The Man in the Car
I keep having this dream about a man in a 50s suit and hat who sits in a car outside my house. The car is always running.
In one of the dreams I ask him what he wants and he says he is “darkness” and that I will be coming soon for the ride.
Man, I hope it runs out of gas, I hate that dream.
The Real Rulers of Istanbul…
Days before Turkey I got cold feet. Night sweats. A tic. Okay, no tics, but scenes of that Midnight Express movie kept me up at night. Years ago, my friend Pooks used to joke about how I was going to end up in some Turkish prison cell one day.
All I had were the tickets to Istanbul and a Lonely Planet book on Turkey. No hotel reservations. I didn’t know a single word in Turkish. Lonely Planet sucks, it’s the worst of all guide books. The more I read it to ease my anxiety, the more I thought about Turkish prison cells.
Arriving in Turkey sleep deprived and scared shitless, I see this ad in the airport:
Look at the guy, he’s sweating buckshots.
Me too, I’m sweating like Brad Davis in that movie.
Then there is the no smoking sign in Turkish and English: Smoking is illegal.
What? No cigarettes in Turkey? What!??
That’s it. I’m going to get busted for sneaking cigarettes and thrown into a rat hole for life.
Could be a mistake like the one on the sign above the toilets: Save water, only flush twice.
Some smartass struck through “twice” and wrote, “once, stupid.”
Nearby, around the electical stuff, here’s their version of “do not touch or else”
I was feeling very very far away from home, something I’d always wanted to feel. It was supposed to feel good.
We get into the city and there’s smoking and lots of English (choose a language, they speak it). Everyone was harking at us to go into their store. Their restaurant. Their coffee shop. Their Turkish bath. Until you learn to not look like fresh meat, they will get your attention and they will get you into their store.
Even in the museums they get you. One kind man followed us around explaining the history of all this stuff and before we knew it he was our “guide.” Then we were paying him for it.
I wanted to get out of there and go to other areas of Turkey. The Agean coast. The Mediterraneo. Troy. The train system doesn’t work so well. We were sick of flying. Forget driving a car there. Most people do a night bus or all day long bus. Not us. We were stuck in Istanbul.
We went to the Bazaar where the salespeople know what you want before you do.
We met a thousand people selling carpets. You think you’re talking to a fellow tourist and then, wham, they hit you with the carpet sales talk and then you are in some store drinking free apple tea and watching those guys do the magic carpet thing.
It is spectacular.
Hypnotic.
Exotic.
And you sit there convinced you came to Turkey to buy a rug.
We didn’t get a rug. Goes against the packing light thing and I already had a water pipe and a bottle of absinthe (since Paris).
It felt good when we finally mastered the art of not being sold. Got cocky about it by stopping the harkers with, “you know where I can find a good carpet salesman?”
The water is beautiful and everywhere. Loads of ferries and boats to bring you back and forth between the European and Asian sides.
And loose cats everywhere. In the plazas, sneaking into restaurants, in the gardens where they smoke the water pipes, and especially in the cemeteries.
So did we do the Turkish bath? The guidebooks and travel brochures say it is a must. The guidebook also said do not go in there naked.
Women on one identical side to the men’s.
After stripping down to underwear there’s a pretty towel to wrap around your chest and enter into this amazing domed room with stars cut out of the ceiling so the light comes through. There is a hot round marble slab to sweat and relax on for a while.
After that door shut behind us, Ohmigod, all the patrons were totally naked! My teenaged girls were in shock. There was no going back. The “bathers” took over. Ladies with mellon breasts only wearing tiny underwear. Scrubbing people down. They call it a soap massage in the brochure. It’s a bath like mammas give their children. This was the crowning moment of the trip, watching my girls choke down the giggles and give in and relax while these ladies worked their magic. Me, I was about to call that lady, “Mamma,” even when she pulled my underwear down to my knees to exfoliate my butt cheeks.
Here is the city at night from the bridge:
The Turks are as welcoming as Southerners here. The food is amazing. Nothing to be afraid of.
Well, maybe the stray cats. My daughter says the real rulers of Isanbul are cats.
Ear it is, Paris
I love the short flights from London to Paris. People are always in such a good mood, the pilots talkative…This time I took an Air France flight and the pilot didn’t speak English too well. He’d crack everyone up with things like, “Put your seat belt up.”
And boy do you need that belt on that ride. The descent is quick, almost like a baby roller coaster. My belt held me down for a good while, I was floating, my butt did not touch the seat. And the turns, I’ve never felt turns like that on a plane.
This is the fourth time I cross the channel this way and I’m just catching on now that they do it like that on purpose. That’s why everyone is giggly. They even thank the pilot for it when they’re getting off the plane.
First thing I did was get my souvenir. Got my cartilage pierced in Paris. Hurts like hell, especially when I sleep, but it’s worth it. At least it is not a corset piercing.
Just the left ear. The guy who did it hated, hated wasting that other earring. The French hate waste. If you ever get invited to dine with them, don’t ever leave a morsel on your plate or a sip left in your glass. Never ever drink soda with your meal. It makes them ill to see us do it, really, they dine with wine.
I never thought I’d see a Starbuck’s in Paris. First one I saw was in an underground shopping mall. Thought it was a fluke, but when we got out of the Louvre, there it was on the street. And that is a real shame because Starbuck’s is inferior to the espresso in the cafes there. It may be better than much of what you can get here in the States, but damn, it is a really big mistake to go for that stuff when the authentic stuff, the espresso Starbucks tries to copy is right there.
Every once in a while in the subway stations the police are checking tickets, to make sure you have one and that it was validated. So we make it through the police checkpoint and while waiting for a train, a man pops up out of nowhere, flashes a badge briefly and asks to see my ticket. I thought it was a crook trying to steal our tickets because of the swarm of cops up ahead, so I tell him, “No.” He flashes his badge again so I hand them to him and he drops one but catches it just before it hit the ground. “Wow” just pops out of my mouth and this man smiles for a fraction of a second and then puts back on his “serious” face. When he handed back the tickets, I checked them over really well to make sure he didn’t hand me some expired tickets. They were legit. He was legit. I think he was having a good time playing Inspector Clouseau or something.
Okay, do not touch the electric wires around here, or else.
The highlight of the Paris trip was seeing my Parisian friend Helene, the one with that second home near Paris. She took us to her sister’s apartment late on the last night we were there. We’d been driving for quite a while in Paris when I realized she was lost. It didn’t bother me one bit. We drove around for about an hour or two and I sure did enjoy the view.
Not as much as the one at the sister’s place though. She lives on the 17th floor and from her balcony is the most beautiful sight, The city of Paris spread out perfectly like I’d never seen. And this was at night. I didn’t have my camera.
We didn’t get back to the hotel until about 3 AM and the flight back to England was later that day, so, technically I got to see my British friend and my French friend in the same day. I never thought that would happen.
This is how Parisians move into an upper floor.
See that thin metal ladder going into the window? There is a sort of elevator thingy that carries everything up that ladder. It sounds like a garbage truck. It was right next to our window and it took about two full days to get all the stuff moved.
But hey, now I know how they do it. One day, you see, I’ll get my turn to move into a Parisian apartment.
Downloaded
We did the whole three days at the Download Festival and I don’t know what I like more, the bands or the freak show audience. This guy is arguing with security because they wouldn’t allow his skeleton inside:
Maybe he didn’t have a ticket, it was sold out. There were 75,000 people there each day
It’s sort of scary at first, the dress code of this crowd. Lots of black and gothic looking stuff, piercings, (there was one chick with corset piercing on her back, she had the strings, oh, you can imagine it). Men in dresses. Not kilts, yes kilts, but not just kilts. That is a dude in the pigtails:
Yes lots of kilts too:
It is amazing that these people were so well behaved (for the first two days at least). Not what you’d expect at a heavy metal festival.
Something else you don’t expect at a place like this is Will Smith. My daughter kept saying, “I see Will Smith on the big screen.”
I kept saying, “No you don’t, he’d never be at a place like this.”
But he was. His wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith is the lead singer of Wicked Wisdom and they were playing when we first got there. Will was at the stage wings and that WAS him on the big screen. She rocks, BTW.
People are asking if there was any anti-Americanism in England. Not at the festival. Almost every band there (about 50) was American. Even stranger, there were so many Rebel flags people in the audience were waving about. Bizarre.
On the last day the crowd started bottle throwing. Glass is not allowed, these were plastic bottles with a little water in them. By the time Guns and Roses got on stage, there was an all out bottle war. I got hit four times (didn’t hurt) but saw some others get hit really hard. These bottles come from behind you. If you look back to see who did it, you will get hit harder and more often. The bass guitarist for Guns got slammed up side the head so bad that the band had to take a break for a while. That’s when we left. Why do this? Throw bottles? It doesn’t make any sense. At one time there were so many bottles up in the air, it looked like popcorn popping.
We’d planned to leave early anyway on the last night to avoid the traffic jam. Had to drive back to London to see Phantom of the Opera the next day.
It’s something we regretted because we had such bad seats.
And we don’t care much for London anyway. We did get lucky and stumble on the London premiere of The Lake House. We saw Sandra Bullock and I got Keanu Reeves to sign my tube map.
I’ll give France and Turkey their own entries.
