D26& 27 He istanbul

1/7,8 Sunny, the sun shined bright!!!
Istanbul

Deniz became the most lovable Turkish guy in the world. He found me a place to stay, fed me with traditional food, took me to where only locals will be and he joked a lot. Deniz, he istanbul. The city always made me feel complicated but adorable, the ancient ruins, the religious muslim and some leftover of royal European pride, I love the city after Deniz’s re-introduction.

While I stayed in Cagatay’s home, I wonder if I should spend more than one day in Istanbul, the reason is that I’ve visited the city already back in 2006, at that time, Brian and I visited almost every important attractions in Istanbul, the blue mosque, the Aya sophia mosque, the topika palace or the new palace by the seaside. “There’s nothing new that I can see.” I thought in my mind, but I’d like to visit Deniz and other friends so that kept the original plan to stay for 2 days. I’m glad that I did.

Dinner at Deniz’s

I arrived in the late evening, we could barely do nothing but went out for a drink. I found that it’s quite refresh to see the city again, especially from a local’s perspective. Deniz took me to the old prostitude street, and the modern bar street. We hanged around Taksim, sneaking every little paths until I could recognize where we had been.

Deniz: The turks never think Mussle(French: moule) is a big deal. We have this stuff from a street vendor, who would spend 20 euros to eat the thing in restaurant?

I laughed after his claim, that’s true! Turkish vendors stuffed mussles with rice and spice, boiled them as a snack. 1 mussle with rice cost even less than 1 lira sometimes. And the kebap are everywhere, with different flavor.

Deniz: It’s kind of weird, the best Kebap I ever had was not in Turkey. I guess that’s because of the cost. In Turkey, kebap is a cheap food, so they use less meat to fill the bread; but in Europe, you pay 4 euros for a kebap: they use much more meat. But! The meat flavor in Turkey is much better!

People fished on the bridge

The other morning, I woke Deniz up and asked him take me the visit the city, that’s the only whole day I would spend in the city. I wanted something different. We went to the vintage market, where only locals went there to buy some antique furnitures.

Old time porn photos

That was funny to retro the old time Istanbul. We saw many things that you could not even imagine how to use them. And many antique stuff I liked a lot but incapable to bring them back. I took some photos in a shop, then the owner came to me, he said:

You should ask for my permission before you take photos, right?

I was sorry and never expect someone would got angry like that. I apologized to him and asked Deniz to get out of the shop. I think the owners of antique shops are some kind of weird in some ways.

Nice place! Good food!

Then Deniz took me to a hidden restaurant, they served the best food in Istanbul I guess. The restaurant is located in the first flood of spice market, the entrance is easily to pass by, and you’ll never expect there would be a fancy restaurant. Yes, only the locals or some clever tourist knew the place.

My dish, lamb leg with rice.

We had a wonderful meal, and I almost forget my homestay brother is still waiting for me :/ For 2 hours!!

Finally!

Tolga was the homestay brother back in 2006. I stayed in his home for 1 month, and almost spoke to each other by Google translator that time. We were close to each other, and he shared his romance to me LOL. His former girl friend was a chubby girl and his mother didn’t like the girl, but he loved her a lot!! That became a problem so the mother-son fighting occassionally happened.

Blue mosque.

His chubby ex was good at jealousy. The other day Tolga made me look his photos with every ex, and he siad that he’s gonna burn them coz the girl friend would be mad if she had seen the photos. I was confused and felt sorry for him, I said:

These photos are YOUR memories, please do not burn them. I will bring them back to Taiwan until the day you felt like to see these photos.

Right now, my homestay brother, got married 3 months ago, with the other girl. I don’t know if he remembered the photo stuffs or not. I ain’t ask him for returning the photos, it’s too hard to explain in Google translator actually, especially we use the mobile version.

Night

Tolga left me and went to his wife after 4 hours of Google translator talking. And I was waiting for Esra to call me after her exam. It turned out that she had no time to call me so that I returned to home. And decided to make something for Deniz and his cousins, in order to feedback the accommodation.

Egg-fried rice!

I made a simple Japanese-Chinese dish, we don’t even have a proper translation for this home-made dish. Directly translate will be “Fried rice covered by egg”. The recipe is simple, just friend the rice then make an egg omlette to cover the rice completely.

Together with Nejat and his friend

Anyway, the Saturday night dinner was funny, and I expect they would like my dish, who wouldn’t like friend ketch-up rice with eggs?