Still, this city has a very strong athmosphere to it and it is certainly worth a visit.

This city is built on seven hills, like some other important cities, but, unlike any other city, it is built on two continents: Europe and Asia. Today, an estimated 12 million people live there, in a city that has a diameter of 120 km. But it is not like a city at all, it looks like many, many small villages, that have been thrown together, loosely connected by streets and bridges. When driving through this city, you see a lot of green spots, and meadows with sheep, and even barracks!

Osman, our guide, said that in Istanbul, there were only two kinds of pedestrians: fast ones and dead ones. There are 2.5 million cars there, and around 22.000 Taksis, easily recognisable by their yellow color.

I'm not sure if that applies to all Turks, but in Istanbul, at least, driving means one hand on the horn, never stopping to let pedestrians cross the street, and always going as closely to the one before you as by any means possible. However, I haven't seen one accident or damaged car there, although I witnessed two quite dangerous situations.

Istanbul seems to be a culture in itself, a kind of city-state. Can you believe that there are over 3000 mosques there? The number of ordinary houses must be 50 times as many! But there also more modern things there: I counted 42 radio stations on the USW scale, and there are at least four 'local' tv stations: Channel 6, HBR, KRAL and NumberOne (the latter two being music channels that harldly play any other than Turkish music). Istanbul's citizens seem to feel more like Istanbulians than like Turks, yet they might get lost in certain parts of this huge city, since they can't know every part of it!

Another interesting fact is, that for certain shops, there are certain parts of the city. There is, for example, a part where all the newspapers, printing shops and bookbinderies are, or another, that contains all the headquartiers of banks. I also found that funny in the beginning, until I wanted to buy a CD, and couldn't find a CD shop anywhere! I had to go to a certain part of Istanbul (Unkapani), and there they were: one shop next to the other. It is unbelievable to a European (or American, for that matter), to see so many similar shops in one place, while there aren't any of those in other parts of the city! The CD I bought, by the way, is Nefes Keser Asklar by Sibel Tüzün, an amazing CD, that contains many different styles of music, really great! The song that made me buy the CD is track number 3, Kacin Kurrasi, which I saw on one of the music channels ...

The Turkish language has a very strong appeal - to me, anyway. I could just sit there and listen to Turks talking for hours. Like Italian, it is perfect for singing, for it contains many vowels (and about twice as many different ones as Italian), and has its own melody and sound. It must be quite difficult to learn, however, for it is related to Hungarian and Finnish.

Istanbul really is a fascinating city, full of exciting sights and friendly people (except for the pickpockets ...), you should really pay it a visit! Only beware of the Turkish sweets, I ate so much of them, I thought I'd die the next day ...