The most common source of trouble for tourists here is taxi drivers; either they take the long way round, or charge the night rate in daytime, or, worst of all, pull the old banknote switcheroo, taking a 50 lira bill and turning round with a fiver in their hand to say you haven't paid enough. Of course we have professional and honest taxi drivers, too. I once jumped in a taxi at rush hour, late for a concert at Boğaziçi University, and the driver threaded his way down the back streets of Nişantaşı, over the hill at Balmumcu, up the road by Ulus and on to the campus. I congratulated him heartily and gave a nice tip.
But the authorities really need to tighten requirements for a chauffeur's license in this city. I recall a Jerry Seinfeld comedy routine about taxi drivers in New York wherein he said there appeared to be only one requirement for a taxicab medallion: a face.
Recently a friend apologized for being late coming from the airport, said he'd been held up by some extraordinary screw-up at customs, where he'd had to wait with hundreds of people for passport control, and only three officers were on duty. Someone else piped in that the delay was not out of the ordinary, that there's always too many people and too few customs officers.
So yes, we have a long way to go to make İstanbul ready to be the European Capital of Culture for 2010 -- that is, to be the capital without offending half the visitors.
The other night I went out to dinner with several tourists, one from Kansas City, one from Honolulu and one from London. Another expatriate chose Otantik, a homestyle restaurant on İstiklal next to the Çiçek Pasajı, part of a small chain. I hadn't been to the place in several years but used to frequent the one in Kadıköy when it first opened about 10 years ago. It was famous for being good and cheap with a peasant woman making gözleme around the flat stove.
This week on İstiklal the host put the hard sell on for the 30 lira per person house special. We said no and ordered simpler fare, but he still brought round the tray of “meze” appetizers. One fellow asked for ketchup to put on his chicken shish. (You might guess that would be the man from Kansas City, but no, it was the Londoner.)
Next thing you know we had two trays of Turkish salsa -- “ezme” -- which we all enjoyed, but it showed up on the bill for five lira each. That's OK, I told my companions, you normally do pay for such extras, though one diner's request usually is not translated into an order for the whole table.
Also on the bill, usually indecipherable to foreigners anyway, with an X denoting two of an item, etc., was the scrawl “ser” with “8” written next to it. They didn't tell us they were adding 10 percent for service and apparently would have been happy to accept another gratuity on top of that. The food was hot and tasty, but the management seemed more interested in making money than in providing a good dining experience.
One of the foreigners complained that he'd been served bread at a café in Talimhane, then charged two lira for the bread and one lira for butter. Tourists don't mind paying for a meal; they just don't like being treated as moving targets.
Recently I met a beautiful blond woman, the picture of health, and she said how she'd traveled with her female companion through Europe, come to Turkey via ferry from one of the Greek islands, rented a car and driven all over western Anatolia on their way to İstanbul. I braced myself for a diatribe about sexual harassment, but she said no one bothered her, that they'd experienced whistles and leers everywhere but Turkey.
I didn't expect that, so we must be making progress.
