As I said, a daily trip by bus to Istanbul was hard. Bus ticket cost me 45 dollars (for me, as a student, have discounted $ 5). Alex, the owner of travel companies, to attract my attention, promised to put me on the best place in the bus. This place turned out a chair almost in the nose, next to the TV and a huge window. From this window I twisted post-wine-hop, I saw the Black Sea, along which we went in standing in the two parts of the world on two seas, the Straits and the four islands of the great hero-city of Constantinople, Byzantium, the Second Rome. Istanbul.



I think the world has some hard work the word. First, write horoscopes - at some point make up the monotonous nonsense like "now your half will be able to suspect that something may fatally bored. Secondly, to TV show in which she had to talk for hours kind of nonsense, while "audience" is always wrong comprise bukovok words. Third - to describe the view outside the window (the window flew endless fields "). And fourth: writing about Istanbul.


I loved Istanbul in 2004, when I first got here. Love, as usual, fell unexpectedly. I left the airport building Atatürk, looked at the trees and realized that, actually, all the end, compactly, there is no other way. I knew that I would be defeated, lose, and I will not have to endure every day dreaming here go back.


Five long years I tried to get to Istanbul. When I got it, I was intoxicated, was so unbearably happy that saturated the city. The world works so smoothly that even if you get something sverhzhelannoe, you can get this so much that is simply not going to think anything. As many as 9 days I walked the crooked streets of Byzantium, drank the bitter Turkish tea and play backgammon in the small cafe of the two tables. And despite this, I still have no idea how to write about this city.


You can notice different details, you can meet some people and take photos, you can eat sandwiches every night with contaminated in engine oil mackerel, tomatoes and onions, you can admire the incredible beauty and wonder that so noisy and fun that all motorists consider it their duty to press a dial tone, but public transportation is some kind of monstrous money, you can ward off pesky vendors (and in Turkey, selling everything and everyone), you can be surprised that all toilets should avtovklyuchayuschayasya lamp avtovydvigayuschiesya wipes and car to cover lid toilet clean polyethylene and they never work, you can marvel at the huge number of orthodox Muslim women, dissecting in sorokogradusnuyu heat dressed in black, you can do many things and to notice a lot of details, but there is absolutely no way to say something distinctly of a city called Istanbul.


God only knows what it is. I know one thing: Istanbul is one of those cities that they live their life incomprehensible to anyone. There is no doubt that this city is stronger than I, you, you, us, all Turks, all Alawite, all tourists, all traders, all the waiters, all students, all the homeless cats, all sellers of fish, all the sailors, all fashionable and Tightened police, all sellers of carpets. Do you find yourself in Istanbul, you understand that there are no more living without the city, and then you squeezed like an orange, throw. And you, dead, lifeless sit on the boat and float away. I understand that a lifetime is not enough to explore the whole city, all its secrets, quirks, secret places, secret passages, oddities and horrors.











Probably no need to invent some words, try to describe.
You just need to take, come and courageously in order to meet the inexorable fact that this is the best place on earth. And you will never need it.