Off meat

We woke early to beat a resentful path back to the Indian Consulate. At some point during the morning before we left the house, Jesse made an important yet rather obvious discovery: the horrible stench that we detected the previous day was in fact the tray of lamb pieces we had bought home after doing some grocery shopping; a tray of meat which to me had looked dodgy to begin with. It reeked. As we got our stuff together, I indicated that I would take it outside with us and find a bin on the street in which to dispose of it. a brilliant idea occurred to me: there were so many cute puddings (cats)

around Istanbul. Cats that were friendly, and needing love. I could feed them with this meat! I decided to carry the tray of meat with me to the Indian Consulate building. I had noticed a lot of very cute cats around there the previous day, and felt strongly that I would derive untold pleasure from feeding them all, like some kind of Mother Theresa of mangy street cats.

Just to be clear, the meat really, really stank. We had to visit an internet café along the way to print off some documents, and I’m positive the young dude must have been wondering if all western tourists smell of rotting meat.

When we arrived at the consulate, I quickly went around the corner to the park entrance where I had noticed some cats. There were three or four hanging out there, including a kitten. I put the meat down, and within 30 seconds close to ten cats had swarmed over, popping out from all sorts of unexpected places. It was delightful to say the least, and yes, I did derive all manner of pleasure untold from this act.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shoe Shiner

Whilst we were walking towards the consulate (yes, still with the rotten meat), a Turkish man carrying what appeared to be a kit with shoe-shining material dropped a brush out of his case. I picked it up off the street and called out after him. He was very grateful, and insisted on shining Jesse’s beat-up hiking shoes. We thought it was in payment for our being so kind and saving his only brush. He was quite thorough, and even glued some lining back together that had torn away on Jesse’s shoes.Then he mentioned that he has five children. And that one of them needs corrective eye surgery. At that point we both knew we were weren’t getting a free shoe shine. After maybe three minutes, he demanded his payment – 16TL (roughly AUD$8). Jesse gave him 2TL, whilst I shuddered at the boldness of it all. As we walked away, Jesse recalled reading about a scam targeting tourists, which went pretty much exactly the same way.

When we got to the consulate our Estonian friends were there too. And they had a funny story to tell: apparently on the way, a nice man had dropped a shoe brush and they had picked it up for him and he shined their shoes…and demanded some exorbitant amount of money in return. We all sat there and marvelled at the ingenuity of the modern scammer.

 Indian Consulate – Take Two

We didn’t get our visas approved. We were missing MORE paperwork. So we left AGAIN and visited Robert’s Café to use their WiFi and short our shiz out. Apparently, our pages weren’t aligned adequately to the square root of f*ck-off-and-stop-rejecting-my-attempts-to-visit-your-country.

Jesse felt sick, but I felt ravenous. I ordered a Turkish coffee, croissant and an omelette.

Play Shorts

Now, this isn’t a phenomenon that is entirely exclusive to this trip, but it is becoming a daily staple of the trip: in my regular day-to-day life, when I get home from work or practically ANYTHING that requires me to dress semi-respectably, my greatest joy in life is to race up to my room and quickly change into my play-shorts. They’re basically a pair of pink and white board shorts that my Mum bought me four years ago, and also has an identical pair of. I call these my play-shorts because as soon as I’m in them I feel free as a bird and just want to PLAY! They go with any basic t-shirt or singlet. Housemates over the years have witnessed me coming home from work silent and surly, only to emerge from my room ten minutes later joy-filled and goofy, racing around the house and singing annoying songs. There is something about these shorts…something that makes me want to play….

ANYWAY – after spending a day in the city not making eye-contact with men and having the entire population of Istanbul look at me like I’m a loose woman because I wear sandles (everyone has covered feet and covered everything here), I like to get home, peel of my layers and scream something along the lines of, “Eff YYOUUUUUUU EVERYONE!!!!” before dancing around as obnoxiously as I can in my play-shorts. This is an example of how that looks:

Jesse even got in on it!

Then things got a little weird:

The main thing is that we are comfortable expressing our weirdness in the confines of our own home.

Amazing Burnt Dal

Jesse had a spew in the afternoon (thank goodness) and then felt achy and sleepy. Whilst he slept, I tried to navigate around the apartment in semi-darkness (the one main light is fluorescent and would have been a bitch to sleep with on). I pulled up all the blinds for extra light, and also because I secretly love being so close to all the action on the street. Still ravenously hungry (I can only assume from all the walking) I set about making myself some dinner. First I had a coffee, with some grapes and a little bit of chocolate while I did some stuff on the computer. I drank a bottle of water and then some kafir (which we bought on our first day, thinking it was milk. It tastes disgusting with coffee). Then I fried four pieces of bread in oil and salt and ate those (proper loaf bread, not packet bread). I had been soaking some red lentils and decided it was time to cook them. I chopped half an onion roughly and put it in a saucepan with plenty of oil and salt. It cooked for about two minutes, and then I added the lentils to fry for a couple of minutes. This is to crack them and make them cook quicker. And this is where I made my first mistake. Instead of gently monitoring and stirring them, I put the lid on, walked away, and logged onto FACEBOOK. Yes, Facebook, the harbinger of doom to most well-intentioned cooking ventures.

Needless to say, when I checked on the lentils in five minutes’ time, they were burnt, and an inch of singed lentils coated the bottom of the pot. Second mistake: I should have tipped the good, not-burnt stuff off the surface into another pot. But I didn’t. I just added water and prayed that by not scraping the burnt stuff off, it would not tarnish the whole batch. It was a bitter-sweet result. By the time it had cooked, the dal itself was really, really delicious – except for the aroma of burning through the whole batch. But it was only very mild. So I still ate it and quite enjoyed it.

Some More Random Photos…