November 19, 1991
Early AM departure on Air France for Istanbul, Turkey. We arrived Istanbul about 1:20PM on the European side. (The city, previously called Constantinople, is divided by the Marmara, Bosphorous and Black Sea with 1/2 of it being on the European continent and the other on the Asia side.) Staying at the Sheraton Hotel – overlooking the Sea of Marmara – absolutely beautiful! The language is Turkish and English. The money is Turkish Lira – $1 USD = a 5,000 Lira bill. One begins to feel rich with a 50,000 Lira bill in his hand (only $10 USD).
David goes to work and I took to the streets, being extra cautious as he had told me to be. I walk about 2 blocks from the Sheraton, am waiting for the stop light to change and realize a young man is staring at me. I walk a little farther and, yes, he was following me. I tried to lose him in the midst of all the people but did not succeed. He approached and began to make conversation. We talked for a moment and he helped me locate a small grocery store and walked me back to the hotel. He was intrigued by my “beautiful eye”??? and wanted to see me again but disappointingly left me at the hotel when I said “no”.
In the evening we were entertained by one of David’s distributors at a Russian restaurant, served lime Vodka, good egg rolls, salad, broiled fish, potatoes, Turkish wine, and dessert. Istanbul is a very old city, very crowded, with 10 million people. French people smoke a lot, but in Turkey it seems worse. Most of the people are very poor, selling all kinds of goods in the streets, and some are very rich. The middle class people are virtually non-existent.
A Lot of people arrive on the Asian side, especially from Yugoslavia, and take “shared taksi’s”, as they call them, (mini buses) to the European side to work. Istanbul receives approximately 5,000 immigrants per day. The seas dividing the city are the only passage Russia and some other countries have to the ocean. Large ships are continually passing thru.
The religion is Moslem and many, many Mosques are located throughout. Five times a day, from the towers of the Mosques a man chants a call to the people in summoning them for prayer. It can be heard all throughout the city. Some enter the Mosques for prayer. The woman are not usually allowed to pray beside the man. If they do, they must face in a backward direction as opposed to the man facing the front of the Mosque.
Most of the time the woman pray on the second floor. If a man touches a woman in the Mosque, he must wash himself in the water basins provided outside. The women wear the full dress with only exposing their face. They believe if a man looks at them with desire or lust, he will go to Hell and it would be her fault if she was not covered. (Definitely not a woman’s world here.) Heavy pollution this time of year because of the leather factories and heating with coal. Natural gas is slowly being brought to Istanbul from Russian.
Editor’s Notes:
Wow, she had a history lesson today, that was really interesting for me to read anyway. On an different topic, yesterday being September 11, I posted on my own blog what we were doing that day in 2001, and during that time we were traveling with David and Georgia to a show, so I posted several photos of Georgia yesterday on that blog if you were interested. Just see Where Were You on September 11, 2001 // 7 Years Later for details.
Tomorrow’s post is very short, then the following day Georgia goes into more detail about her trip.
