Although we had told the manager of our hotel that we would be leaving, we woke up feeling in need of a catch up and planning day. Istanbul days were still in my memory only, and too precious to lose by not recording at least some of our experiences there. Keith had a backlog of hundreds of photos to sort and to select to go with the as yet non-existent text. The room was strewn with drying washing, we had not answered the emails we had received – it was all too much, so we decided to blob out.
The day was spent taking turns on the computer, eating picnics, visiting the internet café, sleeping, and for me, reading my current book, ‘A Death in the Family’. Unfortunately the man who spits was having a day at home too, but that is all part of the rich tapestry of staying in a hotel that is not frequented by tourists and seems to be a rooming house for unusual types and travelling salesmen. Others of our fellow lodgers washed their clothes and themselves at the basin in the shared bathroom, mooched about in their tiny rooms or the tea house next door, or listened to music. By the end of the day, I think I had encountered every one of them at some stage on our mutual landing.
Our window was open so it was very noisy - roller doors that fought their frames were rolled up and down ad infinitum, mobile phones rang, everyone conversed in a way that could have projected their voices to the back row in a theatre, children’s moods erupted suddenly in laughter or tears, and occasionally a vehicle tooted its way through the pedestrians meandering along the road. A particular assault came when some electrical work was carried out on the roof two metres from us, with the hammer being the tool of choice.
We left the cocoon of our room to have tea – a pizza, sitting at a table near the pavement. We watched the passing parade and I thought how people simply replace each other, how I could have been myself as a child and seen the same range of faces and types, and how one day our little grandsons will be old men watching a similar stream. Suddenly one of the generic human crowd started waving madly at us – it was the owner of the 30 kg cat, Garfield, whom we had met at the puppet theatre where we had shared afternoon tea yesterday. She was happy to see us and brought her boyfriend over for a brief ‘hello.’
A session at the Internet café ended the day. We retired with the clouds of undone things lifted and a positive feeling about heading off to Çanakkale tomorrow.
The strange view outside our strange hotel room in Bursa
No comments:
Post a Comment