Istanbul

The flight was late into Istanbul, and passport control was busy with several flights. At 1:00 a.m. local, I'm not at my sharpest anymore. But I managed to muddle through, find the man who issued tokens for a cart, collect my luggage, order the shuttle, and find the shuttle stand. The air outside was fragrant with flowers, and the temperature was nice. I was pleased to be here. 

Getting to the shuttle stand was, while not epic, an adventure in itself. The stand was on an island on the other side of two lanes of taxis. The inner lane was the pick up lane, and the outer lane was the acceleration lane. Two hundred meters of taxis picking up passengers, moving into the acceleration lane, hitting the nitro button, and jetting out of there. And since the shuttle stand was on the exit end of the taxi "stand" (a misnomer of grand proportions, as there was very little "standing"), I had to deal with two lanes of taxis bolting out into the warm, fragrant night. Moreover, there was a sharp curb to deal with both for my departure from the sidewalk, and the island on which the stand was located. 

Island! I was facing the end of an island!  And sure enough, at the end of that island was a little eddy, a place that no traffic could reach. Waiting until the taxi in the inside lane paused to pick up a passenger, I dropped the front of the cart off the curb, spied a slight gap in the acceleration lane, and stepped into it. I was like Moses! The traffic parted, and I made it into the eddy, and safely up onto the island. Not without a sharp look or two mind you, but I was on the island. 

Istanbul traffic is wonderfully chaotic. To survive, you must submit to the flow. I suppose in that way it mirrors life. But since this isn't a blog about metaphysics, I will defer further commentary on the issue. 

This afternoon at Ataturk Airport, the atmosphere is pure Istanbul: chaos organized in the sense that, like traffic itself, there are few collisions, and everything gets accomplished in time. Americans would be pulling guns and shooting each other, all the while complaining about how they would do it better. Fact is, this society works very well in these situations. Americans need the science of crowd control by Disneyland, but this part of the world doesn't. 

And they have coffee, the Italian kind. 

I now have only four more hours to wait for my flight. Meantime, the cities listed on the departure gates are luring me. Belgrade, Ürümqi, Budapest, and on and on. I want to go on every flight. Maybe when I grow up . . .