In relation to the first topic, Sand proposes that the Ashkenazi Jewish populations primarily descend from Jews of the Khazarian empire which dominated the Pontic steppe between the 7th and 11th centuries CE, and which adopted Judaism (partly perhaps Karaite) as the religion at least of its elite; their ethnic origins would be Turkic and partially Slav (though they admixed with the preceding Scythian and Sarmatian populations, and Hunnic elements have also been supposed). Jews from the Byzantine Empire and fleeing the Asian advance of the Muslim armies would also have swelled the Khazar population. Following its subjugation by Kievan Rus, and the Mongol invasions, the Khazar state ceased to exist, but its Jewish subjects are assumed to have sought refuge in the Slavic lands and in Lithuania.

This theory remains for the moment entirely speculative, but this is not the point. It is clearly less speculative, at least, than the Zionist myths of descent from the Jewish patriarchs. Moreover, it has math and therefore common sense on its side; the extent of Eastern European Jewry is far greater than descent from a tiny statelet like Judah could ever imply. Sadly, a veil of silence has fallen on this matter, scorned by those most interested – Zionists and Russians – because of its inconvenient relationship to their respective dominant ideologies, and ignored by others because of the fear of being labelled anti-Semitic. By reminding us of this thesis – which he did not invent – Sand helps me at least to start to make some sense of Jewish history in Eastern Europe and to normalize it within the development of the societies in question. Presumably, he must also help many Ashkenazi Jews themselves to follow the same journey of self-discovery, infinitely more satisfying and authentic than the distorsions of the Zionist discourse.

It is to be hoped that his work will be followed by more detailed research into these matters – the Khazar capital has yet to be located, never mind excavated; the sociological processes at work in the medieval Slavic lands remain to be elucidated, and the origin of the Yiddish language remains clouded in a good deal of mystery (the standard theory that it developed in the Rhineland in the 10th century is evident nonsense, since it incorporates a lexicon based on High German forms which did not spread to the Rhineland until centuries later – see here for a review of current theories).

It is however on the issue of Christian origins, which Sand hardly discusses at all, that I find the book most enlightening. It has always appeared to New Testament commentators that the consistent reference to Jewish matters and practice in the gospels and epistles testifies to the earliest stage of Judean Christianity or forms part of an ontological justifying discourse which needed to draw its roots in the Old Testament for endogenous theological reasons. This frame of reference relies on the supposed marginality of Jewish diaspora groups in the cities of the Roman empire where Paul did his preaching and Christianity initially spread. From Sand’s resurrection of Judaism’s proselytizing past, however, it becomes immediately apparent that (1) the two monotheistic religions were in intense competition for converts in the first centuries of our era and (2) Christianity initially is likely to have spread particularly within the communities of Jewish monotheistic belief, drawing on numerous elements already present in these communities, which must have displayed varying degrees of syncretism (and in any case, one cannot speak in this period of a unified Jewish religion even in Judea – far from it). Judaism was the first monotheistic religion to enter onto the Hellenistic scene which was prepared for monotheism by the great Greek philosophers; as such, its attraction seems to have been considerable. The thought of Plato, Pythagoras and others was increasingly incompatible with traditional Greek religion, yet their metaphysics must have been unsatisfactory for the religious needs of their contemporaries and their rulers (as the well-documented spread of Mithraism and other oriental mystery religions also attests). Paul exploited the same opportunity.

Awareness of this context casts numerous NT passages in an entirely new light. Just to take the example Sand cites, Galatians 3:29, “If ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed and heirs according to the promise”. This kind of turn of phrase always seemed to me impossibly abstract and bizarrely irrelevant to a Greek audience. Imagining the rival claims of Jewish proselytizers targeting, or already having reached, the same audience immediately gives it a lot more sense.

To finish with Israel, though – and the least one can say is that it is and remains a thorny problem in international relations – I would like to quote and endorse Sand’s words in the afterword to the English edition :

It would never occur to anyone to deny the existence of the United States because indigenous peoples were robbed of their lands when the nation was formed. No one would claim that the Norman conquerors should be expelled from the British Isles, or the Arabs brought back to Spain. If we want to avoid transforming the world into a giant mental hospital, we must resist the urge to redistribute populations according to some historical model. Israel can today claim the right to exist only by accepting that a painful historical process led to its creation, and that any attempt to challenge this fact will produce new tragedies.

In this context, an interesting study recently emerged, entitled Régions et frontières de téléphonie mobile en Belgique et dans l’aire métropolitaine bruxelloise and published in the online magazine Brussels Studies (no. 42, 4 October 2010). Based on mobile voice data, this study purports to map out the economic footprint of Brussels and its results have an air of believability to them. If the Brussels region were to be extended to correspond to this footprint, representing 66 municipalities in total (Bru-66), it would have a population of nearly 1.9 million, compared to just over 1 million presently. Using a few assumptions which I spare the reader, almost one-third of the Belgian inhabitants of Bru-66 would be Flemish speaking, compared to 18% of Bru-19 (excluding holders of foreign passports, Bru-19 has 11% Flemish speakers and 13% native French/Flemish bilingual households). Bru-66 would contain three-quarters of the population of the non-Bru-19 part of the contested BHV electoral and judicial district, as well as 4% of the Leuven district (the municipality of Tervuren) and over 90% of Walloon Brabant.

It seems that the institutions of the Brussels-Capital region would be well-suited to assume the governance of this larger entity, with no adjustments to the constitutional guarantees offered to the Flemish population being necessary – indeed, such guarantees, it may be argued, already reflect an acceptance of the economic weight of Flanders in Brussels which is well in excess of the resident population in Bru-19.

The creation of such an entity would reshape the political map of Belgium fundamentally. Bru-19 currently represents just under 10% of the total population of the country, compared to 58% for Flanders and 32% for Wallonia. Bru-66 would represent 17.4% of the population, with both unilingual regions contributing similar proportions of their existing populations, as a result of which Wallonia would fall to 29% and Flanders to 53.5%.

Bru-66, unlike Bru-19, would be well-placed to solve many of its own economic problems by itself. The problem of financing Brussels, which derives from the discrepancy between place of work, where wealth is created, and place of residence, where it is taxed and largely consumed, would be significantly alleviated, as would the problems of coordination between the various governments over transport issues. Metropolitan and suburban rail, bus and tram services would be positively impacted, where currently urban mass-transport stops at the borders of Bru-19 which is already significantly urbanized, offering little scope for park-and-ride initiatives, whilst there are almost no tram connections beyond the outer ring road and there is bad coordination between the regional bus services (De Lijn/TEC) and those of the STIB/MIVB, entity serving Bru-19. Bru-66 would also be better placed to coordinate the policy of overflight for the national airport in Zaventem and the road network around Brussels, especially the heavily encumbered ring road, although national interests in respect of both facilities would need to be given due weight in governance arrangements.

Bru-66 also solves the problem of the electoral district of BHV in a way that seems appealing. As I already said, 25% of the population of Halle-Vilvoorde would be subtracted from the federal electoral district, representing the outer municipalities of this zone – places like Gooik, Galmaarden, Kapelle op den Bos, Ternat and Zemst. Most logically, those east of Ternat would be attached to East Flanders, with Londerzeel, Kapelle and Zemst attached to the province of Antwerp where they seem to belong, and the remainder to a new province centered on Leuven. The other municipalities would continue to benefit from the existing electoral law as part of Bru-66. This would entail retaining the existing rights regarding federal elections of the vast majority of French speakers in BHV, whilst creating new rights for Dutch speakers in Walloon Brabant. For regional elections, inhabitants of Bru-49 (i.e. the new Brussels municipalities) would no longer vote directly for the regional governments in Wallonia and Flanders, and instead vote for the regional government of Brussels – without any doubt the one which has the most impact on their social, professional and economic life – representatives of which would also sit in the Flemish and Walloon governments when these were deliberating on matters of interest to Brussels – the matters currently under the competence of the community governments. The few remaining municipalities in Walloon Brabant outside Bru-66 could be attached either to Hainaut or Namur.

Regarding language use, this would become a secondary issue on which certain constitutional guarantees might be sought by the two other entities, which would then have to agree if they were changed. It would be necessary to redefine the language regime in Brussels at municipal level, accepting that alongside the 19 existing bilingual municipalities, which would retain their status, there would be three new types of municipality: French-only (24), Dutch-only (17) and Dutch-predominant, i.e. the 6 existing “faciliteitengemeenten”, at least as long as no consensus exists to fold these into the bilingual area. At the same time, issues of regional competence might be accessible in either language, regardless of ones place of residence within the new Region. This would potentially simplify matters for business, especially.

This plan would seem to allow for the disappearance of the complicated region/community distinction currently in the Belgian constitution, already largely assimilated in Flanders. There would be a single government of Flanders and of Wallonia, with the cultural commissions of Brussels extending their remit to the respective new unilingual municipalities of Bru-66 and working under the supervision of the respective regional government, itself directly responsible for cultural matters in the two other regions, amplified for this purpose with representatives from the two linguistic electoral colleges of Bru-66. Thus, the Flemish community commission would exercise its competences, under supervision of the Flemish government, in regard to the 19 bilingual communes, the 6 facility communes and the 17 unilingual communes of former Flemish Brabant, while the French commission would be active in the bilingual and French unilingual communes, with its scope of activity, if any, in the facility communes remaining to be determined. The COCOB would be active only in Bru-19.

In conclusion, as a long-time (and continued) sympathizer of Flemish demands for greater autonomy, here is my plan C. On mature reflection, I think the Flemish demands in relation to the Brussels periphery are battles of a bygone era and have become prejudicial to their own economic prosperity and true interests. These interests can better be defended within a reformed Region as part of a reformed State. I think such a “Plan C” better reflects economic reality and therefore is likely to be in the interests of everyone – inhabitants of Bru-19, of Bru-66, of Flanders and of Wallonia.

In case anyone should come across this blog and be tempted to make wider use of these ideas, let me also add this: they are just the work of a sympathetic long-time-resident non-Belgian speaking Flemish and French and having lived on all sides of the language divide around Brussels. I am not intending to campaign for anything, do not wish to offend anyone’s sensitivities, and am well aware that any short essay like this one is necessarily oversimplistic and may perhaps come across as naive. In my defense, I think there are very few Belgians left any more who do not realize that there is a need to rethink the national institutions out of the box. Quite a few potentially rather damaging scenarios start for the first time to be discussed seriously. In this context, I hope to presume that constructive contributions to the debate are welcome. In any case, I claim no particular wisdom or authority beyond any that may be intrinsic in the ideas themselves, and welcome any comments you may have, which I’m sure are as likely as not to educate me on aspects I have not yet fully considered.

That article has a lot of good points but also raises a couple of interesting questions. Firstly, how on earth is it possible that 80% of value added is absorbed as labor costs, and what does this say about the high costs and inflexibility of the Belgian labor market? What percentage of the value added is actually created by this labor force, frequently so surly at checkout and stocking the shelves slowly and with scant regard for efficient management of inventory? Also, is the problem here higher labor costs than competitors, or simply less value creation? How does this ratio compare internationally? (the only figures I found were an average for the UK for the period 1994-98, during which labor costs represented 57% of value added – a proportion that seems hardly likely to have risen given the phenomenal efficiencies of Tesco).

Moreover, the notion of a price war is belied by daily experience and also by statistics which show that the price of consumer food products has risen in Belgium by 20% more than the eurozone average since 2005 (source: Eurostat). They are also higher in absolute terms than in Germany, France or the Netherlands – 25% higher than in the latter (source: Eurostat, see p.152). This represents a hidden tax on food which affects the poorest in society, with enormous knock-on effects on health and well-being. Why is the government not more concerned about this?

Another question is, if Carrefour is ceding a number of supermarkets and with them customers to the competition, how do they propose to compete with these outlets in trying to win these customers back to the outlets that stay open? Isn’t the risk exactly the opposite?

But this underlines the lack of a coherent brand positioning. What could that positioning be? It seems to me that Carrefour faces a dilemma: it is far too clumsy to compete with the discounters and yet it is far too big not to.

This announcement from Carrefour is very disappointing and if I were an investor (or for that matter an employee) I would not be happy with it at all, because it gives no indication at all that there is any fresh thinking or real strategy to get out of this mess.

In that article it is suggested that Carrefour made a mistake in assuming its main competitor was Delhaize. And this is probably true. However, it also seems to me that Carrefour has never competed with Delhaize very effectively either. This is in contrast to Tesco which does take sales from Sainsbury, Waitrose and the like. It has done that, it seems to me, through a combination of extending its product lines to address a sufficient chunk of the demand of the customers of these competitors (organic foods, local produce, deli meals…), improving its operations so that shopping time is reduced and food is fresher, and price advantages which come in particular from its buying power.

In Belgium, Delhaize is ripe for attack. It has nothing like the customer loyalty of the upscale UK grocery retailers – it’s overpriced, and its selection is poor with its “organic” credentials entirely without credibility. In short, no-one shops at Delhaize because they love the products or the Delhaize brand; they do so only because it’s more convenient than Carrefour and its product selection is superior in nutritional and taste terms – but in no way outstanding.

Carrefour could certainly attack this premium segment and could do so on the basis of a few factors.

Firstly, the association between its Frenchness and haute gastronomie is easily made in the mind of consumers. I have always been disappointed that Carrefour seems to have practically no French identity in Belgium, not even a component of identity. Here one does not of course want to white-label quality product brands (“Carrefour Sauternes” or “Carrefour Foie Gras”), but one wants a metabrand that stands for quality seriously enough to command premium prices. It need not even be only French – I have enjoyed visits to great Carrefours in Italy – but it should be based on the same values of terroir and tradition that are universally associated with French cuisine. Here Delhaize and Belgium are weak.

Secondly, Carrefour could probably gain a lot of fans by attacking fruit and vegetables. These I never buy in supermarkets unless I have to, and if I do have to, probably Colruyt is the least bad (but I almost never go there because they do not stock fresh milk). Organic or not, the fruit and vegetables from Delhaize are simultaneously overpriced and often tasteless. Carrefour cannot give over the whole fruit and veg section to premium produce, I suppose, but they could stock a lot of the stuff that I usually have to go look for in the corner store.

Next, Carrefour needs a convenience format. It has not profiled itself successfully in this segment and as a result probably captures a lower share of small ticket visits than its rivals, particularly Delhaize. I am not sure how it is positioned on this segment in France or other countries, but it is well known to be a growth segment and all the major quality retailers in the UK are also present in it.

And one more idea, Carrefour needs a performance contract with its customers. It takes forever to find things in its hypermarkets and the checkout queues are enormous. Perhaps not everyone minds, but enough customers do. There are solutions to these things. Better signage and technology can help in navigating the store, and if labor inflexibility really makes it impossible to implement a maximum queue policy, then why not have a few tills where you pay a premium of say 5% on your bill, that people will use if they are in a hurry instead of just not shopping at all?

But then again, for this kind of changes to happen, you’d have to be looking for solutions and ways to create value instead of indulging in the ever facile game of blaming everyone else…

If you’re anything like me, you’ll have multiple online identities. They serve different purposes and I want it to stay that way. I have no less than six gmail accounts alone – all served from a single login (gmail is cool like that). That login I originally chose for no other reason than that it was short and hence quick to type. It doesn’t contain my full name, though I don’t doubt that online anonymity resists only to casual users and not to real pros. It doesn’t matter much to me, but I don’t want people who look for me for professional reasons first to find a bunch of personal stuff. And that works pretty well.

With the launch of Buzz, Google has decided (indeed decreed) that this email ID should become the center of my online identity. I rarely use it to send mail, so most of my friends will not even be aware it exists.

I find it a bit of a strange presumption.

But beyond this, it seems to me that Google and all the rest of us need to do some serious thinking and research on how, in actual fact, people manage their IDs on line – and design and adapt services accordingly.

In this article, it’s suggested that people don’t want hundreds of passwords to every single site they ever visited. Most of them they forget. If they don’t forget them, they use the same password everywhere, with obvious security implications. As a result, popular sites have a chance to use their login as a key to an individual’s entire online ecosystem of subscriptions – enter Facebook Connect, OpenID, Google; and the author of the article should know, because he was at Paypal. Seems noone uses Paypal because they can’t remember their password…

It’s interesting to compare this state of affairs with how identity is managed in the real world. In countries based on the Napoleonic civil code, identity is established by local authorities at birth. It is defined by name and date and place of birth and recorded in a register of births. It’s subsequently tracked by place of residence. When you move, the records concerning your civil status move with you. In short, those guys have – because of the coercive power of the State – a monopoly over my real-world identity. Whenever I engage in another act that requires me to prove I’m me, like signing a bank giro, it piggy-backs on this system. The bank only knows I’m me because I have given them documents sent to addresses at which the municipality knows I live, and documents issued by the public authorities.

This is not so with Facebook, Google or anyone else. Those are identities I can create at will. I can make them more or less close to the real world me according to what suits me. They have no connection to the root, authoritative authentication of my identity in the real world. And whatever I may build on top of them has no more solidity than the original construction, on which I can pull the plug at will. Governments can introduce electronic signature with PKE, chipcard or RFID (ok, Belgium will figure it out about the same time as Laos). I don’t see Facebook and co supplanting or duplicating this function any time soon.

But aren’t we by now tired not only of having multiple passwords for hundreds of sites, but also of managing multiple identities across multiple social media; and in fact not only tired, but rapìdly losing track, and scaling back usage because of fears about data protection?

Perhaps there is a market opportunity here. How can incumbents position themselves to take advantage of it?

Pushed probably by investors, social media have focused on how to monetize their membership base. They have not been very good at doing so without alienating members. Facebook has made numerous gaffes, and Google has been above this for now just because they have a different business model. But for how long?

To wrap my on-line identities into one, or at least fewer, requires damn good and robust coding and a great UI. Better data protection than, it seems, numerous government departments are capable of… Plus the unshakeable trust of users. This could be achieved by robust terms and conditions – a Users’ Charter – with guarantees of data integrity backed by impartial third parties like insurers.

Who’s placed to win? As always, Google. Today Facebook showed me the entire feed of a user to whom I had sent a friend request, but who had not yet accepted. It is a typical experience on Facebook. Its apparently flexible, made-to-measure security model is only as good as its transparency to the user and its implementation. In both respects it scores badly, and lost trust is hard to win back. Google screwed up too, but it may have learnt its lesson. It has enough cash not to be looking to make a fast buck, and it has the influence to  impose standards. It could, for instance, remove links to material resulting from a data integrity breach from its search engine. Though it screwed up, it cannot really afford to – it is too exposed, commercially and legally.

So how to proceed? I believe Google should draw up a binding and credible user charter and offer all existing gmail users the chance to migrate their primary Google profile to something other than what has been their email address until now. While I use multiple gmail identities by setting up forwarding, support for this should become native. The identity being used within all google products should be indicated in a clear way, by labels and/or colors and the like (much as it is in google calendar). Google should also offer tools to audit the online footprint of the various identities you have set up, delete material they host and put other material beyond the scope of search.

Unlikely philanthropy? I think it is hard business sense. By establishing itself at the root of online identity, Google would provide a vital and unique input to the entire online ecosystem, including numerous paid services. It would be ideally placed to leverage the service provided for free to users into hard cash further down the value chain. Identities validated by Google could also be linked to a range of real world products requiring authentication. It seems to me that the sky is the limit to rethinking identity in the online world and the business opportunities from doing so. But the Buzz faux pas suggests that Google is still a long way from figuring it out.

Broken links: Frequently, for example, the Event link doesn’t work. This seems to be because instead of going to the normal link, ../events.php, it intercalates home.php#/. This happens all over the site, sometimes it tries to access an address /home.php#/home.php. Predictably unsuccessfully.

News feed: It frequently publishes items from sources I have chosen to hide, publishes items more than once, and publishes items as recent material which were actually posted weeks previously.

Ads: Facebook ads are pretty limited generally, with slow turnaround time for approvals, little flexibility in format, unclear targeting and poor diagnostics. But recently I noticed the possibility listed alongside a group I administer to advertise the group. I clicked on that, but not only does it not pick up and automatically fill in the link I wanted to promote – it actually appears to be impossible to promote groups at all!!! (You can promote it as if it were an outside link, like you can promote any outside link, but this seems very inelegant; you also can’t indicate that it’s a Facebook group in the text because the word “Facebook” is banned!)

It’s also interesting that for a certain range of values, the less you bid per click the more clicks it predicts you will have!

Uploads: For some reason, you can upload video files, but not audio files.

Link previews: Facebook insists on adding a preview of any link you include in the text of a status update or any other material posted to your wall/newsfeed, but unfortunately this preview is frequently worse than useless. Often it references some general statements about the site to which you link, rather than the material you are linking to (for example if you link to drop.io or tinyurls). On other occasions it previews, for reasons no one can understand, entirely different pages from the same site (for my blog, it will frequently provide a preview of a different blog post, although I use the permalink).

Mail: Why on earth is it impossible to forward messages? And why have updates suddenly become so invisible?

Friends: Why is it so difficult to manage lists?

Privacy: Why is Facebook continually trying to put, and actually putting, material in the public domain which I do not want to be there? I was very surprised to discover that my public search listing includes pages I’m a fan of and a host of other personal material that I don’t especially want to be in the front line of my Google Search listings. I hope I now fixed it, but I see more and more the default option “everyone” which, in case you didn’t realize it, actually means “the entire world (human or otherwise)”.

x.facebook.com: Facebook seems to have a host of different mobile sites with reduced functionality. Particularly reduced is this one, which for some reason is the default it opens on my phone (although m.facebook.com works no less badly).

Notifications: It frequently omits notifications, or includes them only hours (or possibly days) later (usually as if they were read) so you don’t notice them.

Any more annoyances with using Facebook? Post them here!

Not that I actually need this software for the moment, but i’ve long awaited the day when I could book professional services online and see when people are free without having to phone them. It’s not only that I don’t like to phone. There’s frequently no-one on the other end of the phone, or my request disrupts them, or I’m in a holding queue for half an hour, or they don’t have the slot I want and then I have to negotiate my way out of the situation, call someone else….

Apparently, it’s also possible to book seats at concerts, tables at restaurants, and places in group events using this kind of software (though for the concerts, there are already ticketing apps that have this functionality).

So there’s definitely a market demand.

As far as I know, the first generation required a client on the service provider side, but now it seems that most if not all of these applications have migrated to a remote hosting model (in normal language, you access them over internet through any browser).

It would be nice to get hold of a comparative analysis, but since I haven’t found one, here are some comments of my own, with any luck social media monitoring software will get my comments to some interested parties who will then complete the picture

So far I only looked quickly at Clickbook, and this from the customer standpoint. This application was the first I came across, and has the additional nice feature of being free

Apart from useability considerations, the following obvious features occur to me:

1. Web integration: how seamless is it? What about support for popular CMS packages like Drupal and Joopla? (About which I am also so far fairly ignorant, but it’s on my to-do list)

2. What about CRM integration? These apps are gathering, and could potentially also exploit, valuable information on customers. How easy is it to feed this information into CRM systems, for analysis and for email marketing, for instance?

3. Clickbook appears to provide an iCal feed to the service provider, but what about sending meeting requests automatically to users too, so they don’t have to enter them manually in their agendas? That should work for Outlook, Google Calendar, whatever Apple users have, and so on.

4. What would be really attractive would be credit card reservations. Does any app support this? How difficult is it to build in?

5. Clickbook doesn’t support reservations to activities that can admit multiple or unlimited participants, at least not in an elegant manner. What applications do permit this?

6. In the event a service provider is unavailable after booking (eg through illness or emergency), how easy is it to inform clients automatically? Is it possible to propose to reschedule appointments?

Perhaps there are also some other features I should care about and which differentiate these apps from each other. I’d really like to know, as rolling out such apps seems to me to have quite some potential.

I’m also wondering about the business models of these applications, including whether they have any chance of becoming killer B2C portals for service provision beyond individual providers, at least in particular sectors and geographies. So far we seem to be a long way from that. However, I must say that if one of these apps gained market dominance I’d be very tempted to use it to look for service providers, rather than other channels. It’s extremely convenient. So a good business model could definitely be built around that.

Looking forward to some interesting feedback!

It’s apparently not the capital of Turkey (I knew that of course…) but I am not sure its inhabitants have really accepted that. It certainly was the capital of vast Eurasian empires for 1500 years, and that leaves a mark.

Like Venice, Istanbul is dominated by the sea. And somehow it feels so weighted down by history that one wonders if it is not really in danger of sinking.

The modern city is on such a scale that it is impossible even to begin to grasp it during a week-long visit. I had the impression I would need many years. Wikipedia says the population is 12.4 million, but I have heard 15 or even 20 million – apparently, no-one really knows.

Used to the Turkish districts in Brussels and other Western European cities, I thought I knew something of what to expect. There were a few points of contact, of course, but that was overall not really the case. Although men clearly outnumbered women in the street, the vast majority of women whom one did see wore no headscarf and dressed in quite a Western way. In the prosperous districts north of the Golden Horn, they shopped in a Western way too.

But overall, Istanbul was an enigma, and the guidebooks we used (TimeOut, hg2) were largely useless, at least for our purposes. So were sites like Tripadvisor. So here are a few notes of my own trying to make sense of the place.

SIGHTS

These at least you will figure out with a standard guide book.

Try to go to Hagia Sophia when there aren’t too many tourists, as the queues can be very long.

The archaeology museum next to the Topkapi palace is superb, especially the gorgeous sculpted mausolea from the Sidon necropolis, which are in an extraordinarily good state of preservation. An amazing fusion of Egyptian and Hellenistic styles.

The Yerebatan Cistern (Basilica Cistern) was well worth it; as was wandering around in Pera (Beyoglu).

SHOPPING

To buy something worthwhile at a normal price in one of the bazaars is almost impossible; at best, a few souvenirs can be picked up there. North of the Grand Bazaar there are many shops selling much humbler produce. Little of this would seem worth taking back though – it’s the kind of garments and other trinkets they sell here in Belgium in Turkish shops and on markets. Prices in the posh shopping districts offer little advantage, if any, over those in Europe.

However, there is one district in the old city that offers what appears to be quality fashion at reasonable prices. Some items carry the famous European brands and look like them too. Others carry local brand names, fantasy Italian brand names or are unbranded. This district is situated to the South of Ordu Caddesi near the Istanbul University.

Be prepared to bargain there too – but from a more reasonable starting point often known in advance. Being able to speak Russian is a huge advantage – especially if you don’t speak Turkish… Many shops actually refuse to sell you single items, they appear to cater to who-knows-what kind of small post-Soviet shopkeepers. Occasionally they bear the word “wholesale” in the window but more frequently the russian word “optom”.

What’s authentic there and what is not? I have no clue. Are the items genuinely of the quality that they appear? Not always in any case, so buyer beware – but I think we picked up lots of bargains: leather items, fur coats, shoes… We also avoided serious rip-offs (goose down comforters with almost no weight of down in them). Who shops there – can it really be JUST for Russian tourists? And isn’t that a bit odd?

There are also some normal shopping malls out of town (Cevahir in Mecidiyeköy, Akmerker in Etiler, Kanyon…), these we didn’t reach so I can’t say what the shopping experience there would be but I imagine it would be more reliable and organized, prices presumably would be at least similar and probably lower. But maybe I’m wrong. Russian-language assistance would probably not, though, be provided (I do speak enough Russian to communicate).

If you want to buy carpets and kilims in Istanbul, it surely isn’t the best place but it may be an opportunity you don’t have at home. It is absolutely indispensable to be really clued up on all the technical details in advance. There are buyers guides available – you can order them on Amazon, but there is also an English-language bookshop near the Blue Mosque at the beginning of Divan Yolu which is well stocked in all sorts of interesting material with a local slant – it will cost you much more but it’s convenient and pleasant browsing. Anyway you’ll certainly save from having these guides if you do intend to make a purchase.

For some reason all those carpet stores are unable to provide any evidence for their long stories about the carpets they try to sell. I wonder why…

Shops in the touristy districts displaying prices were a rarity. Unsurprisingly, those few who did, were doing great business. Elsewhere, we found all the hassling really tiring and it put us off the shopping experience, so we ended up buying almost nothing other than clothes in the district mentioned earlier.

The Arasta Bazaar near the blue Mosque is much more hassle-free than the Grand Bazaar and an altogether more pleasant experience, though real bargains are unlikely.

Don’t let the hotel take you by car to shops or restaurants, that’s yet another tiresome scam. For some reason, they can’t just tell you the address and let you go by yourself.

Obviously the Turkish government has little vision or desire to reform the tourist experience, which is a pity as the city has great potential without any need for scams.

EATING

We found some really nice and high quality Turkish restaurants in Ticarethane Sokak near the Basilica Cistern and Blue Mosque. One of the few places they don’t hassle you. There are also others in other side streets of Divan Yolu that looked nice. We recommend “The Cure” (despite the name). Rumeli was less good.

There are great grilled fish sandwich available in a variety of places, not just at the quay in Eminönü – for example we also found one next to the Gedirpasa bath. TL 3.50, a bargain.

In the event you get out to the City shopping mall in …, which sells only Western labels at high prices, there is nonetheless an absolutely amazing restaurant on the top floor called “Itś a Joke”. Astonishing design down to the last detail, a feast for the eyes as zell as palate!

After a while we got tired with all the kebabs. Notwithstanding sometimes good quality and service, and the amazing displays of fresh produce in the markets, there seems to be a real lack of variety in terms of food on offer.

BATHS

For goodness sake avoid Cagaloglu on Yerebatan Caddesi – at least if you are a man it is a total ripoff and an unpleasant experience to boot. Gedirpasa was much cheaper and better: 40TL with massage. The architecture in neither place is anything particularly stunning, but Gedirpasa does also have a small pool. In any event, in neither place will you find anyone speaking even very rudimentary English – which is kind of surprising considering the first place caters exclusively to tourists!

CHILDREN

The Turks love children and our two small ones were constantly surrounded by attention. Pushing them in strollers around Istanbul was a challenge though. The sidewalks are awful, frequently too narrow, blocked by lampposts or parked cars, and frequently with steps. The kerbs are also extremelt high and most of the streets are cobbled. We had to push them in the street most of the time, which is certainly not ideal; but we managed it.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT

Taxis are cheap and we never had any problem with meters or other scams, though it always pays to be careful. The tram which runs down Sultanahmet across to Beyoglu is also very convenient though. Single journey by token, TL 1.40. Buses run everywhere but it was impossible to figure out what was going on there; in any case they are often crowded so not easy with kids in strollers.

HOTELS

We stayed at Kybele two nights, it was a great location, and worth the stay, though it’s rather expensive and the breakfast buffet was disappointing. Our room had a nice terrace, but no view as a high-rise was blocking out Hagia Sophia.

For the rest we stayed at Aruna which is a new hotel and apparently under the same ownership. It’s location in Sultanahmet was slightly less ideal but still OK. The breakfast buffet was better but still got boring after a couple of days. Unlike at Kybele there is a lift. One guy at reception was very helpful and friendly, the other more annoying. Make sure you use the code on the safe deposit boxes, just with the key it is not necessarily safe.

The hotels around Ordu Caddesi are presumably cheaper and next time we might try them, as the district is ideal for shopping and convenient for the tram. But perhaps they cater only to tour groups. There are so many hotels in the old peninsula and around Istiklal Caddesi.

CONCLUSIONS

My main conclusion is that once you venture a bit off the beaten trail in your travels – and Istanbul really is only a LITTLE bit off the beaten trail – local knowledge becomes hugely important. There is really no substitute, even in the internet age. Next time, I would plan more in advance. Internet cannot be relied on (except this article of course . I would try to contact people on the ground by better exploiting my online social networks to find friends of friends. We really only used A Small World, and that delivered something, but not a great deal.

A week was the minimum to get ones bearings and see stuff, but it was also enough for a first visit as the non-stop hassle became tiring and one realized how little one actually understood of how the place worked.

Istanbul is an obvious place to go at least once in a lifetime for its cultural and historical attractions, but it is also a place that one could keep coming back to if only it would be more visitor-friendly and public authorities made a real effort to rein in the hassle and scams. If one has to tolerate the latter anyway, I guess there are more interesting shopping destinations. But it is surely a place that, in any case, leaves a deep impression on one and a hunger for something more.

The photos are here.