This morning I just happened to look at the vaccine website, not really expecting a change only to, in fact, see one. I dashed off to wake the GF then stopped at the door, and went back to try it out to make sure I could in fact register. And I could – for the Pfizer vaccine, this very afternoon, at a hospital in the neighbourhood. Off I went to wake the GF who was delighted to be woken and also booked an appointment.
So off we went this afternoon to the Austrian hospital, a pretty pink building just down the hill from the Galata Tower. We registered, signed a consent form, no idea what it said, and waited to be called in. The GF went in first and came out in a second, then I went in. It was all over in a millisecond, the needle so fine that I barely felt it, and such a relief and a feeling of the world perhaps reopening. There is still the second dose to be had, of course, and the registration for that doesn’t yet seem to have opened up.
After the shots we went off, feeling very cheerful indeed, to Cihangir for coffee. On the way we stopped at a shop we’d passed when the sign was being painted. It was now open and turned out to be selling some really high quality local design stuff. We bought a blue glazed bowl and I tried on a light linen kimono top which was absolutely beautiful, with block print patterns, but a little too expensive. But the GF insisted on buying it for me as an Eid present so the misery of Eid was redeemed, and I have a really elegant top in a style I’d been looking for for years. Really pleasing.
In the evening we took a speculative trip to a pan-East-Asian restaurant in a rather dismal part of Tarlabasi. It turned out to have two tables and was manned by a woman and her brother who may have been Central Asian. In any case the woman cooked us up a passion fruit cocktail, a deft tom yum fish and an excellent sakura creme brulee, as well as a less fine but very authentic vegetable stirfry. It was quite a surprise, and very pleasing to come across East Asian food made by someone who knew it well in Istanbul which, lovely as it is, does not do non-Turkish food well. The woman later told us that she had worked in kitchens in China, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines for many years and was also a Turkish Master Chef contestant. So, touched by glory and partially vaccinated, we returned.