Day 100

Monday April 28th,

For our last day in Istanbul we decided to had to go Asia. Since it was the start of the workweek, the ferries were back in full force. So we hopped on one of these and headed off to a whole new continent. Istanbul is the only city that is on two continents, and its kind of novel experience to just hop on a fast ferry and change continents. As for Asia, there is really not that much to see on that side of the city. Apparently its the more conservative part and as we wondered around we also noticed that it was more of a residential district. The more interesting experience came with my interaction with a shoe-shining guy rather than anything we saw. You see, I was still carrying around a good 1/3 kilo of Turkish Delight from the previous day. One of these shoe shiners came up and asked if he could have one. I happily handed him one and he insisted that he clean my shoes as payment. I said that it wasn't a problem, thinking that I might be charged despite his claims that it would be free. He however wouldn't take my refusals and insisted that he clean my shoes. Now, my shoes were really quite dirty from getting soaked by the Aegean sea, when the tide soaked them as we were getting to the Ferry. So I gave in, and let him clean my shoes. However, my sucker-ass heart felt bad that he was doing this just for one piece of turkish delight. So I offered him another one, but instead he just took the rest of the bag. Not being able to speak a lick of Turkish, I really didn't know what to say or do. And then after that he had the audacity to demand 20 lira for the cleaning. I tried to explain, no that's not what you said, and what about the candy, but he just wasn't having it. So I gave him the spare change in my pocket, like 3 lira and walked away in a huff. I guess my experiences from yesterday really isn't the rule in Turkey. There are always people, everywhere, who want to make money off you. I just got to stay on my game and be a hard ass, be more determined, more forceful, in what I want and implementing it.
After this incident at the harbor I wanted to walk across the Bosporus Bridge back to Europe. I kind of a thing for big bridges, so I decided that I would there and then across. Well, everyone didn't have enough of their own cares to do anything else so we all walked to the Bridge only to find out the Police wouldn't less us cross it, even though there was a huge sidewalk. So we got a bus back to Taskim Square and then took the Tram back to the Hostel. We picked up our bags and headed on the subway, the world's second oldest, to the airport. That day we road every form of mass transit available. We got to the airport very early, but I always figure its better to get there early than late. So after checking in, I went did my airport routine, which consists of trying on expensive cologne and then reading magazines. We boarded at around 10 at night and headed back home to Cairo. When we arrived in Cairo, it was bittersweet. For the sweet part, when we got to customs, we showed our passports and then let us right through, even though we had tons of bags clearly displaying stores. However, the guard stopped the Australian behind us, and told him to go to the declaration line. He asked why we got to go through, and he said it was because we were Americans. I guess there are benefits to having your country bank-rolling a police state. It was bitter, in that after spending all that time in the developed world, coming back to Cairo was once again a realization of how shitty the quality of life is here.