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Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Istanbul: The Maddest City in Europe | Off the Road

Istanbul: The Maddest City in Europe

Fishermen pass the hours along the Bosporus Strait. They occasionally catch sardines.

Miles from even the suburbs, hours before it can be seen on the distant horizon, Istanbul can be felt. It seems to get louder and hotter as one gets nearer. The traffic thickens. Dust and cement replace grassy goat pastures. Freeways begin to crisscross the land in a madhouse maze. Like space junk careening around an overpopulated planet, trucks and buses converge and cross paths from all directions, blasting the cyclist who dodges among them with fiery belches of exhaust. By 4 p.m., I had come 100 miles and was immersed in metropolitan mayhem, yet the city center remained 20 miles away.

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