Recently I went to an international student party here in Istanbul, but I don’t want to talk about the party. I want to talk about our way to the party. We were hanging out in an apartment on the Asian side of Istanbul, where we all live. We had dinner together, some wine and around 11 we decided to get on our way to grab a bus to the Taksim/BeyoÄŸlu district of the European side of Istanbul; it’s where all the parties happen.
So we got on our way and into the bus… As we were sitting in the bus, waiting for it to leave, it was noticeable that we were attracting some attention. Of course, we were all chatting and foreigners in Turkey generally attract quite a bit of attention.
As the bus started moving, we started getting some ugly looks from people turning around and looking at us… Maybe it was not just us being foreigners, maybe we were a bit too loud (even though we weren’t loud, especially by Turkish standards).
Then, upon one guy’s third turning around and staring at us, he said in a very direct and rather rude tone:
“Excuse me!!!!” There was a pause.
“Slowly!” Another pause.
“Slowly!!” He kept staring at us.
One of the girls present said okay and then the guy turned around to start a conversation with his neighbour. No doubt that it was about the nuisance and the suffering he had to go through, with us in this bus.
Even though the guy was quite rude – and drunk, as was obvious upon him exiting the bus – this small anecdote says something about the culture in Turkey, or at least Istanbul. You will hardly ever see someone eating in a bus, or even on the street. When two friends get into a bus together, they usually lower their voices and speak rather softly. This is quite different from other countries I’ve visited, where people generally talk with each other in a normal volume.
Also, a lot more so than in Holland, people will actually immediately get up for a woman, an old person or a person with disabilities. Not 100% of the times, but a lot more than in Holland. Over here I started feeling that the whole bus should be ashamed of themselves if there’s an old lady standing while there are young people sitting.
However, all of the above does not mean that the guy yesterday wasn’t completely out of line. First of all, you’re in the bus to Taksim at 11 o’ clock on a Friday night… What do you expect? Second of all, he was eating when he got into the bus. Thirdly, he could have asked us politely at least, or just have made some gesture instead of shouting at us.
Photo above by ibcbulk on Flickr, shared under a Creative Commons license.
How is the bus culture in your country? How are people’s manners? Can you comment about some of the things mentioned in this article and how it is in places you’ve been to?
BasBasBas.com is about my life as a Dutch student living in Istanbul. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul and travels in the region. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.
I’m about to embark on a 24 hour busride to Prague with my girlfriend. I’m invited to speak at a conference about social dynamics and hope to change some lives with the speech I will give there. I’ll be staying with a friend of mine who’s a DJ and who’ll be playing at 3 gigs that weekend, but before having a blast in Prague, I’ll have to make the best of my time in the bus.