Istanbul: Day 6 (10/29/19)
We had discussed it since a few days ago but Mustafa, being a glass blower, loves art exhibits and I’m a gallery rat so he took me out on the town for the afternoon while Ebru’s family was at their place. They don’t know or approve of the idea of hosting strangers so it was best for me to clear out.
Mustafa and I walked over to our first gallery of the day which was the Istanbul 16th Biennial: The Seventh Continent. A collection of artists from around the world, The Seventh Continent focused on showing different or specific worlds of the artists’ imagining in a variety of forms. From life sized seaside fish markets made of glass to almost organic illustrations of microbial life to western depictions of Turkish life in the 19th century. A lot of variety and some very good art!
We then sat down at a cafe and snacked on a sort of coffee cake while talking for a while. The 2nd exhibit Mustafa wanted to show me was closed unfortunately since it was a national holiday (Date of Turkish Independence) but we found a gallery just off the main street that looked interesting. A study on the objectification of women and the portrayal of their bodies, it was a jumble of painting and sculpture from a global variety of artists. It was a bit of a weird one but I thought it was put together really well, even if a couple of the pieces made me more than a little uncomfortable. (Didn’t take pictures of those, gotta keep it PG-13 here).
I was ready to head back after finishing the exhibits but Mustafa wanted to stay out longer, tho neither of us had a plan, so we ended up wandering around until eventually coming to a courtyard church which housed a pretty cool underground chapel. We checked it out and from there walked about 15 minutes to the riverside and got “the best fish bread ever” according to Mustafa. Who was 150% right about that! Suuuuuuper tasty fish wrap with like 10 different spices and sauces. He ate it like a pro but I spilled all over myself and made an absolute mess of my hands hehe.
From there I pointed out an old castle wall/fort which is currently a gallery, which was closed but we hiked up the steep street behind it to a neat little “artists’ town” which had some neat graffitti and a cozy cafe we had tea at. At that point we were pretty dry on conversation topics and while I was fine sitting quietly and people watching I think Mustafa was getting a little anxious.
After tea we returned to home base, I ate my remaining soup from last night, and was said our goodbyes. From there it was a 40 minute taxi ride to the airport (cost like $50 which is more than I like to pay for transportation but actually not that bad compared to what it could have been) and had a very confusing hour of terminal hoping to find my flight. Once I found it however, I was in for a very #BAD TIME.
Turns out I didn’t declare that I had a bag to check on my flight when I checked in online yesterday, which would normally be free, but they told me that it would be charged as excess baggage. Which is handled by weight, and since its my 25 kilogram backpack containing my entire life, IT WAS GOING TO COST ME 700 DOLLARS TO SHIP MY BAG!!!!! As this was absurd, and I did not have $700 to spend, I whined, pleaded, and acted as confused as possible to every counter and airport helper I could find until a group of security guards came over to help me get things sorted out. I threw away about 5 lbs of stuff and the baggage clerk, bless her soul for putting up with me through this, didn’t charge me for most of my bag’s weight. It still came out be about $200 in fees, but I could at least survive that financially.
Having cried my way through that problem, I blew through security and found my gate just in time. And several hours later I landed in Dubai, capital of the United Arab Emirates, the UAE! But my #BAD TIMES were far from over - it was 2am local time and I was ready for sleep but there could be no rest for me. I tried to take out money from an ATM at the baggage claim only to have the machine deny me, then a second machine said it didn’t recognize my bank, but the third ATM worked, even if it charged me an absurdly large transaction fee. I got my bag and then immediately got signaled over by a security guard before leaving the baggage claim and my bag got completely emptied and searched by a guy who was VERY concerned that I had pain killers in my medical bad and an ankle brace. That took half an hour and afterwards I had to wait at the train terminal until 5am when that first trains started to run. I then proceeded to buy the wrong kind of train ticket and got stopped at the exit gate and forced to buy the correct one.
And it was only than, after being in Dubai for almost 4 hours, that I finally went outside. It was almost 6 in the morning, 85 degrees out, the sun was rising, I was surrounded by skyscrapers, and there was sand everywhere. It finally hit me that I was in Dubai, a futuristic megacity city built in the middle of the freaking desert. I found my hostel after an hour of confused walking (I was brain dead, it was on the 2nd and 7th floors of a high rise, and the lobby had no idea there was hostel in the building. Yes, that is correct, it occupied two completely separate floors and was basically undercover). I dragged the hostel owner out of bed, got shown to my room, which was basically 4 beds jammed next to each other in a tiny hotel room with barely enough room to walk between them, and flopped into my bed ready to sleep for an eternity.
