Steam swirled around legs as I stepped elegantly off the carriage, momentarily casting my flannel walkıng suıt in monotone grey. Harrıed porters hurrıed past, theır shouts mınglıng wıth the clanking engıne and the pop and hıss of coolıng metal. The acrıd smell of the porter´s sweat mingled with the smoke, a hınt of spıces ın hıdden bazaars and darkened souks on the aır. Shafts of lıght poured through the hıgh wındows, illuminating the young French Countess who´d laughed a lıttle too readıly at my tales of goıng down to Cambrıdge and lost summers on the Rıvıere for her Italıan Governess´s comfort. Catching myself, I beckoned to a porter to fetch my hamper and trunk from the compartment. The world was black and whıte...
Sadly my arrival didn't quite go like that. I'd just finished Tender is the Night (another example of books bending my expectations), giving me a rather more Jazz Age view of the Orient Express than my budget allows, and really it went more like ... this.
Shouldering my backpack I stepped out of the carriage. The station was quiet, surprisingly empty. A few other backpackers spilled out onto the platform, a few consulted their guidebooks nervously, a couple chattering in loud American accents. The station was small, perhaps four platforms. Down one side ran wrought iron curlicues, hints of glories past. A small sign pointing to a closed museum and a cafe restaurant served tea on ostentatious trays with immaculate white tablecloths, strange and isolated reminders of what once was.
Stepping out of my own dreams and into the bright sunshine I was in Istanbul, the gateway to the Orient, the city that "If the Earth were a single state ... would be its capital". Istanbul is a huge city, something like 12 million inhabitants, spanning two continents. A lifetime here and you still wouldn't know it, never mind attempt to describe it in 2000 words (I think that is roughly what my blogs come to these days; 1999 words too long many of you might think). I will content myself with the few impressions I had of it.
Much to my host's bemusement I found it an ineffably romantic city, a city that, if I were pushed to associate with other memories, I would say reminded me of Jerusalem. It has that same air of a meeting place of many cultures, a heroic city, walled and fortified, home to empires lost and perhaps to come, a city that untold numbers have fought and died for. There is the mix of the West and the Middle East too. It feels an undeniably Western, if not European, city (it doesn't have the wide central avenues of more or less grand buildings that make European cities so quintessentially European), but equally, paradoxically, it is undeniably not a Western city.
It is one of the few places I have visited that I have felt slip through my fingers as I tried to grasp it, as if it were too grand, too dignified and just too complex to let itself be caught in the amateur descriptions of a young backpacker, even the internal ones. Seen through the lens of a 24 hour train ride, all I can see is vague memories, impressions, nothing definite that I could pin my hat on and say, "For me, at least, Istanbul was just so."
And what do I remember, perhaps more interestingly, what I do think I will remember in years from now?
Sitting on the steps of the Yeni (New) Mosque, undoubtedly; the Golden Horn before me, chewing on salted corn and watching the devout pour into the courtyard at the insistence of the evening call to prayer. Sun catching on the water and sparkling, heat and crowds and the noise of people milling around, idly passing the time, chatting, joking and simply sitting. Getting vaguely lost in the Sultanahmet, blinded by store after store after store of gold and silver, cheap t-shirts and rugs, tourist tat and local bargains. Small dark passageways and strong coffee maybe. Kebabs.
I will remember the Ayasofya. Or will I? Like the station, it's perhaps an idea of a building that suffers from a surfeit of imagination. I was told it was so beautiful it had rendered strong men speechless, struck by the glories of both Man and God. And as I approached it reverentially, I could feel the emotion, the presence that it must of had on so many people of the past (though for not inconsiderable periods of its 1500 year existence it had been destroyed, desecrated and otherwise in less than perfect state). I prepared myself for its majesty, readied myself for its marvels. I walked finally through the Emperors doors (which are simply enormous, they must 8 metres high) and lo was there scaffolding. Great, magnificaent scaffolding that stretched to the very height of the dome, all 55.6 metres of it. Of course, it remained an astoundingly beautiful building, the biggest cathedral in the entire world for over a 1000 years. The famous pendentives were still visible; some of the mosaics - that caused Justinian to exclaim "Solomon, I have surpassed thee" - were uncovered and light streamed in through windows that could give even Dawkins pause for thought. It's just a shame about that scaffolding really. At least the almost equally fantastic Sultan Ahmed Mosque didn't have the same problems. And it was free to enter. I love Mosques, perhaps even more than Orthodox Basilicas, with the calm, quiet light and their spacious domes. Maybe they're really the buildings to give Dawkins pause for thought?
Istanbul is a modern city too. My host was convinced that I'd find it almost "a little bit 3rd world" and I had trouble persuading him that, actually, my impressions couldn't have been further from that. I had difficulty explaining that after the Balkans, and Albania in particular, Istanbul felt quite quite 'developed'. I had little trouble with taxi drivers - only one half-heartedly called "Taksi" at the station on my arrival - and almost no one tried to sell me anything on the street. Perhaps it was just testament to my 'trying-desperately-to-blend-in' outfit of ragged t-shirt and wares stored in my "Bulgarian Handbag" (i.e. a plastic bag), because some travellers I knew told me they'd got sick of the carpet sellers and tea vendors calling after them. But then they were two Norwegian girls, so they were never quite going to manage to blend in. It might also have been that I only really spent one day in Sultanahmet, the touristy part. My host lived a little way away from that, close to the cafes and bars of Taksim.
In the evening crowds filled the several kilometres of Istiklal (I think that is what it's called!), tables and chairs cramming the side streets in a sea of bars. It was warm, pleasant after hot days (usually 35+) to drink beer and chat. All my host's friends spoke English and as he was busy, only back in town for a week after a year away, he was happy to hand me over to them. And, to be honest, so passed much of my time in Istanbul. But then, it's not really a bad way to pass time anywhere...
So why Istanbul? Why not just keep going, why not pass time in Ankara? I thought about this for a long time, enjoying the idea of just keepin' on goin'. I'd considered carrying on into Turkey and exploring the lesser explored East, perhaps even going to Cyprus. In the end I realised that to really travel Turkey I'd need more time. I couldn't make it part of my journey Eastwards, the Israel stamp preventing me from getting any further East than the Turkish-Iranian border. Armenia and Georgia, even Azerbaijan, would be fascinating places to see, but ultimately I decided that was another trip entirely. To go into Turkey only to turn around again seemed too arbitrary, too much of a loose end for my narrative arc. And therefore I contented myself with Istanbul, the edge of Europe, the end of the Orient Express. The symmetry of a journey to the end of Europe appealed to the field theorist in me; I'd touch Asia and no more and leave the rest for another time. It seemed, well, dulce et decorum (without the rest of it...!). What more romantic destination or glamorous turning point could there be for a train journey than the end of the Orient Express? I've come to the edge of a continent: it's time to turn back.
