I have locked myself up in my house for two days. Turned my table into a home office, and only briefly went out to get bread, cheese and fish. Okay, and wine. From behind the window of my living room, I have been watching the city. The Bosporus with ships passing by, the Besiktas stadium across the water, I can …
‘Spring has started, you don’t need wood for the heater anymore, do you?’ I asked my neighbour when I saw her chopping wood. I knew what she was chopping it for, I just needed to start the conversation. ‘It’s for the barbecue, why don’t you come and join us!’
The first real spring weekend in Istanbul seemed a good occasion to …
Why Istanbul is not the new Davos
Kofi Annan, Al Gore and Abdullah Gül were there. And high profile leaders of academics and civil society, famous in and beyond their field: Helen Clark, Wim Kok, prof. Tariq Ramadan, Patriarch Bartholomeus, Wendy Chamberlin, Kemal Dervis, Lord Nicholas Stern. It was, overall, interesting and now and then even inspiring, but does that make Istanbul the new Davos, like some …
The prospect of major disaster
Japan was prepared. As far as you can be prepared for an earthquake, Japan was prepared. The buildings swayed like they were supposed to so as not to collapse, the people didn’t panic but knew what to do and what not to do. And still, the disaster is tremendous. That makes it so hard to imagine what could happen in …
I admit, I had sort of a panic moment at the beginning of the week. Too many things to arrange on very short notice, and they all seemed impossible to begin with. I complained to my colleagues at the office: ‘I was hired by an Indonesian TV crew to arrange all sorts of things for them to film, but how …
‘You should come’, says marketing manager Miss Aylin, ‘on the 8th of May. It could be the last Formula 1 race in Istanbul Park’. But the general manager of the racing circuit, Mr. Bülent, is rather confident that the contract with the Formula 1 management will be renewed after the current contract expires later this year, and that there will …
‘In this hall’ – and the muscled guy switches on the lights – ‘you can follow crunch classes, or yoga, or pilates, or aerobics.’ I don’t want aerobics, yoga or pilates, and what the hell is crunch? Something with muscles, I understand. I ask where the swimming pool is. ‘There is no pool, but we are the biggest sports centre …
Soon after the suicide bomb exploded yesterday morning on Taksim Square in Istanbul, several media announced there was a need for blood at the hospitals where the wounded were taken. Two hospitals were mentioned, and the blood types needed were A and O positive. Apparently, colleagues of the wounded policemen were already in line to donate their blood.
We’re not talking …
Churches are hot news these days in Turkey. Yesterday a mass was held at the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross in the eastern province of Van; some weeks ago a religious service was held outside the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Sümela in Trabzon province. And last week, a group of Greeks from the United States were set to come …
It would have been too cruel, of course, to take Istanbul off the World Heritage List in the year that the city is European Capital of Culture. UNESCO decided not to transfer Istanbul to the World Heritage in Danger List. Just like last year, and the year before. And it doesn’t look like the yearly decision-making meeting of UNESCO is …
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