Home in Istanbul - Settling in to the Biggest City in Europe
3 things I love about living here:
• One day in Europe, next in Asia. The cool thing is that as I live In European side, to get to Asia takes around 30 minutes.
• There's loads to do around the city, always something new to discover
• The fruit/veggie truck passing by my home every day, selling fresh goodies
What I don't really love about living here:
• The fact that the taxis try to run me over daily.
I love our small but adorable sunny home here in Istanbul. In fact, this is my first "real" home I have since I moved out from my parents home. I graduated a few months ago from Uni and decided it's time to move on and turn the next chapter. So I did.
We moved together with my boyfriend and got this beautiful sunny apartment with one bedroom and a reasonably large lightful living room with a big window and a Frech balcony. And size of a kitchen perfect for 2 people who occasionally like to cook.
Let me tell you - it's not easy to find this kind of "good" homes over here with a reasonable price. Somehow we managed to find one - the perfect little place for us to call a home for the next (some) years.
Settling in to Turkey legally is not that simple
Being a foreigner can be costly. I had to pay around 100€ just simply be able to use my foreign phone in here. What comes into staying here, for Europeans it's allowed to stay 90 days for free (tourism purposes) and applying to a visa is not needed. That's great for a few months travel. BUT, if you want to live or work here, things are much more complicated than you imagine. Nearly everyone I ever talked about working and living here showed frustration regarding this topic. To sum it up - takes some paperwork and many months of waiting, but it's doable.
The air is full of life and there is always something exciting happening. Whether it is a pop-up bazaar on a Saturday morning where young people sell their handcrafted design. Or whether it is going to a free jazz concert presented by international travelers, who're showing video clips from their travels while playing their instruments. Or watching musical or going to a new exhibition. There's always plenty to do.
Some fun "weird" Turkish things, I didn't get at first:
• Drinking coffee from extremely small cups and drinking tea from (equally small) glasses
• Eating olives for breakfast
• Every house has a gas stove (which I didn't know how to use before coming here)
• Greeting people by giving a kiss to each cheek while giving a light hug (That one was a shocker at first so I'm here to inform! :D)
And talking about now - I love olives in any time of the day and I greet even my non-Turkish friends with cheek-kisses.
Cheers!
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