Istanbul’s public transport system is developing faster than they can print the maps.

My books are useless when it comes to the metro/tram system. The otherwise greatly informative and amusing Gebrauchsanweisung Istanbul (Istanbul Manual) published in 2010 lists one (!) metro line in operation….

The maps in several apps for my phone are helplessly out of date. Hell, even the metro system’s own plan’s cannot keep up with the speed they are building stuff. Unfortunately, Google maps hasn’t integrated the public transport info into their system, so it can’t help either.

First of all: get an Istanbulkart. It’s a rechargeable electronic card that gives you access to tram, metro, bus, cable car and ferries. Do you hear that, Sydney? With 1,95 TL it’s cheaper than buying the plastic jetons, and you can easily transfer within the system, only paying a small additional charge.

What I like most is the ferry system. Hop on and off a ferry and get cruised across the Bosphorus in no time, feel the salty wind in your face and hair and get a tea, orange juice or cheese panini while you’re crossing the water. Perfect.

The tram and metro lines are the most impressive, though. All modern, and clean. Swiss clean, to be precise. Again, with 15 million people, that’s impressive (Brussels, take note! No one is peeing here!)

The development of the system can create some confusion though. I wanted to see the city walls, and my maps all showed that from the old main station close to the Palace, a train line was running along the coast and through the old sea wall protecting the old city, towards the main city walls…

I didn’t really check the details in the train station and just followed the metro sign… with everyone else. I went deeper and deeper into the Istanbul underground, counting three major, massive, long elevators that must have brought me down a hundred meters, or so it felt.

Who constructs such a weird station, deep down into bedrock, I thought? An atomic shelter?

Finally down at the tracks, I saw my station: Yedisomething… (that’s how I often navigate) and waited for the train to arrive.

The station: brand new. It even smelled like freshly poured concrete.

Squeaky clean. And still a few improvements being made, signs and stuff installed. It looked like it had just opened last week.

Train comes, I hop on… Next stop is the above mentioned Yedisomething station, I get off. Above ground, total confusion, no city walls.

Check the map, I was far from it. I’m at Yenikapi – not Yediküle. That station is no longer mentioned anywhere on the maps actually, neither is the train line it was supposed to be on.

I love these little hick-ups. Getting lost. Arriving somewhere else than I planned…. having to figure it out.

Back down, I realized, I hadn’t taken the train, but the brand new Marmaray.

It’s a new rail system that shoots passengers from the European side to the Asian shore underneath the Bosphorus in a submerged tunnel.

They had it all on display in the station, and it explained why the whole damn thing was so deep underground on the European side – it needed to cross the Bosphorus sea bed.

It is earthquake proof and supposed to withstand even a 9.0 catastrophic earthquake – after which the city probably does have no need for any public transportation at all…

What was really interesting were the archeological excavations they did during the construction of the line. Complete graves were found, sunken boats with the payload still intact… It delayed the project considerably as suddenly they could no longer drill through the underground, but had to advance at the speed of a paintbrush.

On top of that, the Eurasia tunnel is a road tunnel, set to open in 2016, that will link both Europe and Asia, in parallel to the Marmaray tunnel, cutting transit time between its ends from a whopping 100 to 15 minutes.

Anyway, long story short, the system is developing faster than you can print a guide. If you come here, don’t trust whatever your book says. And if you google a map on the internet, you’ll find a dozen of different versions online.

As a tourist, it’s probably best to stick to the new tram line that connects all the main sights, from the Sultanahmet Mosque to Hagia Sophia, the Topkapi Palace, the Golden Horn, and on to Kabatas.

That’s all you need. If you’re adventurous though, hop on any train and see where it gets you.

I was curious to cross the Bosphorus in that tunnel. So coming back from the fortress I made a little detour to the Asian shore in Üsküdar, and from there on another ferry.

What is really crazy though is that, if I look at a map, I have only navigated within a tiny fraction of the 15 million sprawling metropolis of Istanbul…