Our plan, to visit a graffitied house in Kadikoy, was thwarted this morning as the city has decreed that all travel cards should be linked to the HES codes allocated to track the virus. We all have HES codes as they were needed for inter-city travel and – more relevantly for us – to enter government buildings and many shops. I had submitted to the tracking and linked my card to my HES code, but the GF had not – we’d assumed we could both just use one card, as the highly civilised Istanbul travelcard allows. But of course, with the HES linkage it’s one card one person, and we found ourself on either side of the gate. The GF tried to link his card, about three different transport staff came to help, but nothing seemed to work. At last they let us through, but as we walked down the corridors it occurred to us that it would be impossible to get back without public transport, since Kadikoy is on the Asian side.
So instead we got off at Yenikapi, the last stop on the metro in the Fatih district, and walked back from there. It was quite interesting: definitely a poorer, more deprived and diverse area than many we’ve been in, and perhaps the first where there were a few streets that actively felt dangerous. It was, as I said, very diverse: lots of little restaurants and shops from all over: African grocery stores, Russian and Ukrainian cargo companies, South Asian restaurants, Central Asian cafes. It struck me, as it has in London so often, how there are who communities who live in a city but their culture, food etc is just not on the map as far as the majority is concerned. It’s only long after I left London that West African food started appearing as food trucks etc, for example. I think Americans in big coastal cities are a little more interested in this sort of thing. There were also lots of people out and about, all on foot – an advantage of the lockdown, I suppose, as once we got out of the slightly dodgy areas it had a strong neighbourhood feel, with people meeting to chat on the street, children running around, families out in large groups.
It’s one of my favourite bits of travelling, to see the different global neighbourhoods, and the spheres that countries inhabit. Here China and America and Western Europe were all very far away, there was certainly nothing South Korean or Japanese, and it was new and exciting to see Central Asian flags on restaurants and shops, and to think what they must be like. One of these days I’ll come back and try them out.