Istanbul – Back in the Day

Part 2: Eminönü and the ‘First’ European Shore

I say ‘first’, simply because it is the first one I’m going to talk about. It was my own first footfall there in 1985, after being spat out at Sirkeci station early one September morning off a 36 hour train trip from Athens. I was hooked instantly. Years later I still am. On each visit I sense the attraction of Eminönü, spending yet more time there watching the to’ing and fro’ing of the next generation of to’ers and fro’ers moving, well, to and fro, sitting on the steps of the Yeni Camii mosque watching life’s pageant and other clichés, and nosing through the markets in the pedestrian underpasses before catching the tramway back home. Even though gentrification and cleanup projects continue to sand down Eminönü’s rougher edges, they haven’t yet completely refined it.

One of the first places I ever ate at there was next to the Kadıköy ferry terminal - a bobbing wooden fishing boat with several friends who served up grilled sardines sandwiched in half a loaf of bread. This simple little venture operated for years before it finally succumbed to the Istanbul Killjoy Municipality’s sanitary measures: Their boat is now gone and, I believe, they work, on dry land, from a city-sanctioned stand among many others around the terminal buildings. They were an institution – no one could resist stopping for a sandwich, even if you weren’t particularly hungry. Another thing I was privileged to share with Istanbullis, while it lasted. 

Apologies for the lame pun, but pigeons rule the roost here. For years people have flocked, so to speak, to Yeni Camii Mosque to sit on its steps, feed the insatiable little buggers, and fit in a prayer, of course. Likewise, for years there have been grannies and grandpas who make their living selling bird seed. They used to sit hunched in rags over rough old boxes selling the seed from old paint can lids and, no doubt taking a regular and healthy pelting of guano for their efforts. Today they’re somewhat better provided for in their blue lab-coats and sheltered wooden stands managed by the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce, whose name is emblazoned across the tops of the sun awnings. A stranger to the city could be excused for thinking the Chamber of Commerce was a series of bird feed stalls.

Ferryboats make the city, perhaps, one of the few places on earth you’d actually look for an excuse to use public transport in. The best boats are old. They creak and groan, with wooden decks and white coated waiters who bring tea and soft drinks round on silver trays. They’re wonderful things, especially early in the morning when you cross the waters to the Asian shore watching the sun rise before the din of traffic has had a chance to. The new boats are high speed, modern and boring, so we don’t want to contemplate using them, do we? Time was when you could sit on an upper deck with a 360 degree view of the city drinking tea, maybe catching a girl’s gaze, and smoking as enormous tankers and cargo ships passed by and the ferry bobbed in their swells. You can still do all that, but even smoking on an outside deck has fallen victim to the ‘smoke free Istanbul’ of today. 

Then the engine reverses, the old iron tenses and trembles, and the ferry turns in its wake and sidles shuddering up to the terminal quayside at Karaköy. Commuters jump ashore and hurry off to work in offices around the shore, or up the hill to Pera. But more about that later…