D28 Whatulookinat?

1/9 Cloudy, foggy
Istanbul, Budapest

After the Lyon inccident, I always stay in high cautious when I walked alone on the street or after the sunset. I don’t feel like to face that kind of situation again in my life ever! Right now I carry a knife with me in any cases. But sometimes I got frightened when somebody closes to me, maybe just ask me to take photos for them, maybe ask for time or even ask for direction. Especially when teenager guys stronger than me, I felt like they might be a potential threat.

But things is not as well as I expect. You know, during the journey, I always try to keep the good memories.

I had to catch a morning flight from Istanbul to Budapest, which means I had to get out of house before the sunrise. It was still dark at 7am, I grabbed my luggage and went to the Taxi station, asked the driver took me to the bus station. Deniz told me the taxi fee would be 5 to 7 liras, and I had only 20 liras in my wallet, nothing more.(The bus ticket is 13 lira) The damn taxi driver took some loop to somewhere I don’t really know, then I had to pay 9 liras for taxi fee.

I realized that I am running out of liras, I couldnt even take the bus. So I had to withdraw money in ATM machine. The bus was 7:30, after I put my luggage in the storage was 7:20, I got 10 minutes left to the bank. It was like 200 meters away.

Anyhow, I need to catch my flight, so that I took my wallet with me, went for the ATM. When I almost done with the withdrawing, there were 2 guys seemed like drunk, looked at me with greedy eyes. I knew something might happened, so tried not to have eye contact with him.

But the guys kept looked at me with strange face expression, I was nervous, but pretend that I am Okay. I gave them a gaze and then kept waiting for the bill. The guys passed me but one of them tried to walk back, and he kept looking my wallet. Then there were the other guys and girls walked in the opposite direction, so he gave up. I knew that he tried to robbed my wallet, I got only 10 liras and a few coins inside, almost nothing left to lose, I could fight with him, but I needed to catch my bus desperately!

Finally nothing happened. I made it to catch the flight. Great! I thought that I could have something good in Budapest!

It wasn’t the best when I first talked to the people here. The custom officer checked my passport for 10 minutes, then asked me to take a seat.

the bronze officer

I knew anything might happened when the custom officer asked you to take a seat. I waited for 20 minutes and then he came to me,

We need to check out your passport, because I don’t know what’s that sticker for.

It was the OFII sticker made the custom became suspicious about me. The officers gathered together and discussed about my visa for 10 minutes. I prepared a voice recorder in my pocket, just in case. So I recorded everything they said.

The result went out to be alright, I could travel back to European Union again! But this situation made me rethink my ability to deal with crisis. I always think of the worst situation, like at least I can buy an expensive ticket to France, re-enter European Union country again. I never expect this stuff could happen to me, actually nobody did. I claimed that I have the resident right to live in France, in the name of the little yellow sticker.

9 of January, the 29th day of my travel, bad things happened, please never make it happen again!

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?