My name is Jacek and I am an adventure junky.

Why this blog?

Many may and in fact have already asked me, “Why Turkey?”. “Why not”, is the instinctive answer I give them. Of course there is more to my decision than just the why not. I could go into details of historical descriptions and geographical destinations but that is not what this blog is about, or at least not entirely. I’ve had my minimal share of moving about this globe and when I really sit down and think about it, that is really what drives me. Being able to move to a part of the world and become one, to some extent, with the country of my new residence. I have been a tourist before, many times, but as much fun as tourism is, it does not provide the same experiences as settling in one place for at least a short while. So this is what my aim in this blog is, to share my experiences living in this old city of Istanbul and hopefully providing some helpful info to those thinking about coming to this city in hope of making a living, during their initial stages of settlement.

If you happen to have some questions, other than what written here, please feel free to drop me a line and I will answer your query as best as I can.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride. For all you know it could be short and turbulent.

First days

We touched ground at the Attaturk International Airport at 5am on Monday the 27^th. Subways start running at around 5:30am and so we had some time to kill before loading our 5 bags onto the tube. A shuttle to Sultanahmed, which is where the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia are, on that day was 20lira, or an approximate 10Euro per person. The subway is 1.4 lira, as is most of the transportation, not including taxies into the equation.

The subway line took us to the final station at Aksaray, where we had the option of changing onto a tramway, or a bus and to continue our cheap line of transport for another 1.4 lira per person. Taking into account the volume of people on these local transports and the bulk of our baggage, we decided to take a taxi, which was 7.85lira to our final destination at Sultanahmed.

Jetlagged we checked into one of the many accommodations around the area. If you’re curious about where to go and how much to pay, check the Turkey Lonely Planet guide book. Prices seem to be fluctuating, especially in the recent past, but in essence you can find accommodations starting as cheap as 10 euro for a dorm bed to as high as 150euro, or more, for a hotel room.

It’s very easy to get tangled up in the mess of conversion. Trying to figure out how much things would have cost back home as compared to here is a waste of time, as well as a sure way to confuse the exchange rates right out of you. When you buy things in lira, which is always a better option than paying in Euro or US dollars, keep this simple principle in mind: Cheaper is better!, HAHA!!! No really. I’m serious.

Buying things.

As I had visited Istanbul and some parts of Turkey on a previous occasion, I had some general sense of directions and where things were in the city, at least around the Bosphorous straight area. The different names of the areas of the city, on both the European as well as the Asian side, remained a mystery since many of the names sound similar. Getting a map was a good idea. A local kiosk guy wanted 7lira for a city map, which seemed a bit high to me so I chose not to get it. I told him I’d get it tomorrow, to which he responded by saying that US dollars or Euro were ok. Seeing my unwillingness to drop the coin, he proceeded to drop his price. In the end all he wanted were 2 Euro, which at the time of writing were equivalent to 3.86 lira. (1.93 lira/euro, exchange rate).

Bargaining is not only done at the Grand Bazaar it would seem.

Phones and the internet

The hook up of phone lines in an apartment is a whole new ordeal in itself. In order to get a line set up one has to first find the local Telecom office. Every major neighbourhood has one and that’s the one you have to go to. Most people will be completely clueless as to where the actual office is so perseverance is the key word if you want to find it and find it you must since the only way you get a phone is if you pay them a visit in person with your apartment contract and a passport. With some Turkish translation the process takes roughly between 1 and 3 days. If you’re lucky, the desk person will let you know the exact day on which you can expect the technician to show up. Don’t expect to know the exact time though and be prepared to wait at home on that day.

There are several options in the phone hook up department. You can have a phone on which you receive phone calls only, that goes for both local and international, or you can have your regular connection allowing you to receive phone calls as well as to make them. Don’t rush at the office and make sure you are aware of what connection you are choosing since to make any changes requires another trip to the Telecom office.

Internet

Internet is a separate affair and it does not get connected at the same time as the phone line. Once you have your phone line set up, you need to trek back up to the phone company and make another application for the internet. We were hoping to use a second hand modem we had from an acquaintance, which turned out to be a huge mistake. Two weeks later we still had no access to the internet. Turk Telecom is not a very customer friendly organisation. Upon sign up we opted out of getting another modem and having to pay extra money for it since we already had one. Our modem didn’t work and so I went down to the company to get a modem. The first visit was completely unsuccessful doe to a lack of a translator. I finally had someone write out in Turkish, exactly what I wanted to happen, which was a great help. Only problem was that I couldn’t simply receive a modem. My subscription is a standard one and as such I am not entitled to a modem. I asked if I could simply change, upgrade, my subscription and pay for the modem, to which the phone operator replied in a negative. Reason being that in order to get a modem I would have to sign up for a different account, but in order to do that I would also have to wait until the 1^st of a month, since the sign up and cancelation dates are important for the company I was told. So I was left with two options. Waiting out till the end of the month without the internet, cancelling the account on the first of December and opening up a new account that would provide a modem, which would have been a waste of 50lira approx. 25Euro. The other option was buying a new modem, which is what I did. 90lira, 45Euor and the promise of a technician to come in, in order to change the phone connection from only incoming to incoming and outgoing phone calls and hopefully setting up the internet connection, which despite the presence of a new modem, is still not working.

If you have any questions regarding living in Istanbul or the city in general, just leave it in the comment section. I will try and do my best to answer your question.