Having just completed a tour of Turkey and Italy, here are some interesting observations and notes that Americans may find helpful if they are planning to tour countries. It has been many years since I had previously been to Europe. (I was in England and at the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral when Charles and Diana got married, which makes it almost 20 years ago.) I do not know if the idiosyncrasies I observed common to Turkey and Italy translate to the rest of the continent, so bear that in mind.
Subjects Discussed:
Beggars, Hustlers, and Vendors
Hotels
Language
Money
Pay Toilets
Restaurants and Food
Tourist Traps
Although we stayed in supposedly "four star" or "deluxe" hotels (though not the top-of-the-line luxury palaces), the rooms were in general very small. Our hotel in Italy had a bathroom with the smallest shower I'd ever seen. If they eliminated the useless bidet and expanded the shower, it would have been the size of one of the compact showers in an American economy motel. Some of the Turkish hotels actually had nice bathrooms, though only one was what would be called luxurious, and it made up for it by having a small living area.
Get ready for tiny beds. The day before I left I toured the California men's prison with a friend who is captain of the correctional officers. The deluxe hotel beds in Turkey and Italy reminded me of the beds in the prison bunkhouse -- literally. Now I was not traveling with an intimate companion, but it surely would have annoyed me if I had been. I asked the rest of the tour, and even the straight married couples were assigned to individual bunks. (I really hesitate to use the term bed.) So if you are thinking of Europe (or at least Italy or Turkey) as a place for a honeymoon or romantic getaway with your significant other, you might want to think again (unless, of course, prison bunk beds instill romantic thoughts into you).
A few of the Turkish hotels had very innovative energy conservation systems. Along with the light switch at the entry hall is a device in which you insert a plastic card-like device on the ring with your room key. This enables all of the lights to operate. When you remove the device to take your key with you, all the lights go out after a short period of time. This idea actually impressed me (as did the level of lighting conservation found all around Turkey where compact fluorescent bulbs abound). I inspected the device, and it appears (not surprisingly) to be of Japanese manufacture. We should get them in the U.S. Nonetheless, when I first encountered this device, I merely thought the breaker for the room had tripped, and I called the front desk. They sent someone up rather than just saying "Put your key in the slot by the light switch." Apparently they are so used to these things that it doesn't occur to them that they should tell people they exist and that even Americans with doctorates in electricity don't know what to do to get the lights on. There remained the problem, of course, as to what to do if one person was still in the room while another took the key to come back later. I did figure out that the bottle opener (or any other hard object about an inch wide and a quarter inch thick) will trigger the device and leave the lights on. If they had just given us two keys, we wouldn't have had to be so innovative and thereby wouldn't have been as likely to accidentally circumvent their wonderful conservation system. (In China in 1987 our hotel room had a master switch by the door that served almost as good a purpose, making it easy to shut off all the lights when leaving the room and reducing the nuisance-based energy waste resulting from the lack of desire to run around the room turning off lights.)
They really don't have the room key concept down right. Aside from Istanbul, which had cardkeys, none of the hotels had multiple room keys, even though we had two persons to a room and might be going out separately. This is a big problem, especially if it is not clear who is going to be back first. There does seem to be a common practice of leaving room keys at the front desk, but this seems to lack security. I noticed that they rarely check ID of people coming up and asking for room keys, so what is to stop someone from asking for the key to someone else's room? One desk clerk was annoyed when I just walked away after being asked to leave the key "so they knew who was in and out," but I had my computer in the room and I really didn't want the hotel or anyone else to know whether I was in or out. It really isn't their concern. They do have master keys, so it wasn't like they really needed my key to my room.
The food in Turkey is very good and healthy. Lots of grilled meat -- chicken or lamb -- which seemed very lean. I came with low-carb protein bars thinking I would be loaded up with starch, but found that not the case at all. There is little or no pork. Turkey is a liberal Moslem country and pork is not illegal (like I guess it is in some Moslem theocracies) but it is just hard to come by. I gather that many Turks are to Islam like many Americans are to Christianity -- they identify with the outward trivialities of the religion even if they don't take its more important parts like worship too seriously -- so they don't eat pork even if they seldom go to the mosque. Beef is sometimes served, but not as common as lamb or chicken.
Restaurants in Italy keep odd hours. This was not helped by our being there on Easter when everything is closed. (I think they may have been open on Good Friday when I was fasting, and closed on Easter, when I expected a feast.) But even on normal days they don't open until 7:30 p.m., when I am ready for bed in order to be up and shining by 7:00 a.m. for another twelve hours of hiking through ruins. And don't be mislead by seemingly reasonable prices. Everything is priced a la carte, which is one thing, but also yet to be added are water and bread! At first I thought it was incredibly rude -- to be charged for something you didn't ask for, even though it was good and you might have ordered it if it were listed on the menu with a price. By the time I left Italy I realized it was just their way of doing it -- not too different than us adding sales tax on to a restaurant bill (which they seem not to have).
Water is always bottled (even though you can drink the tap water). In restaurants it is expensive, and this is annoying. There also is not enough of it for someone like me that drinks a lot of water with meals. But I learned to go back to the hotel and drink my water. Restaurants in Turkey also charged for bottled water, even though tap water was not an option, but they did not charge for bread. Food in Turkey (like most everything) seemed to be more reasonable than in Italy. The exception was the little pizza shops that abound in Rome. They are very reasonable, and for 2 euro (about $2) you can have some very good pizza and go home for a glass of water, as compared to $15 to $20 for a mediocre dinner at an average sit-down restaurant.
Roman grocery stores (which they call "supermercato" even though they are about the size of a 7-Eleven) also keep odd hours. The one nearest our hotel (about one mile walk) opened at 9:00 a.m. and closed at 7:30 p.m., so I guess you cannot go out to eat and then go to the grocery store. And don't expect them to have the shelves stocked at 9:00 either. The prices are reasonable when you realize that you are no only converting euros to dollars but also pounds to kilograms, so 2.5 euro/kg is about $1/pound.
In Istanbul, on the other hand, we found tiny little stores all over the place. They had sodas, candy, some produce, a small selection of supplies, and even alcohol (which unfortunately seems easier to get than pork even though Islam bans both). In spite of their being about 1/4 the size of an American convenience store, we found them easy, friendly, and reasonably priced. The nearest one was just a half block from the hotel, and another quarter mile walk would probably take in four or five more, though all tend to be similar.
Most Turks near the tourist areas speak English, at least enough to effectively communicate with us for the essentials. All of the signs at ruins, museums, etc., were at least in Turkish and English, sometimes other languages as well. This is even true of the detailed display explanations.
Less people in Italy speak English, though Italian is easier to pick up than Turkish (especially for someone who knows some Spanish and Latin). We found our "English tours" to actually be bilingual, with all the English descriptions being repeated in Spanish or Portuguese. This tended to decrease the information available, so you might want to check before booking a tour. It also seemed that trilingual guides were less able to understand complex English questions. (This is clearly not to say that I don't greatly admire guides who can speak two non-native languages with reasonable fluency.)
Turkey has high inflation and a somewhat depressed economy. There are about 1,300,000 Turkish lira per US dollar. It soon became fun to spend in the millions, and I saved a receipt from McDonald's showing a 1,500,000 bill. In most places, though, it was actually easy to use U.S. dollars. This was even true at small stores, and the exchange rate always seemed roughly fair. The Turks apparently like to keep US dollars as a hedge against inflation. Many stores even mark prices in US dollars.
This was not the case for other currencies in Turkey. On the tour we became friends with a Canadian couple. They found it virtually impossible to use Canadian cash, even at larger places.
We had been told that the airport was the best place to exchange currency. This is exactly the opposite of the truth. The airport change shops had worse exchange rates and added commissions. The change shops in the marketplaces had slightly better rates and no commissions. Even the conversion rate used by small stores and street vendors (usually 1.3M to 1 at the time we were there) was better than the effective rate at the airport (1.28M to 1).
In Italy everything was done in euros, and US dollars were not taken on the street as in Turkey. Changing was not a difficulty, however, and change shops are common. Some prices are still marked in Italian lira (which is about half of a euro) so at first I thought things were very expensive until I realized there were two prices listed. Because the euro is worth about a dollar (actually about 1.1 euro/dollar) it was easy just to treat them as dollars. I think the euro is an excellent idea and hope it leads some day to a single currency worldwide.
A hint to travelers is to use a quick and dirty conversion factor. The friend I traveled with had bought a calculator in which you could enter an exact exchange rate. This proved to be a nuisance and led to confusion by accidentally inverting the exchange. In Turkey if you just let 5,000,000 be $4 (or even more simply 1,000,000 be $1), you got an idea of what you were paying. Whether you were actually paying $1.00 for a soda or 93 cents really doesn't matter. Don't try to make it too complicated. We even just started calling euros "bucks" because the exchange rate was close enough to 1.
ATMs are very popular. I didn't even bring my ATM card (and didn't need it because I didn't buy many little things). Our Canadian friends would have found it difficult without theirs. If you have a no-ATM-fee bank account this would be the way to go. Credit cards are of course acceptable at major establishments and for big purchases, but one needs cash for the "more important" things like sodas, postcards, and stamps.
Beggars, Hustlers, and Vendors
Again a similarity to visiting the prison. "Unless you want to be engaged in an endless conversation with an inmate, just ignore them when they speak to you." So it goes for the various types of street person in both Turkey and Italy.
My first encounter was a shoe-shine man just outside the hotel in Istanbul. There are several aggressive young men offering to shine shoes on the street. They carry their polish and brushes with them. Rather than ignore him, I said "No, thank you" which broke the rule of non-engagement. It also let him know that I spoke English, and he spoke English very well. He was friendly and I was trapped. He escorted me to the grocery store (though by a circuitous manner). He offered me directions to the disco and told me he could get me a girl for the night. When I said "No" he offered to come to my room himself. I still told him "No." I finally let him shine my shoes, and he did very well. But when I was done he wanted twice what he said, claiming the price was per shoe. I paid him and walked off, and it left a bad impression of the whole country that took me a day to wear off. I wonder if tourists to America get the same negative feeling if they meet our street people.
Then there are the vendors at all the tourist sites. Even on the steps of the great mosques, pushing everything from toys to food in your face. It made you wish the Koran had a story about Mohammed throwing the moneychangers out of the mosque. And they'd come right up to the doors of the bus when you got off to tour a site. The tour companies really ought to do more to stop it.
Again the effective way seems to be to just totally ignore them. The prison rule again -- nonengagement. I realized I got really good at it when a vendor switched from English to German, figuring I didn't understand him the first time. I was proud of myself (and glad for a brief moment that I don't speak German in spite of my German-Norwegian heritage). Walk by them and don't say a word. Don't even say "No."
In Italy the vendors aren't so bad. They are there but seem more civilized. The ones that do come up to you usually are selling postcards and, quite honestly, they have the best deals around. I paid 1 euro for 20 postcards at the walls of the Forum, and found postcards anywhere from 0.30 to 0.50 each in the actual shops.
The beggars are truly pathetic looking. There are little old women who are stereotypical in their appearance, shriveled and bandaged and toothless. They seem so much more desperate and feeble than the stereotypical American beggar. I wish there was a way to tell whether they were really that way or whether it was all an act. I ignored them, but I cannot say that I am entirely comfortable with having done so.
Everyone talks about pickpockets in Italy. I cannot say that I ever encountered one, although I walk very confidently and quickly wherever I am and always carry my wallet deep in my front pocket anyway. So I do not know. I can only say that I never saw a person that looked suspicious. I never head from any of the other tourists of them having been robbed, and I never saw the young children or people with babies that they warn you about. I'm not saying not to be vigilant, but it does seem as if this concern (like so many others) is overblown.
In Italy we took four individual tours -- two day-long tours to Assisi and Pompeii and two half-day tours to the Roman ruins and the Vatican museum. On the day-long tours we would stop for lunch and then for breaks. Lunch was included but it not the drinks. This was fine for those who wanted wine, but it seems really petty to leave lunch owing 2 or 3 euro for a soda or even water when lunch was included!
The other places we stopped truly classified as "tourist traps" and I wrote to the tour line suggesting they change this. In Assisi I bought an icon for about $3. Later on the way home we stopped at a wine and cheese store on the excuse of it being a restroom break and a "good place to buy Italian wine and cheese." The very same icon was $8 there. I don't know about the wine and cheese, but I suspect they were greatly overpriced as well. Surely the tour company gets a kick-back from these deals, so just watch out. You're better off buying wine and cheese at the "supermercatos" I am sure.
The same is true of the restaurant rest stops. All the truckers and local travelers stop at the McDonald's or the truckstop on the turnpike. We stopped at a place where there were four or five tourist busses but no one else. Makes you wonder.
Both Turkey and Italy often have a tipping system at toilets. There is no great correlation between paying for a restroom and its cleanliness or quality, but it is usually not a major cost -- 20 cents or so. It strikes us as rude and petty (and hardly cost-effective to have someone sitting collecting tips), but it may not be a bad idea. It certainly eliminates the quandary of feeling guilty over using the restroom at an establishment where you don't make a purchase. Again, it is one of those odd things you eventually get used to.
Click here to see pictures from my trip.
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