Streetwalking

Todays sermon comes to you from Ankara and will be on the joys of streetwalking!

People ask me what I'm especially interested in, when I travel. The answer I end up giving is really lame; "well, everything". But it's as close to the truth as I know how to get. It would be easier to say what I don't like, or rather, what I don't find interesting (obviously touristy stretches of street, locals who have been tainted by excessive mass tourism to give a smile while they hope to get money from you and the finger behind your back if they don't get it, tour groups, touts and I'm not terribly big on museums usually (the stuff in glass cases -variety, with notable exceptions, such as the Museum of Egyptology in Cairo and the Pergamon in Berlin)).

However the one thing I really do like, is walking. Just hit the roads somewhere, doesn't really matter where, and start walking. Walk the smart parts of town and the seedy parts, the beautiful parks and the ugly office areas, the busy shopping regions (though these tend to bore me, unless they are open markets or possibly grand basars) and the high-rise residential areas.

This method took me on my last night in Istanbul (after a bus ride, which didn't go where I though), to a really lovely, shady old neighbourhood, where I ran into Mehmet from "under the bridge" again (from the entry Kati keeps her head straight). Well, actually he ran into, or rather after me, having seen me pass the restaurant where he was having his lunch. I mean HOW BIG IS ISTANBUL ANYWAY? If there's the one person I'm not too keen on seeing, what are the odds of meeting him half way across town the next day. Anyway, I taught him the correct pronouncement of "happiness" and "sing" and cut him loose.

When walking around, it's usually the little things that amuse and interest me. Like the things that are sold in the street stalls, the design of packaging and advertisements, funny signs, the colourful clothing lines hung outside old buildings, elegant old gentlemen having a smoke on a street corner or, for example, the beauty of the way the paint is fading from this blue wall of an old building I saw this morning in Ankara (photo above). Of course sometimes things may amuse me, because I'm ignorant of the local culture or language; for example a roadside gravestone of one "Ali Baba" I spotted in Istanbul amused me, since it made me think Akrakadabra, Open Sesame - yet for all I know Ali Baba could mean "beloved father" and I'm missing the whole point.

Life is so much more on the streets here - and indeed everywhere I have been outside of the wealthy west. When trying to take a picture of some beautifully crumbling bit of wall with a crooked window, it's as likely as not that that window will pop open and the lady of the house will lean out to hang her washing, shout to her child playing football on the street, or just see who's about and on what business. Gossip is exchanged on the streets, hands shaken, street kittens patted, laundry hung and even the delivery men are a more visible part of the picture with their loads of firewood, gas flasks, fruit and such.

Admittedly I am especially partial to the slightly seedy back streets, the often rather run down parts of town with narrow streets and old buildings, which haven't yet (or hopefully ever) been renovated by the noveau wealthy into hotels and restaurants. These are the parts that are often first to go, when progress arrives. Like the hutongs in China razed to the ground for the Olympics and for modernisation. And many of the old parts of town I have seen in Istanbul and Ankara are in real disrepair, with empty Ottoman -style wooden houses rotting, roofs fallen in and windows gone. Or burnt - by accident or design - beyond saving. Such a shame!

Thus endeth today's sermon. But it's easy to go on about Aya Sofya and other legendary stuff and forget to tell about the little things that count. As the saying goes: allah is in the details