Above: Racks of wine inside Beyoglu Saraphanesi
A full wine rack in a restaurant in Istanbul became a welcome site for determining where we would eat. If you are a teetotaler, dining options are more plentiful with much lower price points.
Of course, this makes sense. Ninety-nine percent of the population in Turkey is Muslim, a religion that bans the consumption of alcohol. Intoxicants are viewed by many as “abominations of Satan’s handiwork.”
This doesn’t mean you personally are forbidden from partaking; it means that those of us with a certain type of thirst must work to locate restaurants willing to pay the high license fees to offer beer, wine and cocktails. With its Muslim majority, Turkey’s steep sin tax receives high approval ratings. Why not tax those foreign visitors clogging your streets and your young people who already are over-influenced by western culture?
…travel, is flight and pursuit in equal measure. It is both the desire to leave home and the passion to find something new, to pick up stakes and discover who you are in a different landscape and culture….
You are both somebody and nobody, often merely a spectator. I always felt in my bones that wherever I went, I was an alien. That I could not presume or expect much hospitality… that wherever I was, I had no business there and had to justify my intrusion by writing about what I heard. Most travel… can be filed under the heading ‘Trespassing.'”
“The Hard Reality American Expats Quickly Learn,” Paul Theroux, New York Times, January 5, 2025
Continue reading “Postcard from Istanbul, Turkey: ‘Mea culpa,’ admits a wine-swilling trespasser”
Postcards from Barton Springs 