SÖZBİR ROYAL RESIDENCE HOTEL, Üsküdar

The participants in Luis meeting all stayed in the Sozbir Royal Residence Hotel on the Asian side of Istanbul, in the Uskudar area.

The night time taxi ride from the airport was long. Luis and I rode in a large van with his supervisor and 3 other Belgians involved in his project, through a seemingly endless city of lights and minarets and cars and men walking dangerously between lane after lane of choked up traffic selling tired roses, a bread that looked like a flat round cracker, oranges and other fruit...and who knows what else. Parts of the city looked more "American" than things back home...what I mean is things looked familiar, just much much bigger. Enormous shopping malls, unattractive mega- buildings...Kentucky Fried chicken, McDonalds, and Burger King, all of this we saw on the ride. We also saw trams crammed so full of people, their backs were curved up against the walls of the train. They ejected people at the stops because there was simply no way they could hold any more. When we got to the hotel all of us were very tired and I don't think anybody wanted to eat anything out. When Luis and I saw our room we were impressed with how large it was. When we first came in there was just one twin bed in the entry area (what one of Luis' Belgian colleagues explained to me later must be for the one in the relationship who is a fighter)...then we came down the hall and found the big double bed and an incredible Bosphorus view with all the boats and ferries going by! Looking out the window was absolutely engrossing...much better than tv and I don't think life on the Bosphorus is ever quiet day or night. I amused myself, with the thought that perhaps a day hasn't gone by in hundreds of years that someone hasn't made the Bosphorus a part of their daily life. That is a really amazing feeling! Ever since I saw it I have been looking for a way to describe the decor of the Sozbir royal residence hotel. Some ideas I have had have been things like polyester Sultan Fantasy Chic.. I guess that does a pretty good job. I get the feeling the hotel caters to those who want to live out a sultan's palace fantasy, even if only for one night, and even if the bedspreads are a gleaming polyester rather than silk, and they are embroidered with plastic beads rather than rubies or emeralds, and even if the morning sun reveals a very stained brown carpet and milky stains on the bedspread whose origins I would prefer not to think about. (At least the sheets and blankets were clean white cotton. Don't worry I promptly got rid of the bedspread, folding it up and putting it on the far end of the room's strange sultany couch.) Luis and I ate dinner in our hotel room in front of the window and even though the food wasn't good, it was fun eating while looking at the lights outside. They sure like flashy, glitz and glam over there, wow it is a sparkly place! After we ate we turned off all the lights in the room so that we could see the colored lights of Bosphorus bridge, boats and ferries, the gleaming flashing skyscrapers in the distance, and the view of the Dolmabahçe Palace across the water. We sat for some time in awe..and then suddenly Luis jumped back. "What is it!?" "I saw a naked man, he was completely naked!" "What??" It turns out that people in the room next to us seemed to be living out the sultan fantasy just as I described, their moist fleshy bodies relaxed on their backs watching tv and unapologetically explaining the strange stains on the hotel bedspreads. Luis had been privileged with a full frontal view of the man and his extra large belly when standing he looked out across the Bosphorus. That night I did not sleep very well and I had strange dreams about sultans and conquerors. So far everything about Istanbul felt very foreign!