Sleeping Around (26 page)

When Joris dropped me off at Brussels airport, our parting was quite emotional. We had slept together after all. We gave each other a hug knowing that there was a good chance we might never see each other again. Then again, I'll probably bump into him while he's riding his bike across the Gobi desert or some other dusty place that he likes to frequent.

TURKEY

13

‘I can take you around the most unknown and interesting parts of the city. Which, I imagine, will be a lot of fun.'

James Hakan Dedeog
lu, 30, Istanbul, Turkey

CouchSurfing.com

‘Ey oop, lad. Let's gaw t' poob!' my Turkish host said when he greeted me in the middle of the incredibly crowded Kadiköy wharf and bus station.

Okay, I may be exaggerating a little, but I was taken quite aback when my Turkish host had a broad Yorkshire accent.

‘Me moom's from Bradford,' James told me when I commented on his accent.

Although James's moom was born and bred in Bradford, Yorkshire, James was born and bred in Istanbul. James didn't look very Turkish (well, apart from the fez he was wearing). He was slightly built, with brown hair, a ginger beard and blue eyes.

On the short walk to his apartment, he told me that his parents met at university in Birmingham in 1972 where his dad was studying economics and his mum was studying to be a teacher. A year later they married and moved to Istanbul, which was then a relatively small city with less than 2 million people (there are now more than 15 million residents). Just to confirm that they were trailblazers, they settled on the Asian side of the city. The two halves of Istanbul, separated by the Bosphorus River, are in different continents. In those days the Asian part was mostly made up of holiday houses for people from the European side. ‘After a few months,' James said, ‘me dad asked me moom if she wanted to go back to England and she said “No, sod that, I want to stay here”. She's never been back to England since. Me dad passed away four years ago, but me moom won't go back to England because Istanbul is her home.'

James had two names—an English one and a Turkish one. His mum and English relatives call him James while his Turkish friends call him Hakan. James also had a split-personality brother: John and Batu.

James was one of a number of people in Istanbul who I'd emailed to ask for a couch. There were certainly lots of couches to choose from. Istanbul is the sixth-ranked city for couch-surfing membership. The number one city is Paris—and who said Parisians were rude and inhospitable. The top ten couch-surfing cities from the 20 000 cities represented are in order: Paris, London, Montreal, Berlin, Vienna, New York, Istanbul, San Francisco, Melbourne and Toronto.

As usual in my search for a host, I was looking for someone who sounded ‘interesting'. This turned out to be quite easy, because some people hadn't waited to be asked. They knew just what people like me are looking for in a host:

I am a very interesting person, but please do not disturb me with stupid ideas.
Okan, 29

My visitors should be interesting like me, honest and respect the ordinary home regulations such as throwing out the bins. Anil,
32

I'm a interesting man. u can learn all mafia history from me. give me a hug
Can, 23

I did find one host who was very interesting without feeling any compulsion to tell me that he was. Serhat Bilgiç must be the King of Couch Surfing (or the King of HospitalityClub to be more specific). A 36-year-old retired banker, he has had waves of surfers through his door. I don't know who holds the record for the most couch-surfing guests, but Serhat must be right up there. In a space of less than two years Serhat had hosted 327 travellers from 38 different countries. As I write, his record for the number of guests staying at the one time is thirteen, while Jasmina from Macedonia holds the record for the longest stay of 42 nights. His oldest guest (so far) is 61-year-old Wolfgang from Austria and the youngest is Eric from Estonia at only nine months.

In the glowing online references for Serhat, he is dubbed the Sultan of Istanbul. He certainly loves his city: ‘Istanbul is Queen of all the cities because Istanbul is a dancing lady of the Bosphorus. She is a salsa dancer during the day and a belly dancer during the night; always ready to hug you and kiss you.'

Serhat was away when I was in Istanbul, which was a pity. With 327 people giving him such good references, I imagine he must have a pretty fancy couch.

At the other end of the hosting numbers scale was James Hakan Dedeo
lu. I was to be his first couch-surfing guest. The reason he'd not had a guest before was the very reason I thought he would be an interesting host. James was often too busy to host because he was the founder and Editor-in-Chief of
bant
, a hip monthly magazine which featured music, cinema, art and general arty stuff. ‘I can take you around the most unknown and interesting parts of the city,' he told me in an email.

I was actually looking forward to seeing even the known parts of the city. I'd been to the Turkish coast before, but not to the city that was once capital of the Byzantine empire, the Roman empire (they even changed its name to New Rome for a few years to silence the critics) and the Ottoman empire. The history of the city reflects the whole amazing story of Western civilisation, religious conflict and kebabs.

Mind you, I saw most of the city on the way to meet James. I had to go all the way from Europe to Asia—on a bus ride that cost less than 2 dollars. The airport bus whisked me through a modern if somewhat grubby city, across the huge span of the Bosphorus Bridge where rust-streaked cargo hulks loomed up out of the Golden Horn, and on to the expansive Taksim Square in Europe. The square was teeming with locals wandering around with kebabs in one hand and Cokes in the other. I had to fight my way through hordes of people just to get across the road to catch the Kadiköy bus.

Even on the walk through the suburban streets of Moda on the way to James's apartment, we occasionally had to step onto the road as the crowd squeezed us off the footpath.

‘Today is a holiday,' James explained when I asked why the entire city's population was out and about. ‘It is
Eid ul-Fitr
, or the Festival of Breaking, which is the first day after the end of Ramadan. The next three days are also holidays, called
Bayrami
. Everyone puts on their best clothes and visits relatives and friends and eats lots of food. Today is also the most important day to go to the mosque and pray.'

‘So you are Muslim?' I asked.

‘Yes. Ninety-five per cent of Turkish people are Muslim.'

‘Did you go to the mosque this morning?'

‘Um, no. I am a Muslim, but I don't really do the Muslim things,' James said irreverently. ‘I only go to the mosque for funerals. We do the family thing at end of Ramadan because we get lots of good food and when we were young we used to get presents.'

‘I'm exactly the same,' I nodded. ‘I'm a Catholic and I only go to church for funerals and I celebrate Christmas so I can get presents and have an excuse to drink a lot.'

‘Most of my friends are like me,' James shrugged. ‘I have a Canadian friend who is living here and he is more of a Muslim than all of my friends.'

That reminded me of something that puzzled me at the time.

‘Do the Turkish have something against Canadians?'

‘Um, no. Why?'

‘At the visa payment counter at Istanbul airport, there's a large sign on the wall which lists all the countries and their relevant visa fees. Most of them were around twenty dollars, but the Canadian one was sixty dollars.'

‘That's strange.'

‘Yeah. Why the Canadians? They're nice enough.'

‘You'd think the American one would be most expensive,' James said. ‘No one likes them.'

It was almost as strange that there were only three countries whose citizens were exempt from having to pay for a visa: Kyrgyzstan, Bolivia and Macedonia. They must have just pulled their names out of a hat.

‘It's a pity that you won't be here in ten days' time,' James said as we traipsed up the stairs to the fourth-floor apartment. ‘I'm getting married and you could have come to the wedding.'

I'd spent less than an hour with James and he was inviting me to his wedding. The hospitality and generosity of the couch-surfing folk I'd met so far was quite astonishing. So much so, in fact, I wouldn't have been surprised if James asked me to be his best man.

James and his fiancée Aylin had only just moved into the apartment and were still in the process of unpacking boxes. James had been living with Aylin in her small rented apartment in a nearby suburb. James and Aylin's new apartment was huge. Well, it seemed huge after Smári, Joris and Cecile's tiny abodes. Although the apartment building looked rundown, the apartment itself had recently been renovated. There was parquetry floor throughout and a new kitchen and bathroom. Their rent was US$1200 a month (as a comparison, Smári paid $2000 a month while Bob's three-bedroom flat was $780 a month).

The lounge room alone was bigger than Smári's entire flat. Besides a few unpacked boxes, the room was almost empty. The only furniture in it was a new leather lounge suite, a new coffee table and a new LCD TV. James told me that they also had a new fridge, new dishwasher and, of course, a new toaster. ‘We are already getting wedding presents,' James smiled. ‘That's why we had to move to a big apartment.'

Sitting on the couch busily typing away on a laptop was James's fiancée Aylin. ‘It's my day off and I'm still working,' she said, flashing me a gorgeous smile. There were also two other laptops on the coffee table and a clutter of mobile phones. James and Aylin set up
bant
magazine together after they'd met working for a computer games magazine. They were up to their 25th issue and were just about to launch a
bant
television show.

James gave me the apartment tour, which took in what I instantly imagined would become the highest-ranking ‘couch' so far. I had my very own bedroom with a huge double bed and my own bathroom. Aylin's mum and sister (who were both in town from Izmir for the two weeks leading up to the wedding) were busily baking, blanching, braising and boiling away in the kitchen. ‘Mum has been cooking for three days,' Aylin said.