istanbul, and hello

Beth told me someone at her therapist course used the phrase 'third culture kid' the other day. This is someone whose parents left their home country for a second, 'host' country where the kid grows up, never fully relating to the home or host country but instead experiencing a mixed up, 'third' culture. I had never heard this term before (it was coined by sociologist Ruth Useem in the 50's) but it resonated a lot, despite not completely representing my own experience: my Indian parents left Mumbai for Dubai, where my sister and I were born, before immigrating permanently to Perth, where we grew up. I left Perth at 17 for university, and left Australia at 23 for the UK (and beyond). As many of you know, I have no memories of Dubai despite being 8 by the time we left - all the 'growing up' I can recall happened in Australia. Crazily, 2025 marked 10 years since I left.

I guess all of this is an extended preamble to 'why' you are reading this. Third (fourth? fifth??) culture kids apparently 'face issues with identity, rootlessness, and grief over lost friendships and homes'. Many of you, having fielded my constant existential crises over the years, will understand why I relate to this and the more pressing feeling driving me to put virtual pen to paper: i miss you. I miss crossing our suburban cul de sac in Perth to shyly ask 'does Adam want to come out and play?'; I miss the 'meet in the kitchens in 10?' texts sent to group chats at Uni; I miss going to Hotel Hotel for bao and drinks after the closing shift at A.Baker – I miss the coffees, dinners, walks and achingly casual proximity I enjoyed with all of you when we were working / living / playing in the same place.

I have felt this for a long time, alongside my slow slide off social media, and daydreamed of sending little packages of typewritten letters and printed photos around the world to you all. These aspirations eventually ebbed into reminders and points on to-do lists, only to inevitably be subsumed by Other Pressing Life Stuff. We recently went to Istanbul, I loved it, and all I want to do is share my silly little musings and photos with you – this is my attempt to do that in a way that (A) actually happens and (B) you can (hopefully! please!) engage with in a way that I can feel and respond to.

a tiny notebook, a big place

We were in istanbul for five glorious days in late April this year. On day two, i bought a comically small notebook from a Turkish paper shop and resolved to deposit thoughts and snapshots of this new city into it, which i largely managed to do. By far the best thing about this was feeling like a regular Hemingway every time i whipped it out of my pocket to scrawl down some quasi-profound observation, no matter how loud Beth's eye roll was.

So, our guides today will be: things i scrawled in my tiny notebook and some film photos i am quite pleased with. I don't really want to frame each musing with a story or narrative, so I'm just going to dump them all here in the order i wrote them, as a kind of overloaded, no-context preamble:

[flight attendant to handsome turkish man, 4 min conversation during boarding] i'd sit next to you, regular george clooney! [when he mentioned his mother and sisters in iran] oh right! do they support the regime? why do they hate women so much? [a perfect pause] do you have a western wife then?

a woman and a small child stand at their balcony, put a 50 lira note in a basket and lower it down on a rope. a man crosses the road in perfect time to meet the basket, take the money, put a couple of freshly baked simit in, and signal for them to lift it

in turkey there was a national scandal involving a governmental cover-up about radioactive tea post chernobyl (!) during which the minister for trade drank tea on tv and said 'a little radiation is good for your health'

proper wood, proper craftsmanship, proper labourers everywhere, a pre- B&Q world where a shack selling different gauges of chains doubles as a watercooler for men [note for the non-brits: B&Q is a giant hardware chain - think Bunnings, or Home Depot]

density is key - money, SUVs and luxury are ruining london (and maybe the world)

at a cd shop. proprietor recommends ilhan ersahin album! east village is the centre of the world!!

pomegranate juice goes crazy

the man developing my film pauses our conversation to take a call on his landline, connected to his fax machine

late night tea culture! there are only cigs + coffee countries, bistro + wine countries... and pub countries?

density is KEY!!!!!

do other, non-istanbul turkish cities have this late night cafe culture?

[proprietor at turkish grill restaurant to customer] "where you from?" "korea" "ah! kim jong!"

what about all the non-english knowledge / training data on the internet? cadence, style?

man hanging off the back of a bin truck, it slows a bit, he leans out, grabs a bin bag from the sidewalk, lobs it behind his back into the truck, we make eye contact, the truck speeds off

deaf school kid tour of the museum, group of small boys filming selfie videos while signing!

at a hamam, being bathed by a middle aged turkish woman, the most motherly figure i have maybe ever encountered. she bends to lift my leg, i lift it myself, she is amazed, looks at me, says “strong!” - is this the best moment of my life?

[soon after] the same woman dips a pillowcase in soapy water, fills it with air and engulfs me in bubbles - is this the best moment of my life?

need to learn more about the ottoman empire / alexander the great / this insanely historic part of the world. Alex the G was 20 when he set off, dead by 33 - manosphere bros aspire to this but he was the son of a king!

the drama! insanely short, insanely hollow film! no substance! no richness or layers! zendaya and rpatz magnetic but wow left so much on the table. 2.5 / 5 school shootings

tram AND metro day! so cheap. london needs to learn. put a tram in the towns! cheaper TFL! the problem with raising fares is you can never put them back down. density!!!

couple on the ferry. he wanted to speak english so she could practice hers. asked how old I am, guessed 25, he said 'is it good or bad to have this baby face?' 'sometimes good, sometimes bad' he said he feels the same. in return they taught me some turkish slang, to say to a friend, 'mal mush un' = 'you are an idiot' i think 'how did they choose this perfect thing for me'

kebab shop on tiny heybeliada island. proprietor asks where im from, i say australia, he says but originally, i say india, he says 'you should just say india, it's better!' i smile and walk away before turning to ask why it's better - he says 'important question! where were you born? where did you grow up? where do you live?' increasingly appalled at each different response. giving up, he smiles 'i was born on heybeliada, i live here my whole life, i hope i will die here"

if you are a global citizen who is your community!

i liked istanbul a lot. It is viscerally historic AND a glorious mashup of cultures - if 'third culture kid' was a city! It was also incredible to be in a properly massive, global city and see a horizon dotted with mosques. Increasingly, my favourite trips are to places that feel different and distinct culturally. Istanbul has this in spades – just looking around felt like learning – as well as the 'cherry on top' of seeming to inhabit a different moment in time to the rest of the world, certainly to London and New York.

Time was a central theme across my jotted down thoughts - it's a big, heaving city. The macro hum was very familiar: crowded, busy, loud; but anytime you focused in on a single point, it felt slow, filmy, rich. We found this absurd burek place that opened from 4:30am every day and is run by a weathered old Turkish man with strong, thick hands. We ate his burek daily, and every single time there was an assortment of labourers, relatives and friends dipping in and out for a tea or a burek, smoking and laughing. Somehow, they all seemed to be in the middle of doing something but also to have all the time in the world. I went back on our last day to ask if i could take a photo of them through his shop window - i really cant wait to develop it, as if the magic of that place will somehow reveal itself in the film.

Tangentially related to time is specificity - wandering around istanbul also made me wonder what 'supermarkets' have robbed us of. The shops and stalls in istanbul are hyper specific - the pic below shows a man leaning in to a shop that only sells screws. There were many others - selling only rope, only different gauges of chain, only pipes. This of course means that instead of wandering the aisles of a single massive warehouse listening to a podcast about liberal progressivism you have a rope guy, a chain guy, a pipe guy. You make many trips, have many conversations, know many people. You are happy, in this curious world where everyone is busy and no one is rushing.

Does specificity underpin community? The second most common refrain in the UK right now (after 'broken britain') seems to be 'death of the high street'. People are collectively yearning for times when the main road had a butcher, baker, fishmonger and florist - specific shopfronts! I'm not sure whether the rise of ultra convenient shopping (same day delivery?!) represents correlation or causation here, but it seems plausible to me that a spectrum of 'most to least human interaction' maps to specific shopfronts on one end, super markets in the middle and home delivery opposite: i talk to way more people when criss-crossing the stalls of a farmers market than while roaming tesco, than while illuminated only by the blue light of my laptop. I'm treading a line between middle-class cliche and disaffected millennial here, but i really noticed that the customers, shopkeepers and neighbours of Istanbul all actually seemed to know each other at more than a passing level, and it was great. Home delivery and megastores definitely exist there, but so do so many specific shopfronts, and so much community, and i think they've held onto something important, folks.

Okay one more observation to file under 'millennial gripes' - Istanbul is much closer to nailing density than London or other UK cities are. Being there actually made me wonder if there is such a thing as too much density – im sure there is, I've heard horror stories of shoebox apartments in Tokyo and Hong Kong – but I think parts of London and the UK (probably especially those with declining high streets!) could afford to turn the density dial up a few clicks. Again, it all seems pretty logical: most buildings having 3-5 storeys of apartments with (specific!) shopfronts on the ground floor would mean that if you lower your proverbial basket you're likely to hit a business that actually has enough local clientele to stay afloat. Beth and I live (relatively) out in the sticks of London, such that I am in a constant state of intense gratitude and anxiety for the small businesses around us. How do they stay afloat amidst such a sparse scattering of accommodation? Anyway, these are the fun thoughts that scroll through my head while on holiday - and of course, the systemic caveat of late-stage capitalism applies here: despite all of the above, istanbul still exists in the world of 2026 and so has the requisite housing and inequality crises that a five day visit glosses over. Hope drains eternal.

Okay got a bit glum there - let me bring it back with what is always a favourite focus of mine on trips abroad: public transport. Istanbul has a fantastic public transport system. It's extensive, clean, fast, well sign-posted and CHEAP! It's everything a global city should aspire to when designing its transit system, and it was a total joy to use it. Much to my delight, we took five different forms of public transport, all by tapping our little red 'Istanbulkart'. Tram, train, furnicular, ferry, and bus - all coherently interconnected and heavily used by locals and tourists alike. My friends, it was wonderful. Many of you know my main critiques of the tube (overpriced, no bikes) and NYC subway (dirty) – istanbul knocks these out of the park, and then some. Please go!

I'll close by mentioning the final thing i scrawled in my notebook - if you are a global citizen, who is your community? I was chatting to a Turkish student at home for the weekend from her university in milan - she said something like 'i couldn't wait to leave and go into the world, but when i come back and look around and see the mosques i think oh yeah i do leave something kinda special'. This really struck me - the only enduring feeling i can recall from my early childhood was an eagerness to leave, which i have arguably spent most of my adult life acting out. If community is consistency, specificity, proximity then i guess i've found a framework to hang my existential crises on and (hopefully) to guide these writings. I feel a bit exposed doing this but one word from you will quell my beating heart 😊 bye!