With the bayram holidays, Istanbul becomes very quiet, as most people leave the city to visit relatives in the countryside. This year most of my friends had left too, on exotic trips or else home, but I didn’t mind having the city all to myself.

One evening I met my landlady to pay the rent. We had dinner at a local restaurant. That evening I wasn’t feeling particularly well (too much holiday cheer the night before), so the landlady suggested I take things a bit easier.

“And eat well,” she urged. “Yogurt and apples. Trust me.”

The next morning, having taken her advice and slept well, I got up and went to the local bakkal and purchased a small bucket of plain yogurt, the kind that is a staple of the Turkish diet, not to mention throughout much of the Middle East, and I picked up a few red apples.

Back at the flat, I dished out a few spoonfuls of the yogurt onto a dish, then chopped up the apples and added them to the yogurt, swirling them up a bit. The sliced apples gave off a faint spray of perfume, and sweetened the yogurt. It was good, healthy tasting. I ate the whole thing, and later in the day, had another plateful, this time on my own initiative adding a few black olives and slices of cheese (interesting, but not really necessary I found).

That night I slept well again, and awoke feeling very good. I texted my landlady, thanking her for the recipe. “U R welcome,” she replied. “It’s my favourite dish. It’s my secret for staying young and beautiful.”

That evening I had a date with a young woman I’d met through Craigslist. Her name was Ozge, and she had proposed that we meet for a glass of wine, “just one glass.”

Ozge had to work at her job at the museum during holiday, so like me, she was stranded in the city. Upon her suggestion, we went to Viktor Levi, a well-known wine house and restaurant in Kadikoy. She hadn’t been there yet and wanted to try it. I had been there one time, as a favor, to fill in as the fourth on a double date. A friend had wanted to take his mistress, a young woman from Turkmenistan, out for dinner and she had a friend visiting from back home. My “date” spoke only Russian, and a bit of Turkish she had learned during her stay, and she didn’t drink alcohol, so we really didn’t get anywhere.

“So you sat like idiots while your friend and his mistress carried on,” Ozge said, finishing the story and laughing sympathetically.

“Well, I did it as a favor.”

Inside Viktor Levi’s it was nearly empty. The wait staff, who were mostly standing around, gave bayram greetings and said we could sit anywhere we wanted. We found a nice table in the garden. It was still warm enough late in the year to sit outside. Under the light, I had a good look at her. As her photo had showed, she had good taste. I liked her simple, but elegant outfit, her long dark hair, and fair, almost Russian features.

“Lots of people say that,” Ozge said, her eyes acknowledging the compliment. “But actually my family is Turkish.”

The garcon brought the wine list, and we decided on an expensive bottle of merlot. If there were to be just one glass of wine, we reasoned, it might as well be a good one.

“Actually I’m starving,” Ozge confessed. I was hungry too, so when the garcon brought the wine, we told him we wanted dinner. Remembering the last time, I remembered that my friend’s mistress had really liked the ravioli, so I suggested that for Ozge, and had the same thing I’d had before, the fettucini Alfredo.

The garcon poured a bit of wine into my glass. I approved it, and so he filled our glasses, left the bottle on the table, and walked off to place our dinner order.

“Şerefe,” we said, raising a toast, and clinking glasses.

It was good wine, especially after it breathed a bit. We talked about her work at the museum. She worked most days at the museum, which was over in Beşiktaş. So most mornings she got up early and took the ferry over to the European side. On her days off she was pursuing a master’s degree in museum management, following in the footsteps of her father, who was a museum curator.

“Basically I work every day,” she said. “That’s why I decided to try Craigslist – because I really don’t have the time for ‘dating.’”

The garcon brought the food eventually. I finished my first glass of wine, and poured a second. Her glass was still half full, but when I topped it up, she didn’t object.

“So,” she said. “What about you?”

It was my second “online” date. How had the first one gone? Not so well. We’d had dinner at an outdoor café over on the European side, and my interest had quickly waned when the woman had told me she had just broken up with her boyfriend and wanted to know if I was into cocaine and ecstasy, which I was not.

“This is my second time too,” Ozge confessed. “Actually – the first one was last night.”

“Really? How’d it go?”

She studied. “Umm … He was nice – for somebody else.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know … He talked too much, or not enough. I think maybe he was too young. By the way, how old are you? In think you said 35.”

“Actually 41, soon to be 42.”

“41!” She laughed. “Well, you don’t look it.”

“On Craigslist, I was afraid if I said 41 it would scare the women off. So I figured the best thing to do was to just wait and tell you, and then let you decide.” Ozge was 33.

“Well, you don’t look 41,” Ozge said. “Ah, Tressler. Tressler. It’s a nice name. I think I like it better than James.”

“You can call me Trez if you like. Old friends do.”

“Trez?”

“It goes back to school days, the basketball court. We used to play all the time and sometimes I’d be one of the only white guys on the court. So all the other guys would be like, ‘Here comes the Trez!’”

“Trez,” Ozge said. “I like Trez. It’s honest. So – OK, Trez, you have been living in Turkey for nearly – four years? Why is it that you don’t speak better Turkish?”

Lots of people asked that. The reason, aside from laziness, was mainly work. My job was to teach English, and like most people in Istanbul, I spent a great deal of time at work.

“Right,” Ozge said, finishing the thought. “And most people you meet in Istanbul want to practice their English.

Her English was quite good. She’d been in a relationship with a guy from Scotland, and had travelled in Europe.

We continued talking through dinner, and finished the bottle of wine. When the bill came, we split it. The garcon wished us “Iyi bayramlar,” and we headed out. The streets were pretty quiet, but most of the shops and cafes were open.

“It was a nice place,” Ozge said. “There are some better wine houses in Taksim, but this one was not bad. Do you go to Taksim often?” Taksim is the entertainment center of Istanbul, located on the city’s European side.

“Actually I don’t get over there very often,” I said. “Just now and again, I go to the bookshops on Istikklal Caddesi. I prefer the Asian side. It’s more relaxed. It feels more like home. The European side feels like you’re in a completely different city.”

“I agree,” Ozge said. “In Taksim you feel more like a tourist. So where do you usually go in Kadikoy?”

“Bar Street.”

“Well, why don’t you show me one of your places?”

It was only fair, as Viktor Levi’s had been her call. There was the Hera Bar, which was just around the corner.

We went in. The barman recognized me, and I introduced him to Ozge. The back room, which has a big window looking out onto the street, was fairly empty. Normally it’s very crowded because everybody wants to smoke. Inside there was a nice fire going, and some of its warmth crept out, but it was nice evening anyway and we didn’t really need it.

“I forgot about this place,” Ozge said, looking around curiously, approvingly. “It’s very cozy. So you come here?”

I did, usually on the weekends, early in the afternoon, after I had done some writing. It was a good place to cool off, have a couple of beers, and look over what I had written. Also, most of the people who went there were very open and friendly; inevitably you could always find someone with whom to strike up a conversation. Even if nobody was available, I could always sit with a book, or else look out at the people passing in the street.

I told Ozge some of these things, and she listened. We’d ordered the more modestly priced, but reliable Angorra red.

“So you were in Prague before?” Ozge asked. “You mentioned it somewhere. How long were you there?”

“Five years.”

“And how was Prague?” She peered at me closely. “In one word, how would say it was?”

“Pohodichka.”

“Pohodichka?” Ozge tried out the word. “And what does ‘pohodichka’ mean?”

“It means, ‘cozy.’ Like this place.”

Ozge smiled:

“You know some nice places then, Trez.”

“And nice people.”

“So were there any women in Prague?”

“A few.” I told her about Olga, a bi-sexual Russian woman whom I’d briefly dated. It had ended when a conflict between me and her girlfriend arose. I told her that story, and a couple of other ones.

The wine loosened us up, and she told me about the Scot. That relationship had ended, she said, because he had wanted her to move to Scotland with him. She’d refused, unwilling to leave Turkey. He eventually returned to Scotland on his own, and evidently that was that.

We talked of other people and other places. We talked of Europe, of Paris, comparing travel notes. We talked about her job at the palace, about her sister, who was living in Eastern Turkey, and we talked about my family back in the States.

“Do you ever miss your family in America?” Ozge asked.

“Sure, all the time,” I said. “But you know these days, with the Internet, Facebook and all that, they don’t seem so far away. I know what everybody is doing.”

“I know what you mean,” Ozge said. “It’s the same with me, and my family live here in Turkey. I mean, they are not so far away as America.”

We raised our glasses: “Well – to family then.”

The bottle of Angorra was empty, so I went to the bar and got another. There we were, two strangers stranded in the city. The holidays are always a sentimental time. Perhaps we were both feeling a bit melancholy, but there was something else there too with us, and it wasn’t such a bad feeling. If you were alone, you were not entirely alone.

As a matter of fact I was feeling pretty good, and it wasn’t just the wine. Maybe it was Ozge. Maybe it was the holiday, or Istanbul on a rare quiet evening. Maybe it was the yogurt and apples.

Later I escorted Ozge down to the main avenue, where the taxis were waiting. She had to get up early to work at the museum.

“Damn, Trez,” she said, swaying, taking my arm affectionately. “We were supposed to have just one glass of wine.”

“We did have one glass,” I said. “Then we just took it from there.”

James Tressler was a reporter for The Times-Standard. He is the author of the recently published book, “Lost Coast D.A.” He lives in Istanbul.