I spent the latter half of yesterday afternoon watching the Germany-Turkey Euro 2008 match in a Washington, D.C., bar with a bunch of Turks while maintaining a text message conversation with a German friend. It was an odd situation for me. I’m neither Turkish nor German, but I’m a self-proclaimed Turkophile with deep-seated connections to Germany. Being that I’ve spent two years out of the last five living in Germany and only five months in Istanbul, it would seem my loyalties should be painted black, red and gold. But it wasn’t so clear cut.

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Writes Melissa Myers: “Of the 1,000 Things to Do, I wondered, how had sprawling buck-naked on a wet floor made the list?”

Beautiful Turkey. It topped a recent survey of various nations’ fuel prices conducted by AP correspondents. I wound up discussing the article with a big, burly Turkish immigrant who runs a copy shop I occasionally visit here in San Diego. He shook his head and said with a wry smile, in a way that suggested years of frustration with the country he left behind, “At least Turkey is number one in something.”

Related on World Hum:
* The $4 Gallon Survival Guide
* Visiting Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul

Photo by Wrote via Flickr, (Creative Commons).

Nobel Prize-winning writer Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City is “the perfect literary companion” for a visit to Istanbul, Ben Quinn observes in the Guardian. The memoir evokes 1950s and ‘60s Istanbul. Writes Quinn: “[F]or those seeking to avoid the tourism trail—revolving around the “old” city and the undoubted beauties of the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque—Pamuk reserves a special fondness for Istanbul’s lesser known quarters.”

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World Hum contributor Joanna Kakissis went to the capital of Cyprus and visited with a few ethnic Greeks and Turks who live in the divided city. One needs “a little magic” to see Nicosia as one city, she writes in a story for the New York Times. “We’re not the Israelis and Palestinians,” one Greek Cypriot tells Kakissis. “We don’t have to love the Turks, and they don’t have to love us. We just have to tolerate each other.”

Centuries of rich architecture define this city straddling two continents. But to understand how the new constantly challenges the old in Istanbul, the Boston Globe’s Tom Haines considered its architecture piece by piece: its minarets and mosques, its skyscrapers and soccer stadiums, even its bathrooms. For example, the public restroom in Kadikoy Park, designed by architect Gokhan Avcioglu, has “historical identity, looks nice and does its job,” he writes.

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The subject of our latest nearly up-to-the-minute interview with a traveler somewhere in the world: Christy Quirk, a writer and consultant. Her response landed in our inbox this morning.

World Hum: Where in the world are you?

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We’ve got the Chunnel between England and France. Plans are being drawn for a tunnel between Spain and Morocco. Why not a tunnel beneath the Bosporus Strait, connecting the Asian and European sides of Istanbul? Well, there are good reasons not too, such as the strait’s proximity to the violent North Anatolian Fault. But Turkey has been cautiously moving forward with the Marmaray Project, which according to a terrific story by Julian Smith in Wired, will relieve some of the stress on the two bridges already spanning the Bosporus and also offer new opportunities for world travelers.

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This week travelers prowled for bargains, studied French culture, got left behind for hours and mourned the passing of Hawaii’s cultural ambassador, Don Ho. Here’s the Zeitgeist.

Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
R.I.P. (and Aloha) Don Ho

Most E-mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Online Fares: If It’s Good, Is It Too Good to Be True?

Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
airfarewatchdog

Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (this week)
Business Owner’s Guide to Cutting Travel Costs

Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
Travel With Rick Steves
* This Week: “French culture 201 for the American traveler”

Top Rated “Your Pick” Video
LonelyPlanet.tv (current)
Istanbul Guerilla Guide
* Lonely Planet TV is still getting up to speed. This video gets the top spot with, as of Friday morning, two votes. 

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Three college friends recently embarked on an epic ride from Turkey to China via the Silk Road, a trek being chronicled this week on Slate. Greg Grim wrote the first installment, and he outlined the trip’s goals: “Mikey, Cam, and I aimed to show these folks that not all Americans are fat, rich, Muslim-hating warmongers. Rather, we’re people just like them, with the same needs, questions, and desires. But diplomacy isn’t our sole mission: It doesn’t hurt that these lands are breathtaking in their beauty and baffling in their culture.” As usual with Slate’s travel coverage, a compelling slideshow accompanies the dispatches.

Related on World Hum:
* Lost City of the Silk Road
* Colin Thubron and the “Shadow of the Silk Road”

Looks like we’re a little grumpy this week. Our snapshot of what’s on the minds of travelers and armchair travelers reveals we’re concerned about “Ugly Americans,” bad-mannered Chinese and our poor service on American Airlines. What will get us out of this funk? Perhaps 36 hours in Grand Rapids, Michigan? Here’s your zeitgeist.

Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
* Rethinking the Ugly American

No. 1 World Music Album
iTunes (current)
* The Life Aquatic by Seu George

Most Complained About U.S. Airline
Air Travel Consumer Report (June 2006)
* American Airlines

Most Popular Site Tagged “Travel”
del.icio.us (recent)
* Kayak

Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
* Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
* Chinese travelers’ bad manners earn a chilly reception

Most Viewed Dispatch
World Hum (this week)
* Tony Perottet’s The Joy of Steam

Most Viewed “Travel & Places” Video
YouTube (this week)
* U-StampIt Productions: “This is a sample video for three co-hosts and their upcoming show on Italy”

Most Viewed Weblog Country Category
World Hum Weblog (this week)
* China

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
* 36 Hours: Grand Rapids, Mich.

The Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” Button Travel Zeitgeist Search
* “What I did on my summer vacation”

And, finally, a tribute to the Crocodile Hunter
* In honor of Steve Irwin and International Khaki Day, we’ll be flying the khaki today. R.I.P. Crocodile Hunter.

Got something that deserves to be included in next week’s World Hum Zeitgeist? .

Matt Gross, who has been zipping frantically around the world for the last two months writing the Frugal Travel column for the New York Times, slowed down recently to spend four days on an organic apple farm in Beypinar, Turkey. “I couldn’t stand to see another sight,” he writes in this week’s dispatch for the Times. “I had to do something — anything, I had to feel useful.” It turned out to be a great idea. The story begins as a breath-catching trip to a farm, where he gains “muddy palms, scratched calves and an unironic farmer’s tan,” but soon becomes something else: a sweet tale about friendship and brotherhood.