Istanbul, oh Istanbul

I don't really know where to start. There are about 15Mio people living in Istanbul, so the size of the city just blows you away. You could say it is like several cities, each with their own character, like the historic Sultanahmet, old and run down housing areas, modern housing areas with lots of multi-storey appartment buildings, the lively downtown area of Taxim... And with Thracians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs and Ottomans having resided at this place at one time or other, the history of the area is extremly rich. One of the most striking facts for me however was the cultural diversity with respect to Islam and the strict separation between state affairs and religion. At universities, women are not allowed to wear the traditional headscarf (although there have been attempts to change that), whilst in some areas of Istanbul the majority of them wears at least the headscarf or is complete veiled in black, and at the same time you can watch women show their belly buttons in TV soap operas.

Part of the daily routine is the muzzein's call for prayer. They do this five times a day, at dawn, noon, afteroon, evening and night. To me the calls sound like some beautiful singing. They are broadcasted via speakers from the minarets. Every mosque seems to has their own muzzein, and given the density of mosques in cities you can often hear overlapping calls. But that still sounded nice to me. In fact, after attending one of the evening prayer sessions I was able to pick out "my" muzzein later on during the night time call when I was already far away and heard at least four or five of them "competing" in their singing skills.

Friday noon prayer is a special one. If you are a moslem man, you should turn up at least for this one, the other prayer times, so I understand, can be conducted at other places if you can't make it to your mosque. So, Friday noon it gets really busy in mosques, even the gigantic Blue Mosque filled completely.

This is a snap of the Basilica Cistern, dating back to the days of the Roman Empire. It was used to supply the city and the palace with water, rather than being some cool underground swimming pool (which was my initial thought given the pretty design of the pillars).

Majestic Aya Sophia, once upon a time it was a church but got converted into a mosque by the Ottomans. Nowadays it serves as a museum that you pay an addmission fee for (mosques on contrary are always addmission free).

Galata bridge across the so-called "Golden horn" water way, with Galata tower in the background. Fishing off the Galata bridge is a favourite past-time for many a man from Istanbul.

A visit to the archeological museum almost resulted in a brain overload. It is a collection of several indivual museums of which I tried to visit two. The amount of information and number of artefacts on display is just overwhelming. Given the rich history of the place it is no surprise I guess: whereever you start digging, you are likely to find some kind of artefact or other.

Side street in Sultanahmet, the historic quarter of Istanbul. Unlike on the main roads there were almost no tourists there, and no touts, a very welcome change. If you spend your time only around the main attractions, having to deal with touts can really get to you. Everyone wants to sell you something, and you are approached in a friendly and often even charming way that it is hard to just ignore and walk past the guys. A friendly "No, thank you, I am not interested" is usually not accepted but will prompt a tout to start over, asking where you are from, followed by some story about his relatives living in your country or he will come out with some compliments about your country of origin. They know so many lines in so many languages to lure you into their shops, you almost have to admire them for their skills.

A little bit further away from the touristy main streets this could be a common sight: plenty of men watching one man dig a hole or sweating with their pals playing backgammon or nine men's morris (deutsch: Muehle) on the sidewalk.

Turkey's national drink #1: Turkish tea, here being delivered to a bazaar salesman.

I had many a glass of tea here already, and with a single exception they have been as tiny as this one. The idea behind the small size is that you get to enjoy it hot, whilst the glass allows you to admire the colour ot the tea.

That was a must-take photo! Spices and teas sold at the bazaar. Unfortunately I cannot reproduce the nice and rich smell here...

The narrow streets in the old town area can be quite taxing for traffic...

...and in the bazaar it gets so narrow and busy that people often just resort to carts to deliver goods.

An hour or two after closing time, and after the garbage collectors have been through, the bazaar seems like a ghost-town...

...whilst at the same time it is getting busy in the Nargile cafes.

After 30 days on the road I treated myself to a hair cut at a Turkish baber. The whole treatment took 1.5 hours and included a haircut, shave, face mask, hair wash and a short head + face massage. For only 10Euros, I could get used to that treatment on a weakly basis!