If you are a budget traveler in Istanbul, you may be tempted to save some lira by grabbing a hot dog for lunch. This is not advised. As someone who has eaten quite a few hot dogs in her life – even accounting for The Vegetarian Years – I can confidently say that the hot dogs there are the worst I have ever eaten. They make Tofu Pups taste like heaven, like as good as the Seven Layer Burrito at Taco Bell.

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In fact, having returned from Istanbul, I can’t really recall a meal that makes my mouth water. I could have just gone to the wrong places, or maybe it’s because the typical menu is comprised of eggplant, kebab, eggplant, kebab. All good, to be sure ... except if you’re currently living in a country that is eggplant, kebab, eggplant, kebab. It’s like leaving America for a country that subsists on Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.
Fortunately, the food is the only thing that sort of sucks about Istanbul. You can even avoid the food altogether by smoking away your appetite with nargileh, or water pipe. Don’t worry. It’s only full of nice, legal tobacco. I’ve seen “Midnight Express.” I know what Turkish prisons are like.
Nargileh is nice under the Galata Bridge, when the sun goes down (I suppose you can get food there, too, but it’s hardly worth the trouble). Anyway, the setting sun looks pretty good against a foreground of imposing mosques and the sparkling Bosphorus strait. Try it. Actually, if you get hungry, try a fish sandwich too, from the street vendors just off the bridge and along the riverbanks. The sandwiches are priced at hot-dog rates and are far superior to the local hot dogs, maybe even superior to the fish you can get at sit-down restaurants. Now, my mouth is watering.
But the best place for nargileh is a little restaurant in Sultanamhet, the area around Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque. It’s called Havuzbasi, and it’s where I learned to play backgammon from the friendliest waiter on the European side of the Bosphorus.
Let me tell you a little bit about this waiter, and Istanbul customer service in general. Those in the tourist industry are, by and large, very good for the ego, if not the purse. I bought far more than planned just because a few shopkeepers were ridiculously friendly and persistent – and I’m not really given to impulse purchases.
Being fully aware of the flattery endemic to Istanbul, my cohorts – husband and sister-in-law – and I haunted Havuzbasi for the few days that we could. Our waiter kept us happy by offering teas on the house, teaching us magic tricks, and, one day, inviting us to join him for his half-day holiday to the first of the Prince’s Islands.
I was skeptical, having heard stories of tourists lured into “friendly” tours, only to be pressured into buying $1,000 carpets as payment at the end of the day. The outing was harmless, though, and we spent the entire afternoon lazing on the beach, not talking about Turkish carpets, or anything else related to draining our budget. Not that our waiter didn’t get something out of the deal. After he hooked us up with a restaurant-quality nargileh, we gave him a decent tip.
I won’t deny that we paid for friendship, but I like to think that hanging out together wasn’t a total drag for him, either.
What else. I tried to wash some of the Armenia off of me by visiting a bath house. The sudsing up was – I’ve gotta say – perfunctory at best ... but still worth the experience. Andrew, however, got the sultan’s treatment because his bather saw American money written all over him. Guess I didn’t smell like tip.
And of course we visited the big mosques, Aya Sophia and the Blue Mosque. They were, after all, right in our neighborhood, and their call-and-response calls-to-prayer provided constant background music to our stay. I was awed by their interiors, exteriors, and even the thresholds in between (Aya Sophia’s marble doorways were worn down by centuries’ worth of footsteps). We skipped some of the other tourism points, though, like Topkapi Palace and the cisterns, banking on the prospects of swinging through Turkey a year from now, as we end our service.
Now I’m going to step out of blissed-out tourist mode for a second. I didn’t go to Turkey without a bit of trepidation, mostly out of respect to the Armenians with whom I live. See, there was this genocide surrounding the year 1915, by the Turks, against the Armenians. This is still very much in the Armenian consciousness, and we were warned a number of times about the danger and moral depravity of the Turks.
So it’s with mixed feelings that I found most of the Turkish people I spoke with got glazed-over eyes when I said I lived in Armenia. They had no idea where, or what, Armenia is. Good side: Apparently Turkey is pretty safe for Armenians. Bad side: Total ignorance, not only of the genocide, but apparently of shared, geographic borders.
Armenians do make a go of it in Turkey, too. The island we went to with the friendliest waiter in the western world was populated almost entirely by Armenians, who had been there long enough that they spoke Western Armenian, not the kind we’re speaking in-country. Further, I met a woman – she gave me a face massage at the Turkish bath – who was actually from Armenia, and spoke the language I understand.
Alright, that’s enough about Istanbul. Now that I’m back home, I have some eggplant to eat. It’s time to shake it up. I had hot dogs last night. And the night before.

-m