How To Get Robbed (Part 1 of 2)

September 7, 2007

Turkey has a lot of prostitutes. They are all for some reason Russian. Turkey has a lot of Russian prostitutes. The Turks and the Russians are geniuses at swindling Americans out of money. In Turkey, I was thoroughly swindled. The closest I came to a fistfight in a very long time was my last night in Turkey. Two buddies, John, Matt and I decided that our last night in Turkey should be spent in Taksim Square, the main hub for nightlife in Istanbul (At this early point in the story I’m going to stress that Istanbul is Europe’s biggest city and Taksim Square is Istanbul’s biggest nightlife attraction). We went to Taksim simply to see what we could find.

En route to the square we were solicited to go to a small bar, Mojito, by a dubious looking gentleman. I quickly made a mental note not to go there. That was right before Taksim Square. At TS I went to an ATM and John and Matt suddenly disappeared. It was a Friday night in the busiest bar district in one of the biggest cities in the world and I had lost the two friends I had come with and at that time of the night, in that part of the city, without cell-phones or any sort of communication device, things and people who are lost stay lost. I think the Turks and Russians like it that way.

I started wandering around and a Turkish guy, Jun, walked up to me and asked me for the time. That’s the first tip of a con artist—the casual, ‘Hey, do you have the time?’ (i.e. can I look at your watch and size you up and see how much money I can fleece from you). So at first I told him I didn’t have a watch. But later on, I slipped and checked the time (on my watch) and I confessed that I actually did have a watch, but I stressed the fact that it was a cheap Swatch knock-off that I had bought the night before for 8 lira ($6).

He agreed that yes, it was a cheap watch. He told me I overpaid– that kind of hurt. We walked into a bar to watch the Fenerbache soccer game, the main social event of the evening. Sitting in the bar, I again pleaded poverty and again highlighted the fact that I had no money and was a poor student. I was trying to convey the fact that if he wanted to rob someone, I would be a bad choice.

Then I insisted on paying for the drinks before I left. In retrospect, that was clearly a mistake. Only…when I left, he left—which I found odd. He said he was a Turk and that we were in Turkey so it was only fair that he bought me a drink in return. I couldn’t argue with that, so we walked around some more, half looking around for my two friends and half just looking.

We walked a ways away from TS until we came to a bar, oddly enough, called Mojito and Jun asked, oddly enough, if we should go inside. I said no, and that was that and we walked away. We got to the corner and stopped and, oddly enough, said, “Yes, why don’t we just grab a quick drink there (Even thought I have a bad feeling about the place, even though it had a stupid, cheesy name like Mojito, even though I’ve heard some pretty bad stories of some pretty bad things happening to dumb college kids in the area.

Upon stepping inside, from the first second, I knew something was awry. I said to myself, ‘As soon as things get weird, I’m leaving.’ We sat down and Jun ordered us some beers. I looked around the bar and found it weird that so many gorgeous Russian women were there, mostly sitting with each other, and how many hideous Turkish men were there, most of whom we being paid very close attention to by other gorgeous Russian women.

This, I thought to myself, is a bar full of Russian hookers.