Dutch, shisha, and 14 TL beers

    Well, now I did it.  I am 24 hours behind in the publishing of these.  So, you may see a few today.  I had a couple saved as drafts based on my happenings.  This is one such post.

      When you travel and stay in hostels, there's a very good chance you will meet some fun people to spend time with.  At the very least, you will meet some interesting people.  Australians are usually tops on my list for great people to spend time with when traveling.  Their sense of humor, willingness to drink pretty much anytime, and go anywhere to do anything really helps.  Oddly enough, our full hostel is void of any Australians so far.  That did not prove to be an issue, because there are four Dutch here who have been a lot of fun.  We were five unique personalities, and they meshed really well.  The down side is that we only had a couple nights together (they had to take off Sunday afternoon).  This didn't prove a problem, as we got along so well, that they are going to make the 2 hour trip into Amsterdam from their college town to have dinner and go out with me on my Tuesday night layover.  

     Saturday night, the Dutch and I went out for drinks (some of the other's staying here came too).  I think I commented a few days ago on the affordability of things here.  If I didn't, well, things are very affordable here.  Except beer.  The cheap beer is 7 TL (about $4.20) for a 16.9oz bottle.  And that is fine for a city this size (around 14 million people).  None of us apparently asked about comprable pricing out at the bars.  So, sticker shock hit when the cheapest palatable beer was 14 TL, and mixed drinks were 25 TL.  But, we made the best of it.  I mean, come on.  We had already taken 30 minutes just to get up to Taksim to go.  And there was finally some decent music, too.  The clubs were pretty good but our group decided we wanted quieter and cheaper as the night moved on.  So we moved onto the shisha bar.  Shisha is less a novelty like it is here in the states (your college hookah bars), and more of a natural order of the culture out here.

     It took 15 minutes to convince the server to make up tea for a couple of the people (he had turned his "hot water" machine off).  It took another 15 minutes for the group to settle on the flavor of tobacco we wanted.  Jasmine, it was.

A pretty good night.  But it had to be.  I had Dutch friends with me.