"Merchants Dealing Time" Turkey by Romanian_Bat

An endless road and a never-ending commercial street filled by people buying and selling. Holiday packages in superb locations of blue seas and palm tree-lined beaches, cheap clothes, fine artefacts, unique experiences. Everything is for sale and one cannot pass through Turkey without becoming part in the buying or selling. For this is merchandise, disregarding of its nature, is about.

Boat crossing the Bosphorus

A truck replaces the horse or the mule, together with the cart. A hotel next to a gas station replaces the caravanserai. The boy running around with a plate filled with tea glasses replaces the water merchant. Different flavour tobacco replace the drugs traditionally used for water pipes. After centuries of running and fighting the Ottoman Empire, people from all over Europe come to Turkey out of their own will.

Merchant-filled street in Asian Istanbul

My fondest memories from Turkey... Cooking soup on the Istanbul-bound train with some Poles, watching the great scenery while the bus was crossing beautiful mountains in the East of the country, where they are builsing an oil pipeline at 2000 m.a.s.l., watching Ankara and its night stillness, having a glass of tea with a carpet merchant endlessly telling me about the motives and different designs on some score rugs, talking about Hagi with a stranger in a restaurant...

Find more details on my (quite limited) trips to Turkey in travelogues.

• Pros:A country that has preserved its best feature: trade.
• In a nutshell:Lesson on giving and taking.