Turkey, Feb 25, 2014
Who would have thought
nearly four weeks in Europe would have passed by so quickly? Not I. They say
time drifts by quickly for those that are having a good time and for those that
are growing older, good things course away faster. I suppose that was the case.
It was almost hard to take that the holiday I was so looking forward to a month
ago had now ended. It was time to bid adieu to Slovenia, once again. We were to
fly to Istanbul, Turkey, in the afternoon of March 21. Andrej was to compete at
the Balkan Championships and we were to stay in Istanbul for three nights. He
had not packed for the trip yet, so I helped him assemble his stuff for the
competition and for the forthcoming holidays in Maldives, Sri Lanka and India.
His mom came to check on him, looked at his bag and immediately noticed from
the way his clothes and shoes were arranged properly that he couldn’t have
bothered to do that by himself. A few months ago, when we met again after
nearly six years since school, I couldn’t even imagine looking through his
stuff. But now, it felt right to me to be doing such “wifey” things for him.
Besides, being the oldest child and having had the hands-on experience of
looking after my two brothers, playing a caretaker role in various ways came
naturally to me. I always felt the need to “look after” Andrej and lend him a
helping hand wherever I possibly could. His parents went with us to Brnik
airport to see us off. Even though I had a lot of luggage, I was not that
anxious about paying excess baggage as Turkish Airlines allowed 30 kg per
passenger onboard and I was certain my bags wouldn’t weigh that much. Our main
concern was transporting Andrej’s poles safely to Istanbul for the competition.
As hard luck would have it, the airlines personnel refused to entertain any
idea of carrying the poles to Istanbul. After over a harrowing hour of
pleading, explaining and negotiating, they finally agreed to meet our demands.
It was such a relief to know Andrej would be able to compete at the event using
his own poles. This whole episode made me feel like the Slovenian authorities
did not care a damn about their own athletes, professionals that are to
represent their country internationally. Another frined, Vrici, also a pole
vaulter was to compete at the championships and traveled with us on the same
flight. She had agreed to take Andrej’s poles back to Ljubljana after the
competition in Istanbul… we started to wonder how she was going to manage with
that since the Turkish airlines authorities at Brnik airport were creating so
much fuss. Andrej believed there wouldn’t be much hassle for the poles to make
it back from Istanbul as the authorities there were more flexible. We got our
boarding passes and went into to security check. I wanted to check in both of
my bags since it looked like we were within the weight limit but Andrej was too
busy to pay attention to me. So, I let him take the bag as carry-on luggage.
While at the security screening, a spitfire of a lady asked me to remove all
the items from my bag. Now, I remembered clearly that I had not packed any
liquids, whatsoever, in that bag but I obliged and took my belongings out one
by one. This ticked me off greatly not because I was asked to unpack my bag in
public view but because the employee ordered me to do so impolitely. I found
her attitude and tone of voice to be highly repulsive. And then I got annoyed
with Andrej for not listening to me before when I had asked him to check in
both the bags and for gossiping away rather than try and show some concern
while I was being scanned unnecessarily by the uncouth official. I figured he
must have been excited because his poles were checked in after much hassle.
When the woman did not find any liquid in the bag, she focused her attention on
a pack of barbecue skewer instead and chucked it away from my bag. What a first
impression of the national capital’s airport of Slovenia which looked
completely lackluster and was much smaller in size than the domestic airports
in India’s metropolitan cities. And then I remembered what Andrej once told me,
“In Slovenia, we got people that couldn't pass elementary school leading the
country…most of our politicians have no education and are borderline retarded.”
He thinks Slovenia on the whole is a joke, and I realized at that time he could
just be right. At least, the airport was.
We boarded the plane,
watched some Family guy and took a quick nap. By the time we landed, it was
already evening. A couple of organizers had got a bus to pick up the athletes.
We first went to the hotel at which the athletes were put up since Andrej had
to register or check on some things. His poles were transported to the stadium
by the organizers. We then made our way out towards the hotel he had booked. We
decided to commute by the city subway to connect us to Sultanahmet, the tourist
hub and the location of our hotel. Since our bags were heavy and we lost our
way to the correct metro station a few times, I got a bit agitated and made
some passing remarks to which Andrej took offence, as usual, and came back with
even more bitter comments. But we got over the spat quickly and made it to our
hotel. The room was dingy and the bathroom even dingier and cold so we opened
the door hoping that the heat from our bedroom would warm up the shower area.
We had dinner at a restaurant near our hotel…the streets were lined with
kebabs, stray cats and tourists. We went to sleep early as Andrej had a
competition the next day.
The next morning, we
went up to the rooftop restaurant which overlooked the famous Blue Mosque of
Istanbul. The weather was really misty and grey so it wasn’t ideal for taking
any good pictures of the mosque and the harbor beside it. Across the square was
another historical monument, Hagia Sophia. But first, Andrej’s competition. We
met up with another Slovenian athlete, Joni and her boyfriend Dani who were
putting up in a hotel close to our ours. The four of us took a cab to the
stadium. There weren’t many people around when we got to the venue. We met a
few other Slovenian athletes and sat down on the seats. Andrej was to help
another female vaulter with her jump and vice versa. Soon, he went to warm up
and I sat on the stands with some other Slovenes. Another pole vaulter from
Andrej’s club, Mateja, came to sit next to me. Earlier, she had asked me to
take some videos of her jump and I did her the favor. She won the bronze medal.
II got the feeling that she did not get along much with the team but she was a
pleasure to talk to. She shared some of her grievance with me, albeit subtly
but I knew exactly the message she was trying to convey. Whether people liked
her or not was secondary to me, what I appreciated about her was that she
clapped and cheered on for my guy while the rest of the Slovenian team lumped
their asses on the chairs and did not even notice another teammate was
competing right before their eyes. So much politics and bitchy attitude for a
profession that’s meant to evoke healthy competition and professionalism. I had
heard a lot more about the level of unfairness and injustice in the Slovenian sport
society or the federation from Andrej’s father even before. Andrej’s patience
tank and his guts must be real big to to deal with all the negativity and
backbiting, I thought. 
He didn’t perform as good as he had expected in this
competition but managed to secure himself the third place, the bronze medal.
This was his medal at an international event after winning the nationals indoor
title in Ljubljana a week or so ago. So even though he could have done better,
it was nonetheless a positive and encouraging start to the season for him. He
kept complaining that he could have done better, I tried to convince him that
he gave his best shot! After the competition, we went to the athletes’ hotel to
have dinner. Joni’s boyfriend and I were the only non-athletes so we wore
“fake” badges to appear like one of the competitors. He’s Slovene so no one
would have suspected the foul play, whereas I don’t necessarily look like a
citizen of the Balkan states. Thankfully, no one bothered to check on us and we
had dinner for free. After dinner, we went to enjoy some vodka in one of the
athlete’s room. Slowly, some more athletes started to gather around in the
room. We were wondering whether to go out and party or not but we found that
the other athletes had made some other plan for themselves. So, Andrej and I
decided to head back to Sultanahmet with Joni and her boyfriend. Our location
was central and possibly the most touristic spot in Istanbul. The other couple
wanted to have a private time since they were also in a long-distance
relationship, in Slovenia. I was pretty amused to hear them whine about the
distance given that Andrej and I live nearly 10,000 KM apart and rarely meet
up. We didn't do this much in the evening except walk around a bit more around
the beautifully lit up fountains at the square. Andrej savored some of the
sweetest Turkish sweets. I wanted to get a packet of Turkish delights to take
back home but I dropped the idea after realizing we had more countries to visit
after this and both were going to be very hot. So the idea of carrying sweets
or chocolates around didn’t sound like a smart idea. 
We woke up quite early,
had our last complimentary breakfast and checked ourselves out of our hotel. We
We walked in and around Sultanahmet,
visited the local flea market where vendors sold items that looked worse than
any items sold at any garage sales. The streets were crowded and loud and
looked just like some of the local markets in New Delhi. We thought about going
for a movie at the theatre nearby but it did not show any movies in English. After
getting exhausted from all the walking and sight-seeing, we went into
McDonald’s to have some ice-cream. We were asked to stand in line at the
counter outside the restaurant so dropped the idea and thought we’d have some
burgers instead. But the burgers were only sold as double menus and outside of
certain hours, you could not buy a single burger. This pissed Andrej off
greatly. I couldn’t understand why they had to follow such a lame rule but I
was more amused to see my guy lose his temper over something as stupid as this.
I have never encountered a particular burger being made available to order only
between certain hours in any of the McDs across the world. Whatever they were
trying to follow seemed obnoxious and unreasonable. Andrej already had bad
impression of Istanbul from his previous visits but I had always been excited
to see the city. The McDonald’s episode was far from helpful and understandably
exacerbated his dislike for Istanbul and the Turks. We sat down at another
restaurant nearby and enjoyed a Turkish meal instead. After this, we met up
with Joni and her boyfriend for coffee. 
They wanted to have some food so we
switched to a busy restaurant across the street. Dani bought Andrej and I some
Turkish beers. The two of them were a very young couple, 20 years, but
seemed quite mature for their age. They struggled a bit with speaking English
but were fun to hang out with and did not have any airs about them. In the
evening, we met up with Vrici. We had hot dogs from a street kiosk, drank more
beers and walked around Sultanahmet. I went to purchase a Turkish dagger for my
brother as he had asked me to. The shopkeeper was willing to accept Indian
rupees so that was very convenient for me as I did not have any Turkish lira on
me. But later, I decided to exchange the item we bought for a bigger sized
dagger. Andrej offered to clear the bill. We wanted also to get some tobacco
for Vrici’s boyfriend who is an avid hookah smoker but we did not find any in
the shops. She said she would pick it up the next morning from another place.
Soon after, we bid goodbye to vrici and made our way back to the hotel to
collect our bags. We took the metro to the airport. Andrej was still moody from
the McDonald’s misadventure and also a bit mad at me because I told him I took
a puff off of Dani’s cigarette the night before (both of us hate cigarettes, so the fact that I took a puff on purpose bothered him greatly). He stayed this way throughout
the flight to Male... I tried and ignored his attitude because I had somewhat grown
accustomed to his sulking habits. I felt like he was being quite the silly boy
for wanting to stay moody when we were about to board a flight to one of the
most exotic places on this planet with the most exquisite beaches- Maldives! 
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