Springtime at last. What does one do with a well-deserved holiday in Turkey? For starters, a ferry boat ride on the Bosphorous. Then it’s on to Istikklal Caddesil, where one comes face to face with Polanksi’s ‘essential strangeness of life on this planet’ – and the high price of beer and Harmon mutes.

The Eminönü ferry. Photo http://sozunbuyusu.wordpress.com.

The outdoor cafes in Moda are a reasonably good indicator that spring has finally arrived. As its name suggests, Moda is a fashionable neighborhood, located on the Asian side of the city.

Strolling along its narrow streets, past rows of shops, you arrive at a park overlooking a placid sea. The sun is out, showing the first hints of color returning to the trees, the air is warm and fine, and people have left their jackets at home and are out enjoying it.

With the return of spring, the crowds are beginning to fill the outdoor cafes too. They sit at the small tables drinking çay or Turkish coffee with the grounds floating on top. The waiters are relaxed and unhurried, bringing fresh bread in wicker baskets, along with sliced tomatoes and cucumbers in preparation for breakfast.

I went to the Dodo, a popular cafe, and ordered a potato and cheese omelette, with fresh orange juice, then watched the passersby as I ate. A woman in a white blouse, heavily pregnant, walked slowly, accompanied by her husband, who had a neatly trimmed mustache. They held hands. Schoolgirls from the nearby lycee in their white shirts and blue skirts gossiped self-consciously. A young couple carrying shopping bags were on their way to the park.

I thought about what to do with my holiday. For months, I’ve been working six days a week, and now I had a refreshing fortnight off. There were so many places to go. Paris, Rome, Venice, Athens, even Prague, my old stomping grounds. There was always the Black Sea, a bus ride along the coast to Trabzon or even Georgia …

With the spring, the possibilities always seem tantalizingly endless. The only limitations were time and money. Now, for the first time in many months, I had the time, and even a little bit of money, as long as I didn’t get out of control.

The waiter came and took my empty plate, and brought a fresh cup of tea. The other had got cold. “Bu çay soğuk,” he said.

You really ought to plan these trips better, I thought.

“What do people plan?” Daisy Buchanan famously inquired.

Two full weeks, and a fine day ahead.

Why not start the holiday by spending it right here, in İstanbul? For months, you’ve done nothing but work really. When was the last time you took a ferryboat ride on the Bosphorous?

Right. The waiter came with the bill. I paid, tipped him 3 lira and headed out. Down the hill, a bright sun shone over the sea. The Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, as well as Topkapi Palace, were blurred by a thin spray of mist. You could just make out the beginning of the Golden Horn and Galata Tower in the distance, and the shipyards. Again, there is that realization of living in a great city poised on two continents, all the stuff they feed you in the guidebooks. You were a tourist again, seeing the city for the first time.

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The ferry boat to Eminönü and Karakoy, on the European side, was warming up at the dock. I got a ticket and went aboard. I headed up to the top deck. There weren’t that many passengers. Most people were at work, or at school. It felt good to not be at work, and to have the city to myself.

A garcon passed, selling çay, juice and toasted sandwiches. Some university students sat nearby. One of them was Asian, and the two Turks, a boy and girl, were speaking to her in English, helping plan her itinerary.

Soon the engines fired up, churning the water and pitching the deck gently back and forth. The pilot rotated the ferry as we left the dock, pointing the bow forward, and we were off. I went up to the bow to get a better view.There were not many ferryboats out, and the sea was quite calm. We stopped at the Haydarpaşa train station and picked up more passengers, then glided out smoothly onto the waves. The water here was very deep and you felt it with the smooth power of the waves , rising from a ferry that passed making the return trip to Kadikoy.

It felt good to have the wind in your face, but it got chilly too even in the sun. Normally the sea gulls kept pace, and the passengers tossed chunks of simit bread, the birds swirling and swooping high over head, diving and expertly snatching the bread in mid-air with their beaks, before the bread hit the water. But today there were few birds about, and randomly I wondered whether they were still down south. In autumn, you could always see great clouds of passing over the city.

We passed the shipping yard, with its huge cargo containers, many of them labeled MAERSK, the great Holland-based shipping company. I used to teach MAERSK students in Prague, they had offices there. As we passed the shipping yard, a huge loaded freighter approached from the sea channel. The skyscrapers of Levent and Maslak could be seen over the rooftops behind Beşiktaş. It was still misty but the mist was beginning to burn off in the sun.

As we prepared to round the Golden Horn, you could also see The Maiden Tower and beyond that, Dolmabahçe Palace and the Ortaköy mosque far off to the right. There was much more ship traffic now. We slowed to let another big freighter pass. The stern of the freighter read FLİNTERMAAS. It was a Dutch freighter from Groningen. Then a coast guard boat jetted past, sending out a big white spray in its wake. It left huge waves, and we on deck had to really hang on for a moment, but the pilot took the waves gently, at an angle, so that there wasn’t even a hint of spray as we passed over them.

Rounding the Horn now, the hills of Beyöğlu came sharply into focus. We passed Sultanahmet on the left. They were doing some construction work at the foot of the walls below Topkapi Palace. We passed that and went into the final stretch of the trip. People began coming forward, readying to disembark at Eminönü, the first stop on the European side. Just then the imam sounded like a trumpet blast. It was coming from the minarets of the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque and the New Mosque, and in fact from all of the mosques in the great city. The minarets rose sharply like spears, piercing the sky.

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I got off at Eminönü. As always, it was like setting foot in a different city. I wanted to find the train station, over near the New Mosque. The streets were thick with tourists. I passed a man selling some kind of brown sugar dessert in plastic cups. He was too busy to ask, so I asked an old man standing near the mosque and he pointed the way.

Inside the train station, it was very quiet. There was a train ready to depart, but the main lobby was deserted. Over at the international desk, I asked the clerk in English about a train to Thessanoliki.

“No train,” he said, shaking his head. “You can only go there by bus.”

He told me where to get the bus, and I thanked him and left.

It was a bit disappointing. I’d looked forward to a train ride, much like the train journeys I used to make in the countryside outside of Prague. The trains did not move very fast, and were very old, and you could look out the window at the countryside, or read or write or nap as it all rolled by. But a bus ride wouldn’t be too bad either. Just not as good. I could get the bus to Thessanoliki, then circle back and see my friend in Izmir as I thought earlier. That had the makings of a good trip.

I walked across the Galata Bridge to Karaköy. There were the usual groups of hamsi fishermen with their long poles hanging over the railing, there were the usual bird droppings splattered here and there, and the usual tourists posing for pictures on their iPhones and digital cameras. The Galata Tower, framed by a thin, silver cloud, looked more promising. So I decided to hike up the hill.

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It was a steep climb as always. When I got to the top I was tired and hot. At the tower base, there were people sitting on benches in the shade. All the seats on the benches were taken, so I kept walking. Up the street called Galip Sede is where all the music shops are. Most of them sell guitars and eastern lutes like the saz, and lots of percussion instruments like the tabla. But I found several places with trumpets in the window and went in to ask about a mute, specifically a Harmon mute for my trumpet. At most of the places, I had no luck. But finally, at the last shop at the top of the hill, a brand new Harmon mute stood gleaming near the cash register.

“How much?” I asked the clerk, in Turkish.

He consulted a price list. “Yetmiş beş. Dolar.” Sixty-five dollars. He emphasized the word “dolar” so that I understood that he did not mean Turkish lira. With the exchange rate, that would come out to more than 100 lira.

“Sixty five dollars for a mute?” I was angry. “Çok, çok pahalı!” It was too much.

The man shrugged, and put the mute back on the counter. I gave the finger (to the price, not the man) and stormed out.

Sixty five dollars for a mute. I was still angry about it as I continued walking up the hill. What a crock of shit. But you could have at least tried to negotiate, I thought. No, not at that shop. He doesn’t have to, with all the tourists. Not that trumpet mutes are selling like hot cakes, or are they? Still, there’s always some out of town, half-assed tourist who is willing to pay the man’s price because they don’t know any better. That’s why you don’t go to Beyöğlu very often. The tourists drive up the prices and keep the shopkeepers fat, vain, smug and aloof, instead of on their toes and helpful as they should be. Then again, you could have tried to gently ease him down, instead of showing your anger so quickly. That was a mistake because you tipped his hand too quickly also. You were not a good negotiator. It took patience, guile, and a certain amount of veiled determination that you simply didn’t have, or were not willing to use.

Istikklal Caddesi is the heart of Beyöğlu, the city’s historic commercial and entertainment district going back to Otoman days. It’s a long, slender avenue, urbane, cosmopolitan. Here you find many of the foreign embassies, including the Swiss and French. Walking along Istikklal is always an event. You feel as though you could run into celebrities, or the president, or anybody, and you probably will if you stay long enough or happen to be there at the right moment. It was a feeling I used to get back in New York when I visited Times Square, or the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

A lot of shoppers were out, although it was still early afternoon. The street musicians were there too as always. A one-legged man, his missing leg supported by a wooden block, played the accordion, while across the street another man plucked at a banjo. Across from the Swiss Embassy, two young men, one of whom played guitar, belted out Black Sea songs in tremulous voices. They attracted a pretty good crowd, who clapped along in time to the music, and dropped coins into the open guitar case. Further along, a young guy was playing a mellow, dull-gold trumpet. He wasn’t bad, and I recognized him from a night over in Kadıköy, and thought about how the street musicians in İstanbul really get around.

I walked along, past the musicians, and found the Robinson Crusoe Bookshop. It has an excellent collection of books in English and Turkish, as well as German. Inside, I quickly scored, snapping up a biography of Roman Polanski, one of my favourite Seventies directors. It cost 25 lira (about 13 USD), and I figured it was a much better deal than the over-priced Harmon mute. I was still sore over that, but with my purchase in hand, as well as the many hours of enjoyable reading it was sure to provide in hand, I left the shop and went back out onto the Avenue. Hell, knowing me, I’d probably break down and fork over the 65 dolar for it later, after I’d had a few beers and grown sentimental about it.

Outside one of the shops called Çetinkaya, a young girl, probably a university student, was dressed up as a clown. She was handing out flyers for the shop, and pressed one toward me.

“Please,” she said, her smile behind the red nose and clown make-up as full and bright as the spring itself.

I took the flyer.

“Thank you,” she said, smiling again.

I felt good again, walking through the crowd of shoppers and other idlers like myself. By now, I was getting tired from all the walking. All winter I’d spent indoors, working, sitting around. Istanbul’s hills, like San Francisco’s, can be tiring if you are not used to them. I wanted now to find somewhere to sit in the sun, have a beer, have a rest, and get started on the Polanski book.

So I walked, looking for a cafe. There were posters above the shops advertising a new production of Goethe’s Faust at one of the theaters. Further on, the prestigous columns of Galatasaray University brooded over the square near the Turkish Independence monument.

Istikklal Caddesi is a really long street, and by the time I neared Taksim Square my legs really were tired. I’d worn my winter coat which by now was too warm. But I couldn’t find a cafe that sold beer. Tea yes, but I didn’t want tea. Tea was for old ladies.

At Taksim, I circled back and walked back down the Avenue. There were some backstreets near Tünel that I knew would be open, so I went there. When I first arrived in İstanbul, three years ago, I used to frequent these places quite often. In the spring and summer, the patios outside of the narrow backstreets would be crowded, lively, full of people drinking and talking in the dusk and well into the night. Nowadays, all the patio tables for the beer and wine people were gone, and nobody drinks outside anymore, except for tea or water. They left, taking with them something of the lively atmosphere and leaving behind a faint regret.

There was one place open with a small terrace. A young, attactive couple was sitting at one of the tables. The woman was drinking over-priced Miller Genuine Draft, sold here as an “exotic import.” I ordered Efes, the common Turkish brand, and found a seat outside on the terrace, and sat down to read the book. After awhile, I put the book down and took a break, sipping the beer.

The recurring thought came back about Beyöğlu. As many times as I’ve been over here, it always feels like being in another city. Over there, on the Asian side, where I lived and worked, I felt at home. Here, I feel like just another yabanci on holiday, a tourist to be served quickly and overcharged. Well, you did say you wanted to start your holiday in İstanbul.

Stil, it was funny, if you looked at it a certain way. The N.Y.C. Studio of Laughter …

Was that what that sign read, a little while ago, over on Istikklal Caddesi? I had hardly seen it, tired as I was from all the walking, my thoughts focused on just finding a place to sit down. Above one of the shops a digital sign had flashed, like the ones you see at bus stations. One moment it appeared to flash NYC STUDIO OF LAUGHTER … it had registered that way in my mind. So you backed up, to see it again, waited for the ad showing Miranda Kerr in her new collection to pass, and there it came … NYC STUDIO OF LANGUAGE. So it had been a trick of the eye. You’d only dreamed it, or imagined it. THE NY STUDIO OF LAUGHTER. It does have a certain ring, doesn’t it? Like some sort of concept.

But no, it had been just another language school, like the Wall Street School, English Time, et al. There were so many schools now. They even hired kids to pass out fliers in the street. Sometimes they handed you a flier, saying “English! English!” That too was funny. Lots of things were funny. Like when you think how they sell English these days like they used to sell frankfurters on Coney Island, or how they sell Harmon mutes over on Galip Sede Street. Next thing they will have a school called Big Mac English, or even Harmon Mute English. Maybe I could open it. That would truly be very funny.

Or like, how you used to be a journalist, and thought you still were sometimes, and a teacher, but were in reality just a language peddlar, fitting up desperate housewives with enough vocabulary to order a latte in London. That was another funny thing. Or like earlier, in the bookshop, before finding the Polanski book, coming across this new book that had, judging from the back cover, a story that was strikingly similar to the book you sent around to publishers and had rejected so many times. Not that the story was the same, but very simiar. Something about, “A man struggling to keep himself, and his family, together during the global economic crisis.” Yours had been set in Prague, and it was all about you and Islam trying to stay afloat as the roof caved in. Maybe you should have included more about the family. You could have made it a cautionary tale, full of evil capitalists, and with a moral at the end, or at least a witch or a wedding. People have to have at least one of them: either a moral, a witch, or a wedding, right? Or at least some good sex, or a murder. You forgot the basic elements of good story telling.

Back to the Polanski book. The introduction is very interesting. Polanski is recalling the moments just before his wedding to Sharon Tate, who was brutally murdered by the Manson family a few months after.

“Despite familiarity with both the Jewish and Catholic (wedding) rituals,” Polanski recalled, “I was personally agnostic. What I shared with truly religious people was a sense of exile,

and this sprang not from my foreign ancestry, but from beıng a human being. The essential strangeness of life on this planet, particularly in places like Hollywood in the Sixties, would create this sense in anyone who was not a complete idiot.”

I read on for a while, absorbed, feeling like an exile on a strange planet too and hopefully not too much like an idiot. I even felt a little agnostic too (again) for a while which I have felt for a long time and don’t blame on the beer or on Polanski.

The owner of the bar was a woman named Arpa. She spoke very good English. When she brought another beer we talked for a while. A newspaper boy came by, holding fresh editions and crying out in the old “EXTRA! EXTRA!” style. He was saying something about Erdoğan, the prime minister.

“What does he say?” I asked.

“He says, ‘Will someone give Erdoğan a brain?’” Arpa said, laughing. “It’s one of the Communist newspapers,” she added.

“What happened to all the tables outside?” I asked. “I walked around and couldn’t find anything anywhere.”

“Two years ago it was forbidden,” Arpa said. I knew this, but just wanted to check it again. “Erdoğan, you know, our prime minister. His mother lives near here, in Kaşımpaşa. He was going to visit his mother and he got stuck in the traffic. So the next day, he said, ‘Take the tables away,’ and that was it.”

“Stuck in traffic?” I asked. “But everyone in İstanbul is stuck in traffic.”

Arpa laughed again.

“Yes, she said. “So this is Erdoğan.”

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It was nearly five. I’d had several beers and read the introduction. It felt late; the light had changed. I thought about Polanski growing up in Poland, living like a fugitive, his parents in separate concentration camps. I thought about the Harmon mute. Forget the Harmon mute, Trez. Miles Davis already used the Harmon mute. Find something else. Take Nat Adderley, for instance. He used a black velvet cloth. The players in New Orleans used a toilet plunger. For trumpet players, the mute is a device to change, or in some cases, clarify, the sound of the instrument, or the sound of the singer or the music itself, the drama within each note.

It’s like an actor experimenting with accents, or a poet with meter, revealing by disguise, or vice versa. Well, maybe I could use something Turkish. I could track down the paper boy and stuff the bell of my horn with the latest editon. The Erdoğan mute: That would y change the sound all right.

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An hour later, the sun was beginning to set. I headed back down the hill. The ferryboat was getting ready to leave. I ran and caught it.

There is a feeling, leaving the station at Karaköy, bound for the Anatolian interior lands that really are the heart of Turkey, that you may not ever return. A part of you dies each time, just as you are always excited upon returning. Each time, the ferry pulls out, amid the roar of the engines and the changing colors of the waves streaking past, you feel a sadness, and relief too. It was time for me, at least for the day, to get back to the world I knew. There is a peace returning to the Anatolian side that I like to imagine Nazim Hikmet, the exiled Turkish poet, might have felt, had he lived to return to his native country. He died in Moscow in the early Sixties. On the ferry boat ride back, I found myself standing next to a man who bore a striking resemblance to the poet. He had the same upshooting blonde hair and clear blue eyes, the same elegant suit, white tennis shoes thrown to the wind as a nod to gentle perversity, colour and wit.

The wind blew his blonde, wavy hair back as the waves rose and fell. It was a passing flicker, like the STUDİO OF LAUGHTER earlier that day, but it held nonetheless. We chatted for a few minutes. The man’s name was Kristov.

“You look a lot like Nazim Hikmet, the poet,” I said recklessly. I was tired, and a little drunk.

“Why, thank you,” Kristov said. “But actually I am from Germany.” He was in business in İstanbul and has lived here for several months. He had never been to the Anatolian side before, and told me he wanted to see it for himself. Later, when we arrived at the station, we shook hands and wished each other good evening.

It felt good to be back on my side of the city. Still, I recalled that feeling that the man looked like Nazim Hikmet returning from his exile, and how the silhouettes of the dusk and the crashing waves helped create the illusion. The gulls had finally returned, too, and they kept pace with us all the way back.

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James Tressler was a reporter for The Times-Standard. His work has also appeared in The Prague Post. His books, including “Conversations in Prague” and “The Trumpet Fisherman and Other İstanbul Sketches,” are available at amazon.com He lives in İstanbul.