Wednesday 25th September
I woke up in the morning, this was strange I thought. For the past 6 weeks I've had howling winds, barking dogs and noisier bowels affecting my sleep through the night and despite getting to sleep late/early because the hostel is in the thick of the party section I had an uninterrupted kip! I was quite nervous about sharing an 8 person dorm with Marco and Margherita purely because they are really nice people and I didn't want the in humane pong from my shoes ruining our quite pleasant relationship. The worst thing was that we were the only three in the dorm so I didn't have a leg to stand on when it came to things that go trump in the night also!
I chose the bed near the open window, that's all I could do. That plan was soon foiled when I entered the room last night to find the window closed due to the thumping music. Anyway, things were good and all three of us were up early around 8 for breakfast that started at 9. I stayed in bed till around half past and went down to see what my 8 euro a night hostel could possibly provide for breakfast! Dead on 9am some highly efficient Chinese people came to join us for a buffet of bread, feta cheese, potato salad, olives, tomato and lettuce, fruit salad and chocolate spread.
Pleasantly surprised with the spread, I treated it like a Thessaloniki buffet and naturally made the most of it. After the morning duties were finished with, I prepared myself for what was going to be mission impossible. I even wrote a list of my duties that I had to fulfil because when you have a list, you definitely mean business. Top of my list was to find a cable to fix my solar panel, then find a chemist with some sufficient poo tablets, then find a bike shop for spares and oil for Africa then if all the finding was complete, I could sightsee and maybe just maybe, make sure the beer was still keeping cold.
Simple tasks it seems, and maybe so if you know the area, have a car, speak the language and the country that you're in have actually seen a solar panel battery pack before. As you could probably assume, I did not have any of these luxuries and on top of that, Istanbul is very easy to get lost in due to all its small interlocking streets and I proved this just 5 minutes into my mission. Luckily my aimless ambling took me to a chemist and a very pleasant lady that spoke good English and she gave me good instruction with the tablets. About half an hour later I decided to get a taxi to a region I thought there could be an electrical shop.
The Turkish organise there shops by grouping them for some reason. I don't know how each shop can survive against the other but in my hunt for an electrical shop I wandered through meat cooking street. In meat cooking street every shop sold kebab spits, or bbq's. After this I experienced tool street, gold ring street, rug street and my favourite, scales and safes street. They've clearly found a neisch in the market there and I guess that one is for when you want to weigh your money before you lock it away or if you share the same assets as Pat Butcher and once you've relieved yourself of your gold, you want to see how much weight you've lost.
As a result of this commercial layout, unless you find the particular street that you're looking for, you could end up walking around the whole town empty handed. The taxi man dropped me into an area riddled with tourists. There were 4 cruise ships in port and hence a lot of Americans asking the locals where the Starbucks was, don't get me started on this. (I've been guilty of the odd McDonald's abroad yes but they really need to wake up and smell the coffee) I wasn't confident i was going to find my "electronics street" in the middle of a tourist attraction but out the corner of my eye i spotted a tiny shop with light bulbs and clocks in the window.
The shop was something else, no bigger than the "box room" of your standard 3 bedroom semi detached house and somehow it had managed to store absolutely anything and everything to do with electronics. 3 guys squeezed behind the counter pulling adapters, bulbs and cables out of the walls as locals came and went. As I opened up my solar panel they looked at it in a similar way to how the old guys playing dominoes looked at me as i cycled past, like an alien! The cable was a standard cable though, DC one end and USB the other. I had established eventually that both ends were faulty and told them this in my best Turkish, "this bit problem and this bit problem" One of the guys got rummaging and in the end we basically cut off both ends and attached two new ends because they didn't have the exact wire or the exact size DC part. It works though, SUCCESS! My hardest task and I had completed it before 11am!
Next was cycle world, that was easy. I walked out of the electrical shop proudly displaying my solar panel, turned left twice and there were 4 in a row. I had forgotten my spoke annoyingly but got some oil, asked some questions for the Italians as they need to transport their bikes back to Italy soon and before I knew it, 3 tasks pretty much complete and as far as I was concerned it was mission made-possible. A hour or two of sightseeing around the Grand Bizarre and a few Mosques and my legs were screaming for a seat and my throat for a beer so happy hour was tested to make sure it was exactly an hour. Luckily for me it was about 3 hours and when they had taken all my coins I decided to go back to the hostel. On the way back I experienced hairdresser street and for some reason all of them wanted to have a go at Beirdre. I was shocked at the thought of losing her and it will be a sad day when/if she goes. She's just starting to build her confidence and now likes to get involved with more things that I do like drinking, eating (especially eating soupy things) and she even tries to help when I zip my top up. (That soon gets annoying and painful) I walked quickly through hairdresser street before getting pounced on and got back to the Hostel.
In the Hostel I got talking to a tall, bald Iranian guy named Riza. He lived in Australia and was not allowed back into Iran so was going to rent a house in Turkey and have all his family flown over to share some time together. He spoke very good English but was sat with another Iranian who had just arrived in the Hostel and was learning English. I told him about my story and we got chatting for a while. He invited me to dinner and I accepted (he had been in the area a month already, he knew the best places and I wanted to know why he couldn't go back to Iran)
If you want to meet interesting people that will completely blow you away then Hostels seem to produce them if you dig deep enough, like little gems in rock. Cue the most unbelievable meal that almost brought me to tears. It's hard not to go into detail but Riza used to be a very successful engineer on a ship for Iran. He could see the way the country was going and knowing things about the government that they didn't want him to know he decided to leave for a better life in Australia and took his brother with him. He got his brother onto his ship and as it left Australia to go back to Iran he decided he was going to jump. He tried at first when they were in port but they caught him and held him on the boat. He worked out that at 4:30am the ship would be the closest to any port so he decided to take his brother and jump then. "It was 50/50, go back to Iran and probably put in jail for trying to leave or jump ship and maybe get eaten by sharks but maybe be saved by Australian immigration" At 4:30 he sis it and ended up being sat in a life raft in some of the worst waters for 12 hours. After helicopters were called the Australians never came, so drained of energy they had to get back on the Iranian ship but were promised the ship would stop in Freemantle and Riza was forced back to work. He was told that things would get sorted in Freemantle. Knowing this was never going to happen he rung an Australian journalist and told her everything. When the ship arrived in Freemantle it was greeted with every tv station and newspaper in Australia and he showed me the front cover of the paper that he was on. I was blown away, I thought to myself, would I be able to do the same if I was in that position. He told me more about saving his brothers life in the water and what he had to do whilst on the ship. A truly inspiring man just doing what he had to do for a better life and if he wasn't so physically and mentally strong, his brother and himself would've definitely died. Now he renovates houses in Australia and has lived there 16 years and can afford to do what he is doing now in Turkey for his family. I compared this with his friend Nikzad who is 33 and has just got a job in Turkey making jeans. He arrived yesterday and he left his son and his wife for what could be two years until they are allowed to visit him here, his son is one week old. I asked him if he had experience in making jeans he said "yes, 16 years" "16 years! You've been doing it all your life pretty much then" I said. He said he started when he was 10. Right there, right then, another blow to my emotions. We continued to talk and i asked him if he had ever sewn his fingers or been injured etc. I could see the slight imperfection on his eye and he said that came from the dust of the factory from sleeping there for 2 years as a child.
You can watch comic relief or see the adverts for UNICEF non stop for hour and hours but you never ever know how blessed you are until you sit in front of someone and see and hear their stories. Nikzad started to well up, and I was going to so in a bid not to make a scene in the middle of a packed out restaurant I dug into some sponge that I had for dessert. Thinking it was warm in the middle with a warmish honey sauce I soon experienced a cold watery injection like eating wet bread. It took my mind off the two Iranian guys for a second but honestly, nothing will ever let me forget their truly unbelievable stories and how thankful I am of my upbringing and my life today.
On top of all this Riza paid for the food and despite my pleas I couldn't even sneak money is his pocket. (Im not going to argue with a 6ft 4 bald Iranian) I bought him a couple of beers in the shop after which almost made us square and we continued our conversation back at the hostel where the public dining area had turned into a crazy discothek of young Germans. Riza went to bed and I got talking to 3 Germans from Hamburg. Freidel 20 and Theo and Lara both 19. Talk about feeling old and trying not to give them advice on life or use the line "when I was your age" I felt I was holding my own on fitting in with the kids though because Theo especially wanted to know all about what I had done. They were travelling around in a campervan but the oil pump had broke so they had to stay at the hostel whilst it got fixed. A few more beers later and good chat about this and that turned into time for a Kebab. We wandered the streets at around half 1, the place is heaving with blokes but its probably easier to find a well paved road then it is to spot any girls. The kebab shop didn't except their card so now it was my turn to repay the generosity that I have received. I was paying it forward and maybe one day they may remember the old homeless looking English guy that paid for their kebab and chips as I remember all the people that have helped me out on my journey.
We walked back to the hostel and they soon went to bed leaving myself sat alone on the sofa in the hostel listening to the horrendous techno music eating chocolate biscuits.
Some amazing people and stories to take with me for the rest of my life and hopefully continue to keep me thankful for everyday that I'm alive. As much as I want to have a permanent symbol that helps me to remember the best way to live, I won't ever get a tattoo. (Dad would probably disown me and my mum would give me the look of disappointment that we all know is worst than anger) Instead i just have to take my experiences as tattoos on the heart and mind and as I've said, I've got a lot more heading my way...
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