Istanblues

I'm not going to write anything about Albania. Deal with it.

OK, I'll give you one sentence. In Albania there are no car lanes and everybody drives like a maniac and the capital city of Tirana is full of smog but that's ok because we couchsurfed with Christoph and the restaurants are really good and I got an awesome haircut for 3$.

There, now let's just move on.

I wanted to post about one average day in the mentality of a globetrotter. Sometimes I have to laugh at myself for having an inexplicably bad attitude, or being way to pleased by something very simple. None of these events are really worth conveying to anybody (except Morgan, who is forced to listen to my stream of concioussness on a daily basis), but you can't understand what it's like just hearing about the sights.

We had 3 hours until our shuttle to the bus station left, so we decided to wander back through the Beyoglu district of Istanbul, and get some coffee and dinner. As a nature of my substance addiction I start to get headaches at precisely 4pm every day that I do not get my coffee. Sure enough, as Morgan was examining some jewelrya shirt at a nice little shop, I felt my energy go and my head get foggy. It was time to power through to our destination.

We came to the main street down to Taxim Square, which is basically a giant outdoor shopping mall packed with people. I will admit that the first two times we had to walk down this street I was enamored by the shops selling Turkish delight, kebabs, and even some neat handmade stuff that girls like. In my present countenance, however, I was just irritated. The Starbucks' and Burger Kings put me over the edge.

One thing I can't stand is people walking slowly, treating the walking path as their own personal slalom. Usually these people are arm in arm or carrying lots of shopping bags. When they are in groups they like to stop and fan out to have a conversation, instantly causing a traffic jam. On this particular evening, they seemed to beout in greater numbers. I don't know any dirty words in Turkish, so I had to content myself with shouldering past with an exaggerated contortion of my body, and then briskly walking away.

We came to the restaurant of our choice before finding any decent coffe shops, so the fix would have to wait. After ordering our far to expensive meals, I was more than a little irked to see the size of my entree, accompanied by the miniscule amount of bread that they failed to refill and, at the meals end, they had the had the audacity to charge extra for. There was no way we were getting coffee here.

Upon reaching Taxim Square, we began to bop in and out of cafes to check the prices of coffee. 6 lira, 7 lira, 8 lira (1 dollar = 1.5 lira)- I was not about to drop 4 bucks on a cup of coffee. On second thought, I was not about drop 4 bucks on a 3 ounces of coffee, from some tourist trap whose probably using Nescafe instant coffee mix they get for $0.02 a pack. If I was going to drop 4 bucks on a cup of coffee, it was going to be from the US of A. We walked into Starbucks, and I ordered a tall cappucino for 4.50 lira.

I paused for a moment to reflect that only a small portion of my 4.5 lira would re-enter the local economy, while the lion's share would be shipped back to Washington State. A smile formed on my lips.

The tall cup of coffee, as we all know, is the smallest size Starbucks offers. However, it is approximately 4 times larger than anything you can by this side of the Atlantic. God bless America! It felt so wrong, but it felt so very right. We huddles in the corner for the next hour. Starbucks was my sanctuary, I couldn't have felt better had I been sitting in the United States embassy. But let's be honest for a minute, I was sitting in the United States embassy. U.S.A! U.S.A!

Anyway, a fully caffeinated Tommy made it though the next few hours quite well. We settled into our night bus to Cappadocia, and as we pulled out a movie came on. Rush Hour 3 in Turkish. It was great. The recipe is quite simple: Jackie Chan does his thing, then Chris Tucker tries to kick somebody and gets beat up, but it's ok because either Jackie saves him or Chris just shoots the bad guy. My eyes greedily drank in the film in its entirety, and somehow I left Istanbul completely contented.