Getting Accustomed to Turkish Temperatures
Weathering meteorology shock, finding the right clothing for Istanbul

Article and photos by Amy Elliott
This article was printed in Abroad View magazine spring 2006

For at least 24 hours, winter in Istanbul seemed like a relief. I arrived on a chilly overnight train from Bucharest after a month of trudging through the icy winds and the dripping, snow-clumped streets of

On an uncharacteristically sunny day, a view from an Eyup district harbor.

Eastern Europe. In Istanbul, it was barely drizzling. The man who met me at the train station smoked bitterly and tightened his red scarf against his neck. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked me. “It’s freezing out here.” I carried my jacket in my arms.

The next day, however, the rain was torrential. The day after that, it snowed—fiercely, ceaselessly, for two incomprehensible weeks. The ferries stopped running and the bridge across the Bosphorus closed. My classes, which had yet to start, were cancelled indefinitely.

I was more than a stranger in a strange land; I was a stranger in a strange land that had been grabbed by its ankles, turned upside down, and jostled so hard that the change fell out of its pockets. Men stood on rooftops with heavy brooms and brushed smothering blankets of snow to the street. Tiny women in colossal heels skittered over ice patches with their shitzus and bichons in their arms. School kids, college kids, and older men walking home together started snowball fights on every corner. They gathered the snow in their bare hands and examined the crystals, marveling while their palms turned pink. The nights were weirdly quiet (which I wouldn’t know until later, when I heard the loud nights). I began to imagine that the only way to get around the city was by swinging on tethers between buildings and swimming across the strait. You should have seen it three years ago, when the Bosphorus froze over, contrary Turks would tell me.

I spent a week walking in circles, drinking strong tea, watching a lot of CNN, and taking hot baths. I spent hours reading books in bed, buried in sweaters. When I finished the last of the novels I’d brought with me, I read my guidebook as though it were a work of art. I stationed myself at computer number ten in the neighborhood Internet café, flirting silently but fervently with the attractive young clerk who brought me all the hot drinks I desired. I did not know what else to do.

The following week I started my Turkish lessons and passed long, secluded hours with vocabulary sheets, grammatical constructions, and episodes of Turkish sitcoms. By the time my crash course had finished, the snow was starting to melt. February, the shortest and beastliest of months, was almost over, and with the seeds of new language splitting open in my mouth, the chaos of the city began to settle into patterns and shapes. My classes started. I made a few friends.

As March burgeoned and my own life in Istanbul started to take on some color, I found myself facing struggles of unanticipated complexity: drivers on bus systems I thought I’d mastered stopped in the middle of their routes and, with a mumble, made everyone get off. I confused the city’s three majestic waterways—the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, and the Sea of Marmara—and had to walk from one side of the European peninsula to the other looking for the right ferry station. People once charmed by my complete lack of language skills were perplexed and annoyed by my attempts to communicate. My amorous café patron stopped bringing me free drinks, huffed whenever I gave him the wrong amount of change, and no longer watched through the window as I turned the corner and strolled out of his line of sight.

And, to my fury, I couldn’t figure out the weather—or how to dress for it—to save my life. On nice-looking days I swapped my fleecy boots for sandals that seemed to scandalize the whole neighborhood; by late afternoon it would be sleeting and my numb, wet feet wouldn’t forgive me for the whole night. The next mild day I’d wear stockings under my skirt, just to be sure, and I’d sweat until 7 p.m. I once walked a mile to the post office in gusts of snow so thick I wished I’d worn goggles, only to walk home under strengthening sunlight wishing I hadn’t worn such a heavy sweater. There’s an old Turkish saying, they’d tell me: don’t trust the weather in Istanbul, and don’t trust the women.

A mist rises from the water in the Kadikoy district of Istanbul.

It was exactly halfway through the month, two days after my birthday, when something changed. I put on a light corduroy jacket—the sun was setting—and walked along the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare toward the shopping district and the waterfront. I crossed a gritty overpass and cut behind the train station, followed at all times by the honks of drivers who shot me incredulous looks: why walk when you can ride in my minibus? I walked past the Suleymaniye Mosque, its looming stone minarets surrounded with scaffolding, and up wedding dress alley, where cloisters of white-clad mannequins with high veils and red-stringed wrists leered down at the crowds. I reached the life-size brass bull statue at the top of the hill—Asian Istanbul’s most recognizable rendezvous point—where packs of teenagers and singles with anxious faces scanned the traffic and checked their cell phones for text messages.

That’s where it happened: I felt a peculiar chill in my hands, a stinging not from the breeze. My cheeks flushed and my ears burned. There’s a fog on the water, I thought. The ferry station will be closed.

When I reached the shore, the docks were quiet and the sun in the mist looked even less believable than the big, yellow sightseeing balloon rising and falling over the harbor. I leaned over the gate, rubbing my hands together, breathing deliberately for the sake of watching my breath.

A young man in a suit coat with a bag full of simit strolled to the water and threw a piece of the sesame bread over the rail. Within seconds, dozens of seagulls materialized out of the fog, squawking, fighting, and dunking their heads into the water, plucking crumbs right out of the air. When the man saw my enchanted smile, he offered me a chunk of bread. Together, we threw simit for the seagulls as the sun fell farther and farther into the fog.

Istanbul sent me an ambassador that night, a diplomat with sharp green eyes and a silent, even manner that told me what I had been aching to know all along. Don’t fight it, he seemed to be saying as we watched the frantic grace of the birds. If Istanbul sends you fog, feed the seagulls.

Thereafter I rarely agonized over dressing seasonably. I listened to the city, I felt for it. I developed a bodily sense for the weather, and an affable countenance to face its fickle returns. Istanbul had extended to me a benevolent, bread-holding hand and I was holding it, feeling its pulse. In a matter of weeks, I would be letting the unapologetic sun brand its messages into my skin.

At the time of this writing, Amy Elliott was a senior at Beloit College majoring in Creative Writing and Religious Studies. She studied at Marmara University in Istanbul from May through July 2005.