One day impressions: Istanbul

People occasionally get numerous opinions based on the first impression. The particular approach can be highly misleading, but still there should be some peace of truth as a part of reality that can be viewed with a person’s own eyes. The particular aspect will be reflected in the context of Istanbul. Observations have been taken during half a day from Istanbul Ataturk airport to the Green Park Hotel.
First that can be noticed even thanks to the Turkish Airlines, are Turkish sweets. Square-shaped candies are almost without smell, but tastes somehow different from anything else. Secondly, the food including beef with rice and baked vegetables, salmon, bread, another small square candy for a desert, some creams to be eaten with a bread. All that was served in nice hard plastic dishes that had thought thru form. First time in the use of different airlines cutlery was not from a plastic, but metal. From the aforesaid can be understood that Turkish people like to eat and eat good. There were no difference in serving business or economy class passengers.
From the view of streets the most outstanding are red flags with a Moon as well as tall towers with sharp tops. Perhaps not only Turkish people tend to be patriotic towards their country, but they also are religious. Further support for that can be found in the desk drawer of the Green Park Hotel. There was the Holy Quaran (colour coded translation with Arabic text). Some religious songs were heard also on the streets and in the airplane saloon.
Dressing for Turkish women mostly are long cover also over the head. Seems that they like to apply also read lipstick and use dark eyeliner to highlight their eyes and a mascara to make their eyelashes appear long and thick. Female darker skin and dressing makes it easy to be distinguished among others. Men are less expressive and mostly wear some light colour clothes (jeans with a t-shirt) or a suits regarding business people.
Seems that Turkish people like animals as they appear not only on the streets running in freedom (some appeared wild ones), but also in signboards and other places. In the street graffiti mainly appear cat or other animal drawings.
People are on the streets all night, including even kids. You can seen many kids in the playgrounds or streets past 10 p.m. Also special guards in parks can be noticed. Additionally you can easily buy there an ice-cream or some other light food. Additionally, on the streets you can also buy some vegetables in the late evening, for example, melons and watermelons a guy was selling after 10 p.m.
Road system is well developed and there are no high traffic jams. Metro is also well used. On almost every corner you can see yellow taxi drivers. Their cars all look the same.

Istanbul is a diverse city and it is definitely worth to be explored much deeper.

 Photos: personal archive


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