back to writing / back to myworld

In summer 2021, COVID-19 restrictions had relaxed enough that international travel was an option again, and I went to Turkey to visit my family. I spent a week with them, and decided to go on my first solo adventure in the country – all the times I had been to Turkey so far, I had always just been with my family. I had a friend I decided to meet in Fethiye for a weekend, and then I flew to Istanbul where I had booked a hostel for three nights.

Those three nights turned into three weeks. I fell in love with the city, made so many friends, felt immediately at home in my neighbourhood, and never wanted to leave. So, when I finally returned to Estonia, I signed a full-time employment contract with my remote side job and quit my non-remote main job. One of my old internet friends decided to join me in Istanbul, and we found a house to rent through one of the friends I'd made on the trip. I figured out the bureaucracy for flying my cat to Turkey, and for getting a residence permit for myself, and less than three months later, I was back in Istanbul, with just my cat, my ukulele, a backpack and a suitcase.

It's hard to describe the love I felt, and still feel, for that city. If you've never been, picture this: a sprawling concrete jungle filled with 20 million people built across mountains and valleys. Mosques scattered in every neighbourhood blasting the call to prayer five times a day. The city split into two by the Bosphorus Strait, the gaping blue waterway that connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara and is crowded with boats, filled with jellyfish, framed by fishermen and beloved by the bravest swimmers. More than 1500 years worth of historical walls, fortresses, palaces, churches and mosques from some of the biggest empires in history.

Zooming in: streets lined with bowls of food and water and various constructed shelters for the local street cats, cared for by the neighbourhood. Men on every corner selling everything from freshly squeezed juice to freshly roasted chestnuts to freshly fished fish from their carts. Women in headscarves and long skirts, women with bare heads and miniskirts, linking arms and laughing together. The bakery next to my house, open 24/7 – we got hot olive rolls straight from the oven at 2 am, on our way home from nights out. Istiklal Street, the street that never sleeps, where I would go on late-night strolls whenever I felt bored or lonely to become part of a crowd and feel revitalised, filled to the brim with life. The small backstreets of Istiklal Street, where all imaginable types of nightlife venue are squeezed next to and on top of each other.

Ferry rides. You have no idea how much using ferries as a regular mode of transport improves your life until you've lived it. Sitting on the deck in the summer, in a window seat in the winter, gazing out at the sea and the birds and the boats while the buskers croon traditional Turkish ballads.

I loved the winding, narrow, cobblestoned streets, the way cars and people intermingled on them because there wasn't space for a separate pedestrian space, the steep ups and downs and the long staircases. Turning a corner and getting a sudden, breath-taking view of the sea, tears stinging my eyes as I take it all in. The hot, humid summer days. The noise - whether from traffic that never ended, random wedding parties on streets, buskers, partiers, or neighbours fighting over a parking space. The way you could never predict how anything was going to go. You might get stranded in the middle of the night on the wrong continent due to a sudden storm, stopping all ferry transport. And yet, you always figure your way out of it.

Don't worry, a city as big as Istanbul has plenty of dark parts, too. The increasingly authoritarian government, the rapidly deteriorating economy (every time you think inflation can't get any worse, it gets worse). The fight for women's rights, LGBT rights, worker's rights, and the fight against that fight – police on every corner, shields and machine guns and helicopters spraying us with something that makes our eyes sting. Tensions between Turks and Arabs, Turks and Kurds, Muslims and non-Muslims, Kemalists and Islamists. The pollution that gets worse every year; the sea snot, a dire sign of sickness. Fathers jumping to their deaths in the middle of crowded malls because they can't handle the stress of debt and trying to feed their family any longer. Women beheaded and displayed on the Walls of Constantinople. A bomb going off 20 minutes from my house. The constant fear of the next big earthquake.

And yet, among all of that, life. The most vibrant kind of life, full of kindness and sadness and anger and love and loss and beauty. A love of delicious food, a shared meal among friends and family. A love of music, language, culture. A love of god, or of Atatürk, or of the people and the land.

There is as much to say about Istanbul as there are people and cats and cobblestones, but the city always treated me well. It was where I learnt what it means to feel at home somewhere, and I will likely continue to return to it throughout my life. The chaos and unpredictability of the city was what I needed to feel comfortable settling down somewhere. I think I am terrified of boredom, and this is a city you can never get bored in.