First impressions

After the initial scrabble to find myself a job, an appartment and a Turkish phrase book, I finally find myself with time on my hands to document something of my first impressions of Istanbul. French poet Alphonse de Lamartine once famously said that "if one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul". I know that Istanbul is certainly not the only thing in the world worth gazing at, but having been here for two weeks now, I whole-heartedly agree that it is one of them.

First, you can't help but be overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place. A city twice the size of London in ground spread and population, it can also claim to exist in two different continents. I had heard before of the old description of the place as 'the city where East meets West', but I assumed until I got here that this was meant only in terms of culture. No. The city of Istanbul actually marks the place where the world divides into Europe and Asia. The division is represented by the vast and shimmering Bosphorus Strait, running from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, thus cleaving the city in half.

I have found myself a teaching job which requires me to split my time between two branches of a school, one in Europe and one in Asia. To travel between the two you cross the Bosphorus Strait by boat; a cross-continental commute. As you chug along in a ferry lined with cushioned benches, an in-house waiter offering you Cay (Turkish tea), looking out on the unmatchably evocative view of the minaret-adorned skyline, you can't help but think that surely, surely this is the best commute in the world. Especially next to the London Underground.

But it's not just the size of Istanbul, or even the fact that it straddles two continents that makes it remarkable. It is the sheer life of the place. The city has a life that pulses howls shudders up through the soles of your shoes as you walk the (dangerously uneven) streets. It is shambolic unruly ancient scruffy decrepit unpredictable - but here lies its appeal.

The school has provided me an apartment in a district called Kadikoy in Anatolia (the Asian side). The nights are never quiet - I do not know when people sleep here. Your dreams are suspended against a vague consciousness of the incessant background noise of car horns, musicians, shouts, street cats, traffic. My bedroom window looks out over the leafy surround of a vast and gleaming white Orthodox church. There have been a couple of times since I've been here that I've heard the church bells chiming against the sound of the Muslim call to prayer. This, I think, sums up what most modern Istanbullus would like the city to represent; a place of tolerance, harmony and unison.

I met a street musician two nights ago who told me that he believes in always acknowledging how much you don't know, and how much there is always left to learn. This rings true for me, especially at this time, in this place.