The night of my birthday, despite the unfortunate events, ended up being a ton of fun and became one of the most memorable events in my life. I mean, who can say they were pepper sprayed by a transvestite in front of a hot new club in Istanbul??!
Here’s how it went down. We drank a little at the dorms and went out to Rush, a hip hop bar on Istiklal. I loved it! I hadn’t heard this kind of music in the longest time. I don’t think our hip hop and rap songs are all that popular throughout Europe so it was great. Dancing to this kind of music brought me back to The KK,The Kollege Klub, the infamous bar I lived above my senior year where everyone goes to see and be seen.
Since, this kind of music isn’t all that popular outside of The States most of my friends kind of got sick of it pretty quickly so we went bar hopping and met up with different friends here and there. One of the bars we stopped by included Joker Bar, cool because it kind of reminds me of one of the floors of an old frat house on Langdon I used to frequent. The door opens to a hallway with a bunch of different rooms to the right and a few bigger open rooms to the left for dancing, the whole thing is covered in hard wood floors. It was great. People were buying me drinks left and right. Everyone was hardcore dancing to early 90’s music including “Can’t Touch This,” by MC Hammer. After we realized how crazy we were we thought it would be better to leave our own made up world and come back down to reality. We left for Sawady (the four story club).
On our way to meet the others at Sawady we ran into two random high school kids from the US and Canada that latched on to us as soon as they heard us speaking English. When we got to Sawady and Onur, Alp, and Bilge were so increadibly mad at us. Apparently we had told them we were going to straight to Sawady from Rush. Onur said he HATED me. You can't tell someone you hate them on their birthday. We got over it and all decided to go to a club we had never been to called Indigo.
As we were waiting outside Indigo for Onur to hook us up without paying a cover, the high school kids were being so incredibly obnoxious and loud. I couldn't handle it so Alex and I sat to the side of the entryway and tried not to be noticed. All of a sudden I saw people running, screaming and crying. I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on. Finally we understood that transsexual was so annoyed with all the ruckus and commotion that she sprayed pepper spray into Onur and Alp's eyes and also to the rest of the crowd waiting to get in. Fortunately Alex and I weren't in the line of fire but just as Alex went to help Alp she noticed that someone had stolen her wallet out of her purse (she hadher ID, social security card, two credit cards, a check card, lunchcoupons, and $250 worth of Czech Crowns).
Everyone around me was hysterical. I was trying to calm Alex, while at the same time and everyone else was also crying from the pepper spray. Finally after things died down a little we were able to think a little more clearly about Alex's wallet. I couldn’t believe it! There were like 10-15 friends including the AIESECers and Trainees trying to help her. We were like a SWAT team looking for her wallet all over every club. By this time it was probably like 5am. We went to report the wallet and finally told most of the people thank you for helping but it was okay that they go home now. All we needed to do was to get the numbers to cancel her credit cards but where the hell could we find Internet at 5am in Istanbul??
Luckily someone was able to get us into the back room of Rush, while the party was still hoppin mind you, to get the numbers from the internet. It took us a while to find them but finally when we did we realized we couldn't use the phone at the club to dial internationally. Luckily Alp let Alex use his phone to call her mother. By that time the credit card company red flagged a purchase with the card in Istanbul. The problem was that Alex's mom told the company when they had called that the purchases in Istanbul were okay because her daughter was in Istanbul when in fact it wasn't okay because the card was stolen.
At this point, Alp's phone had disconnected and we needed to dial internationally FAST! Serkan to the rescue. Alex and Serkan booked it to the AIESEC office so that Alex could call her mom with all the numbers to cancle the cards. It was about 7am when we finally got everything straighten out. It was nice in the AIESEC office at that time as the sun was just coming up and we had a view out over the city and theBosporus. About 5 of my friends had stayed with us the whole time to make sure everything was okay. I couldn't believe it. I actually have REAL friends here. People I have met, whith whom I've gone through both good times and bad times, and these people are still here, helping me and a friend of mine who they don't even know through horrible things until early hours in the morning. It makes me feel so good to know I have friends here that care. I LOVE TURKEY!!
In the end Alex's mother was able to cancel the credit cards but she lost EVERYTHING else. It was horrible. She was somehow able to compartmentalize this whole issue and still have a great impression of Istanbul and have fun the rest of the trip. She liked Istanbul so much in fact that we are currently working to get her an internship in here A.S.A.P. I can't imagine what will happen to this city as soon as Alex and I take it over together. Watch Out!
