İstanbul is an object lesson in one of the risks of how I’m traveling. I mean, nothing bad’s happened to me, I haven’t been robbed or hospitalized or gotten lost somewhere. But I think it’s evidence of a tendency I have to keep in check.

I’ve only been here since Tuesday. I ended up here for a couple reasons:

• I knew I was going to be in Berlin on the 10^th, and I wanted to be around friends for Christmas on the 24^th. That gave about a two week window where I needed to be somewhere, ideally outside of Schengen.
• I had friends in İzmir, so I figured I’d spend the time in Turkey, either staying with them or staying in İstanbul.
• I checked with my friends, and confirmed it would be fine. So I found a cheap flight to İzmir from Berlin on the 11^th, and a cheap flight from İstanbul to London¹ on the 22^nd.
• Because I really dislike imposing on other people for too long, I really try not to stay for longer than a week. I kind of assumed I’d leave on the weekend, but I was enjoying İzmir and the company, so I bought a ticket to İstanbul on the 18^th.²
• And so I arrived in İstanbul, found my hotel, and collapsed.

So what’s the problem? Basically, there’s two different ways I travel, and I’m caught between them.

Sometimes, I’m happy being a tourist. I want to do everything: see all the sights, tour all the museums, wander through the marketplaces. Three days is more than enough time for that — except I’m still kind of tired from all the travel I did for the first half of the month, and I’m trying to get some projects done. I kind of feel like I should be relaxing.

So sometimes I just want to be a resident: find a couple favorite restaurants, stay close to home, read in a bar or just curl up next to a fire and get some work done. And for me, three days in a strange city just isn’t enough for that. Everything’s still weird and intense and I get lost even a couple blocks away from where I’m staying. And even when I do just keep to myself for a day, the fact there are all these things to see (The Grand Bazaar! The Aya Sophia! Topkapı Palace!) means I’m restless.

So mostly, I’m restless.

It’s not like I did nothing while I was here. I’ve seen the Aya Sophia and the Archeological Museum, the Grand Bazaar and the Blue Mosque and even made it to one of the baths. I also got buttonholed by a rug merchant, which I suppose is a quintessential İstanbul experience. I had bought a roasted corn from a vendor just outside the Aya Sophia, and he struck up a conversation with me.³ I own a business around the corner, would I like a business card? Oh, I keep them in my store, just down the road. Now that you’re here, just have a seat while I get it. This is my business partner, he runs the shop.

So within a span of five minutes, you find yourself sitting in the back of a cozy rug store, glass of tea steaming in front of you, while rug after rug is being tossed on the floor in front of you. Now, look, I’m not naïve. I knew what was happening as it was happening, and I had halfway decided to go along with it because, hey, quintessential İstanbul experience. But it’s very hard to try and break out of that situation. It takes a lot of social conventions and weaponizes them: you don’t want to be rude, you’ve been given a cup of tea, people are being awfully friendly.

And some of those rugs were gorgeous. I was very tempted to buy one. But the simple fact is I’m in no position to judge how much they’re worth, whether I’m getting a good deal or a bad one. The salesman knows exactly how much they bought it for and has years of experience knowing what they sell for. Everything they promised might have been true — This is handmade, pure silk, the highest quality knotwork you can get. They’re made in Turkey, not imported from China. We’ve got relatives handling the business in New York, if you don’t like it we’ll personally pick it up and give you a full refund, no questions asked. If we ship it today, it will arrive on the doorstep anywhere in the United States by Saturday, guaranteed — but I’m in no position to verify any of it.

And this is perhaps the most overwhelming thing about Turkey, especially for an introvert. You’ve got all these aggressive sales tactics everywhere, restaurants have touts trying to draw you inside, street vendors call to you on the street, people everywhere feign friendship to try and get you into a shop or to hire a tour guide. It’s exhausting.

I eventually extricated myself from there, saying I had to meet friends at the Aya Sophia.⁴ I did take some comfort in reminding myself that İstanbul has been a center of global commerce for thousands of years. This is a fundamental model of doing business around the world.⁵ And I’m sure, 1,000 years ago, there was very likely a rug store there with a Crusader sipping tea in the back, politely trying to explain that yes, those were very nice, but they just couldn’t afford it and had no way to carry a rug back to Europe with them anyway.

So now I’m on my way to London, for the holidays, and after that⁶ I’ve got a month’s trip through India planned.⁷ I’m trying to take some of these lessons to heart; I’ve got a vague plan to visit New Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai, but when I sat down to make arrangements I found myself starting to shoehorn in additional destinations: maybe I could just spend 4 days in New Delhi, then Agra, then maybe Chennai, or Bangalore after 3 days in Kolkata, and … no. No. Stop that. Three stops, about 10 days each. That’s my goal.

One of the best pieces of travel advice I’ve read is always visit every city like you’ll be back, even if you suspect you won’t. The world is too big; you’ll never see it all anyway. Slow down, move at a comfortable pace, and just remember to breathe. The world will still be there. Honest.

Next: New Year’s Eve, 2018, London
Prev: İzmir (ADB) to İstanbul (IST)

Footnotes

¹ Technically, I booked a flight to Stockholm on the 23^rd, but my plans fell through, as sometimes happens. So London was my fallback.

² By the way, the total cost for that ticket was ₺90, or about $17. I bought it a couple days before I left. I’ll never understand airplane prices.

³ This should have been the first warning sign; nobody strikes up conversations with me.

⁴ And even after that one of them went to the exit of the Aya Sophia and waited an hour for me, in an effort to take me back to the shop. We’ve prepared a small gift for you, please, my partner will be so disappointed.

I hastily declined and left, checking a couple times to make sure I wasn’t followed.

⁵ Ever tried to buy a used car in person?

⁶ And after The Smoke, a larp convention the weekend after the New Year.

⁷ Honestly, I’ve lived in the Northeast of the United States for basically my entire life. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that I could just spend winters close to the equator before, but that insight sunk in while I was watching native Ukrainians slip and fall during a freezing rain storm while I was there.