Istanbul is a hit

We stayed in Budget Hostel for the first night. At first nervous about the lack of air conditioning, the giant window in our room leading out to the fire escape that connected us with all the other rooms, and the moth balls that were everywhere, it ended up being just fine. One beer and a game of cards on the terrace before bed turned into staying up with a film-making, theatre-trouping couple from Warsaw playing hearts until 4 in the morning.

Then, the next day, even though we had at first miscommunicated with him, we met up with Salih, who so far has turned out to be the best Asian-side-of-Istanbul-living, dinner-making, English-practicing host ever! Through a hilariously complicated series of public transit methods (initial directions: It's easy. Take a ferry, then a bus. Realıty: mistake one ferry stop, find the right one, cross the Bosphorus, search a gigantic bus station in earnest for half an hour before finding a city bus that may go to our destination, spend forty-five minutes in traffic nervously asking fellow passengers if we're still on the right path, eventually get off the bus, ask a few local youths where our street is, get led by friendly local youths to the correct apartment building, meet Salih who tells us he's just after locking himself out of his apartment, smile politely at Salih's neighbours while one forces the lock open with a credit card), we arrived at our temporary home, and now we are pretending to be just a couple of foreigners living the normal life in Istanbul (except for all the touristing, of course).