Socks And Jocks

"Ive said it before, Only 1 person can take the blame for this circus at Arsenal and that is Mr Burns aka Wenger who was toothless in the transfer market in the summer. This is what you get for being so fcking tight, You only have yourself to blame Wenger."

- Attila, from the Gooner Forum.

I'm back in Istanbul, and I'm staying in the same hostel that I did when I first arrived. I'm even in the same room, and only two beds along from the one I slept in before. It's quite odd. They say you should never go back, and I'm starting to realise it applies to hostels as well. Everyone I knew from two weeks ago has left. The rooftop bar's been closed for winter. And the new people are, well, new. 

It's a shock to realise just how transient your experiences really are.

I suppose I should say something about the Villa game. I've been avoiding it because there isn't anything new to say. It's all pretty obvious. We played crap and deserved to lose. If we play like that again, we're not going to qualify for the Champions League next season. We need reinforcements in January because our current players aren't good enough. And if we don't get those players, Cesc Fabregas will leave at the end of the season.

It's all been said before, and I'm sick of saying it again.

I spent today exploring the streets between the Grand Bazaar and the Spice Bazaar. It's quite an interesting area. It's a maze of shops and malls and little side-alleys. You can buy virtually everything in there - baby turtles, Turkish Delight, cameras, power drills, designer clothes, weapons.... but I ended up just buying a bunch of socks and boxer shorts. It's tempting to buy something touristy, like a hand-woven carpet, but I've a limited budget and I'm running out of the essentials. I'm sick of wearing the same pair of underwear for days on end. 

And there's a lesson in that for Arsenal, maybe. It's exciting to consider the potential of our kids, and it's probably incredibly fun to try and unearth the next Zidane or Pele, but what we really need right now is a solid defensive midfielder and a gusty central defender. We've been shopping for the future for so long that we've run out of underwear. I know it's tempting to continue buying those baby turtles and 1 YTL lottery tickets, but we're hopelessly exposed at the moment, and we live in terror of our next de-pantsing. 

Time to buy some socks and jocks, Arsene. 

Not Constantinople

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works
That's nobody's business but the Turks

- Istanbul (Not Constantinople), by They Might Be Giants, a song that, weirdly enough, had been banned by the Turkish Government.

We limped into Istanbul around 10 o'clock this morning. 

I'd always imagined it to be an awe-inspiring experience, because the train passes through the walls of old Constantinople. In my mind, I'd thought the train would pass through a giant archway underneath huge red-and-white brick fortifications that stretched across the city. What we went through was a couple of crumbling sections of wall with a giant bulldozed hole in the middle. 

Not what I had in mind. 

The American girls in the room are talking about this other girl who's latched onto them for a night's company. They're trying to shake her off before they go out for the night with the French boys. And the things they say about her... I've met some really awesome Americans while over here, but these girls ain't them. 

I have a problem remembering that it's Istanbul, not Constantinople. The city that fascinated me as a kid was the old city, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, the city of Constantine and Justinian. When I think of this city, I think of the Hagia Sophia, the Hippodrome and those red-and-white bricked city walls. 

It's hard to remember that it was also the Ottoman capital for 500 years, the cultural capital of Turkey for 70 more, and that it's well and truly been Islamasized. My knowledge of the city's history pretty much ended about 1453, and while the bones of old Constantinople still stick out, it's an Islamic city now. It's bizarre to sit in the Sultanahmet garden and see the Aya Sophia on my right, the Blue Mosque on my left, and realise there's a millennia of history separating the two. And it's a bit sad that while the former has been converted into a crumbling, poorly-funded museum, the latter's a beautifully maintained, functioning mosque. 

Still, it's a pretty city. I took a walk along Kennedy Cad today. It was beautiful. On your left, there's the old Sea Wall with the Topkapi Palace looming overhead. On your right, there's the glittering expanse of the Sea of Marama and the Asian half of Istanbul staring back at you. On sunny days like today, you've got fishermen on the rocks, bathers in the sea, and a fleet of yachts and ferries in the distance. 

And I came across an "Arsenal Youth Hostel" in Sultanahmet. The owner's a gooner, and there are pictures of himself and his little boy standing in front of Emirates. There's an Arsenal banner right next to the reception. If I hadn't already paid three nights for the place I'm at now, I might've stayed there.

Here's a picture: