For the opening of the 9th Istanbul Biennial I went to Istanbul. My flight was German Wings to Sabiha Gökcen International Airport 60km outside Istanbul on the Asian side. Arriving at 2 AM I had to wait 1h for a shuttle to Taksim, a central square in modern Istanbul. Getting to the hotel was no problem since a number of cabs was already waiting for the shuttle to arrive and to take over the passengers. One driver seemed to be the leader. He asked everybody about their hotels and grouped us accordingly. When someone stepped away from his position, the chief would run to that person – much like a shepherd dog would do with sheep – and signaled that you were not supposed to move while he organized everything.
Impressed by such a degree of decentralized organization – the cab drivers seemed to follow the shuttle bus like small fish follow a shark – I did not waste another thought on how I would get back to the airport two days later – if the arrival time of the shuttle bus (4 AM) was public domain knowledge, it would not be hard to find out about the bus back to the airport and it would suffice to do so 1h before leaving.
At the opening party someone approached me, saying that he had heard that I was also going to take the 3.30 AM German Wings Flight to Berlin the next day. I said I was going to take the shuttle bus, he smiled and told me that he had researched it and that there was no shuttle bus. My own investigation the following day proved him right. In the end we shared a cab which I figured was better than an adventurous trip through the suburbs of Istanbul. The ride was adventurous enough: Negotiating the price by writing numbers on my hand and see the driver fighting sleep. At the airport cops told him to turn on his headlights.