My first week in Istanbul :)

Today marks one week since I arrived in this marvellous city and not a day has passed that hasn´t made me fall more in love with it... let´s just say that Istanbul is taking over a little bit of my heart every minute.

These past few days have been a bit crazy. The place we´re staying in isn´t the most comfortable in the world (picture six beds in one room, and a bathroom shared between fifteen people...in order to make the bed you almost have to do sit-ups, but this is a pretty good thing for me as the food here couldn´t be more delicious, my oh my! ahah) Because of this we have been looking for a flat and we´ve found it quite easy after a post on Facebook sent about sixty messages our way... We went to see a few flats (it would have been better if we HADN´T seen one of them haha) and voilá! We have a flat to move into the day we move out of this place.

The transport in Istanbul is damn confusing - there are trams, the metro, cable cars, taxis, buses, dolmuses (like shared taxis)... if I´m the kind of person who is so hopeless they get lost in their OWN city, you can imagine what would happen to me alone in Istanbul. I´m lucky that the people here seem to be incredibly friendly (sometimes too friendly, cough cough xD) and even take us to the place we´re looking for. Everyone helps although nobody speaks a word of English, which I think´s amazing.

We´ve already been to Taksim, Besiktas, Kadikoi, Eminönu, Osmanbey and our future neighbourhood: Mecidiyeköi (yep, that´s right, I´m going to live in the place whose name is hardest to pronounce hahaaaa)

I have to say that on Thursday we decided to go partying in Kadikoi on our own, and almost got caught up in some riots. We ran away to try and escape the gas, ending up in a bar where a Turkish band were playing and taking requests for popular songs on napkins. The bar had an incredible atmosphere, with everyone singing popular Turkish songs and smiling. Next to us a group of Turkish people in their thirties invited us to join them and it was there that I tried my first Double Raki (a Single Raki isn´t as strong, but I wanted to be brave, hehe). If I´m honest it tasted good at first, but listen... when something is served along with a glass of water, something´s not right! Haha, just like Turkish coffee - madness.

I ended up having two Rakis and it was all death and destruction from then onwards... a girl we had spent the whole night with wrote us a message on a serviette which said something like ´thank you for the marvellous night you´ve spent with me, we´ve enjoyed getting to know you, look after yourself, you´re an incredible bunch´... I swear to you, I get goosebumps just thinking about it now, I wrote her a reply and asked her to read it after she left because of the potential crying fit we could have been confronted with. Yesterday I got a call from her brother, who we danced with that night, although I can´t have done very well as the steps were more difficult than Zumba. xD

Yesterday we went to a party held in some Turkish people´s flat, we must be the only Erasmus students who get on better with the Turkish than with the other Erasmus students! Ahaha, I love it :)

This morning we found a flea market by accident - and how we sinned! Heck: perfumes for 5 lira, t-shirts, jumpers and jackets for 5 lira (that isn´t even 2 euros! ) and you know what I´m like with cheap stuff, hehe.

Right, well, even though I would love to, I can´t tell you about every experience I´ve had here, else I would have to write a new New Testament (! ), but I promise you that the feeling I get about this city gets better every moment. Everyone should visit this city, because whoever you are, whatever interests you have and whatever your way of thinking, you´ll love it here!

Without more ado, have a nice day! I need to have a rest since yesterday was a bit much for me... and I´m going to try and do it all again today. ;)