Stories - SELF-TIMERS FROM BOSPORUS    (ITA)

Time passes slowly among the big rocks that are placed on sides of Bosporus in order to protect the city. Small groups of friends are going to linger to talk to each other, listening to music and someone is taking some shots. In the distance, the skyline of a modern, chaotic and frantic Istanbul, a melting pot between east and west. A light breeze is cooling the hot summer’s day. In a while it will get dark. The wind is dragging clouds off, toward west.

Descending from hills, leaving behind us the Topkapi Palace, the sea of Marmara can be reached, precisely where Bosporus begins. The Kennedy Avenue runs toward southwest, coming up to the sea and following the old walls of Istanbul city. It is a fast road that connects the station of Sirkeci, the last stop of the legendary Orient Express, to the Ataturk International Airport. We are in the European side of the city. The Avenue is protected from bad weather by an artificial cliff. Citizens meet each other exactly among these rocks, in the hot summer nights. They sit on the rocks, surrounded by waves spray, far away from tourists’ eyes and chaos of the megalopolis. They listen to music, drink some tea; someone has dinner baking some fish of Bosporus on an improvised fire. They participate in the passage of big cargos headed to the Russian and Ukrainian shores of the Black Sea. After the sunset, thousands of bright lights illumine the city, like in an immense funfair; on the other side of the canal, the Asian part of Istanbul, with the neighborhoods of Uskudar and Kadikoy. It is time to take a selfie in a such breath-taking panorama. For those who have come here travelling through one of the biggest city in the world, it was really worth it.

+ Published on Erodoto108

+ Published on PRIVATE