Turkey - European Side
Istanbul
One of the early lessons we learnt in Istanbul is that traffic lights seem to be optional. I suspect that the Turkish police don't agree with this interpretation.
Red traffic lights are optional, and the bigger the vehicle you have the more optional the red light becomes
Istanbul is a big city, with large approach roads crawling slowly towards the centre. As with lots of cites, roads like that are littered with traffic lights. On reds we would dutifully stop, only to be passed by other vehicles ignoring the reds. This happened a few more times, so it was not a random aberration. Pete and I were both quite into people watching, which we would say gave us an advantage when trying to assimilate different situations. A few more times, an we thought we knew enough about the rules to join the game. Red traffic lights are optional, and the bigger the vehicle you have the more optional the red light becomes, the less often you have to stop and the more everybody else has to avoid you. Not in a film car chase sort of way, where chaos is the apparent aim, but more in the Jersey very controlled, courteous, and polite turn in turn or filter in turn.
Knowing these new rules became a bit of a party trick for subsequent trips. Jumping red lights!!
We continued to make our way into the centre, and found somewhere to park, relatively touristy.
An extract from a rare letter home, from Kabul dated 14 July 1975;
We stayed at a street car park outside the Blue Mosque in the European side of town with a lot of other campers. The car park was guarded 24hrs a day and cost about 60p a day, double normal price because of the size of the lorry.
Well that made it easy to find our way back to where we had parked. We were still sleeping in the back of the truck and nobody seemed to mind. It was after all a campsite, but on the street, outside a very famous tourist attraction.
Loo trips could not be just outside the truck though. There was a nearby public toilet, attended by a wizened old lady who took your money. It was of the squat variety. A raised footprint on either side of a 2" (50mm) hole. The problem was that the pipework was the same diameter. The system was not designed for, nor could it cope with toilet paper. There system was, there was a tap and a tin. You poured water into the tin and used your left hand and water to clean yourself after your ablutions. They found that a lot of Europeans could not, would not cope with this and insisted on bringing their own toilet paper, which they then used and put down the loo. Into the narrow pipes which then became blocked. Result, signs in lots of languages telling you not to put toilet paper down the loo, but into the bucket provided for used toilet paper. This in turn led to very smelly public toilets and lots and lots of flies. Pleasant subject. But if you have ever travelled into out of the way places, you will recognise that toilet becomes a major topic of conversation.
There was also a favoured cafe nearby, which for the cost of a cup of coffee, or two, provided a free sit down loo. Still the same problems with the pipework and toilet paper, but at least you could be more comfortable at the same time as being disgusted.
Don't worry though. you soon get used to it. If you don't you go home. And miss out.
The photo left is Pete sat in front of Sancta Sophia, previously a Greek Orthodox Cathedral, a Mosque for some years and now a museum. We were parked between Sancta Sophia and the Blue Mosque. However, both this and the Blue Mosque photo on the next page are from our next Trans Asia trip in 1977.
