historical site, to the point where all manner of buildings have historical columns sitting outside of them, not interesting enough to be included in the main exhibits. All of the umpteen major historical empires that the city housed are well-represented. I'm feeling truly guilty about not carrying on in Latin and Greek now, although actually finishing my PhD is a sort of consolation. But, there but for laziness and being rubbish at languages, that could be me sight-translating Greek inscriptions into blazing Turkish, making pursed-lip sounds about how difficult it is to get the nuances right. (In this scenario, I am wearing a beret.)

There is a hallway in the archaeological museum that lets you walk through all of the seven waves of habitation of the actual city of Troy: I may now say that I have seen Trojan pots.

But I'm not the only person with a formulaic interest in the national past! Turkey itself seems to be going through a phase of national self-confidence, parts of which seem to be centered on the Ottoman culture that preceded modern Turkey. Since Istanbul was the Ottoman capital, much of this Ottoman-fancying is in evidence. Two major city attractions, Topkapı Palace and the Basilica Cistern, have photo booths set up where you can dress yourself, or your entire family, as a variety of sultans, complete with all of the orientalizing paraphernalia a boy could wish for. (Alas, I did not avail myself of this opportunity, on the off chance that I ever want to appear in Postcolonial Studies.)

I walked around the city for five days slack-jawed and staggered, like a mid-century Mississippi yokel who has just wrapped his mind around plumbing. I will omit descriptions of the Hagia Sophia here only because I have nothing particularly insightful to say about it, other than the fact that it's stunning and that you should probably go to it and that, in my hideous home city of London, Ontario, we think Eldon House (Google it!) is impressive.

The above? An Ottoman footstool. 

I also ate at a Krispy Kreme--as one does as a larger-assed North American--for the first time since living in Houston. It was a Krispy Kreme, down to that feeling that you could eat your weight in overprocessed flour and not be satisfied. (I am disinclined towards religious controversy, but every time I imagine a god the experience of whom is an endless, unquenching delight, I think of Krispy Kreme.)  I urge all Americans feeling homesick while living in Turkey to get themselves, post-haste, to Bağdat Caddesi, where you can find all of the brands that were the reason you left America in the first place. You can hear the call to prayer while sitting in a Caribou Coffee, as in some Michelle Bachman fantasy of St. Paul under Afghani occupation. You can purchase a seven-hundred lire hat (too much to pay for a hat USD) from salespeople cloned from the same awful people who work at the Chicago Neimann-Marcus. They even have a Muji! I had not thought that Istanbul would be a hideous international brand destination, yet there were velour jumpsuits on surgeried busts and disciplined abs a-plenty. 

Do any of you know how to write about taking a ferry over the Bosphorus without sounding like a bad travel magazine? Please write to me, care of this blog.

No account of a Strange Foreign City would be complete without an account of street food, so I will say that I had the best meatball sandwich of my life--"epiphanic" would not be too strong a description--cooked over a flame and sold by the meatball sandwich guy outside of the Turkish Archaeological Museum. I am not particularly inclined to use the word "sonnet-like" to describe a sandwich, but will do so now, since what I ate was essentially perfect. I even ate it, along with my Native Informant and life-long Istanbul resident friend Başak, while sitting in a thronged city park watching residents of the city go by. (You may, if you wish, hear the exotic oriental instrument of your choice playing while you read that ş in her name. I'm sure she won't mind.) 

A rest stop coming up: again the earthly paradise of techno and simit. More soon.