Istanbul

Haghia Sophia, church of the Holy Wisdom behind me. Notice the Turkish flags. They are literally everywhere right now because of the political situation.

The four of us got in the yellow taxi and took a nightmarish ride through twists and turns and back alleys until we were told we had arrived. The Istanbul bath house, a hole in the wall with cracking ceiling tiles and old oriental furniture. As we got out of the taxi, honking cars began to scream at our taxi driver as the taxi driver demanded money from us. We told him we had already paid a package deal and we did not have the money. He followed us into the bath house, yelling and screaming in Turkish. The bath house owner yelled back and for the next 5 minutes there was all kinds of chaos.

We finally made it into the sauna where we heard deep and cavernous cries from the baths outside. Grunts, yells, splashings and some strange pounding noises brought nervous smiles to our faces. We were in for the infamous turkish bath.

20 minutes later, an overweight, toothless, middleaged Turkish man came in half naked pointing at me. He smiled and had me squat near the marble floor. What followed was a serious of varying temperature buckets, hot water, cold water, warm water dumped all over my head, followed by his vigorous scrubbing of all parts of my body. I was then placed flat on my back on a 20x20 marble slab. The Turk laughed hysterically and said good massage. He took my legs and bent them over the back of my head and slapped my thighs. Then he crossed my arms over my chest and put enough pressure on them to crack my back. He then turned me over and pummeled me with his elbows, lifting my legs upward and pushing the middle of my back downward, all while smiling and laughing with a toothless grin. This was the real thing.