According to Turkish Daily News, the top 10 countries in the UNDP development ranking the previous year included Canada, Norway, US, Australia, Iceland, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Japan and Great Britain. Turkey was in 85th place, in the company of countries such as Brazil, Tunisia and Belize. As usual, development was uneven. In the cities you could obtain services to rival those in developed countries, but in the country it was a different story. Perhaps the greatest challenges to Turkey were to improve their human rights, to look outwards, and to care for the environment. They got a head start on other Middle Eastern countries thanks to the reforms of the Turkish Republic but they could still get left behind in a fast-changing world.
I woke at 0500 and went up to the roof to watch the sunrise, and the still lit Aya Sofya and Blue Mosque against the daybreak. Then I went back to stretch the time until breakfast by reading the paper and doing my packing.
Each room in the hotel had a poem. Mine was Listening to Istanbul by Orhan Veli Kanik. It was a fitting paean to Istanbul at the tail end of my holiday. It is a special place blessed by geography and climate. I had barely scratched its many layers of history. I would like to revisit it some day.
The hotel had a friendly kitten that I positioned on my luggage for pictures, that's why its poses look awkward. It was probably thinking: Am I doing this right? Will I get stroked after doing what this strange human wants of me?
My flight wasn't until early afternoon so there was no hurry. I sauntered over to the Orient Hostel and joined a shuttle. There were a couple of USAns and 4 Belgians or Dutch students in the van. The students had heavy duffel bags or backpacks. I'll never understand people who don't pack light.
At the airport I was so early that they hadn't even assigned a gate to my flight yet. I saw the destination Vnukovo on the board. Where the hell was that? I later discovered that it is the oldest of Moscow's three operating airports.
I had retained a 1 million TL note as a keepsake so I had just enough money left to buy a sundae. And that was my last purchase before we flew off into the sunset.
I woke at 0500 and went up to the roof to watch the sunrise, and the still lit Aya Sofya and Blue Mosque against the daybreak. Then I went back to stretch the time until breakfast by reading the paper and doing my packing.
The hotel had a friendly kitten that I positioned on my luggage for pictures, that's why its poses look awkward. It was probably thinking: Am I doing this right? Will I get stroked after doing what this strange human wants of me?
At the airport I was so early that they hadn't even assigned a gate to my flight yet. I saw the destination Vnukovo on the board. Where the hell was that? I later discovered that it is the oldest of Moscow's three operating airports.
I had retained a 1 million TL note as a keepsake so I had just enough money left to buy a sundae. And that was my last purchase before we flew off into the sunset.
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