İstanbul

Coming from the quiet, hard-earned friendliness of Sarajevo, Istanbul was like a donkey kick to the face. Everything was bigger, busier, noisier, more grand, more ostentatious.

There were huge rivers of people flowing up and around the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia and spilling down onto the shore of the Bosporus. If driftwood could have consciousness then that was what I was: a perplexed and slightly troubled stick, bobbing around a rich and ancient city borne along by a current of walking tours and selfie sticks and the smell of corn roasting on coals.

Turkey is a complicated place.

A few days before I arrived, the British government upgraded their travel advice, warning that terrorists were “very likely to try to carry out attacks in Turkey,” and cautioning against travelling near the Syrian border. You are legally required to always carry ID, and it is illegal to insult Turkey or its flag, which flutters proudly, billboard-sized, from landmarks and vantage points on the skyline. Officially, inflation is at 40%; unofficially, it’s over 100%. There is shrewdness and careful cleverness to the politics of Turkey’s president, most recently displayed in the negotiations around Sweden’s NATO membership.

In sum, everything is not as it seems, nor is as it seems, everything.

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It is telling that the most enjoyable part of my stay in Istanbul was not in the city at all, but about an hour away by sea, on the Princes’ Islands. These islands are marketed as the ideal escape for people wanting a quieter, less frantic experience than the busy streets of Istanbul. This is aided by there being almost no vehicle traffic on the islands, save for a fleet of electric three-wheeled minicabs. I took a day trip ferry out to Büyükada, the largest of the islands, and enjoyed walking through the peaceful streets.

The boat trip was worth it for the views of the city alone, but there was an additional surprise in store on the return leg. Someone next to me on the boat rather helpfully yelled out “shark, shark,” heralding the arrival of a pod of dolphins which strafed past us on their way out to sea.

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Leaving Istanbul turned out to be an entire journey in itself. Firstly, there is the complication of the city having two airports, one for each side of the Bosphorus. I arrived in one, left in the other, and spent much of my last day checking and double-checking which one was which.

Despite leaving myself eons of time to get to the airport ahead of my flight, my taxi driver paid no heed and nudged 140 kph on the (not quite deserted enough) motorway out of town at 6am. He had a plastic Chevrolet badge stuck over the Honda symbol in the centre of his steering wheel, and he certainly drove like we were in a Corvette.

To pick up my boarding pass, I had to head to one extreme end of the airport, and my departure gate was predictably at the other. The airline I flew with was cheap, the kind of cheap that charges you extra for the privilege of checking in in-person at the airport if you don't do it online ahead of time (but not too far ahead of time, or they’ll charge you for that too). The next hurdle became taking off- something (gratefully) well out of my hands, but also, as it turned out, those of our pilot. We had to wait for someone from the airport authority to come sign paperwork on board the aircraft (hopefully the “this plane definitely works”-kind), and they took most of an hour to get there.

Eventually, we taxied and lifted off into the bright sky, heading east for Armenia.