A nostalgic look at Istanbul traffic in the 1950s
This photo is from the long-forgotten past. Istanbul traffic today equals pure chaos. You won’t understand what I am talking about unless you are in it! I have seen traffic jams in cities like Madrid and Moscow but Istanbul traffic itself is the “jam”. Think of a city that is busy 7/24 and a city where the number of cars is increasing each day. Even the covid pandemic has not cast a positive spell on the Istanbul traffic. I had a Canadian friend who once told me that Turks drive with their emotions. We can be one of the shortest tempered drivers across the globe. Angry, grumpy, argumentative! And another issue is the taxi drivers of Istanbul. As a local, number 1 experience I avoid is contact with taxi drivers. Every encounter with one is a drama! Either they have no change or they do not know how to get where you want to go or they are not willing to go where you need to or they are on their way to another direction and wonder what you are doing in their car. They can drive you mad or you can diagnose them as such. So, avoid them at all costs especially if you are not a local. You can never know if they are taking the longest road to where you want to go! You won’t have a chance to talk to them because they won’t know English. Even if they did, you can never reason with them! They live in another world, believe me!
Therefore, the wisest thing is to avoid taking taxis at all costs. Take the ferry and small boats or marmaray (tunnel underneath Istanbul) across the Bosphorus, take the subway or the trams wherever they are available rather than busses. Istanbul has the newest subway system across the globe. It is brand new and reaches to really remote parts of the city, now!
Buy an Istanbul card which is very cheap and enables you to use it across all range of transportation: busses, trams, ferries and the metro and enjoy the city without the hassle of the traffic and the capriciousness of taxi drivers! Then Istanbul is a heaven on earth!
Istanbul Café on top of Kadiköy ferry station that will take you to Eminönü and Karaköy
And don’t forget to visit cafes on tops of ferry stations overlooking the Bosphorus.
If you ever use the Marmaray, don’t forget to pay a visit to the Orient restaurant inside the Sirkeci Train Station which is also one of the stations of Marmaray. Orient restaurant takes its name from Agatha Christie who has written the Murder on Orient Express. The walls of the restaurant is filled with photos from the movie. Orient Express’s last stop was the Sirkeci Train Station.
