Midday, sunny, nice day in the Bosphorus. It is Turkey, it is Istanbul though I am starting to doubt if the rest of Turkey has anything to do with Istanbul...something in the air tells me that it probably isn't. I still do not know exactly why, some memories come and go, memories about me and  Spain when I was a child, and  they seem to indicate that they are not the same... or maybe it just makes sense that a city of 11 million people is not like a little town close to the Iranian border.

Still with the impression that Istanbul may represent a great chunk of Turkey but not all Turkey (I am so smart I scare myself sometimes) I decide is time to go to the big Bazaar and buy the T-Shirt I promised one friend. It is time to change some money. Abusive change in the hotel, so I go to a change office. They hardly speak English but we manage. I should write that down, nobody speaks English here, not even the basic rudimentary words, as it is now the case in most of Spain. It really looks like Spain in the 80s.

So I must take a taxi to the Bazaar... upps, which one I take? the brand new ones or the old ones? Half the fleet of taxis are new cars, half of them quite old cars, no middle ground. The old cars are all the same, they remind me the Seat 600 that was so widespread in Spain in the 70s and was smoothly changed to imported cars in the 80s.

I go for a new taxi...once in the Bazaar I realize that tourists are everywhere, and they shop and they bargain!!! by default, everybody,everybody bargains, nobody takes the price at face value. I cannot imagine that in Spain now, "you do not like the price? Do not piss me off and piss off!!" Quite similar to the markets in the early 80s in Spain though, but I hardly remember, I was not even ten years old.

So, which one, let's see. I ask the price, they still use the million old liras and the new lira, with a ratio of one old million is a single unit now. I use always the new format, people seem happy with that (some inflation maybe?). So ten liras.. ok, well  maybe I can find it cheaper. I go to another shop. I find a nicer T-Shirt, how much? uups 18 YTL (more than in Spain, are you kidding??), no way. Ok, he bargains. I understand he says 10 YTL, but when I want to pay they expect 10 euros (16 YTL). No, no sorry. "You can not change your mind" they say in symbolic language. "Of course I can, I saw the same T-Shirt for 10 Liras two blocks down!(false)" I say. "Ok I take the 10 Liras " (really, that easy?) he answers me back once he hears my English sentence (are all they pretending they do not understand English when they do indeed understand??). OK I hate discussing and lying for nonsense, so I take it. I could have paid in euros, they really liked euros, even coins!!!! If people accept a Euro coin it means the Euro is a really powerful coin. It reminds me of the D-Mark in Spain in the 80s, did we take coins...?? yes indeed.

So, time to try the t-shirt on me, but where??? Ok I look around, do people seem to like  it if I put it on now in the middle of the street? Mmmmhh I am not sure, I do not ask if they would like or dislike it, I do not care, my question is, would they say something if they see me (let's say it, wonderfully and handsomely) half nude? I can not take my bets, I would do it in Spain, no problem, but ei I would not take my chances, really, why not? Yes, I am tourist...so I take y bet and no problem.... Yes if you are a tourist they must think I am weird, it really looks like Spain in the 80s

It is time to go to a mosque with my T-shirt.  Do I look like I can get into a mosque??  It is not a problem, it is a not disrespectful T-Shirt. Sure I can. And then I see a bunch of women with a colorful cover for the head (yeah I know I know the real name is Hijaab but common I am trying to give so novelesque spirit to the diary so I am not supposed to know). The colorful ladies go together with other women without cover. At the same time they also go with older women with black covers. They seem fine with both...but I did not see any black cover woman with a non-cover. I do not know exactly what this means but it really reminds me of the city girl-little town girl in the early 80s in Spain, again!!! and it also reminds me that I love anthropology. And my grand grand mother also dressed a cover for the head, and she was catholic, but no one seems to remember that.  I remember the Movida, the cultural revolution in Spain where suddenly we went from having a lot of children to have none, to hardly ever have sex outside marriage to actually not getting married at all. We even went from women not deciding anything to , well earning less money but deciding some of the time (specially in sex, but this is another anthropological discussion about Spanish sexual customs which is out of the scope of this diary). Bless we/they do.  A Movida in Turkey?? Well, Taksim district could very well be the next centre of...no, no, it still needs some work to do though. Let me think about it.  No, no answer comes to mind. They need weird music groups and strange cinema directors, among other things. A pity I do not understand anything in the radio. Any weird Turkish group as Alaska in Dinarama would make the deal, what about another Pedro!!!??? In the world of cinema, is one Pedro director in the world enough?.

Time to eat something, time to visit a poor district. I walk for a couple of hours in the the most poor direction I find. Until I reach it: It is my childhood neighborhood, the same one but different, it is there, right in the middle of Istanbul at a few km from Sultanhemeit. And I have a T-Shirt and I am weird and they all know I am probably a tourist. I enter a bakery, I buy a wonderful bread, it tastes good, excellent!!  not like the bread now in Spain where it has no taste . I recall the bread in Spain in the 80s, now everything belongs to a chain, all is insipid, that was not the case in the past, and this is not the case here. They look at me, at my T-Shirt (an old bloke and a younger one). The young lad asks "where?".. Where I am from? I guess they asked that but the young boy (below 30) only knows the word "Where?" I say Barcelona and he replies "Barcelona good, Besiktas football" and smiles, and I smile back and I already now he does not know any other word when I asked about the last game of the team and he repeats "good Besiktas and Barcelona teams".  I leave making a lot of reverences. It was late at night. And I am happy. I go chanting down a half dirty street back to some place where I can take a taxi far away from a Spanish neighborhood in the 80s, or was it turkey in  2005?

In the plane back home I got the answer. It must have been Turkey not Spain. A cell phone never rang in a catholic church in the Spanish 80s but it did in an Istanbul mosque in the 00s as I witnessed (despite all the warnings about it), he had to stop his prayer to switch the f--king phone off.

Some people just do not read the signs at the entrance. Will Europe do the same?