Istanbul Local Custom Tips by gilabrand

I don?t profess to be an expert after less than a week in Istanbul, but in the short time I was there, I found the whole ?fashion scene? tremendously interesting. People are always going on about how Istanbul is a blend of East and West. Well, that may be true to an extent, but I definitely felt that I was more in the East. Despite all the talk about Turkey banning headscarves, I saw them everywhere, on women young and old, including on the campus of Istanbul University.

These scarves added a vibrant splash of color, and while they did cover the women?s hair in keeping with Islamic ideas of modesty, they were clearly a fashion statement. Coming from Israel, where headcoverings for women are also very common, I noticed a difference in the way the scarves are worn. They don?t follow the contours of the head, but seem to bulge slightly in the back. My guess is that some kind of form is worn underneath to get that elongated shape. The most interesting thing was that many of these girls in headscarves were also wearing tight jeans and revealing tops. Some were walking hand in hand with their boyfriends.

Other women were swathed from top to toe in black abayas. Sometimes their faces were uncovered, and sometimes the black veiling was clipped tightly over their noses, leaving only their eyes visible. Incongruously, these same pious ladies were accompanied by men in sleeveless undershirts and fashionably torn jeans.

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The bazaars and alleyways of Istanbul are full of peddlers hawking fake perfume. Of course, they?ll swear it?s the real thing. If you so much as look at cellophane-wrapped boxes they thrust in your face, you will never get rid of them. ?Where you from?? they?ll say, to get the conversation started, and you, who were raised to be polite, will answer them. This is a mistake. Once they get you talking, they?ve won half the battle.

Chanel, Cacharel, Armani. The packages look authentic. No glaring spelling mistakes or phony-looking graphics. After coming through duty-free, you know these products are very expensive. They will tag after you and try to sell you as many bottles as they can. Two, three, four for the price of one. To show you the stuff is ?genuine? they will pull out a bottle and spray you with perfume that smells real (maybe they keep some real perfume on hand for this purpose).

If you show the least bit of interest, as my husband did (despite my glares), they will just latch on and won?t let you go. Now, I like a bargain as much as the next guy. I don?t care about brand names, either. But believe me, this is no bargain. A knock-off of a luxury item should be hard to tell from the original ? which is NOT the case here.

After my dear husband bought three of these ?perfumes? for a fabulous bargain price, I made said: Okay, what?s done is done. We?ll give them as gifts. When we got home, we opened one carefully to get a sneak peek before giving it away. While the boxes looked nice, the bottles were cheap imitations with atomizers painted to look like shiny chrome and plastic tops. The stuff inside was not water, but neither was it perfume. If anything, it was some kind of watered down aftershave.

Not to be deterred, we found a use for them ? as a bathroom spray.

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HOW TO MAKE THOSE ANNOYING HAWKERS DISAPPEAR

So much advice on how to get rid of the annoying hawkers that accost you in the markets and streets of Istanbul – and nothing works. Smiling at them politely and shaking your head doesn’t work. Saying “no” only lets them hear your accent and start a round of guessing “where you’re from.” It is very hard to go about your business with people tagging after you and sometimes surrounding you from all sides, shoving boxes of fake perfume and other counterfeit goods into your hands.

But I discovered a magic trick that does work. These hawkers are breaking the law and they know it. If they are caught by one of the police patrols in the area, they are done for. I personally saw several of these characters being handcuffed and questioned by the police.

So here’s what you do: Look them in the eye, and quietly say “Be careful, poLEEZ”, with a knowing look. They scatter and run off into the bushes like frightened rabbits. Maybe it makes things harder for the cops, but at least they leave you alone. I can tell you from experience that it works like a charm.

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Year round - winter, spring, summer or fall – tea served in little gold-rimmed glasses is the most popular beverage in Istanbul. It is offered on every conceivable occasion. With a Polish mother-in-law, I am used to the idea of every meal ending with a steaming hot glass of tea. But the Turkish custom goes beyond mealtime. It seems to accompany all human interaction. Shopkeepers offer you tea to draw you into their shops and get you to look at their wares. No transaction is closed without an offer of tea. The men huddled around their backgammon games in outdoor cafes always have glasses of tea within arm’s reach. Tea sellers walk around the parks and bazaars balancing brass trays laden with glasses of tea.

Turkey, of course, is not alone in its tea obsession. The English, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Russians – they all love their tea and have invented all sorts of ceremonies and rituals to go along with it. Turks drink their tea dark and sweet, and without milk. But “elma chay” - apple tea - is the tea of choice for many tourists.

Now, I’m not knocking apple tea. I liked it very much and drank a lot of it in Istanbul. But here’s an interesting factoid for you. It’s not tea. It’s hot apple juice.

At a restaurant near our hotel on our first night in Istanbul, we did have “apple tea” brewed from teabags. This is what tea mavens would call a “fruit infusion.” To qualify as real tea, the beverage in question must be made from the leaves of a plant called Camellia sinensis. All the other “apple tea” we drank in Istanbul was simply apple syrup diluted with boiling water.

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Without sultans to please, the world would have been the poorer. Turkish delight, that sticky candy known in the Middle East as “lokum” or “rahat lokum” might never have been invented.

According to the legend, the candy, whose name means “morsel of contentment,” is 230 years old. The sultan, with 100 women cooped up in his harem, needed some sweet treat to keep the ladies (and their numerous offspring) happy. The cook came up with Turkish delight.

He boiled cornstarch, sugar and water until it became a thick gluey mass, threw in some pistachio nuts, added a splash of rosewater, and let the whole thing set. Then he cut it into little squares and dunked them in powdered sugar, so they could be picked up with the fingers and daintily eaten (although the powdered sugar scatters everywhere). It was a big hit (and has been the source of delight for dentists all over the Middle East ever since).

Turkish delight traveled westward in the 19th century, when a sweet-toothed British visitor shipped a few cases home. If you love lokum (as my husband does), you are in good company. It was a favorite of Napoleon, Churchill and Picasso.

Today there are entire stores dedicated to this gummy confection, such as Koska and Heci Bekir. It is worth visiting one of these shops for the visual experience alone. Hundreds of little cubes of Turkish delight are arranged on trays in pale pinks, greens and yellows, some dusted with white powder, others rolled in coconut or studded with nuts. You can buy the candy by the box, or choose a little of each kind from the display and pay by weight.

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Say “Istanbul” and the images that come to mind are of soaring minarets and stone cupolas. Perhaps less well known are the wooden houses of Istanbul, ranging in style from small family homes with overhanging room extensions, hammered together from dark wood planks, to fabulous yalis or summerhouses, featuring white lacey latticework.

Most of these wooden houses were built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many have been razed to make way for modern concrete high-rises, but thankfully, UNESCO woke up in time and recognized that they belong to a unique architectural style that is worth preserving.

When I flew off to Istanbul at short notice in September 2005, I knew nothing of these Ottoman houses. I discovered them by chance while wandering in the back lanes of Sultanahmet where the tourists don’t go. It was sad to see the decrepit state that many of them are in. Altogether, there were an incredible number of abandoned, garbage-filled buildings, and not only wooden ones. In the back streets, I saw men sitting on stools in the shade, playing backgammon, totally oblivious to the precarious state of the walls around them, which looked like they could collapse at any moment.

Buyukada Island, where some of the more moneyed Istanbullus own summer homes, is a treasure trove of white wooden mansions with ornamental balconies and trellises. In fact, this island boasts the largest wooden house in the world (which I didn’t see, unfortunately, because I never made it up to the top of the hill), built in 1898. After plans to turn it into a hotel backfired, it was sold to the Greek Orthodox church which used it as an orphanage until the 1970s. Now it sits empty and neglected due to an ownership dispute.

The paint is peeling on many of these island homes, and they are clearly showing the ravages of time, but their delicate beauty is a sight to behold. They are worth a special trip.

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