None of the ways to discover new places does not cause as much emotion as a walk accompanied by a local resident who is able to show the most intimate corners of his city. My recent trip to Istanbul for the wedding of a close friend can be compared with rereading a favorite book - the story and heroes have long been familiar, but it was worthwhile to take a fresh look at how the story sounded quite different.

On the eve of the wedding, me and relatives of the bride were invited to dinner in the family of Turker - groom .The future relatives of my friend welcomed us and sat at the table with refreshments .Dishes were changed one after another in an accelerated mode, and while I was leaning on the birches, a traditional pastry made of puff pastry stuffed with cheese and meat, a delicious sweet pepper baked in the oven and filled with yoghurt I left for a snack,.After about forty minutes, we ate enough, and we were invited to sit on the couch and drink tea with baklava own cooking .Only then did they start asking us whether we had been in Turkey before we did what we had seen in Istanbul .The

The next day we were very worried, while my girlfriend and her chosen one were married by the Muslim laws, that is, they passed the "nikah" ceremony .Marriage is a mullah, only two witnesses are allowed to the ceremony - necessarily men .A small festive dinner, in which women were sitting separately from men, completed the official part of the day, and a couple of hours after finding a new status my girlfriend and husband hastened to show us the city .Here it is worth noting that the real wedding, which was attended by more than 350 guests, took place in a couple of months .The official registration of marriage in the registry office was a few days before the "nickah" and the meaning for the married was much less than the religious rite .The

We did not have much time to get acquainted with the luxurious imperial Istanbul, so we immediately went to the center of the city on Sultanahmet Square .Climbing a steep hill along one of the cobbled streets of Istanbul, we were puzzled when Turker invited us to enter the wooden, sometimes holey door pointed to by the sign "Painting exhibition" .Imagine our surprise when the workshop and the exhibition of the works of the famous Turkish artist Ilhami Atalaya turned out behind this plain entrance! After acquainting himself with the master himself, who came to us in a smeared with a paint coat, warmed by the bourgeois, having looked at the oriental motley, full of juicy colors, we went further than .The

Even on this day we climbed the funicular to the observation deck over the Golden Horn Bay, dined in a fish restaurant with very democratic prices (while less knowledgeable tourists ate the same fish at sky-high prices in a neighboring establishment), skated the Bosphorus and admired a magnificent sunset over the Sea of ​​Marmara .And throughout this long day we did not leave the feeling that our guide is meeting his acquaintances everywhere .Not understanding the conversations in Turkish, we were sure that they charge parking fees, indicate how best to go to the sights, and weigh "louder" on the market good friends of Turker .Our amazement was boundless when it turned out that all these were unfamiliar people .Such is the mentality here: a compatriot is almost a brother, and this applies equally to the inhabitants of a small village, and to the inhabitants of an almost European megacity - Istanbul .The