Maceram 2.0

I'd been gone almost one year exactly when I returned to Istanbul -- this beautiful, complicated, crowded city -- last week. A quick check of the packed public buses, irreverent taxi cab drivers and the sparkling blue of the Bosporus confirmed that the city remained just as I'd left it. Which isn't to say that it doesn't continue to surprise me -- this city's mix of old and new, fast and slow, beautiful and filthy means Istanbul always, always manages to surprise me just when I think I have her figured out.