Turkish Money and a Pub Crawl

 I spent a lot of money over the last two weeks, mainly because I keep mistaking the Turkish currency for Monopoly money (happens especially when I'm intoxicated). To my defence, it is an easy mistake to make, since 10 Turkish Lira are approximately €3.50, so the numbers on the banknotes are almost three times as high as the ones I'm used to. Alcohol is quite expensive over here, but high prices won't prevent me from enjoying this liquid happiness. Other things, such as public transportation, are relatively cheap on the other hand: A bus ride only costs ₺2.15 (I mentioned the exchange rate two sentences earlier; you do the math), and that's without the student discount I'll get soon. The payment system is simple, you can buy and charge the Istanbulkart on many kiosks in the city. The only problem is that many people here don't speak English, which led to the following dialogue:

Me: Hi, I'd like to buy an Istanbulkart.

Kiosk Salesmen: Istanbul? (He made this question sound like "Istanbul? What the fuck man, this is Manhattan!")

Me: IstanbulKART!

I believe there is some stereotype which states that Germans tend to yell at people when they're not being understood, but in this case it actually helped. And at least I didn't yell at him in German.
After I got the card, I could finally explore the city by bus. The buses are often very crowded, but the bus drivers are really cool: At some point, the bus I was sitting in encountered another bus which was going in the opposite direction, and we were stuck in traffic, so the two drivers used the opportunity to greet each other with a handshake through the open windows.

Saturday, I participated in a pub crawl at Taksim. It's amazing how crowded the place is at night! Luckily, I managed not to lose the group of Erasmus people I was there with. The first place we went to (I don't remember the name) was great, I was especially happy about the fact that they played the following song (which I also only discovered recently, thanks to one of my neighbours from across the street (in the Netherlands):

 

(Please listen to this song while reading the following paragraph)

The drinking already started on the bus ride, a British guy and me both got beer because we didn't want to wait. It continued at the place mentioned above (imagine, if you're drinking a beer now and are listening to the song as I suggested, you're almost in the exact same situation as I was. It's that easy!), where we stayed for quite a while. I'm not trying to complain here because I enjoyed the atmosphere, but I think if you have enough time to drink more than one beer at a place, I wouldn't call it a pub crawl (the film "The World's End" is an accurate description of how it should be done). After some time, we went to the next place, an overcrowded open air bar. Some more drinks and conversations at that place, and I decided to leave. At that point, I was pretty drunk. Luckily, I'm excellent at getting home in that state (lots of practice), so I took a Taxi from Taksim to the University. And I didn't even get ripped off! The last part of my way home consisted of walking over the entire south campus (down the hill, right, left, down the stairs, right and through a small gate, which is locked at night, but was opened for me by the guard). I think there is some old saying: "If you can get to the place where you live when you're really drunk, you may call it home".

When I got home, I realised that there was a sightseeing tour planned for the next day and I did not want to miss that, so I set my alarm clock to 9am. I didn't get too much sleep that night, but the tour was great (and I had to something that I could tell my parents about for a change).