A few days in Istanbul: the business-and-brief-tourism schedule – full!

One of the main reasons for my recent trip to Turkey was our annual global partner conference, which brought together 100+ business partners from 35 countries – from Chile to Japan. The weather outside was chilly (in Turkey!), but the event itself went off without a hitch!…

Let’s get started!…

As usual, we talked about our new technologies, products and services, and changes to our partner program, carefully listened to our guests (feedback!), discussed hot topics – and so on…

The highlight – the presentations explaining the company’s strategy for the coming years:

There were over 30 (thirty!) presentations in total, including eight talks by guest speakers who shared both their insights on what’s happening in the cyberworld and their experiences working with our products and services.

Like I say, everything went smoothly – with a two exceptions…:

(i) The day before the conference, the hotel suffered eight (8!) power outages;
(ii) A cat snuck onto the stage during the gala dinner and nearly won the partner award!

Cool novelties this year: our colleagues who organized the conference decided to display my photos from the countries where our partners came from:

Spot on! The pics were a hit!…

Everyone had their photo taken with images from their home countries:

But that wasn’t the only thing I was up to:

All in all, Istanbul gave us a lot of interesting, funny, and unexpected business moments. But I won’t dwell on those – to really get the nuances you need to be deep in the game. So I’ll wrap up this part with a light and cheeky joke from the stage, told by our main host – our director of all things Americas, K.M. (from Brazil) ->

What’s the difference between paradise and hell?

Paradise is where the humor is British, the mechanics are German, the cooks are French, the lovers are… Brazilian [of course!], the cybersecurity experts are Russian, and everything’s run by the Swiss.

Hell is where the jokes are German, the mechanics are French, the cooks are Swiss, the cybercriminals are also Russian, and everything’s run by the Brazilians!

All righty. That’s it for the business part!…

…Now it’s time for tourism! For all work and no play makes Eugene a dull boy, and business and fun need to be shaken – not stirred…

And Istanbul’s got plenty to see – as has the country on the whole. In fact, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia, for I’ve been to some of Turkey’s most famous tourist hotspots, which are truly world-class: the travertine terraces of Pamukkale, the oddly-shaped rock formations of Cappadocia, and many historical landmarks. And in Istanbul I’ve walked on and around the rooftops of the city’s bazaar. So, like I say – plenty to see and do in Turkey! And the view from the hotel room was pretty good:

Little boats zipping back and forth on the Bosphorus:

Cargo ships too constantly passing through. Bosphorus transit traffic is one-way – either toward the Black Sea or back. Sometimes a line forms, but it clears up fast. Watching all the ships cruising this way and that from the hotel window – oddly fascinating. I reckoned it’d be cool to somehow hitch a ride on one of those tankers all along the Bosphorus. Just not sure how to make that happen…

Here’s the Asian side of Istanbul:

And here’s the bridge from Asia to Europe:

Just a nice pic:

Not all Istanbul streets are neat and tidy and pretty, but these ones were:

I’d been wanting to climb up the new Istanbul TV tower for a while, but there was always either no time or lousy weather with real low clouds. Not today!…

Cool design ->

Not super-tall (369m), but the views are still amazing. Here’s the Asian side of the city and the Sea of Marmara:

One thing I don’t get – why build TV towers these days? (This one was built between 2016 and 2020.) I mean, TV and radio are already distributed via cable or the internet. Or maybe the city just had to have a tower: can’t be a big, proper city without a TV tower, right?

I’ve stayed in Istanbul hotels with panoramic views of the Bosphorus more than once before. And while I didn’t exactly dream of it, I’ve always had this nagging itch somewhere in the back of my mind that I needed to cross the Bosphorus by ferry. // Some super-heroes swim across it, but I’m not all that super – or heroic ).

And so, the silent little wish lurking in my subconscious finally came true: time for a ferry ride!…

What can I say? It’s just beautiful in every direction! ->

The city’s really densely built up:

But other views from the water: lovely!

And where were we headed? The Basilica Cistern. Last time I was there was so long ago, I honestly can’t remember it – maybe 15 or 20 years back.

Woah: a huge place! Its purpose was to store fresh water in case of emergencies (turns out “cistern” in Greek basically means reservoir). Our excursion guide told us that when it was fully operational this place was filled up to two-thirds of its height.

But the Cistern hasn’t served its original purpose for centuries – it was abandoned, then renovated, and now it’s open to tourists. They’ve also added cool lighting:

The ceilings are held up by 336 columns (yep, I checked online:):

Interesting fact: since this place was purely functional and not meant to impress, they used crooked and rejected columns and stone blocks that didn’t make the cut elsewhere. So most of them don’t look fancy at all; still – they’ve been holding up the ceiling for 1500 years just fine.

Photos from weird angles come out kinda surreal:

Here you can see how mismatched and unpolished the columns are. But it doesn’t make the place any less stunning:

Of course – where there’s both water and tourists, there are always coins in the former:

Kunst:

Hey wait – isn’t that the “bug” from The Matrix they stuck into Neo?

Medusa:

And here she is again. Curiously, no one bothered placing the stone blocks the right way up; after all the plan was for them to always be underwater ->

By the way, Medusa’s got an interesting backstory. She was originally divine, super beautiful, and had totally normal hair. But then Poseidon came after her and ended up raping her in Athena’s temple. The higher gods got real mad about this indecent conduct, but didn’t punish Poseidon: they punished Medusa – by turning her hair into snakes and making her face so hideous it killed anyone with just a glance. Yep, you read that right – they punished Medusa for being beautiful. Good (Greek!) God! Oh – wait: there’s more outrageous horror: she eventually got beheaded. Greek mythology: really something. But you probably know that – either from books, or maybe films…

Oh, and speaking of Medusa – while walking around Istanbul, I finally learned that the city’s old name – Constantinople – was named so in honor of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, who legalized Christianity. But the official name back then was actually “New Rome” // Yep, just like New York, New Jersey, New England, New Hampshire, etc., etc…

We were also told about the origin of the term Byzantium. It was really the Roman Empire; then, after the split, it was the Eastern Roman Empire. Byzantium was just the old name of the city to where they moved the capital – New Rome. Apparently, neither officials nor citizens called their state Byzantium. That term didn’t appear until about a hundred years later in Roman historical texts. So yeah, basically some “office folks” came up with a name that stuck forever.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on enough. Gotta keep going – this tourist route isn’t going to walk itself!

And that was our walk through the largest cistern in Istanbul. In total, they’ve found a few dozen – or maybe over two hundred! – similar structures, depending on how they’re counted: they come in different sizes and are scattered all around… it’s hard to say. But whatever. We’d just explored the biggest:

And that’s it for Istanbul. Meetings held, conference completed, interviews given, and everything wrapped up with a spot of tourism. Time to say güle – and head home!…

The best high-res photos from Istanbul are here.