Tucked comfortably into my British Airways seat from London Heathrow, I contemplated where I was going. I pulled out the in-flight magazine, traced the arcing flight line, and ended at Turkey . Despite my flatmate's recent admission that he probably couldn't do so, Turkey is not hard to find on a map-if location is all you are after. But I was after something deeper.

Istanbul is the only city in the world that straddles two continents. The Bosphorus River separates Europe and Asia, leaving three percent of Turkey in Europe and the other 97 percent in Asia. I wanted to find out what this split does to the Turkish self-image. Do Turks consider themselves Asian or European? Do they think of themselves as modern or traditional, Western or Eastern, and do they mesh with the rest of the Muslim world? Then there is the question I wasn't even asking myself at the time, but have come to realize needs to be asked: Why can't these concepts of where people fit into the world be mixed? Someone can certainly be Asian, Muslim, modern, and Eastern, or Asian, Catholic, modern, and Western-can't they?

I suppose I could have queried my Turkish aisle mates on the flight. But I didn't know what to make of them, as one was flossing his teeth with a phone-card advertisement, and the other was downing the tiny cup of cream that was supposed to go in his tea. I used to think that cream was for coffee, but I suppose I've been living in England too long. As the plane's wheels touched down on the runway, I thought to myself that I was on my way to the source for my sought-after answers. I had never been anywhere in Asia, and had spent minimal time in the Muslim world. I was entering a world new to me, armed only with stereotypes and vague ideas. I hoped to solve some of my dilemmas during this visit.

But was Istanbul really the best place to find out the answers? At first, it was proving to confuse the issue. I had been told that from a certain point you can see the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn rivers join, as two colors of water merge and they both flow into the Sea of Marmara. But when I stood at the watery line that divides two continents, the Golden Horn seemed more like the Murky Brown Horn, and the Bosphorus was the same. Either way, as I gazed across the bustling rivers from the European side, I had a strong sense of being at Asia's doorstep. Along the waterfront, men sold fresh grilled-ish sandwiches from boat-mounted barbecues. They weren't contemplating their continental alignment. To them it seemed quite obvious. They had fish, lettuce, bread, and sauce, and there were hungry masses to feed.

To get a better perspective of the city, I climbed Galata Tower, a stone guardian that has been vigilantly watching over Istanbul since the Genoese built it in 1348 (when the city was still Constantinople-I know thanks to They Might Be Giants). The elevator was broken, so I plodded up the spiral staircase that hugs the inside of the 183 foot tall round brick tower. As I caught my breath on the observation deck, the view dazzled yet puzzled me. I got a much better sense of the rivers joining (still minus the color change), two continents coming together and two worlds meshing. As I scanned the panorama, I gazed upon (among other things) the 386-year-old Blue Mosque, the first mosque in the world to have six minarets. Sultan Ahmet I, who commissioned the mosque, wanted a minaret of gold, which is the word altin in Turkish. But the similar word alti means six, and so the architect, Mehmed Aga, built a mosque with six minarets. Because of this miscommunication, today we are treated with a rare splendor. From the tower, I also picked out modern skyscrapers, new and gleaming, surrounded by crumbling neighborhoods ready to give in to time and gravity. The city seemed like a work in progress: exposed metal rods sticking out from brickwork, half-finished red-tile roofs, buildings erected with no uniformity, no concern given to what the building next door was doing. Yet this was all juxtaposed with so many other architectural gems in the city, both old and new.

At the bottom of the tower was a restaurant; I perused its menu and found out that for an astronomical $65 (that's U.S. dollars), I could have glitter-covered belly dancers and a kebab on a china plate. Down nearly any side street in Istanbul, I knew, I could purchase the same filling kebab for 500,000 Turkish lira with a glass of cabbage juice for another 250,000 TL to wash it down. (I'd read that cherry juice is common in Turkey, so when my glass of red liquid turned out to be cabbage juice, it was a bit of a shock.) No belly dancer, but the busy, vibrant streets of Istanbul provided (free) show enough for me. Fifty-five cents for one meal, sixty-five dollars for the other, two ends of the spectrum.

I wanted to ask a lot of people how they classified themselves, but as an American in a 98 percent Muslim country (something that the call to prayer from the minaret's loudspeaker five times a day would not let me forget) I had to approach the subject with care. (For Americans in this time of heightened tensions, caution is recommended.) With regard to religion, it seemed to me that Turks lump themselves in with the Muslim world - but this was really just an assumption on my part, because I did not feel comfortable discussing religion and politics, and so was left to infer. What I do know is that while almost all of the population is Muslim, Turkey's beloved Kemal Ataturk instituted reforms that separated religion and state and looked to the West as a model for his new republic. And out of the dozens of people I told I was American, only two seemed to have any problem with it. (I'm sure I could get more French waiters to hate me on a slow afternoon in Paris.) In fact, most people were happy to meet me and find out where I was from. The questions I asked did not broach the religion issue, they were more along the geographical line: Which continent do you belong to? One drunk in an Istanbul bar-the Cheers Bar told me, "Turkey is very eagerly awaiting the results of its application to the EU." He was very eagerly waiting for me to buy him a drink.

The proprietor of a treehouse hotel (the latest fad in tourist accommodations) told me Turkey was "most definitely in Asia, but it would do us good to join Europe." No one told me they were against being part of Europe, but they suspected that if I spoke Turkish, and I headed east (which I didn't), I might find a different response. I did read that an estimated eight million Turks would leave Turkey if they got European passports.

Throughout my trip, I found a vast number of discrepancies between the usual stereotypes and reality. The headscarf that Muslim woman wear (the hijaab) is a very traditional garment, but some Turks think it's outdated. It is not uncommon to see a mother and daughter walking arm in arm, mother in full traditional dress, the daughter adorned with the latest trends shipped in from Paris and Milan. There is a string of prayer beads called tespih that Turkish men commonly fiddle with in their hand, but I was told by a young Turk who had just dropped out of college, "I do not like people who play with them because they symbolize an old-fashioned closed-mindedness." The tespih are often handed down from father to son in a show of old-world affection; I also found them sold in every souvenir shop, next to trays of Turkish delight (jelly cubes covered in powdered sugar), Turkish-flag T&-shirts, and the ever-popular postcard of two camels screwing.

In accordance with Muslim law, most Turks are not supposed to drink alcoho-a religious mandate that I observed many of them not observing. Efes, the local beer, is the sponsor of a great many things, and raki, a clear anisette liquor that turns white when you add water, is drunk all over the place. Posters advertising these drinks display attractive woman who seem to have forgotten their hijaabs, along with most of their clothes. It's not like Morocco, for instance, where I found it reasonably difficult to buy alcohol.

In Cappadocia I found the finest example of the traditional and modern worlds quite literally colliding: I turned a corner on my rented scooter and came face to face with an old man and his donkey cart, almost hitting them as they trudged along the dirt road. The man stared at me in quiet indifference, seemingly happy to carry on holding the reins of his trusty old donkey as I zoomed off into the distance, dust kicking up behind me. He reminded me of the ruins that adorn the Turkish countryside, quietly standing by while everything else modernizes. The underground cities of Cappadocia, which stretch as deep as eight stories below the surface and protected the locals from marauders in ancient times, seem to have taken no notice of the centuries of progress. The area is still raided from time to time, but the barbarians bring money, not weapons.

Note: Watch out for March weather. I bragged to my coworkers that I was getting away from England's nasty spring weather for two weeks, but Istanbul was colder than London. It rained every day, and even snowed once. The Turks all told me that the weather was a complete anomaly. What a surprise.

Photos by Todd Sulchek