Turkish Hospitality

I found the Turkish people to be warm, hospitable and happy that international visitors have made their country a destination site. That was entirely true outside of Istanbul and virtually true within the city. But I have to share with you a rough 24 hour period that was, let's say, trial by fire.

It actually started in Dubai where there was a standoff between United Airlines and Turkish Air about my reservation and whether it had been cancelled. (Turned out it was a human error on the part of United) But that wasn't known at the time. And as I was standing in the Dubai airport for 2 1/2 hours (after midnight) and the Turkish Air representative refused to call United, I wasn't feeling very "welcome" to Turkey.

Ultimately I placed a call to United on my blackberry and shoved it in front of the rep and the two of them had a terse conversation -- which in the end meant something I suppose. The happy ending is that at about 2:05AM, the Turkish air representative declared that a seat was available and that I should run for the gate (having to go through immigration still) to catch the flight at 2:25 AM. Fun :)

After a smooth flight, I arrived in Istanbul around 8 AM and, of course, my room wasn't ready. But I had prepared for this possibility by identifying a walking tour that was starting near to my hotel at 9. I figured if I was moving around I would be fine for a few more hours. And if the guide was knowledgeable and, perhaps, a cutie, even better. Check. Check. The tour was followed by an authentic Turkish lunch around the corner from the hotel at a place called Doy Doy where about 30 Turkish guys and I dined. My $10 got me a mezze plate, chicken skewer with rice and vegetables and a diet coke. Nice.

I came back took my nap and then asked the hotel manager (who I like very much) for a recommendation for dinner. He suggested fish and since I'm trying to be good AND since one is surrounded by water everywhere in Turkey, I said sure. He also said that the restaurant will send a car. Mistake #1. Never accept a "free" ride to the restaurant. Need I say more?

Here's the long and short of it: There is a phenomenon with fish places (at least in Turkey) where the primary goal is to rip off the tourists for as much as they can possibly get. And since fish is cheap and plentiful, fish restaurants charge extraordinarily exorbitant prices -- say $50 or $80 or more for a modestly sized pan fried fish which costs no more than $5 at the wholesale market. But don't think there's any transparency about any of it. There's this whole drama where they wheel in the table of fish, pick up every last fish and talk about it, wheel the cart out, bring out different fish, take them away, weigh some and not others and so on and so forth.

For me, I wound up with an extraordinary dinner bill of $212 US which was probably about 75% more than the meal was worth. Among other things (mind you I'm leaving out the details) is that the restaurant insisted that I had ordered two main courses in addition to three small appetizers. That would have been enough food for 3 people let alone one but that didn't seem to matter at all since this was one big farce! I refused to let them even put the second fish on the table despite repeated efforts to do so because I felt that would have been an acknowledgement that I, indeed, ordered that darn fish.

By the time the bill came I had caught onto this situation and began to converse with two lovely British couples sitting behind me who informed me that they had been through the same theater more than once. In fact, after they observed my encounter with the fish salesmen (they weren't waiters, really), the Brits called the staff over and the Brits themselves wrote down the price for each item and handed the "check" to the wait staff. All this before even one item was served at the table. Lessons learned, I suppose. My takeaway was never to eat fish in Turkey again. And I didn't. The next place I ate anything from the sea was on my departing flight on Turkish Air where it was included in the price of my ticket :)

To conclude this little story, I paid the $212 in cash for this delight. The last thing I wanted to do was to give these guys any of my credit card information. And I didn't want to engage with them very much because we were on a very long pier and I didn't want to wind up swimming back to shore -- or worse. But that wasn't the end. I took the issue to the hotel manager the next day and I told him that I expected to see the money back and that he should feel free to tell the restaurant that I would be happy to call the police. Whether that would have worked or not isn't clear but I wanted them to have a lot of hassle if they were going to so blatantly rip people off. I wasn't the first and I certainly won't be the last. (I now know that there are plenty of postings on Trip Advisor on this one and all of its variants!) In the end, 100 Turkish Lira showed up in an envelope at the hotel. And I learned a lesson.

Back to the hospitality part. Admittedly, it took a few days to get over this incident and I was feeling a bit uneasy about my host country. (There was also a cab ride that cost $16 for a 5 minute drive but I'm not going into that one.) The sad truth is that the Turkish economy overall is still developing and a few people will go beyond looking for an extra $1 or $5 to capture some larger sums of money. It is unfortunate because once the tourists begin to figure it out (after about 2 days) it creates a bit of a bad vibe between visitors and our hosts. And, at least on my trip, Turkey became a place where I started to watch the bill at restaurants much more carefully and to be more cautious -- not for my physical safety but from preventing a continuous flow of little, petty rip offs. In fact, I know there were others but I didn't obsess over them. I just prevented as many as I could through more caution. And it seemed to mostly work, at least in my head.

On the more positive side, I actually liked the Turkish people quite a bit. I was touched, for example, when I was on the tram and a teenager with kind of wild hair and outfit gave up his seat and took an elderly gentleman by the arm and helped him sit down. Or the staff at the Sarnic hotel in Istanbul who couldn't have been more gracious. Mehmet, the manager, Ergin the front desk guy and Murat the owner's brother were warm, generous and a pleasure to be around.

And, perhaps most memorable, there was the pudgy seven year old boy at a food stall in Bursa (the 1st Ottoman capital) who was gushing with pride as he took my order, served me and then took my money and made change. He kept looking at his dad to make sure he was doing things right and the father both gave him guidance and wide smiles of approval as the boy completed the sale. It was a special moment which I probably related to on some level because of all my days as a busboy and waiter.

And as if my little shishlik sandwich experience wasn't enough, I decided somewhat impulsively that I really needed some baklava. That's my stubborn sweet tooth kicking in no doubt. Conveniently, within five seconds, I encountered a stand with all sorts of sweets most of which I remain clueless to identify. But that didn't make a difference. So I stopped, got the attention of the purveyor and pointed to the baklava, pushing two fingers up in the air to indicate how many I wanted. All was good. The man took out some paper to prepare my gooey goodies to travel -- not that they would last more than a minute. And then, much to my surprise, the gentleman, who didn't speak a word of English, signaled that he was offering the baklava to me for free. While I appreciated the gesture, I felt rather badly about it since I'm certain I have more resources than he. I insisted at least twice that I wanted to pay him but he absolutely refused. So maybe it was a higher power intervening since the fish incident had taken place less than 24 hours earlier? Who knows? But I certainly won't forget that courtyard in Bursa for a long time to come.

These were by no means the only acts of generosity by my gracious Turkish hosts. One more cute story relates to a long distance bus ride between Izmir and Mamaris which is about 6 hours down the coast. I was a bit flummoxed at the end of the ride as I thought there were several more stops to go. But as the bus emptied, I realized we had made it to our destination. So as I was getting off the bus I left one of my bags in the overhead -- something I never do since I usually make a habit of keeping all my carry-on bags at my feet when traveling by bus. In any event, by the time I realized I was missing this bag (with insignificant items I might add), the bus was 100 yards away and 2 seconds from exiting the lot. I threw my hands up in the air, dropped all my papers, started to run and, frankly, probably looked a bit crazed. Within an instant, another van driver saw me, understood exactly what was going on, and accelerated his vehicle to literally cut off my bus before it could turn back onto the highway. Within seconds, the bus driver opened the door and the attendant handed me my little orange bag. I then turned to thank the driver of the van but it was gone. So I will never have an opportunity to thank that gentleman for helping me out. But his efforts provide an opportunity to think of his act of kindness as being typical for the Turkish people which it really is.