Queen Restaurant

We're in Istanbul. Tunisian bureaucracy working as slow as it does, means that both my girlfriend and I still haven't gotten our residence permit yet, even though we started the process to get one many months ago and this means we still have to leave the country every three months. And this time, we decide to do so by making a trip to what must be my favourite city.

The first time my girlfriend and I came here was a little bit over twenty years. We were hitch hiking and camping for a year and had made our way, through Eastern Europe, to Turkey. Except for a visit to America when I was fifteen, this was the furthest I had ever gone away from the Netherlands and I was deeply impressed. We've been coming back here ever since - in fact, between 2008 and 2011, Istanbul was very much a second home for me, as I very regularly stopped by, often on my way to or from some other destination (such as Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait). I know the city intimately.

The trip from our home in La Marsa to our hotel in Fatih, an old quarter close to the historical heart of Istanbul, was pretty straightforward. We hailed a cab to the airport just outside our house, picked up our tickets and had a drink before boarding our plane and then took the metro and tram to Fatih, where a ten minute walk brought us to the hotel. Throughout all of this, Rihanna Gaga was very easygoing. She doesn't mind travelling, although I notice that this time she is much more excited than during trips we made before (to Egypt, Ireland and Sweden, to name a few destinations). Obviously, she's much more aware of her surroundings then when she was a baby and all the impressions make a visible impact.

After we've settled at the hotel, we need to decide where to go for dinner. We first consider an eatery just outside the famous 'blue mosque', but decide not to because it's outdoors and the weather is just a little to chilly for that. Why don't we, I suggest, go to that little kebab place around the corner from the hotel where we stayed twenty years ago when we first visited Istanbul together? The funny thing about that place is that I only figured out where it was in 2008 - during earlier return visits I had always confused the street in which it was located with another street. It's a simple place, where the owner always claimed he remembered me, something I've always found a bit hard to believe - 1995 was such a long time ago, even then.

There's a typical melancholy you can only feel in Istanbul, when you realise some things have changed - I feel that melancholy now when we walk towards Aya Sofya Büfe, as that little kebab place is called, and discover it's closed. The sign is still there, half dismantled, but the entrance and windows are bolted by large wooden panes covered with advertisements. What makes a change like this - and it's not the first time something like this has happened on a return visit to Istanbul, although I possibly feel the strongest about it - so poignant is, of course, that it plays out against the background of centuries old buildings that seem to examplify the exact opposite of change. It shouldn't matter, right? Just an eatery that I enjoyed sending people to whenever they asked me for tips on what to do in Istanbul, as a kind of personal joke - you could eat in any of these kebab places, so why not eat in the one I frequented when I came to Istanbul as a 19 year old?

What to do? There's a brand new looking restaurant called Queen Restaurant, part of the Queen Apart Hotel, opposite the closed büfe, that is probably as good as any other place around here. It's decorated in a dazzling Arabian Nights style that probably doesn't fool anyone as being authentic, but still is pleasant in its attention to detail, albeit in a kind of halfhearted way: the murals on the walls are very bad paintings and the toilets and kitchen in the basement are decidedly grotty, while the waiters are dressed in nylon suits.

Rihanna Gaga is having a bit of a difficult moment. First, when the waiter suggests she'd like to sit in a high chair they keep for children, she decides that's what she really wants and she becomes angry when I decline the offer - because normally she doesn't want to sit in one of those at all. Then, when it turns out to be quite an operation to get her in the chair, she becomes very angry about that and refuses to even look at the chair. Finally, the waiter tries to cheer her up a little, but she only becomes more moody because of this - not even the paper flower the waiter makes for her out of a napkin can cheer her up, although she refuses to let go of this treasure for the rest of the evening. After being left to her own devices for a while, however, her mood brightens up. She wants chicken, she loudly declares, as well as fish, so my girlfriend orders a fish platter and I order a chicken platter.

Then, she tells us she's pooped - and we realise we forgot to take nappies with us. Luckily I remember there is a shop around the corner and even though I haven't been there for twenty years, I am confident it still exists, as I've passed it several times since then. I remember the shop as a bit of a dodgy affair, limitedly stocked. We'd go there to buy cans that we'd heat on our little camping gas stove in our hotel room and the shop always had an interesting collection of old men discussing things loudly in the back of the store. The street leading there was quite grey. Now, there are bookshops on either side of the street - there is one where I once went with a Turkish friend, who bought a book on Alevis living in Istanbul there while a friendly old man made calligraphies of our name - not to sell them, but because he enjoyed doing so - and the shop is a bright affair selling candy, groceries and general necessities. I buy diapers and wet wipes, return to the restaurant and go down to the toilet to change Rihanna Gaga - only to discover her diaper is still completely empty. She laughs loudly and declares it's a joke - one she'll repeat several times during this trip.

The food is reasonable - nothing special - and Rihanna Gaga isn't in the mood for eating much. After finishing our dinner, it's time to go back to the hotel. Rihanna Gaga is clearly very tired and we'll spend the rest of the evening reading in the hotel lobby while she sleeps soundly in our room.