08. A morning at the Jacketstore
Istanbul as metropole could be called a country for Dutch standards. There are about 16 million people living together (with about 9.6 million illegal citizens) on a third of the surface of the Netherlands. The region of Sultanameht is it’s famous historic and touristic heart. It brings a lot of landmarks in one cluster, like the Aya Sofia, Blue Mosque, The Topkape palace and Basilica System.
In the morning of our second day we went out to see the Blue Mosque. I’ll write on that later because on our way a man was coming towards us and asked if we where from Holland. First guess and bingo. It wouldn’t stay by this only time someone knew it right. The reason because of it is that we are much taller in average lenghth comparing to other people in the world.
The man owned a clothing store near our hostel selling leather jackets. He also tried to sell us one, but I refused the offer because I just had a new one and also Jelmer and JR we’re not interested in buying. He joked “I’ll shoot u’re right foot if you buy, and you’re left if you don’t” and started laughing hard, tapping us on the shoulder.
Typical old Turkish humor we supposed and offcourse he didn’t mind that. Like every salesperson in Istanbul they try to attend you on what they sell, become ‘friends’ and hope you will recommend their products to other tourists as well.
What Holland and Turkey have in common is that we have both a history in trade and tulips. Ok, in fact Tulips are not typical Dutch as Holland imported them from Turkey.
We drank a cup of appletea with him and spoke further about his shop which has gone over from father to son on many generations. At around 11 we left the shop to play tourist again.
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