Now I'm finally getting scammed! I was beginning to think I wasn't pretty or something.

The boat riding went down as planned. Sort of, that was scam one. I was armed only with a little info from the internet to look for "TML" for a ferry that would cost $5 round trip, and the ride would be about 2 hours each way, and a the far end I could get off and eat fish (take note, I'm desiring fish now, it comes into play later). Well I can't find no "TML" and I don't remember the name of the exact place I want to go (something like Anadolu Kavagli). I just kind of assumed ther would be one going north, south and across to Hadarpasha (the Asian side). I thought that pretty much all I'd have to do was find the northbound one, and take it all the way.

Well there's lots more boats than that, and they aren't clearly marked, and they go all different ways. So I hear something familiar - "Bosphorous" and say ok. Now I had glanced at a ferry price and saw 7.50 YTL round trip. So when this guy says "20 YTL" I almost said no. But didn't, I'd already wandered a lot at this point and wanted to get on a boat. I knew at least that this was in the general direction I wanted to go in. SO I say OK. I ask where the ticket window is and he says just to pay him. This is also bad but I do it. Then he doesn't have the right bills to make change, so he wanders off with my money, leaving me short.

Surprise, he actually comes back eventually with the 10 YTL he owes me. But still no ticket, I can just get on. Well at this point there are only 3 other guys up there, so I was sure that the way this would go down is that he would take us way out, drop us, and leave us. Then when the next ferry comes along we'd have to pay again because we have no ticket.

Turs out though he was running at least a semi legit operation. Lots more people get on and it's not really a "round trip", it just goes in a big loop, no stops. I wonder if everybody else paid as much as me though... All in all it worked out though considering this, a slow boat up the Bosphorous, is something I really wanted to do and if the going rate was 20, I wouldn't blink.

But then after dropping by the hotel room I really do get scammed. I still wanted fish and had noticed a poster for a fish place behind my hotel. (It's called somthing like Sabahattin in Sultanahmet). Anyway they got me with a tourist trick where they give you stuff you don't order. Turkish fish restaraunts don't usually have menus. You either tell them what fish you want or they tell you what they have and you agree on a price (more like they tell you market price). So as soon as I sat down I realized the place was a little too "nice" but I decided to give it a shot. I have speant no more than 7 YTL ($5ish) for any meal up to this point, but I wanted some fish. So I decided that I would do it unless it was more than 20. Well I ended up ordering bonito for 25. So then he brings out the meze (appetizers). And I submitted to a salad. The salad was brought out with a sort of milky fish dish. It rang alarm bells because I had only seconds ago ordered the salad. I almost said "No take this back, I didn't order it". But the fish was tunaesque so I assumed it was bonito (which in American sushi restaraunts at least is a kind of tuna). I ate it and waited a long time, presumably just to ask for a check. And just when I was about to do so the waiter shows up with a plate full of fish. Wow. I had fallen for the gambit - but only because the apetizer was plausibly my entree.

So my bill was 40YTL. Thats 5 for salad and 10 for soup or vice versa or 7.50 each. Any way you cut it, expensive stuff. And the entree was actually plenty. I was pissed but knew I had no case. "You ate it, you have to pay" would surely have been the answer.

The rest of the day was uneventfull, I wnet back to a tried and true Kuftechi from last night for dinner. I just didn't want any surprises at this point.

I'm back in the saddle tommorrow.

Hey Istanbul, how about some public trashcans?

A public trashcan?

I'd think twice about buying a Coke if I knew the commitment involved.

Well I really touristed it up today.

It rained steadily until about 5p and my punk self did not bring a poncho, so I was soaked most of the time.

I started off at Tokapi palace, the palace of the sultans...



It was alright. They make you buy a seperate ticket to get into the Harem, the Sultan's family's private quarters. I bet they only get more money for it because of the titalation of the word "harem" in the west. I think you expect to see giant beds and mirrored cielings and poles. But mostly it's a bunch of relatively nice rooms. Nothin sexy about it really (except maybe the swimming pool, not that there was anything sexy about the swimming pool, just that it was one place where you could picture all the concubines frolicking together, perhaps naked). the rest pf the palace was pretty nice, but not overwhelming (I skipped the also extra treasury which may have had the wowee zowee jewels). The coolest part was the religious relics Sultans had collect. Some of Mohammed's (SAW) red beard hairs, a tooth and a "footprint" were there (how do you get a "footprint"? Did he step in cement for someone? Also seeing the prophet's sword and the swords of his companions was pretty cool.



Then I went over to Hagia Sophia, a giant church built by Roman (Byzantine) Emporer Justinian. It's got a weird cuteness about it. Maybe it's the blush pink color. And the Muslims who took it over during the conquest had really poor taste in erecting 4 minarets - 3 in gray stone and 1 in brick. It looks real unprofessional. On the inside they did very little besides inscibing a nice banner on the dome, no doubt saying "there is no god but God and mohammed is his profit. They also hung some big disks with Arabic on them.

I checked out a Byzantine cistern, a James Bond set which they had the forsight to build 1500 years ago.




And I went over to galata and climbed the tower.



Tommorrow I say less walking, more boat ridin'

peace.

Atlanta World

Forgot to mention this: While I was taking the train in I'm 90% sure I saw a big Hense tag on an overpass (too quick to draw the camera). For those unfamiliar (who don't take MARTA) Hense is Atlanta's premiere graffiti artist. I don't know if he even lives in Atlanta but he's the one you see most and one of the best, artisticly. So he beaet me to Istanbul. Amazing.

Also not long after the guy sitting across from me was listening to Usher featuring Lil John and Ludacris' "Yeah". That song was ubiquitous among headphone wearing Marta patrons last year.

So the train pretty much felt like home.

On a related note, I guess I see where these cultaral imperialism alarmists are coming from. I don't really mind that young Turks like American music, I'm happy about it in fact, but why does it have to be crappy American music. The Usher song is, decent, but the other stuff I've been hearing is all April Levine and 50 cent. In other words, garbage.

Night Shots

Getting there

I started off yesterday by begging a ride of the developer at my um, developement to the train station and then realizing I forgot my camera. Well that wouldn't do, so I ended up having to take a cab to the airport. An expensive mistake (the camera, not the cab, I was running late and wouldn't have made it otherwise.) So I was dwelling on that during the 1st 2 fligths (Atl - Dulles, Dulles - CDG). I always try to sleep on long flights but it never really happens.

Air France gave some nice encoutrements: headphones but also a mask and earplugs. I should have kept the earplugs but didn't think about it at the time. And you know what else? I love airplane food. It is almost always good. I think I like the variety of tiny things. I don't know, I understand that this is a minority viewpoint.

So then we get to CDG very early in the morning, about 6a local time. I've always wondered why they show you the ugliest part of CDG first - the arrivals go through very cold ugly steel and concrete corridors. Ten the deprture area is reasonably nice. Whatver, they also sceintifically calculate the chairs to make them impossible to sleep on so I've read a whole lot of Eric Schlosser's "Refer Madness". I knew I had 4 hours to burn until the flight to Istanbul, scheduled for 10A.



Then it was delayed. Eventually at 11 or so they tell us to go to a different gate at the other end of the terminal. Then we wait another 30 minutes or so. Then they put us on buses and drive us way around to the plane. And we wait some more. A van marked "Nationale Police" shows up and the cops hustle 2 guys into the back of the plane, in hoods and cuffs. People chatter (at least one takes a picture). Once we boarded, one of the detainees is just yelling at the cops. I think he was speaking French and I like to think I heard him repeating "I'm a Morrocan" ("Magrebi, Magrebi")*. The assumption, I suppose most people had was that they were illegal imigrant deportees. So after a lot of this guy screaming and the cops failing to shut him up, the pilot starts complaining to the cops. He says the deportees are a "risk to the passengers". I don't know about risk (there were at least 2 cops per unarmed, cuffed deportee) but they were a nuisance. After the cops versus pilot thing wnet back and forth a couple times superiors got called and the pilot won. The cops and detainees disembarked and we got in the air at least 2 hours after we were supposed to.

In Istanbul I walked right past the Visa counter (with no line) to the passport counter and waited in a short line. Then the guy told me I had to have a Visa. Then I went and got in the now prodigious visa line. Then back in a now interminable passport line. I also copped out and let this little old lady in front of me at the very end, and turned out she had two other ladies with her and their documents weren't straight. Plus, she didn't have a visa.

A train and a tram later and I'm in the heart of the city. It is definitely a metropolis. And definitely European, with a little asian around the edges - especially in driving styles a commerce.

Iyi Geceler boys and girls.

*The implication being "I'm an illegal Morrocan, not Turk you idiot, don't send me to Turkey.

PS - 1 good thing about having to go back for the visa? I found a 10 quid bill on the floor.

Last year Hurricane Ivan hit near Mobile AL. I had been with a crew starting in the Florida keys and following Ivan's path to Panama City and then Mobile and then Biloxi MS (we overshot him a little). That storm damaged some buildings and dumped a lot of rain in Biloxi. It peeled some aluminum off our hotel and gave our satellite truck a scare, but sitting on the beach the next day it was clear that Biloxi would soon recover.

Not so for Katrina. Biloxi looked much worse when I arrived a week after the storm than anywhere I've seen after a hurricane. Last year Biloxi's floating casinos had water and wind damage; this year the giant barges had been lifted over the highway and placed over the highway 1/4 mile inland. Last year houses sustained damage; this year entire neighborhoods are rubble. The coastal highway looks like an earthquake hit it, several large bridges are knocked down, dominos style.

The cleanup effort is also much more massive. Biloxi is swarmed with troops, National Guard directing traffic as well as Navy Seabees working on construction, members of all US services mounting relief operations. In addition to that I met a Dutch sailor, spanish language media extensively covered Mexican troops in the area and we also saw the Canadian Navy. A flipside of the military relief operations is that travel around the small strip that Biloxi is on is very slow and difficult, which made the long hours of field work even longer, and made it much harder to feed things on time. In addition to the military presence there are police and firemen from around the country on the gulf coast. We saw the Atlanta Fire Department and the NYPD. There are also thousands of volunteers from the Red Cross and other groups as well as some individuals who came on their own.

We shot stories in other coastal towns: Gulfport, Bay St. Louis, Waveland. Gulfport's major import is bananas, which accounts for the giant chiquita containers (as in the kind an 18 wheeler hauls) all over the place: on porches, in storefronts, in the street. The beach at Bay St. Louis is relative high ground and it was under lots of water. In Waveland I saw a boat in a Burger King drive through. All along the coast it was dusty, smelled like death, and was hot.

Many of the poor do not have house insurance and are now destitute. Among people who do have insurance many had only "wind and storm". What happens to them is that the adjuster will look at their house and say they will cover everything above the water line. One man in a story we did had a water line on his wall about 7 feet high, nothing below that would be covered. I don't know what I'd do if I were one of these people.

With only a few exceptions people were grateful for our presence. They would thank us for what we were doing, they want the country (and world) to understand their plight.

I live in Atlanta. Earlier this year I was in Shreveport, and we contemplated a side trip to New Orleans for a couple days. I may have even couched the proposition in terms of "we should go again before it's gone". In the end we didn't go. I think it was 7 hours out of the way. Plus we had the puppy with us, so we would have had to find a puppy friendly hotel.

I thought we still had a few years. The way major hurricanes had always missed New Orleans in the past I thought there was some environmental reason they always missed, some force or cycle that the meteorological hadn't figured out yet.

That or magic.

It turns out it was just statistics, the same way you can actually win at a slot machine for a while but if you play long enough house always makes the money back.

So we didn't go. But we should have. My regrets would be amplified had I not been there once last year. I'm not going to pose like New Orleans is my favorite place or that I have a special connection, only that it was certainly a special place. It was genuinely weird for real reasons, it's multi hued cultural heritage and it's geographic predicament. And while I would not want to live there, it was a fantastic place to visit. And the un, she has never been.

(Sorry, I wrote this on Tuesday or Wednesday but hadn't had a chance to put it up yet)