Istanbul General Tips by hekate

Favorite Thing: The new Turkish lira (YTL) is in circulation as of 1 January 2005. Both the old and new Turkish lira banknotes will be in circulation until the end of 2005. After that only the new lira will stay in circulation. According to the brochure on the picture, if you withdraw money from ATM you would probably get a combination of the old and the new bills.

The difference between the old and new Turkish lira is that they had cut out 6 zeros (000 000), which means that 1 000 000 TL = 1 YTL.

Thus, the price for one and the same item had to be quoted (but it is not as far as I had seen) both in new and old Turkish liras. This basically means that, for example, you will have to pay either 13 000 000 TL or 13 YTL.

This could make you feel a bit strange but for me it was OK since we had denomination of the currency in Bulgaria in 1999. The only difference is that we had cut off only 3 zeros :)

What you see on the picture is the old bill of 250 000 TL, the old coin 250 000 TL and the new coin of 25 kurus. Kurus is the equivalent of the cent, i.e. 1 YTL = 100 YKr.


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Favorite Thing: I guess it happend to most of us :)) When you travel, you might happen to see some signs that are a bit wierd, funny or just strange. I think easyoar had a pretty good colection of such signs :)))

I have the habit of taking pictures of such signs, so I could not resist the temptation of taking a picture when I saw what you see on the picture. It was in an underground passage near the Galata bridge.

If I had more time I would have checked the WC to see what is so modern about it but I guess I will have to solve this mystery next time I go to Istanbul ;)


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