Negotiating a bribe last year on the Eurostar Italia intercity provided a useful first pass. I found I was open to reducing prices without a blush. At first the Bazaar seemed wondrous and exciting but after a few turns up and down the alley ways it was easy to spot the identical pirated produce from one shop to another. How fortunate our Intellectual Property session was the day after. I was able to purchase a Prada knock-off untroubled by the thought of the punitive fine or custodial sentence that might lie in wait.
The Conference itself has been excellent. Don’t worry I don’t plan on expanding on too much more of it, except to say that the IALL meetings distinguish themselves by focusing so clearly upon substantive law, and that an afternoon on recovery of stolen art (or Who owns the past?) was a particular pleasure. Stuart will recall some discussion we shared surrounding these topics. One question raised by an interested party was just how far back the statute of limitations applied. Do you return the spoils of war from the Romans, the Pharaohs, from Napoleon? There was also a really interesting overview of Turkey’s efforts to join the EU. Rumania got in pretty much straight away, Turkey hasn’t. The elephant in the drawing-room must be religion.
Dinner on the Bosphorus seemed so glamorous in imagination but disappointingly like a gathering of cousins at the Ipswich RSL. The food was even worse. My vegetarian meal consisted of a spaghetti mound (no sauce) three brussel sprouts lying like road kill in a pool of mashed potato (just add water). The Kookaburra Queen does a better job of waterborne dining. After a sufficient amount of alcohol the music was cranked up and the cousins got up and danced badly with one another. I remember ‘I wıll survıve’ before fleeing away into the upper deck cold and blackness of the passing night. In spite of the freezıng temperature the conversation was good (all the other introverts were there) and the passing scenery wonderful.
Some of us spent a glorious afternoon visiting a library housed in one of the Sultan’s lesser palaces. I think it may be funded by the United Arabs Emirate. Everything within it was beautifully appointed. Even the staplers and sticky tape had their own inlaid doors.
You can imagine how beautiful the map storage was. The buildings look Russian but the gardens Moorish. How nice to be a Sultana and wake up to an Istanbul morning from such a place.
There’s so much more to say but not enough time. Breakfast and then he Bazaar awaits me, and presents for the Libran arm of the family (practically everyone but me). We’ve formulated our first plan for getting around Istanbul on buses and trams. The ticket offices have a bit of a Soviet look:
I’ve loved every minute of being in Turkey even after losing a filling (practically a weekly event in my life), twisting my ankle (again), hitting my skull quite badly on a flight of steps, a bout of Istanbul belly and coming a little closer to sea-sickness than I cared to. Rosemary has requested this picture be placed en blog. I tried to look as long-suffering as possible. If you look closely you’ll observe a can of Sprite stuck into my sock. This was to help reduce the massive egg on my right foot. But help was at hand further in the day with a bit of pharmaceutical attention. I now have the most fabulous painkilling drug ever created. Don’t want to imagine too much what might be in it (opium, cocaine?). Fully anaesthetized I plan on lots of tramping across the ancient surfaces of Istanbul in my remaining couple of days here. More to come…
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