Street beers in Galata

A Thursday night in Taksim. A group of us have just emerged (slightly deafer than before) from a grungy sort of rock bar - the type that has skulls and goblins painted on the walls. We all felt the need to be out in the open for a bit, so we bought beers and we walked. We walked and walked all the way down to the Galata Tower. On turning that final corner I could immediately see that this was the right place to be on a Thursday evening. Sprawled across the wide, cobbled steps were over a hundred people, enjoying the warmth of the night in the open air against the stunning backdrop of the Galata Tower, its yellow stones illuminated by spotlights.

We sat and drank and talked an laughed, and as the night unravelled we somehow got coerced into press-up competitions and arm wrestles with the group of Turks sitting next to us, we spoke to a man with a pet monkey who then charged us 5 TL for the privilege of petting it, and we joined a large circle of people doing the traditional Turkish dance to the tune of a violin-like instrument played by an ancient raisin of a man.

At one point I ambled a short way down the hill. After attempting a conversation in my (VERY) limited Turkish with the janitorof the public toilets, I stepped back out onto the hill and took a minute to take in the scene. The vast Galata Tower looked like something from a fairy-tale; the picturesque old buildings alongside it, shabby paintwork and wrought iron balconies; the crescent moon; the warmth; the Thursday night revellers on the steps; the sound of a violin cleaving through the shouts and the cries and the conversation. And I thought: this is what I'm here for.