03 Flight 975 - The beginning of a journey
On the 27th of January at approximately 22:30 hours local time, our plane touched down on Turkish soil. From there it was another hour and a half to get to Sulthanamet where we had to find a place to sleep for the night. Luckily I’ve been to Istanbul before (during Ramadan, the city is like a fairytale that comes to life during that time) and I happen to know there are a lot of hotels and hostels in the area. Add up the fact that January is not really a touristy month so it shouldn’t be hard to find a place to sleep.
But firstly I should also tell you that during my stay in Turkey
I’m not all on my own. Off course I’ll be meeting plenty of new people in Turkeyas well, but Jelmer de Jong en Arne Mulder, two good friends of mine who study at the same faculty as myself came along.
And about six months ago we started to become friends with Fikeriye Dedeoglu and Pinar Celik, two Turkish girls who study in Eskisehir at the Anadolu University. They came to Holland as Erasmus students from Turkey to study at our faculty. During these six months we went to Paris and some other places and the friendship of our little group became stronger.
And now, six months later Jelmer, Arne and me decided to go to Turkey for our own studies. Fikeriye and Pinar are now back in Turkey as well. They are visiting family and friends and will travel by train to Eskisehir after a few days. Jelmer, Arne and me will probably be taking the same train to Eskisehiras well, or maybe a day or two later.
In Eskisehir we’ll have to say goodbye to Pinar because she will be going back to Holland for another six months to study ‘Crossmedia’ at our faculty.
Jelmer, Arne and I hope you will like those six months in Holland just as much as you liked the previous months. Good luck, ‘canim dostum’ :)
So, now to continue our arrival story: at 0:00 the bus from the airport dropped us off near the blue mosque and from there it’s about a 5 minute walk to most of the hostels in the area. We went to ‘Istanbul Hostel’ and after checking in and dropping our bags we decided to eat something in the city.
We left Sulthanamet and went on our way to Eminonu to look for a place to eat. A Turkish waiter asked us in, we agreed and we ordered ‘something with kebab’. The waiter asked us where we were from. ‘Holland ’ we said, and the waiter starts (as do many Istanbulus once they know where we are from) to talk Dutch to us. ‘Goedenavond’ en ‘hoe gaat het?’ We laugh and the waiter starts to talk in English again. He tells us his name is Rajin, that he has nine sisters and six brothers. He’s 30 years old and lives with his family. He explains to us that family is very important to the Turkish people.
After our late night dinner we went back to the hostel to finally get some sleep.
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