I love smoking everything in moderation

October 22, 2005

Last year in Delhi I reported on why it’s a good idea to keep a positive attitude while experimenting with stimulants. This year I simply throw myself into the task. By the volume of the blueish haze, one wouldn’t suspect that we were entering an outdoor tea house, but the tea house, (and by tea, I mean smoke) of the Balkan Student Union is a vaulted-ceilinged wonder of kilim pillowed couches and abundant eastern aesthetic occupying a maze of very confusing little stone courtyards. There are only four things on the menu here: tobaccos, teas (apple, mint, black) or coffee, and a game resembling backgammon. After a long day’s walk through the Istanbul Biennale locations, it was wonderful to get into a heady relax with a bowl full of nargileh. That’s Turkish for waterpipe tobacco drenched in apple, mint or rose syrup. Smoking a waterpipe is like inhaling jewelry, so delicious. Dip your finger in the tobacco straight out of the tin and you’ll taste that it’s sweet as candy.

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

images top to bottom: an employee of the Istanbul University Balkan Student Union Smokehouse fills a waterpipe bowl with apple flavoured tobacco, a tangle of waterpipes in the storage room await new customers, the pipes unplugged

technorati tags: Turkey, Istanbul, waterpipe

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Sort of public gardens

October 21, 2005

The urban garden is thriving in Istanbul. Walking around the Biennale’s parallel programme locations in Karaköy, I spied some ad hoc agriculture in ‘public’ planters. These images show vegetables being grown amidst ‘ornamental’ city landscaping. Chapeau to the hacker-farmers growing squash, bell peppers, tomatoes and aubergines in their urban gardens. Look, they have even contructed a BBQ on which to do the grilling!