Day two, even better than the first

Dated 30/7/2010

Today Will and I got up early and showered for the first time in our apartment. Our shower is little more than a hot water hose in the corner of a bathroom stall. We lacked shampoo and towels, but surprisingly bars of soap and t-shirts sufficed.

Sadi showed up around 11am and we set out to collect the items on a long list of needs. First we went to go get cell phones at TurkCell. We were essentially ripped by a sales man who had us buy a phone not telling us we could use our American phones even when we told them we had American phones. Then they wouldn’t accept returns. Anyways I got a new phone!

We then went to the bank. The bank sent us to go get social security numbers. We went and ate next to the Galata Tower instead. Sadi ordered us his two of his favorite dishes, a sliced beef dish in tomato sauce with peppers and another beef dish with eggplant humus. Delicious! The tower is sweet, hopefully we will make it up to the top soon.

We then went to a soviet-esque DMV type bureaucratic center that was surprisingly pain free. Maybe the early description wasn’t merited, but we prepared for the worse as we went in. It looked like it was going to be bad and bad bureaucracy is legendary, according to Sadi.

Anyways we went back to the bank “AKBank” and set up accounts in which we didn’t have to pay any fees or put money into to open…. Yeah sounds like Lehman Brothers of Turkey.
We bought maps and drove to a mall. This was unlike any mall we have experienced in the US. It was next to the new Trump towers and a couple other new tall buildings.
NB: We’ve noticed with the skyscrapers every tower is a “Dual” tower. They design one building and build it at least twice. This wouldn’t be too noticeable if it was a ten story building, but they only do it on their tallest buildings. It’s like having a mirror next to every tall building in the city. You’ll be inside one and wonder “what could this building possibly look like from the outside?” and then poof right next to it you’ll see the same building.

Back to the mall… It was huge. Six stories tall with huge open air atriums rising the full height. The largest atrium was covered by the biggest clock we’ve ever seen. The glass roof was the face of the clock with huge metal catwalks as the hands. Easily the biggest mall I’ve ever been in, every western, eastern, and other directional store you could imagine. Popeye’s ads were everywhere… everywhere. In the mall we went to a super market, which was good we got a bunch of stuff that we really needed: towels, shampoo, beer, and an orange dolphin shower mat. We then went to “Koctas” a store eerily familiar to a Home Depot, down to the bright orange aprons. Here we got more necessities like power adapters, fans, and lanterns, yes lanterns, apparently the power in our district goes out frequently so we need to be prepared. We then walked mall. It was really impressive, massive.
NB: We discovered that the sales tax in Turkey is a whopping 18%!!! 18%!!! We complain about 9% in NOLA.
We drove home with our bounty. We settled in with our new stuff and were ready to eat.
18%!!! Sorry to harp.

Anyways our new best friend Sadi (whether he wants to be or not) decided to take us to a Taksim Landmark. Kızılkayalarda which sold “solus”(sp?) hamburgers which roughly translates to special sauce hamburgers, think meatball sub, meets sloppy Joe with a little Turkish flare. Amazing. Incredible. And for only 2 Lira, heaven! We then ate “Doner” in a pressed wrap with cheese, also incredible. The shop was a hole in the wall opening directly onto Taksim. Here’s the funny thing the five hole in the wall shops on either side of this one served the exact same things and copied everything on the menu. Will said it right when he said we found our new binge food spot.

We then went on our evening walk to find ITU Mimar (ITU architecture). The building is incredible. It is massive the hallways are at least 25ft tall and are so big they echo when you talk in them. The building is a former army infirmary from the Ottoman era. The center court yard is big and beautiful. The building is sadly crumbling, but walking near it or into it and anyone can understand its majesty. We saw a few boards from an Urban Planning class. Let’s say this, we’re going to have our work cut out for us, the work looked really good, so much for the idea of an easy abroad semester. That’s both good and bad news.

We then found a barbed wire lined passage back to our apartment from the school it’ll be about a 10-15 minute walk.

An extremely productive day. Thanks to Sadi. Such a g-d send or a Chadwick send.
Tonight, Will and I will attempt to go out in a city we don’t know, using a language we don’t know, to a bar that’s location is slightly unknown, this is going to be fun. One of the many reasons we came.

P.s. we’ve ignored jet lag
-Lee (edited by Will, his grammar and spelling is atrocious, not that mine is much better)