10 Things That Frustrate Me In Istanbul

As much as I’m enjoying Istanbul, there are also things that frustrate me or have frustrated me in the first weeks after my arrival. I felt a comprehensive list was in order. 😉

10) People thinking I’m a tourist.

I generally dislike being seen as a tourist. I’m not a tourist. I prefer to discover places by living there instead of just going there and not truly experiencing it. I did this for Sofia, Bulgaria and I’m doing this for Istanbul. I have a negative opinion of most tourists and don’t want to be perceived or treated as such. However, it’s hard to hide the fact I don’t belong here, because of my Irish skin and blue eyes, but I don’t mind being seen as a foreigner. Hopefully I’ll be seen as a foreigner who lives here as time passes. Which brings me to the next point…

9) Getting ripped off.

Like in Bulgaria, if someone thinks they can take advantage of you, they will. This is true just for a minority of people (and a great majority of people at the bazaars 😉 ), but whenever it happens it’s very annoying. The first weeks I was very cautious of it, but it seemed to happen more… Or maybe I’ve just realized something about Istanbul that I didn’t realize before.

8 ) Istanbul is not as cheap as I thought it would be.

When I paid 4 lira (about 2 euros) for a coffee on a terrace somewhere, I was sure I was getting ripped off. Looking back, maybe I wasn’t. It’s a very mixed city and in one street you can find a tea or coffee in a bar for just 1 lira, but in the next you can pay 6 or more. Apartments are cheaper than in Holland, but not by much. Although I’m comparing furnished apartments in Istanbul to unfurnished apartments in Holland. This difference makes it a lot harder to settle in Istanbul than it was to settle in Sofia. Sofia, for a Dutchman, is cheap… for now.

7) Asian toilets.

These things… my God. I wasn’t expecting that. On the European side of Istanbul these crouching nightmares are a common thing. For those unfamiliar, let me explain. You walk into the toilet stall, but you shall find nothing to sit on. Instead you are facing a hole in the floor with two places with some grip for you to put your feet. Thank God, because if you’re crouching to take a dump (or a piss if you’re a woman or a rather feminine man) the last thing you want is slipping and touching the inside of this toilet with your bare butt and genitals. Gross!

While crouching, right in front of you (usually at wall on the right) you will find not toilet paper, but a tap and small bucket at a convenient height. Yep… this is used to wash your ass. With your bare hand, yes. Now you can avoid these toilets if you’re staying in a hotel and can hold it up for a while… but at the dormitories where I was living, I had no choice… Well, either go to a European toilet that was covered in feces, or get to crouching. You can see what I’m talking about in my previous post “Turkish Prison“.

6) No Christmas holiday.

Instead I will have a holiday after Ramadan (called Ramazan in Turkey), so that’s nice. It’s totally understandable that they don’t have Christmas holidays, just frustrates me a bit that I’ll have to be in school when I’d either like to visit my girlfriend in Bulgaria, or spend time with some visitors that could come over for Christmas. Too bad.

5) Türkcell – or more specifically: having your phone blocked because you’re told to “come back on Monday” for a month.

In Turkey, after a lot of people were being threatened with knives and robbed of their phones, you should now register your phone when you get a new number. If you don’t, sooner or later, your SIM card will be blocked. I’ve heard of a few people that got blocked after 2 days, some after 2 weeks, but most after a month. Time is running out.

When I bought my SIM card, I figured I’d register my phone. It was communicated to me it was impossible, but they could not tell me (in English) why. I then went to a few other Türkcell shops (a Turkish phone provider), but every time there was either a system error, nobody that could register me present at the moment, no option to register my phone in this particular shop, or I was told I didn’t have the right documents… Then there’s always the “Monday. Monday… you come back, Monday” that’s uttered. Come back on Monday and they’ll tell you you will have to come back the next day.

4) Traffic!

The traffic in Istanbul can be insane. I was meeting with my friend Mehmet at Taksim on the European side the other day. He was trying to get there by car from the Asian side, but it was impossible, so he drove to the ferries and took a ferry instead. When he wanted to go back to the Asian side by bus, he was told that the bridges were closed by the police because they were all full of traffic. Just packed. On a Sunday evening.

Also, direction indicators used as often as normal traffic rules. Almost never. Watch your step or get ran over. This doesn’t frustrate me much though. I’m used to it from having lived in Sofia for half a year.

3) Rush hour public transport.

Oh man… I don’t know which frustrate me more… the mornings or the late afternoons in public transport. In the morning I’m still sleepy and want to sit and relax. No way to do that if you have to share 1 square meter with 3 other people.

In the late afternoon I’ve usually been sitting all day, so I don’t mind standing… If it wasn’t for the fact that you have to share the same space with 3 people again and the only thing to hold on to is above. That combined with the fact that it’s quite hot here and a lot of people don’t wash their armpits or use deodorant as often as they should will turn your 40 minute tramride into a 40 minute nightmare of scent and sight.

2) I’m speaking Turkish! You can understand me!!

Since I’m a vegetarian, it’s important for me to ask if something is without meat. It’s quite a simple question… Just 2 syllables. However, some people, if they see me, immediately decide that they’re not going to be able to understand me. Even if I repeat it 5 times with different intonations… in their mind they’ve decided that they don’t understand… so they don’t even listen.

It’s not just with the meat. I encounter it with a lot of things. Very frustrating!

1) Turkish bureaucracy.

Wow. Just wow. The Türkcell situation is just an example of it. Let me give you another example.

Back in Holland, I went to the Turkish consulate to get my student visa. I asked for a multi entry visa and got a single entry visa. Since I’m from Holland, I had to pay 450 euros for it (as opposed to other European students that have to pay anywhere from 0 to about 50 euros for it). Later I figured out a (10 euro) tourist visa would have been enough to get a residence permit.

Ah, the residence permit. So I have my residence, now to get my permit. I cannot leave the country  and come back with the single entry visa I got. I don’t know why they gave me a single entry visa, but I suppose it functions as an incentive for me to actually register with the police and get my residence permit (as is the law). I want to go visit Bulgaria at the end of next week, plus I need to be registered with the police at that time. With a residence permit I can come back in the country.

Well, the Turkish police, that issue the residence permits, haven’t gotten any information about the Erasmus students for this semester yet. This means they cannot issue residence permits. They will not even register us. To find this out, by the way, you have to stand in line for hours to be told you have to come back the next day. The next day, after waiting in line for hours again, you are explained that you can’t get a residence permit yet.

Well, nice job Turkey. So not only can I not get my residence permit before my trip to Bulgaria… but I risk getting fined upon leaving the country since the police won’t register me and you’re supposed to get registered within the first month. I am rather angry about this situation, especially since I wasn’t granted the multi entry visa which I requested (and no reason was given as to why I didn’t get the multi entry visa – also, no inquiry was made as to why I requested the multi entry visa).

Oh yeah, and of course when I leave the country, the student visa that I paid 450 euros for loses its validity. Of course I can come back into Turkey with a 10 euro tourist visa. Pff.

These are the top 10 things that have frustrated me about Istanbul / Turkey so far. Don’t expect me to come up with a list of the top 10 things I love about Istanbul. It would be an insult to the place. There’s so many things that have delighted me over here, it’s too hard to pick just ten! 🙂

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