u/fohemer

Hello everyone. I finally went to Istanbul and had a great time, on the other hand, I have to join the choir of people saying that this city is a gem, but the people living in it are pushing tourism away. We stayed 5 days and not a single day passed without multiple people trying scamming us, for us it was almost a constant experience with few exceptions of very kind and helpful people.

On top of the classic scams that I’m not going to repeat, I wanted to raise awareness on 2 scams that we fell into and that I never read of, so that it may not happen to other people.
They were both on the first day, on our way from IST airport to the city. We wanted to come by metro as our hotel was on the line, so from IST we went to the metro station and we bought from the ticket machine a “Turkye card”. I remembered reading online about a card that allowed you to travel freely in the region Istanbulkart, turkey card, something like that. I remembered it was red, and the machine said that you could use that card basically for everything. Of course since the name clicked, it was red and the machine recommended it, we bought two and topped them up with some money, just to find out that of course they don’t work in Istanbul. So basically the government itself put a machine at the Istanbul airport that sells a useless card at the Istanbul metro station, taking advantage of unaware tourists. Nice way of welcoming tourists I guess.

So after arriving in Gayrette and realising we wasted money with the turkye card, we tried buying an istanbulkart from the machine. There was a guy there that was “helping” tourists making their cards. Of course we should not have trusted any random person in the street, but at that point we were frustrated, tired and dumb, so we followed what he did.
This guy made us buy an Istanbul kart, and then he told us to recharge it, so far so good, the only issue is that with a very quick movement of hand he switched our charged card with an empty one, so we paid 14€ in tickets just to receive a card that had only 200TL on it. Of course we should not have trusted any random person at the station, at the same time he was very quick and smooth with the switch, so even if I was staring at him and what he was doing we did not realise what happened until we were already far and needed the metro again.

All of this just to say that I loved this city, but what we got from this trip is that both the people (restaurants, shops, taxis, general scammers) and the government (fake transport cards, ridiculously overpriced tourist attractions) see tourists as idiots and just want their money at all costs. I’m really sorry to say it but I will not recommend this city to all my friends and family, because as much as I loved the beauty of the architecture, there are many other places as beautiful and where you are not treated like that.

My previous relationship of 3 years ended after I (30M) cheated with my ex gf (33M) with an old friend of mine (31F). I’m not going to enter in too many details, but I will say that I was going through a tough period with my gf back then, my friend was always close to me and supportive, there has always been some sexual tension between us in our friendship, which for the most time was never an issue (I actually used to laugh about it with my gf back then). In one occasion though, this tension combined with a particularly low moment of my relationship ended up with me cheating. We both felt very bad about it, agreed it was a one time thing and that it would never happen again and I ended my relationship with my gf.

In any case, that relationship ended for that and many other reasons, but my friendship with the girl remained. Mainly because we were friends long before and because I was very depressed after my breakup. I was feeling very lonely and uncomfortable with my body, and even if we both knew we would never be together, her friendship cheered me up because I knew that that person genuinely liked me. She reminded me that I was likeable as a person and as a man, and that did a lot to my self esteem. She was there for me, but never in a sexual way. There were many occasions were something could have happened between us after the breakup (while both single, I slept at her place a couple of times when my flights got cancelled, as she lives near the airport and I don’t) and neither of us felt the push to do anything, just slept on the couch and went on the following day.

Then, during the course of like 6 months we lost contact a little by little to almost no contact at all. The kind of friendship that is lowkey, just sending reels on instagram but almost not talking at all. Years pass, and in the meantime I met my current gf (25F) and we have been together for 2 years now and she meets her bf. My relationship with my friend remained always quite distant as we were both moving forward with our relationships, careers etc.

The issue is that in the last couple of months I noticed that she’s been sending me way more things on instagram, either funny reels or science facts, innocent things, which I don’t mind. I feel she’s trying to catch up with me, but the problem is that I’m not comfortable with being close to her like I used to anymore. I love my current gf, I feel she is the one, and I don’t want to do anything or put myself in any situation that would make her feel uncomfortable or make me look sketchy. I have nothing to hide. I was always honest with her, she knows the truth about my previous relationship and she doesn’t judge me for that, and I want to do everything to never betray her trust in me for a single second. To be 100% clear, if the situation came that I had to choose, I would choose her without even thinking.

At the same time I feel like I can’t just “dump” my old friend like that. She was there for me when I was at my lowest, and abandoning her now that she might need me would make me feel like a really disgusting friend. The one that wants you only when he needs you, and I’m not that type of person.

I tried keeping my distance from her, I told her I was trying to detox from instagram and I wasn’t using it a lot, trying to see if she would stop sending me stuff. I didn’t open her chat for days and days, didn’t post or react to anything, but she kept sending things. When I open her chat I would simply double tap her reels and not say anything, she would continue sending me things. I didn’t talk to her to ask her if she’s doing ok (but I have good reasons to think that she might not be), because I am afraid she would take it as an invitation to get close again, and I’m not sure that’s the best thing to do.

I have planned to sit down with my gf and discuss this with her next week, but before that I wanted to hear what other people have to say about this. I need to see many other perspectives because I really don’t know what I should ask to my gf. From one side I want to give back and take care of someone that was there for me, on the other side I genuinely feel bad being close to someone like her because I am afraid that could hurt my gf, even if she’s so kind, empathetic and sweet that she would never tell me. I did a mistake in the past for which I already paid the consequences, but I am afraid that that mistake could hurt someone else’s feelings now and I want to do my best to avoid it. What do you think?

Hello everyone, me and my gf are travelling to Istanbul in a few weeks and we would love to see the main attractions of the city: Hagia Sophia, the cistern, the Topkapi palace, you know, the classics.

We are honestly baffled by the prices, 25, 55, 40€ for attractions that in other countries would be half the price. We love travelling and seeing other cities and cultures, but this is borderline a scam. With all that money we could literally almost do another travel somewhere else.

Is there a smart way to get some reduction? Maybe some complete package or some insider discount from some nieche website?

Honestly I’m not even there and I already feel like I’m getting robbed.