I haven't posted anything in sometime on any of the blogs. I didn't also got the chance to write about a recent visit to Istanbul. That was a necessary one because who knows when I get to visit the place again. During the visit I was planning on documenting each and every day and bring it LIVE from Istanbul, but sadly that didn't happen. Anyway, now I can tell about many things in a different light, retrospect.
When I was leaving for Istanbul, I had a very different image of the place in my head and it was a very refreshing surprise to say the least. I had been warned by people in person and by the tourist websites of the rampant street crime in Istanbul that I had sort of a third world city image in my head. Though it was surprising since I was going there from Karachi, the city of street crime in Pakistan. Considering also the fact that I had been hit by it twice, so, caution was in my every bone.
When I was at the airport lounge waiting to board the plane, I started documenting everything I saw there. It was kind of interesting how different people were spending that waiting time, considering also the fact that the flight was delayed an hour. I wrote so many points in a diary about the different characters I saw there, their peculiarities and everything, but I couldn't write a post about them now since I lost the diary during the trip. Though, that wait was interesting.
Finally boarding the plane I coincidently was seated beside one of those interesting people. He was a Pakistani doctor from Karachi working in Manchester. So this was a connecting flight for him. He was here on Eid vacations. The flight was six hours long and the seating cramped and uncomfortable. If it weren't for that guy, those six hours could have been torture. The other person sitting beside me was a Turkish and she hardly spoke any English for me to have been chatty with her. Anyway, those were just six hours, I wonder how people, who are traveling for US or Canada, endure the 16 hours of flight.
Once I was on the Istanbul airport my impression about it changed immediately. The airport of any city tells you a lot about it. It wasn't the third world city I had in my mind, it was a European city. Having seen at least three other international airports, I could guess the development level of this city. It was not as large as the Dubai airport and was much "high-tech" compared to Karachi's. I was waiting for the luggage when I took the picture and in the distance is the duty-free.
No trip is complete without its own set of surprises. The first was to come very soon. I wanted my journey to the hotel to be simple, so I got the hotel to do a pick and drop at an outrageous cost. Fortunately or unfortunately there was no one there to pick me up. I walk around the area three times before realizing that it wasn't here. Then I went to the information counter, just to confirm that by any chance the ride for that hotel couldn't be waiting outside. It wasn't. Just then a guy approached me and asked me which hotel I wanted to go and that there was a ride available. I was suspicious at once and was reluctant to go with him but seeing that the "official" ride wasn't here, I should at least check it out. He took to me a counter of his company which provided shuttle services from the airport. There another Pakistani group was waiting since their ride had not arrived as well. The guy offered me a free call to my hotel to confirm if they had sent any transport. I was apprehensive but I went ahead and got the response that I wasn't booked for transport on their list. I think I should have confirmed twice
.
I got on the mini van and conversation start immediately with the Pakistani group. One of them asks me, "How much did you pay?" I say, "Thirty Liras." Then he asks, "Guess how much we all three paid." I said, "I don't know, eighty, ninety?" He says "Thirty!" So the journey begins well and probably this was a wake-up call if apparently I had become oblivious to all those cautionary tales. Those two turned out to be both accountants and were here for an international conference which was supposed to cook up some standards for accounting worldwide.
We set out for hotels and along the way discussed the state of IT sector in Pakistan. As it turned out, both of them were memons and knew both my company and its CEO. They said, he was like their own kids and saw him grow up. It was extremely cold that day and it had snowed in Istanbul that day before. So I got a taste of that as well. Our route was straight-forward but the distance to my hotel was a lot. Istanbul, as I said earlier was more like a European city, in all aspects. The traffic, the roads and roadsides. The shops and the houses and the people and the parks. The driving was left handed though.
The city has a tram system as well as underground tube system for mass transit.
We were supposed to get to our hotels in half an hour but it actually took us more than one hour to get there because many of the roads were closed due to a marathon going on in the city.
Anyway, after about one and a half hour I checked into my hotel and went for a quick nap. The hotel was right beside the Bosphorous river and I got a great view of it from the room. The room was sleek and elegant and especially suited for a techie.
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