For myriad reasons, I ended up taking a cab both Saturday morning and Sunday morning last week. And in keeping with the dual nature of Turkey/Istanbul/Fatih, they were diametrically opposite.
Saturday morning, I was headed out to meet up with a group to walk the shore on the Bosporus, so I grabbed a taxi out off the main road. As an aside, all foreigners are warned about taxi drivers looking to scam foreign tourists, but so far I've been lucky and have just had a few "taking the extremely long way" experiences.
As we're crossing the Galata Bridge, I glance at the meter to see: it's at nearly 14 lira, or twice what it should be. The meter's been tampered with. My driver has his phone wedged into the steering wheel, and is talking with his girlfriend on speakerphone while driving, but we get to Besiktas in short order, where I inform him that I have no intention of paying 24 lira for a 12 lira ride. After I haggle down to 20, I hand the driver my cash... and he switches it out.
A classic trick. Too bad I didn't notice til I got out, after handing over even more cash after my 50 lira bill magically became a 5 lira bill. Gah.
Sunday I was running a titch late for somewhere awkward to get to by public transportation, so I went out to the same main road and hailed another cab. Total 180-degree difference. The driver and I spent the whole trip chatting along about the economic crisis, unemployment, the cost of living here and his adorable 2-year-old daughter (he showed me photos at a red light). When we got to the intersection where I was getting out, he wouldn't let me pay the full fare, because he'd told me a slightly lower price en route.
Turkish hospitality at its best.
And another, as-long-as-I'm-writing-about-things-as-banal-as-taxi-rides story: Last Wednesday, I had by far my most exciting experience on an intracity bus. I was on my way home from work, earphones in, Lady Gaga blaring (don't judge), when the bus pulls over suddenly to the side of the road, between stops. I might not have noticed anything amiss at that point had the bus driver not gone tearing out the door and sprinting around to the back of the bus. At that point, the back of the bus starting rapidly filling with acrid smoke and the bus assistant opened all the doors for the passengers to skedaddle. As I wedged myself in the mass exodus, I glanced behind me to see 8-10 foot flames shooting out the back of the bus.
That's right, my bus Caught On Fire. Not simply smoke and burning smells, respectably sized flames and a busful of duly impressed passengers. Once we were all a safe gawking distance away, we watched the bus driver and his assistant dither before folks started hoofing it to the next bus stop to grab another bus. It was pretty clear our original one was not going to be resuming its route any time soon. I updated my Twitter as I walked, because I am that kind of adherent to modern technology.
Luckily, but far less interesting from a blogging perspective, all my transportation choices since those have been fairly commonplace.
One final note: Sorry for the dearth of posts recently; for some reason Blogger doesn't seem to be working in Turkey. Shockingly, this is a Google issue, not a the-government-banned-it issue. I'm working out options.
kendine iyi bak,
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Life in this fair city
So I'm using one of my few nonwork Internet opportunities to catch up a tiny bit on this; in theory I should be getting at-home internet any day now, at which point my blogging will expand prodigiously I'm sure.
Autumn in Istanbul is kind of a more temperate autumn in Boston, minus the trees changing color and plus about 10 or 20 degrees, depending. People are still out at all the outdoor dining spots, picnicking in median strips and all the other various outdoor activities I'd normally associate with summer. The one thing folks've stopped doing is jumping into the water to cool off, which, given the pollution in the Bosporous, is probably a very good thing.
In the weeks since I got back from the States I've had several visitors, catsat at my home and the neighbors', collected a fairly impressive amount of Expat Treasure (the contents of my fridge at the moment is roughly: bacon, rum, vanilla beans, caviar, more bacon [different kind], duty-free wines -- and the peanut butter, chocolate chips and wild rice are hanging out in my cupboards) and figured out where the Brits of Istanbul have their pub quiz nights (my newly adopted team won, in part because I knew that the lady who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel with her dog dies of suffocation when her dog pressed its nose against the airhole so tightly it blocked the airflow to the rest of the barrel. Important things like this, that's what my brain's full of...).
My landlord visited for a few days, which was good as it was a chance for him to see what I'd done with the place so far and an opportunity to get some work done around the place, as he was home during the day and could supervise contractors. I came home to new hallway lighting and no more wires protruding from various walls. The cat was pretty upset about that latter improvement.
Somewhat more exciting was my other visitor this month: my friend flew in from Switzerland to run in the Istanbul Marathon, which starts in Asia, goes across the Bosporus Bridge, along the Bosporus, up the Golden Horn, and ends at the Hippodrome, directly behind the Blue Mosque. A pretty interesting course, for sure; also the one day a year the bridge is open to pedestrian traffic. We toured the main sites on Saturday, hitting up the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya, Grand Bazaar, Spice Bazaar, Eyup Camii and the Besiktas DVD markets as well as the marathon expo before heading to my Favorite Restaurant in Istanbul for manti. As I don't, as a habit, run, the marathon expo was entirely new to me -- marathoners get some pretty decent swag. The booths were a strange combination of more athletic gear than I have ever seen in Turkey before and random other products, like the Gumussuyu traditional goods association. They had walnuts in molasses, it was kind of but not actually similar to fruit leather, but thicker.
On Sunday, we headed up to Sultanahmet under intermittent rain to catch a marathon bus to the starting line. Having only seen the Boston Marathon before this, the Istanbul marathoners looked a little less...overtly athletic, I guess, in general. Once we got to the starting line, people were milling about as some guy with a bullhorn and a speaker system yelled really excitedly about the Culture Minister, who apparently was there observing the start. I actually started with the marathon runners, just to run across the bridge, and ran about 5 kilometers before grabbing a cab to the finish line to meet up with Kevin. He "just" ran the 15k, so we were able to see the marathon winners run in, complete with motorcycle escort, which was pretty cool.
After the marathon, we ended up walking along the marathon route by the Maramara Sea, which is ordinarily a four-lane roadway but was closed to traffic til mid-afternoon so much calmer. We ended up at Topkapi, which was overwhelming as always but also gorgeous as always, before taking a ferry up the Golden Horn to the Koc Museum, where we speed-walked through before heading over to Istiklal. I don't know how many kilometers we walked, but it was a pretty darn respectable amount.
I really do enjoy exploring this city with newcomers to the country -- I think the experience of seeing Istanbul with a fresh perspective reminds me of just why this city is such an awesome place to live and be in. Plus, I'm a tour guide at heart, and any chance I can get to natter on about the Topkapi palace social hierarchy is something I leap on.
This week has been, it seems, mainly catching up and planning ahead, as I've got another visitor, an old friend in town, my long-term catsittee is leaving, and potentially a quick weekend hop out of the country or two in the next six weeks. In between preparing and planning for all that, I found time to make it to an expat meetup, where I caught up with a few acquaintances and met some new folks in town. It's really fascinating how many expats are in this city, and for how many reasons. I don't know if this Istanbul life is glamorous, but it certainly keeps me on my toes.
And with that, I'm off for now,
-R
Autumn in Istanbul is kind of a more temperate autumn in Boston, minus the trees changing color and plus about 10 or 20 degrees, depending. People are still out at all the outdoor dining spots, picnicking in median strips and all the other various outdoor activities I'd normally associate with summer. The one thing folks've stopped doing is jumping into the water to cool off, which, given the pollution in the Bosporous, is probably a very good thing.
In the weeks since I got back from the States I've had several visitors, catsat at my home and the neighbors', collected a fairly impressive amount of Expat Treasure (the contents of my fridge at the moment is roughly: bacon, rum, vanilla beans, caviar, more bacon [different kind], duty-free wines -- and the peanut butter, chocolate chips and wild rice are hanging out in my cupboards) and figured out where the Brits of Istanbul have their pub quiz nights (my newly adopted team won, in part because I knew that the lady who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel with her dog dies of suffocation when her dog pressed its nose against the airhole so tightly it blocked the airflow to the rest of the barrel. Important things like this, that's what my brain's full of...).
My landlord visited for a few days, which was good as it was a chance for him to see what I'd done with the place so far and an opportunity to get some work done around the place, as he was home during the day and could supervise contractors. I came home to new hallway lighting and no more wires protruding from various walls. The cat was pretty upset about that latter improvement.
Somewhat more exciting was my other visitor this month: my friend flew in from Switzerland to run in the Istanbul Marathon, which starts in Asia, goes across the Bosporus Bridge, along the Bosporus, up the Golden Horn, and ends at the Hippodrome, directly behind the Blue Mosque. A pretty interesting course, for sure; also the one day a year the bridge is open to pedestrian traffic. We toured the main sites on Saturday, hitting up the Blue Mosque, Aya Sofya, Grand Bazaar, Spice Bazaar, Eyup Camii and the Besiktas DVD markets as well as the marathon expo before heading to my Favorite Restaurant in Istanbul for manti. As I don't, as a habit, run, the marathon expo was entirely new to me -- marathoners get some pretty decent swag. The booths were a strange combination of more athletic gear than I have ever seen in Turkey before and random other products, like the Gumussuyu traditional goods association. They had walnuts in molasses, it was kind of but not actually similar to fruit leather, but thicker.
On Sunday, we headed up to Sultanahmet under intermittent rain to catch a marathon bus to the starting line. Having only seen the Boston Marathon before this, the Istanbul marathoners looked a little less...overtly athletic, I guess, in general. Once we got to the starting line, people were milling about as some guy with a bullhorn and a speaker system yelled really excitedly about the Culture Minister, who apparently was there observing the start. I actually started with the marathon runners, just to run across the bridge, and ran about 5 kilometers before grabbing a cab to the finish line to meet up with Kevin. He "just" ran the 15k, so we were able to see the marathon winners run in, complete with motorcycle escort, which was pretty cool.
After the marathon, we ended up walking along the marathon route by the Maramara Sea, which is ordinarily a four-lane roadway but was closed to traffic til mid-afternoon so much calmer. We ended up at Topkapi, which was overwhelming as always but also gorgeous as always, before taking a ferry up the Golden Horn to the Koc Museum, where we speed-walked through before heading over to Istiklal. I don't know how many kilometers we walked, but it was a pretty darn respectable amount.
I really do enjoy exploring this city with newcomers to the country -- I think the experience of seeing Istanbul with a fresh perspective reminds me of just why this city is such an awesome place to live and be in. Plus, I'm a tour guide at heart, and any chance I can get to natter on about the Topkapi palace social hierarchy is something I leap on.
This week has been, it seems, mainly catching up and planning ahead, as I've got another visitor, an old friend in town, my long-term catsittee is leaving, and potentially a quick weekend hop out of the country or two in the next six weeks. In between preparing and planning for all that, I found time to make it to an expat meetup, where I caught up with a few acquaintances and met some new folks in town. It's really fascinating how many expats are in this city, and for how many reasons. I don't know if this Istanbul life is glamorous, but it certainly keeps me on my toes.
And with that, I'm off for now,
-R
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Sometimes when I'm traveling through or reading about Western Europe, I start to think about how nice it would be to live there for a while, or at the very least to explore it more. Today began as one of those days: I got in to Helsinki this morning, and though I was too exhausted to head to the city just to head back 4-6 hours later and figure out customs and security again, the airport itself seemed nice and the people in general seemed ridiculously attractive and pretty darn nice to boot. Then my battery ran low and my metaphorical battery started flagging -- there's like 1 outlet in the international terminal, and one cafe, where a small cup of black coffee and a muffin with hot-pink icing dribbled haphazardly across the top set me back $8. Eight dollars is like 12 lira, and I don't think I'd ever pay that much even for a medium latte and absurdly large-topped muffin at Starbucks. I figured that maybe I'd splurge and buy a day pass to the FinnAir lounge, and enjoy light refreshments in between naps in their sleeping pods, but unlike perhaps every American airline with a lounge, FinnAir doesn't offer day passes. Maybe it's a European thing.
In actual plane experience, though, FinnAir has been pretty darn awesome, especially when compared with my Delta flight over the same ocean last week. Between the actually nice blanket, the gigantic selection of newspapers when boarding, the better wine with dinner (and the quite good dinner, although Turkish Airways does better) and the comfier chairs, I was a pretty happy camper before the lights were even dimmed.
Also a huge plus, and one that I've not failed to complain about on every US-carrier transAtlantic flight I've taken (I suppose I'm a little spoiled), was the in-seat entertainment system. Lufthansa and Air France had more than decent seatback entertainment options in my experience, but FinnAir took it to the next level -- they had over 50 movies, at least 15 television shows and games and other media options galore, and all of them were set up to start whenever you wanted. My other European carriers have had a selection of movies, but the played on a loop, so once you finished the first, you'd switch over to the second movie of your choice and it'd be like a third of the way through, with no way to back it up.
Sealing my support of FinnAir (note to FinnAir: get a domestic partner to the Midwest and I will fly you all the time. Probably. Four legs is just a tad long, you know) was the fact that they had electrical outlets in every seat leg so you could charge your laptop in-flight. Delta's in flight magazine had promised such a thing, but closer inspection revealed no outlets, and the flight attendant said either they were just in one row in Economy or only in their planes to like Singapore. All very well if you're flying to Singapore, but I am not.
Unfortunately my seat was in the very last row of the plane, by the engines, so I hardly slept but aside from that everything was just brilliant. Kudos to FinnAir, even if their home airport could use a little razzledazzle. Get a decent homemade sandwich shop and some of those nice leather armchairs with outlets in the armrests in here and Helsinki'd be my layover of choice, rather than Midway.
Perhaps an airline comparison guide is in my future; I was totalling up the airlines I've travelled with in the last year and change, and it's a formidable number, from tiny little subsidiaries-of-budget-carriers in Turkey to a scattered handful of European national airlines to a grab bag of American outfits. So far Turkish Airlines is my favorite, not out of any nationalist pride but because they manage to serve a full hot lunch and beverage service on the 45-minute flight from Ankara to Istanbul. They should market that hop as a flying restaurant, really. In comparison, on my two flights between Chicago and Minneapolis last week, also about 45 minutes or so, we got a begrudging beverage service and had the opportunity to buy some peanuts if we wanted. The Chicago-Minneapolis pilot told better jokes, though. I'm not sure how that scoring rubric should look.
On that note, I'm off to wander the halls of the international terminal once more,
kib,
-R
In actual plane experience, though, FinnAir has been pretty darn awesome, especially when compared with my Delta flight over the same ocean last week. Between the actually nice blanket, the gigantic selection of newspapers when boarding, the better wine with dinner (and the quite good dinner, although Turkish Airways does better) and the comfier chairs, I was a pretty happy camper before the lights were even dimmed.
Also a huge plus, and one that I've not failed to complain about on every US-carrier transAtlantic flight I've taken (I suppose I'm a little spoiled), was the in-seat entertainment system. Lufthansa and Air France had more than decent seatback entertainment options in my experience, but FinnAir took it to the next level -- they had over 50 movies, at least 15 television shows and games and other media options galore, and all of them were set up to start whenever you wanted. My other European carriers have had a selection of movies, but the played on a loop, so once you finished the first, you'd switch over to the second movie of your choice and it'd be like a third of the way through, with no way to back it up.
Sealing my support of FinnAir (note to FinnAir: get a domestic partner to the Midwest and I will fly you all the time. Probably. Four legs is just a tad long, you know) was the fact that they had electrical outlets in every seat leg so you could charge your laptop in-flight. Delta's in flight magazine had promised such a thing, but closer inspection revealed no outlets, and the flight attendant said either they were just in one row in Economy or only in their planes to like Singapore. All very well if you're flying to Singapore, but I am not.
Unfortunately my seat was in the very last row of the plane, by the engines, so I hardly slept but aside from that everything was just brilliant. Kudos to FinnAir, even if their home airport could use a little razzledazzle. Get a decent homemade sandwich shop and some of those nice leather armchairs with outlets in the armrests in here and Helsinki'd be my layover of choice, rather than Midway.
Perhaps an airline comparison guide is in my future; I was totalling up the airlines I've travelled with in the last year and change, and it's a formidable number, from tiny little subsidiaries-of-budget-carriers in Turkey to a scattered handful of European national airlines to a grab bag of American outfits. So far Turkish Airlines is my favorite, not out of any nationalist pride but because they manage to serve a full hot lunch and beverage service on the 45-minute flight from Ankara to Istanbul. They should market that hop as a flying restaurant, really. In comparison, on my two flights between Chicago and Minneapolis last week, also about 45 minutes or so, we got a begrudging beverage service and had the opportunity to buy some peanuts if we wanted. The Chicago-Minneapolis pilot told better jokes, though. I'm not sure how that scoring rubric should look.
On that note, I'm off to wander the halls of the international terminal once more,
kib,
-R
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Ramazan days
The month of Ramazan started last Friday here. While I lived through Ramazan in Turkey last year, it was really not any sort of an issue, as I lived in a diplomatic section of Ankara, and socialized with expats and fairly westernized folks. Neighborhood restaurants were full all day long. I never even heard the early-morning drums, which are sounded to wake people up before dawn to eat before sunrise.
This year, oh boy is Ramazan a part of my life. About 5 people at work do not fast; that leaves at least one hundred people in the building not eating, drinking or smoking during daylight hours. As a Catholic, I look at our fasting and feel like a weakling: we get water, there's nothing about smoking for those so inclined, and we even get a light meal as part of our fasting requirements. And our fasting days are generally one at a time, spread out over the year. A solid month of not eating or drinking, even water, from sunup to sundown, while working, is rough.
As part of Ramazan at a religiously-inclined workplace, the company cafeteria has been shut down, as has the bakery on the ground floor. The coffee machines are out of coffee and will not be refilled until late September. The snack machine has 2 bags of pretzel rods left and also will not be refilled til almost October. The one thing that is still around, thank goodness, is the water cooler. Us non-fasting heathens have stockpiled tea and instant coffee mixes to get our workday coffee fixes, although I've tried to avoid drinking my blackberry tea, because the smell wafts across the news floor, and that seems pretty insensitive especially towards the end of the day.
The nice part about Ramazan at work though is that the company gave the nonfasters gift cards to spend on lunch at local restaurants. Unfortunately, so far they only work at McDonald's and Sbarro. On the bright side, Sbarro has caesar salad, which is excellent. On Fridays, when we work late, the cafeteria opens to serve iftar, or the fast-breaking meal, which is a big production. Community iftars are pretty fun, especially as the countdown to sundown begins: there's a tide of noise as everyone gets excited to finally eat, which gives way to absolute silence, save the occasional clink of silverware.
One cultural crossover I learned about today is the Ramazan gift exchange. One of our page editors is organizing this, at work; it's exactly like Secret Santa, except the exchange occurs at the end of Ramazan. It's fitting, because Seker Bayram, the holiday at the end of Ramazan that literally means "sugar holiday," is somewhat Christmas-like.
In my neighborhood here, as well, most people observe the fast. The restaurants are nearly empty, and even the touristy fish restaurants are hurting for customers until about 8p.m., when everyone can eat again. My bread guy has a small stand in front of his shop piled high with Ramazan bread, which is apparently special and made only for Ramazan. It's delicious, so I wish they'd make it year-round, but alas. It's round, and slightly puffier than their normal pide bread.
Another new experience for me has been the Ramazan drums. On Sunday morning I heard them for the first time ever. Good Lord are they loud. I'm fairly certain there was a two-party drum-off below my window Sunday morning; it went on for over ten minutes, which I'm sure many would agree is not at all what you want to hear when it is 4a.m. and you don't need to get up and eat because you can indeed eat all day, heathen that you are. Also, it woke the cat up, who then decided that 5:30a.m. was most definitely time for me to get up.
Aside from the drums (which actually can be somewhat pleasant, part of the charm of living in my part of Istanbul) and the lack of coffee and breakfast at work, I've really enjoyed Ramazan this year, as I've actually been able to see and live with people who are really fasting, and who embrace the spirit of Ramazan. I'm really impressed by everyone I know who is able to work all day without caffeine or even water (I think the water part is particularly impressive); going all day without imbibing anything would be not bad at all if one did absolutely nothing all day, but to get up, travel to work, concentrate on frustrating wording issues all day (current challenge: trying to catch every time writers refer to the government's Kurdish initiative as the "final solution to the Kurdish problem" -- because that's just not good) and then travel home, all without water or anything to nosh on, that's just really darn impressive. And they do it every day for a month.
I've heard that tempers get short towards the end of Ramazan, which is understandable. Luckily, I've just happened to plan my trip back to the States to coincide with the last week of the fasting month. So while everyone here is counting down the days til they can eat normally again, I'll be doubly haraam, with my not-fasting and my seeking-out-of-pork-products planned for my visit to the States. It's going to be good.
-R
This year, oh boy is Ramazan a part of my life. About 5 people at work do not fast; that leaves at least one hundred people in the building not eating, drinking or smoking during daylight hours. As a Catholic, I look at our fasting and feel like a weakling: we get water, there's nothing about smoking for those so inclined, and we even get a light meal as part of our fasting requirements. And our fasting days are generally one at a time, spread out over the year. A solid month of not eating or drinking, even water, from sunup to sundown, while working, is rough.
As part of Ramazan at a religiously-inclined workplace, the company cafeteria has been shut down, as has the bakery on the ground floor. The coffee machines are out of coffee and will not be refilled until late September. The snack machine has 2 bags of pretzel rods left and also will not be refilled til almost October. The one thing that is still around, thank goodness, is the water cooler. Us non-fasting heathens have stockpiled tea and instant coffee mixes to get our workday coffee fixes, although I've tried to avoid drinking my blackberry tea, because the smell wafts across the news floor, and that seems pretty insensitive especially towards the end of the day.
The nice part about Ramazan at work though is that the company gave the nonfasters gift cards to spend on lunch at local restaurants. Unfortunately, so far they only work at McDonald's and Sbarro. On the bright side, Sbarro has caesar salad, which is excellent. On Fridays, when we work late, the cafeteria opens to serve iftar, or the fast-breaking meal, which is a big production. Community iftars are pretty fun, especially as the countdown to sundown begins: there's a tide of noise as everyone gets excited to finally eat, which gives way to absolute silence, save the occasional clink of silverware.
One cultural crossover I learned about today is the Ramazan gift exchange. One of our page editors is organizing this, at work; it's exactly like Secret Santa, except the exchange occurs at the end of Ramazan. It's fitting, because Seker Bayram, the holiday at the end of Ramazan that literally means "sugar holiday," is somewhat Christmas-like.
In my neighborhood here, as well, most people observe the fast. The restaurants are nearly empty, and even the touristy fish restaurants are hurting for customers until about 8p.m., when everyone can eat again. My bread guy has a small stand in front of his shop piled high with Ramazan bread, which is apparently special and made only for Ramazan. It's delicious, so I wish they'd make it year-round, but alas. It's round, and slightly puffier than their normal pide bread.
Another new experience for me has been the Ramazan drums. On Sunday morning I heard them for the first time ever. Good Lord are they loud. I'm fairly certain there was a two-party drum-off below my window Sunday morning; it went on for over ten minutes, which I'm sure many would agree is not at all what you want to hear when it is 4a.m. and you don't need to get up and eat because you can indeed eat all day, heathen that you are. Also, it woke the cat up, who then decided that 5:30a.m. was most definitely time for me to get up.
Aside from the drums (which actually can be somewhat pleasant, part of the charm of living in my part of Istanbul) and the lack of coffee and breakfast at work, I've really enjoyed Ramazan this year, as I've actually been able to see and live with people who are really fasting, and who embrace the spirit of Ramazan. I'm really impressed by everyone I know who is able to work all day without caffeine or even water (I think the water part is particularly impressive); going all day without imbibing anything would be not bad at all if one did absolutely nothing all day, but to get up, travel to work, concentrate on frustrating wording issues all day (current challenge: trying to catch every time writers refer to the government's Kurdish initiative as the "final solution to the Kurdish problem" -- because that's just not good) and then travel home, all without water or anything to nosh on, that's just really darn impressive. And they do it every day for a month.
I've heard that tempers get short towards the end of Ramazan, which is understandable. Luckily, I've just happened to plan my trip back to the States to coincide with the last week of the fasting month. So while everyone here is counting down the days til they can eat normally again, I'll be doubly haraam, with my not-fasting and my seeking-out-of-pork-products planned for my visit to the States. It's going to be good.
-R
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Summer in the city
Note: I most definitely wrote and tried to post this about a week ago, but apparently it didn't post, so I'm posting it now for your reading pleasure
Summer's just been flying by, punctuated by an annoying and ongoing lack of home internet (hence the intermittent blog posts). Many expats seem to leave or come to a country in the summer, so the past several weeks have been overfull of meeting new people and saying goodbye to older friends. I did take the time to join the Professional American Women of Istanbul, and although I've not been to a meeting yet I've heard they organize some pretty good things.
I also met a set of new neighbors, also Americans, and am currently catsitting for them. I think we're probably the only 3 Western yabancis in the area. They're quite nice, one does legal consulting and the other aid consulting and they've lived all across Central Asia, so of course I've been picking their brains about life in the wider Turkic world.
Earlier this week, I headed to an expat meetup, where everyone was concerned when they found out I didn't have a Turkish boyfriend. Everyone was quite fun though, and, like most expats in this city, had fascinating back stories.
This weekend I had Sunday off, and a friend and I had a pretty full weekend planned, til she emailed Friday night: her cat had fallen out the window of her 4-story flat. After a brief panic, we found out that everything was fine and the whole neighborhood seems to have seen the whole thing: the cat fell, spread her 4 legs, puffed out her belly "like a parachute," landed, and scampered over to the astounded bakkal. We scaled back our plans to spend a bit more time with the "ucan kedi," as the neighborhood now calls Baykus ("The flying cat"), but still ended up having margaritas and Mexican food at one of the maybe 2 Mexican restaurants in the city, taking the midnight ferry up to the edge of the Black Sea (it's round trip, and there are fish restaurants at the top, but when we got there the captain said they'd be leaving again in 30 minutes! So we wolfed down our calamari and took a quick sprint through town).
This morning, we got up pretty darn early and took the bus up to Emirgan, which is pretty was up the Bosporus but still part of Istanbul. There's a fantastic regional park there, and we did some running and training (or, Cat did a lot of running, and I did some running and some walking). I'm trying to get ready for the Istanbul Marathon's 15k run, in mid-October, which will be a bit of an adventure as I don't know that I've ever run more than 4 miles at once before.
After some catching up and grad school research (now on my watch list: Oxford?), I'm on my way back home to the cats and the houseguest, with scrathing post in hand (it's been an issue). I think I'm getting kicked out of this manti place, so I'll inshallah update sooner rather than later
-R
Summer's just been flying by, punctuated by an annoying and ongoing lack of home internet (hence the intermittent blog posts). Many expats seem to leave or come to a country in the summer, so the past several weeks have been overfull of meeting new people and saying goodbye to older friends. I did take the time to join the Professional American Women of Istanbul, and although I've not been to a meeting yet I've heard they organize some pretty good things.
I also met a set of new neighbors, also Americans, and am currently catsitting for them. I think we're probably the only 3 Western yabancis in the area. They're quite nice, one does legal consulting and the other aid consulting and they've lived all across Central Asia, so of course I've been picking their brains about life in the wider Turkic world.
Earlier this week, I headed to an expat meetup, where everyone was concerned when they found out I didn't have a Turkish boyfriend. Everyone was quite fun though, and, like most expats in this city, had fascinating back stories.
This weekend I had Sunday off, and a friend and I had a pretty full weekend planned, til she emailed Friday night: her cat had fallen out the window of her 4-story flat. After a brief panic, we found out that everything was fine and the whole neighborhood seems to have seen the whole thing: the cat fell, spread her 4 legs, puffed out her belly "like a parachute," landed, and scampered over to the astounded bakkal. We scaled back our plans to spend a bit more time with the "ucan kedi," as the neighborhood now calls Baykus ("The flying cat"), but still ended up having margaritas and Mexican food at one of the maybe 2 Mexican restaurants in the city, taking the midnight ferry up to the edge of the Black Sea (it's round trip, and there are fish restaurants at the top, but when we got there the captain said they'd be leaving again in 30 minutes! So we wolfed down our calamari and took a quick sprint through town).
This morning, we got up pretty darn early and took the bus up to Emirgan, which is pretty was up the Bosporus but still part of Istanbul. There's a fantastic regional park there, and we did some running and training (or, Cat did a lot of running, and I did some running and some walking). I'm trying to get ready for the Istanbul Marathon's 15k run, in mid-October, which will be a bit of an adventure as I don't know that I've ever run more than 4 miles at once before.
After some catching up and grad school research (now on my watch list: Oxford?), I'm on my way back home to the cats and the houseguest, with scrathing post in hand (it's been an issue). I think I'm getting kicked out of this manti place, so I'll inshallah update sooner rather than later
-R
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Thoughts on the neighborhood
After living in a fairly expat-rich neighborhood in Ankara, I was in for a bit of a shock when I moved to my current neighborhood in Istanbul. As far as I can tell, I am the only Western foreigner living here, and definitely the only single female twenty-something Western foreigner.
This is both a blessing and a curse. My first week here, I wandered into a pide shop to buy bread, and chatted with the owner a bit. The next day, as I walked down a different street, I heard a man turn to his friend to fill him in on me: “She’s American, she used to live in Ankara but now she lives here. She writes and she studied at ODTU.” My conversation with the pideci had spread around the neighborhood in under 24 hours, and almost everyone knew my basic background.
Not everyone remembers that I do live here though; there is a street nearby lined with restaurants catering primarily to tourists, and I walk down it almost every day. Even a month after moving, waiters and restaurant owners chorus behind me as I navigate between groups of German and Japanese tourists: “Excuse me lady! I have a question, do you want to eat? Our fish is the best!” I find the “I have a question” one a bit annoying, as I usually stop to hear what it is, hoping it’s not a request that I eat at their establishment, only to hear “Why aren’t you stopping here for dinner?” or “Do you want a drink? Fish?”
There is one fish restaurant whose staff has figured out that I’m a local. We exchange greetings as I take the corner in front of their tables, me in Turkish and them in English.
I’m not, however the only foreigner in the neighborhood -- not by a long shot. My neighborhood is home to a “migrant guesthouse -- Turkish doublespeak for an illegal immigrant detention center. The people who live there are allowed to stay there, and not much else: they cannot work, they would face problems leaving Istanbul, and I believe their movements within Istanbul, outside of the guesthouse, are restricted as well.
Most of these “guests” are of African origin: the call shops around my neighborhood prominently advertize their rates to Somalia, Congo, Libya and Ethiopia. It’s actually quite odd, I’ve seen more pagnes here than I have since leaving Niger; I keep meaning to ask if there’s a Turkish source for them.
I do wish that the government would allow the migrants to work legally, as I’d love to see some migrant-operated businesses in the area (especially restaurants -- Turkey has a dearth of ethnic food and I would absolutely love to find a place selling shinkafa da wake or fari masa, or serving up fresh cold glasses of byssop). I occasionally see a migrant or two working, clearly under the table, in one of the small tailoring factories that dot the neighborhood.
I do think I enjoy my current neighborhood more than I'd enjoy living in one of the "expat-heavy" areas -- Cihangir, for instance, although I do find myself walking around that neighborhood quite often. There's just something to be said for walking down the village-like streets of my neighborhood, where if everyone doesn't know my name, they do know who I am.
This is both a blessing and a curse. My first week here, I wandered into a pide shop to buy bread, and chatted with the owner a bit. The next day, as I walked down a different street, I heard a man turn to his friend to fill him in on me: “She’s American, she used to live in Ankara but now she lives here. She writes and she studied at ODTU.” My conversation with the pideci had spread around the neighborhood in under 24 hours, and almost everyone knew my basic background.
Not everyone remembers that I do live here though; there is a street nearby lined with restaurants catering primarily to tourists, and I walk down it almost every day. Even a month after moving, waiters and restaurant owners chorus behind me as I navigate between groups of German and Japanese tourists: “Excuse me lady! I have a question, do you want to eat? Our fish is the best!” I find the “I have a question” one a bit annoying, as I usually stop to hear what it is, hoping it’s not a request that I eat at their establishment, only to hear “Why aren’t you stopping here for dinner?” or “Do you want a drink? Fish?”
There is one fish restaurant whose staff has figured out that I’m a local. We exchange greetings as I take the corner in front of their tables, me in Turkish and them in English.
I’m not, however the only foreigner in the neighborhood -- not by a long shot. My neighborhood is home to a “migrant guesthouse -- Turkish doublespeak for an illegal immigrant detention center. The people who live there are allowed to stay there, and not much else: they cannot work, they would face problems leaving Istanbul, and I believe their movements within Istanbul, outside of the guesthouse, are restricted as well.
Most of these “guests” are of African origin: the call shops around my neighborhood prominently advertize their rates to Somalia, Congo, Libya and Ethiopia. It’s actually quite odd, I’ve seen more pagnes here than I have since leaving Niger; I keep meaning to ask if there’s a Turkish source for them.
I do wish that the government would allow the migrants to work legally, as I’d love to see some migrant-operated businesses in the area (especially restaurants -- Turkey has a dearth of ethnic food and I would absolutely love to find a place selling shinkafa da wake or fari masa, or serving up fresh cold glasses of byssop). I occasionally see a migrant or two working, clearly under the table, in one of the small tailoring factories that dot the neighborhood.
I do think I enjoy my current neighborhood more than I'd enjoy living in one of the "expat-heavy" areas -- Cihangir, for instance, although I do find myself walking around that neighborhood quite often. There's just something to be said for walking down the village-like streets of my neighborhood, where if everyone doesn't know my name, they do know who I am.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
And now for something a little different
Hey folks (I hope this works, I'm updating via email as this wifi doesn't seem to want to let me access Blogger),
I'm settling in nicely here in Istanbul, and inshallah will write some mildly amusing posts on that as soon as I get internet in my flat (should be any day now...). Til then, here's a piece I'm working on in response to an article I edited for my new job; the original article can be found here: http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=178707&bolum=100
This isn't my usual blog fare, but I figured I couldn't very well post just the article with no commentary, so here goes:
I was somewhat bemused to read the recent headline "Judge sentences man to give flowers to his wife for 5 months," a bemusement which quickly faded when I read on to the article: a man in Diyarbakir beat his wife, and was sentenced to buy her a bouquet of flowers a week for five months after he told the judge he didn't know her birthday or their anniversary and had never bought her flowers. He justified the abuse by complaining that his wife wasn't helping out around the house enough, noting that his recently-married second wife was much more easy-going.
I almost don't know where to start here; I guess first would be the point that domestic abuse is never justified, and the excuse that his first wife "didn't help around the house enough" is nothing short of pathetic. But the background here is truly sad, for all involved but especially for the women. While I can't know for certain this exact situation, I imagine it was something like this: the man and wife's marriage was arranged by relatives, in a match that was set up because of the desirability of the families involved, or the bride price, or because they were of marriageable age. They may have known each other, but almost certainly would not have married each other if left to their own devices. After awhile, enough time for them to have a child, the man found a girl he was attracted to and actually wanted to marry. He lucked out, as her family was amenable to allowing her to be a second, not-legally-recognized wife (they probably were able to negotiate a higher bride price because of this). Most likely he didn't see a need to inform his first wife of his plans to take a second wife until perhaps as late as his wedding morning. As part of his second wife's bride price, he probably bought a new house for her to live in, which led the first wife to press for a new house for her and her child as well (this was mentioned in the article, as part of the man's justification for beating his wife). The man had probably spent any savings he had and took loans to finance his second wife's bride price, making him irritable on the subject of money, an irritation only exacerbated by the fact that he now had the wife he wanted, making the first wife almost superfluous. When the abuse started, the wife probably didn't think of going to authorities; recent studies have shown as many as 40% of Turkish wives have been hit by their husbands (I highly recommend reading through posts on the Kamil Pasha blog, on the sidebar, for background on the status of women in Turkey). The fact that she did go to police, and that there was enough evidence to find the man guilty, points to the likelihood of severe abuse.
The judge's sentence here, while it initially appears whimsical, serves to trivialize the issue of spousal abuse by advancing the notion that "everything will be solved if this man proves he cares about his wife by buying her flowers." The fact that the wife brought this case to court means that she does not feel safe in her living arrangement, and the husband's clear annoyance with his wife and her perceived 'unhelpfulness' is, if anything, a warning sign: there have been all too many recent cases of uxoricide in the Southeast, in many cases after the woman has sought help or the court has interfered. In all likelihood, this is one marriage that would be best served by a divorce: giving this woman freedom from her abusive life with this man, and paving the way for this man's second wife to legally marry him, which would afford her certain legal protections she currently lacks as the religiously-recognized second wife.
It should also be noted that the judge ordered this particular sentence in lieu of jail time or other probationary options; other judges recently have assigned men convicted of similar crimes to plant and care for trees, or in one case to print 1000 fliers apologizing to the man's wife and his neighborhood for beating his wife and distribute them throughout town. While this still doesn't do anything tangible to address the very real abuse, it at least doesn't trivialize the woman's experience like this flower sentence, and I suppose the fliers may serve to make the neighbors more ready to watch out for the woman and recognize signs of abuse.
Domestic abuse is a huge and largely not-talked-about issue in Turkey. Change is needed, at the judicial level and at the political level but most importantly at the social level. We need to figure out how to get from 40% of Turkish housewives reporting instances of abuse to 100% of Turkish spouses knowing that spousal abuse is never justified. Unfortunately, changing laws and changing judicial practices, while difficult, can be and have been done, whereas changing society's views is a formidable task indeed. Still, we owe it to ourselves and our communities to do our small part, so that women don't think they have no choice but to stay with an abusive spouse and so that men don't even consider beating their wives an option.
kib
-R
I'm settling in nicely here in Istanbul, and inshallah will write some mildly amusing posts on that as soon as I get internet in my flat (should be any day now...). Til then, here's a piece I'm working on in response to an article I edited for my new job; the original article can be found here: http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=178707&bolum=100
This isn't my usual blog fare, but I figured I couldn't very well post just the article with no commentary, so here goes:
I was somewhat bemused to read the recent headline "Judge sentences man to give flowers to his wife for 5 months," a bemusement which quickly faded when I read on to the article: a man in Diyarbakir beat his wife, and was sentenced to buy her a bouquet of flowers a week for five months after he told the judge he didn't know her birthday or their anniversary and had never bought her flowers. He justified the abuse by complaining that his wife wasn't helping out around the house enough, noting that his recently-married second wife was much more easy-going.
I almost don't know where to start here; I guess first would be the point that domestic abuse is never justified, and the excuse that his first wife "didn't help around the house enough" is nothing short of pathetic. But the background here is truly sad, for all involved but especially for the women. While I can't know for certain this exact situation, I imagine it was something like this: the man and wife's marriage was arranged by relatives, in a match that was set up because of the desirability of the families involved, or the bride price, or because they were of marriageable age. They may have known each other, but almost certainly would not have married each other if left to their own devices. After awhile, enough time for them to have a child, the man found a girl he was attracted to and actually wanted to marry. He lucked out, as her family was amenable to allowing her to be a second, not-legally-recognized wife (they probably were able to negotiate a higher bride price because of this). Most likely he didn't see a need to inform his first wife of his plans to take a second wife until perhaps as late as his wedding morning. As part of his second wife's bride price, he probably bought a new house for her to live in, which led the first wife to press for a new house for her and her child as well (this was mentioned in the article, as part of the man's justification for beating his wife). The man had probably spent any savings he had and took loans to finance his second wife's bride price, making him irritable on the subject of money, an irritation only exacerbated by the fact that he now had the wife he wanted, making the first wife almost superfluous. When the abuse started, the wife probably didn't think of going to authorities; recent studies have shown as many as 40% of Turkish wives have been hit by their husbands (I highly recommend reading through posts on the Kamil Pasha blog, on the sidebar, for background on the status of women in Turkey). The fact that she did go to police, and that there was enough evidence to find the man guilty, points to the likelihood of severe abuse.
The judge's sentence here, while it initially appears whimsical, serves to trivialize the issue of spousal abuse by advancing the notion that "everything will be solved if this man proves he cares about his wife by buying her flowers." The fact that the wife brought this case to court means that she does not feel safe in her living arrangement, and the husband's clear annoyance with his wife and her perceived 'unhelpfulness' is, if anything, a warning sign: there have been all too many recent cases of uxoricide in the Southeast, in many cases after the woman has sought help or the court has interfered. In all likelihood, this is one marriage that would be best served by a divorce: giving this woman freedom from her abusive life with this man, and paving the way for this man's second wife to legally marry him, which would afford her certain legal protections she currently lacks as the religiously-recognized second wife.
It should also be noted that the judge ordered this particular sentence in lieu of jail time or other probationary options; other judges recently have assigned men convicted of similar crimes to plant and care for trees, or in one case to print 1000 fliers apologizing to the man's wife and his neighborhood for beating his wife and distribute them throughout town. While this still doesn't do anything tangible to address the very real abuse, it at least doesn't trivialize the woman's experience like this flower sentence, and I suppose the fliers may serve to make the neighbors more ready to watch out for the woman and recognize signs of abuse.
Domestic abuse is a huge and largely not-talked-about issue in Turkey. Change is needed, at the judicial level and at the political level but most importantly at the social level. We need to figure out how to get from 40% of Turkish housewives reporting instances of abuse to 100% of Turkish spouses knowing that spousal abuse is never justified. Unfortunately, changing laws and changing judicial practices, while difficult, can be and have been done, whereas changing society's views is a formidable task indeed. Still, we owe it to ourselves and our communities to do our small part, so that women don't think they have no choice but to stay with an abusive spouse and so that men don't even consider beating their wives an option.
kib
-R
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Just a quick update
I'm back in Ankara with my mom, after meeting her in Istanbul and spending a few days there. Mom's been a real trooper, heading from mosque to bazaar to my new house and all over the Golden Horn, as well as out to Arnavutkoy and back in rush hour traffic.
I'll inshallah get more details and stories from our trip so far up soon, but I just wanted to leave you guys with a few pics from our days so far:
This is Mom with the US Ambassador to Turkey, James Jeffery. Aren't they adorable?
We were at his residence earlier tonight for a talk and dinner by the Ankara Friends of the American Research Institute in Turkey. The talk was really good, and we both learned a lot: it focused on the architectural and other achievements of women in Ottoman Turkey, primarily the Valide Sultanas (mothers of the sultans). We had a great time, Mom got to meet the Ambassador and his wife, who are both really nice people and who both just love Turkey. We had dinner with a few Turkish-American couples and a Brit, from a variety of fields, and had all in all a fully enjoyable evening!
My trip to Istanbul to pick up Mom had another purpose as well: find housing for my pending move to the city. Luckily, a friend of mine hooked me up with her professor, and I am now renting his house for the year. It's a serendipitous find. It's in the Kumkapi section of town, which is in the Golden Horn, about a block off the water. There are many fish restaurants in the neighborhood, so I guess I'll finally find out what all Turkish fish varieties taste like. The pic above is me in the doorway of my new house.
So Mom and I are walking down the street in Sultanahmet (Istanbul, the tourist area), and we pass a little boy strutting around in one of these outfits, out with his family. I lean in and to murmur that he's on his way to get circumcised. Mom was pretty shocked, mainly at the relatively late age of Muslim circumcision ceremonies (I believe around 8 is the normal age here). And thus followed a fun, occasionally awkward, and interesting discussion of Muslim circumcision tradition. We saw these for sale the next day and naturally took a photo; what you can't see is below the cape in front, where the shop is displaying some sort of cup/protector, which kind of goes against the whole point there.
So there's a brief and incomplete snapshot of my 3.5 days showing Mom how awesome this country is. It's been great! Much more to come.
kendine iyi bak,
-R
I'll inshallah get more details and stories from our trip so far up soon, but I just wanted to leave you guys with a few pics from our days so far:
This is Mom with the US Ambassador to Turkey, James Jeffery. Aren't they adorable?
We were at his residence earlier tonight for a talk and dinner by the Ankara Friends of the American Research Institute in Turkey. The talk was really good, and we both learned a lot: it focused on the architectural and other achievements of women in Ottoman Turkey, primarily the Valide Sultanas (mothers of the sultans). We had a great time, Mom got to meet the Ambassador and his wife, who are both really nice people and who both just love Turkey. We had dinner with a few Turkish-American couples and a Brit, from a variety of fields, and had all in all a fully enjoyable evening!
My trip to Istanbul to pick up Mom had another purpose as well: find housing for my pending move to the city. Luckily, a friend of mine hooked me up with her professor, and I am now renting his house for the year. It's a serendipitous find. It's in the Kumkapi section of town, which is in the Golden Horn, about a block off the water. There are many fish restaurants in the neighborhood, so I guess I'll finally find out what all Turkish fish varieties taste like. The pic above is me in the doorway of my new house.
So Mom and I are walking down the street in Sultanahmet (Istanbul, the tourist area), and we pass a little boy strutting around in one of these outfits, out with his family. I lean in and to murmur that he's on his way to get circumcised. Mom was pretty shocked, mainly at the relatively late age of Muslim circumcision ceremonies (I believe around 8 is the normal age here). And thus followed a fun, occasionally awkward, and interesting discussion of Muslim circumcision tradition. We saw these for sale the next day and naturally took a photo; what you can't see is below the cape in front, where the shop is displaying some sort of cup/protector, which kind of goes against the whole point there.
So there's a brief and incomplete snapshot of my 3.5 days showing Mom how awesome this country is. It's been great! Much more to come.
kendine iyi bak,
-R
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Big news for my 100th post
I said I'd try to find something good for my centenary post, and it appears I have. Several of my readers have been asking what exactly I'm doing once my Fulbright grant is finished (especially those of you related to me, hi folks!), and my response has generally been a measured account of options I've been exploring.
Well no more: as of yesterday, I have gainful post-Fulbright employment, and in a development that will be good news for this ostensibly-a-travelblog blog, I'll be staying in Turkey!
I will be moving though, and fast. Next week I head to Istanbul to meet up with my mom, who's coming to Turkey for the first time to see Istanbul, Ankara, and me. After a full week of travel, sightseeing, and packing I'll see Mom off to the airport, turn around, and start studying for the foreign service exam, which I take the next day.
The day after I take the foreign service exam, I'll be shipping out to Istanbul, hopefully with all my stuff, although I'm not actually sure how this operation is going to happen. That weekend will be a maelstrom of unpacking, setting up house, and getting ready to start work that Sunday or Monday. Before I unpack though, I need to find an apartment, which at the moment I do not have.
So I'm two weeks out from starting. The job itself sounds really fun and challenging: I'll be copy-editing for an English-language newspaper here, turning questionable prose into beautifully clear articles. Since I'm a stickler for grammar, spelling, and good writing, and have spent the last year learning the ins and outs of the Turkish political system pretty intricately, I think it'll be a good fit.
In the meantime though, I'm commencing a blizzard of activity: packing up everything, getting rid of as much as possible, finding a new flat, getting my current flat ready for the realtor, settling my finances, physically moving all my belongings to Istanbul (this would be so much easier if I had a car), and somehow, between all that and showing my mom how awesome this country is, tracking down all my Ankaralilar to say goodbye. Luckily as I'm still going to be in the country, and in the largest city at that, it should be easier to still meet up with Ankaralilar.
Also easier, oh ye who have not yet visited but who should come see Turkey/me, will be visiting: my new job is 2 Metro stops from Ataturk International Airport, and flights into Istanbul are ludicrous amounts cheaper than flights to Ankara (and you get to skip the 6 hour Istanbul-Ankara busride, too--bonus). So once I have a legit place to live, visits are highly encouraged.
I'm pretty excited about all this, even though it will be a loooong few days getting all the details of my move organized. I'm taking a break from playing The Weakest Link with my wardrobe tonight to go see the last football match of the season, Genclerbirligi versus Kayserispor. It should be a good game, and I'll be in a pretty celebratory mood.
Side note, I'm soliciting ideas for a new blog title; I can't exactly write on Ankarali life when I'm living in Istanbul maalesef. Ideas?
kib,
-R
Well no more: as of yesterday, I have gainful post-Fulbright employment, and in a development that will be good news for this ostensibly-a-travelblog blog, I'll be staying in Turkey!
I will be moving though, and fast. Next week I head to Istanbul to meet up with my mom, who's coming to Turkey for the first time to see Istanbul, Ankara, and me. After a full week of travel, sightseeing, and packing I'll see Mom off to the airport, turn around, and start studying for the foreign service exam, which I take the next day.
The day after I take the foreign service exam, I'll be shipping out to Istanbul, hopefully with all my stuff, although I'm not actually sure how this operation is going to happen. That weekend will be a maelstrom of unpacking, setting up house, and getting ready to start work that Sunday or Monday. Before I unpack though, I need to find an apartment, which at the moment I do not have.
So I'm two weeks out from starting. The job itself sounds really fun and challenging: I'll be copy-editing for an English-language newspaper here, turning questionable prose into beautifully clear articles. Since I'm a stickler for grammar, spelling, and good writing, and have spent the last year learning the ins and outs of the Turkish political system pretty intricately, I think it'll be a good fit.
In the meantime though, I'm commencing a blizzard of activity: packing up everything, getting rid of as much as possible, finding a new flat, getting my current flat ready for the realtor, settling my finances, physically moving all my belongings to Istanbul (this would be so much easier if I had a car), and somehow, between all that and showing my mom how awesome this country is, tracking down all my Ankaralilar to say goodbye. Luckily as I'm still going to be in the country, and in the largest city at that, it should be easier to still meet up with Ankaralilar.
Also easier, oh ye who have not yet visited but who should come see Turkey/me, will be visiting: my new job is 2 Metro stops from Ataturk International Airport, and flights into Istanbul are ludicrous amounts cheaper than flights to Ankara (and you get to skip the 6 hour Istanbul-Ankara busride, too--bonus). So once I have a legit place to live, visits are highly encouraged.
I'm pretty excited about all this, even though it will be a loooong few days getting all the details of my move organized. I'm taking a break from playing The Weakest Link with my wardrobe tonight to go see the last football match of the season, Genclerbirligi versus Kayserispor. It should be a good game, and I'll be in a pretty celebratory mood.
Side note, I'm soliciting ideas for a new blog title; I can't exactly write on Ankarali life when I'm living in Istanbul maalesef. Ideas?
kib,
-R
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Tekirova Pics, and This Week in Ankara
These giant fish greeted us at our last group dinner, Saturday night. Fittingly, it was a seafood banquet.
6 of us braved "The Banana". I'm third from the front.
We missed the oil wrestling championships by just a week. Maalesef! I've still never seen oil wrestling or camel wrestling, so clearly my time in Turkey is not finished quite yet.
George powers up at the Antalya otogar on the long journey home. We were all a little worn out on Sunday.
This week though has been full as always; I had lunch on Youth and Sport Day (Tuesday) with a few assorted Fulbrighters and a Harvard PhD student newly arrived at ARIT. We went back to Spice, for their lunch special, which was well worth it. Afterward we took a group trip to Migros, and then split up. I walked back to my flat, and then on through town, as it was 80 degrees and beautiful. Of course Wednesday dawned chilly and rainy, but that worked well for me as I cloistered myself in my flat to work out what exactly I'm doing this summer. I think I've figured it out, but we'll see how all the pieces move.
Today I met up with the sister of a good friend of mine from Minnesota, who's been living in Ankara as an exchange student. It was nice to finally meet her, and to exchange thoughts on Ankara, Minnesota, and even Boston. It's odd how 2 people can have such a different experience in Turkey (in Ankara, at that), but I suppose it makes sense, as she's been living with a host family and going to high school here, whereas I've been living in my flat and researching. Still, our social circles apparently overlap: I go to football matches with her English teacher. Ankara's a small world.
Well, more will have to wait for later. Side note, this is my 99th blog post. I'll try and think of something suitably exciting for the 100th.
kib,
-R
Also: For those with access to Turkish television (or incredibly good American satellite packages), my cooking show will be aired June 15, at 12:10 and 13:40 EET on TRT Int. I don't actually have TRT International, so I'll be trying to figure out something to see my cooking show glory. Inshallah.
Monday, May 18, 2009
If a group of unicorns is a glory, a group of Fulbrighters is definitely a pride
So I spent the weekend before last in an assortment of Fulbrighter-accompanied activities. That Saturday, I met up with Janna for Indian food (and it was delicious...) before heading to Kizilay to watch the Gucu match with our expat contingent. Unfortunately, pretty much every good team in the league was playing at the exact same time, and Gucu is not exactly a good team, so we ended up wandering and doing a little text-message sleuthing before meeting up with everyone at the Platin. The game was good, what little we saw of it: the bar switched between games every 10 minutes, so we saw a decent amount of the Ankaraspor match as well. Unfortunately, we didn't win, so my personal win percentage is down to 50%. Should've gone to the Gencler match, as they won and my win percentage would've gone up to 67%. Ah well...
After hanging around chatting after the end of the game, grabbing a doner with a few Bilkent boys, and walking over to Kucukesat Janna and I headed over to Daniel's (a Fulbright teacher) place, where we met up with him and Zoe, a Fulbrighter in town from Trabzon on the Black Sea coast, before all heading out to a club. It was a bit Turkish in its music selection, which is actually odd as most clubs here play more American music than I've ever heard. Everyone else in the club was singing along to the electronica'd-up Turkish tunes as we danced along; it was good times.
That Sunday I woke up respectably late and headed out to meet up with Janna, Daniel, and Zoe on Tunali for some shopping, and ended up with another sundress as it's been warming up here in Ankara. Since it was about 75 out, the soft-serve windows on Tunali were open so I grabbed my first ice cream cone of the season with Janna before we split up to head home. That evening I headed over to Corey and Nick's place for dinner and some catching up. We had just finished dinner and were cleaning up when their carpet dealer called: he was in town. So we ended up at a hotel out by Panora (a pretty ritzy shopping mall), going through hundreds of absolutely gorgeous carpets. After tea, many carpet viewings, and about 3 hours of deliberations and decisions, I ended up with 2 carpets! They are the first carpets I've purchased in Turkey (...or, actually ever, although I bought a mat in Tefarkes), and they're quite nice: the first one is a sofra, which means 'family table', and is traditionally brought out for meals; the dishes are served on it. It's half-hali half-kilim, so half thick wool carpet (like the texture of American wall-to-wall, gibi) and half thinner dense wool weaving. It's mainly red and blue, and pretty dark. The second is pretty large (especially for my price range), and has finely-figured shapes on a v-shaped diagonal in several colors. It is beautiful. They're both Iranian, from Iranian Azerbaijan. Carpets purchased, I skedaddled home just in time to Skype my mom for Mothers Day.
The next day Jeremy, another Fulbrighter, showed up in town and moved into one of my guest rooms for a few days. I was a bit busy preparing for my last speech through the Embassy Speakers program, which was at Baskent. Baskent is technically in Ankara, but on the verrrrry edge of town, even further out than Bilkent. Tuesday morning I headed out to their bus stop and hopped on the Baskent downtown shuttle, after convincing the driver that I really did need to get to campus. Once on campus I headed to the American Studies department and chatted with several delightful grad students and professors before guest lecturing to a class of first- and second-year students on the differences between Turkish and American culture. It was a decent talk, although as these students were a bit younger than the ones I'd spoken to in other cities they didn't have many questions to ask. I brought up Turkish Superman, which brought down the house, and my/Americans' habit of walking down the street with a cup of coffee while listening to my iPod, which they agreed was crazy-talk and never seen in Ankara. After the talk, I chatted with the grad students again before I headed back to Tunali and ambled home, stopping en route for a haircut. It was pretty interesting: they had 4 guys working on my hair at once. One of the guys' sole role was to hold various sections of my hair out of the way. That's service.
Wednesday I took Jeremy and Janna up to the Red Lion for Trivia Night with my well-established team. We had delicious BLTs and ended up in second place; the high point of the night (from my perspective...) was when the question "What US state received its statehood in May 1858?" popped up--gotta love the Minnesota questions. We headed back to my place and crashed til way-too-early Thursday, when we headed off to ASTI to catch the bus to Antalya for the end-of-the-year Fulbright conference. The Ankarali contingent headed down en masse: on the way down we had about 15 people. We reached our pirate-themed resort in Tekirova somewhere around 7 in the evening, and settled in to our tropical paradise. Friday was spent predominantly in our conference room, discussing the program, but we had the afternoon free, and all of Saturday. It was fantastic: I spent hours on the beach, swimming in the Mediterranean, racing half the ETAs down the inner tube waterslide, and teaching the bartender how to make daiquiris. Saturday night, after our group dinner and Coast-versus-Anatolia Turkish trivia game (Anatolia won, because we're cool like that), about half of us headed down to the conference room to watch the Eurovision finals; it was a true bonding experience. Most of the viewers had never seen Eurovision before and were amazed at the glitz/glamour/tackiness that is the Eurovision Song Contest. There was widespread disbelief when Norway won, and when Azerbaijan took third place over Turkey (adopted patriotism can be pretty contagious).
Sunday morning, a smaller group of Ankaralilar took off to get back to town, leaving Tekirova at 10am. After ridiculous amounts of half-hour stops, we finally stumbled back into town at about 10pm, sunburned and exhausted. It was a great trip, and interesting to see Turkey as most tourists see it (...I don't spend much time at Mediterranean resorts at this stage of my life).
This week is full of miscellaneous activities, events, and errands. Yesterday was a holiday, and this weekend there are a few big football matches. But those'll have to wait til my next post.
kib,
-R
After hanging around chatting after the end of the game, grabbing a doner with a few Bilkent boys, and walking over to Kucukesat Janna and I headed over to Daniel's (a Fulbright teacher) place, where we met up with him and Zoe, a Fulbrighter in town from Trabzon on the Black Sea coast, before all heading out to a club. It was a bit Turkish in its music selection, which is actually odd as most clubs here play more American music than I've ever heard. Everyone else in the club was singing along to the electronica'd-up Turkish tunes as we danced along; it was good times.
That Sunday I woke up respectably late and headed out to meet up with Janna, Daniel, and Zoe on Tunali for some shopping, and ended up with another sundress as it's been warming up here in Ankara. Since it was about 75 out, the soft-serve windows on Tunali were open so I grabbed my first ice cream cone of the season with Janna before we split up to head home. That evening I headed over to Corey and Nick's place for dinner and some catching up. We had just finished dinner and were cleaning up when their carpet dealer called: he was in town. So we ended up at a hotel out by Panora (a pretty ritzy shopping mall), going through hundreds of absolutely gorgeous carpets. After tea, many carpet viewings, and about 3 hours of deliberations and decisions, I ended up with 2 carpets! They are the first carpets I've purchased in Turkey (...or, actually ever, although I bought a mat in Tefarkes), and they're quite nice: the first one is a sofra, which means 'family table', and is traditionally brought out for meals; the dishes are served on it. It's half-hali half-kilim, so half thick wool carpet (like the texture of American wall-to-wall, gibi) and half thinner dense wool weaving. It's mainly red and blue, and pretty dark. The second is pretty large (especially for my price range), and has finely-figured shapes on a v-shaped diagonal in several colors. It is beautiful. They're both Iranian, from Iranian Azerbaijan. Carpets purchased, I skedaddled home just in time to Skype my mom for Mothers Day.
The next day Jeremy, another Fulbrighter, showed up in town and moved into one of my guest rooms for a few days. I was a bit busy preparing for my last speech through the Embassy Speakers program, which was at Baskent. Baskent is technically in Ankara, but on the verrrrry edge of town, even further out than Bilkent. Tuesday morning I headed out to their bus stop and hopped on the Baskent downtown shuttle, after convincing the driver that I really did need to get to campus. Once on campus I headed to the American Studies department and chatted with several delightful grad students and professors before guest lecturing to a class of first- and second-year students on the differences between Turkish and American culture. It was a decent talk, although as these students were a bit younger than the ones I'd spoken to in other cities they didn't have many questions to ask. I brought up Turkish Superman, which brought down the house, and my/Americans' habit of walking down the street with a cup of coffee while listening to my iPod, which they agreed was crazy-talk and never seen in Ankara. After the talk, I chatted with the grad students again before I headed back to Tunali and ambled home, stopping en route for a haircut. It was pretty interesting: they had 4 guys working on my hair at once. One of the guys' sole role was to hold various sections of my hair out of the way. That's service.
Wednesday I took Jeremy and Janna up to the Red Lion for Trivia Night with my well-established team. We had delicious BLTs and ended up in second place; the high point of the night (from my perspective...) was when the question "What US state received its statehood in May 1858?" popped up--gotta love the Minnesota questions. We headed back to my place and crashed til way-too-early Thursday, when we headed off to ASTI to catch the bus to Antalya for the end-of-the-year Fulbright conference. The Ankarali contingent headed down en masse: on the way down we had about 15 people. We reached our pirate-themed resort in Tekirova somewhere around 7 in the evening, and settled in to our tropical paradise. Friday was spent predominantly in our conference room, discussing the program, but we had the afternoon free, and all of Saturday. It was fantastic: I spent hours on the beach, swimming in the Mediterranean, racing half the ETAs down the inner tube waterslide, and teaching the bartender how to make daiquiris. Saturday night, after our group dinner and Coast-versus-Anatolia Turkish trivia game (Anatolia won, because we're cool like that), about half of us headed down to the conference room to watch the Eurovision finals; it was a true bonding experience. Most of the viewers had never seen Eurovision before and were amazed at the glitz/glamour/tackiness that is the Eurovision Song Contest. There was widespread disbelief when Norway won, and when Azerbaijan took third place over Turkey (adopted patriotism can be pretty contagious).
Sunday morning, a smaller group of Ankaralilar took off to get back to town, leaving Tekirova at 10am. After ridiculous amounts of half-hour stops, we finally stumbled back into town at about 10pm, sunburned and exhausted. It was a great trip, and interesting to see Turkey as most tourists see it (...I don't spend much time at Mediterranean resorts at this stage of my life).
This week is full of miscellaneous activities, events, and errands. Yesterday was a holiday, and this weekend there are a few big football matches. But those'll have to wait til my next post.
kib,
-R
Friday, May 08, 2009
A succession of cities
Last post left off in Ankara, after getting back from Rome. That Thursday morning, I headed back to Istanbul to board a plane to Prague, where I met up with friends, sampled Czech culinary delicacies, saw the sight of the Defenestration of Prague, walked through a fantastic hilltop park leading to Prague Castle, and attended what may be one of the most awful shows I've ever seen: Aspects of Alice. It did make up some points for being a theater experience I'll never forget, and providing me with the story of attending the show, but it's in close contention with a 1960s-set Shakespeare theatre-in-the-round production as the most awful show I've seen. It was billed as a "blacklight show", which in retrospect should have tipped us off, and had clowns, a suave dark man, and a grown-up Alice in Wonderland. Oh yes. I think it would have been less galling if the tickets had not been more than tickets for the opera, which was also playing that night. Lesson Learned. We also stopped by the Communism Museum, which was quite well done as smaller Eastern European museums go. They had a good deal of interpretation, although sometimes the word choice was a little biased-seeming. They did translate everything into 6 languages though, so I don't hold it against them. Their gift shop was very tongue-in-cheek, which I think worked well for them.
I flew back to Istanbul that Sunday, and got back to Ankara just before midnight Sunday night, in time to repack my bag and get on a plane to Erzurum. Particularly dedicated readers or those with better memories may remember that I'd been to Erzurum in January for some pretty fantastic skiing (10cm of snow will do that). This time, I was flying out to give a speech at Ataturk University about 'American Life'. Erzurum was quite nice, snowless at the moment. I stayed at the University's guesthouse, which was gorgeous. The American Corner Director there gave me a campus tour and a city tour, which I appreciated as I'd not had a chance to explore the city in January. There are a few beautiful mosques and medreses in the center of town, but most of the city is quite modern, industrial, and a little gritty. I liked Erzurum though, as it had a vibe that was entirely Eastern Turkey about it. My talk was ridiculously well-attended, with about 200 students in the audience, and I discussed the American Dream as well as perceptions of American Life in pop culture versus the reality of life in America. The question-and-answer section was pretty great; my first question was about cohabitation, whether people actually did that in America, and whether I thought it was moral. We then wandered through various topics from higher education in America, to what people in America think of Turkey, to Superman. I got back that Tuesday night, spent a few days catsitting, and took advantage of temporarily living with an oven to bake chocolate-chip cookies with a friend, Janna. As it was the weekend, Janna and I ended up at a football match after the cookies were done, watching Ankaragucu win with a group of expats and fresh cookies. We extended our luck by going to the Genclerbirligi match the next day, where Gencler also won. So I'm rocking a 60% win percentage for Ankara games I've watched. I should get a stipend for watching these.
That Monday, I again headed to the airport and flew to Izmir, to give a speech at Izmir Economics University. This one was to be on my research, so I was a bit more excited to give it. I stayed at a hotel on the sea, fronting onto Izmir's seaside promenade, and spent a lot of time just enjoying the utterly fantastic weather and laid-back environment. On Tuesday, I headed to the university, where I met up with the AC Director, chatted for a bit, got my photo taken for some sort of publicity purpose, and headed to my speech room...only to find it empty. The AC Director had scheduled my speech, on Turkish Foreign Policy, at the exact same time as a symposium on Turkey's entry to the EU, held in Turkish. If I were a Turkish student, I know which one I'd be going to, and it wouldn't be mine. The Director then mentioned that the student body was up in arms over Obama's statements on April 24th* and would probably boycott anything American for the next week or so. Wonderful. So there ended up being a grand total of 3 people at the lecture, which morphed into more of a one-on-one conversation and which took much less time than anticipated. It all worked though, I took the bus back downtown, met up with Deirdre, a Fulbrighter in Izmir, for dinner, and then we checked out Izmir's expat bar, where we passed the 'good yabanci' test by being able to speak Turkish. We ended up chatting with a British NATO guy for a bit, who didn't think too highly of my choice of football teams, before heading back. I had almost a full free day the next day, which I spent strolling the Kordon (promenade), doing some shopping (the gorgeous weather convinced me to stock up on summer clothes; of course it's been 60F in Ankara ever since), and exploring some side streets. Before heading to the airport, I made a small culinary discovery: patlican boregi, or eggplant borek. Borek usually comes in cheese, potato, spinach, and ground meat varieties; this patlican variety was delicious and smoky. I'm going to have to do some kitchen experimenting with borek, clearly.
After arriving back in Ankara from Izmir late Wednesday night, I had a few days to do laundry, have a simply delicious BLT at the Red Lion with friends, and repack before heading out again last Sunday, to Kayseri. Kayseri is a Central Anatolian town, just south of the Cappadochia region, mainly known for industry, pastirma (a really garlicky, sausagelike product), and manti. I was chiefly interested in the last item, as it's my favorite Turkish food. My speech here was at Erciyes University, again on Turkish Foreign Policy. Luckily this time I had an audience, with 60-70 people attending and giving me great questions afterward on American imperialism, America's position on Armenian genocide, whether America is in the pocket of Israel, and why America didn't give Turkey more money after World War II. I love question-and-answer sessions like that! The AC Director there was a bit of a dynamo: she works full time at Erciyes, and is a PhD student at ODTU, so every Thursday at 2am, she takes a 5-hour bus to Ankara, has a full day of classes, and takes a 5-hour bus back at 5 that night to turn around and teach the next day. She had serious pull with the bus companies in Kayseri. After my speech, I met up with Candace, a Fulbrighter from Istanbul who was giving a speech the next day. We went to dinner with the Director at a traditional Kayseri restaurant, where I had manti of course. It was pretty delicious, although as they are traditionalists they don't have the whole wheat, spinach, or fried varieties that I love so much in Istanbul.
The next day I hopped a bus back to Ankara, where I again changed out my luggage and turned around the next day to take a bus to Bursa. Bursa is 6 hours from Ankara, and I lucked out by getting Kamilkoc's Rahat bus, which is a bit like business class in an airplane (or maybe closer to economy-plus; but they have big leather chairs and satellite TV and internet, so I can't complain). It was pretty uneventful, and I got in to Bursa late enough to grab a light dinner, find my hotel, and write my speech (...). Thursday I got up, checked out, and took the Metro to the Bursa Chamber of Commerce, where their American Corner is. The building looks like a giant pyramid, so that was snazzy. I had lunch with the AC Director and her boss, before giving a speech on the American tradition of the State Fair as a microcosm of American Life. Good thing I did that History Day exhibit on the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, and good thing I know my Minnesota State Fair. The talk was to a group of about 20 Turkish students, and the fun part was that they spoke almost no English. This meant that I got a translator, which was cool but also a bit different to get used to, as I had to pause after every sentence to let her translate. The questions this time were again all about Armenia, the US' position on Armenia, what Americans thought about Turkey, Americans' view on the Conquest of Constantinople, and US foreign policy failures through history. It was a bit like a mental ping pong match, and felt like I was back in my debate days. The students also told me I look like Tansu Ciller, who is Turkey's first and so far only female Prime Minister. She's pretty heavily linked to some corrupt dealings, so I'm thinking it's time for a haircut to put an end to that resemblance. After a few more questions about education in America, I headed off to the bus station, caught a bus back to Ankara, and got in late last night. Finally.
I do have one more speech, but it's in Ankara, so I don't have to travel for it. While I do love travel, I'm looking forward to being able to actually attend research lectures in Ankara, and football matches, and being able to buy produce and other perishables. It doesn't last too long though, as the Fulbright conference starts late next week on the coast.
Hope you all are doing well!
kib,
-R
*April 24th is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day in many Western countries; Obama's remarks that day didn't specifically use the term 'genocide', but used a term close enough to earn Turkish ire and damage Turkish pride. The strength of the response to Obama's remarks in Turkey is a little difficult to explain, because honestly it's such a sensitive issue here that it's hard to understand the scope from outside Turkey.
I flew back to Istanbul that Sunday, and got back to Ankara just before midnight Sunday night, in time to repack my bag and get on a plane to Erzurum. Particularly dedicated readers or those with better memories may remember that I'd been to Erzurum in January for some pretty fantastic skiing (10cm of snow will do that). This time, I was flying out to give a speech at Ataturk University about 'American Life'. Erzurum was quite nice, snowless at the moment. I stayed at the University's guesthouse, which was gorgeous. The American Corner Director there gave me a campus tour and a city tour, which I appreciated as I'd not had a chance to explore the city in January. There are a few beautiful mosques and medreses in the center of town, but most of the city is quite modern, industrial, and a little gritty. I liked Erzurum though, as it had a vibe that was entirely Eastern Turkey about it. My talk was ridiculously well-attended, with about 200 students in the audience, and I discussed the American Dream as well as perceptions of American Life in pop culture versus the reality of life in America. The question-and-answer section was pretty great; my first question was about cohabitation, whether people actually did that in America, and whether I thought it was moral. We then wandered through various topics from higher education in America, to what people in America think of Turkey, to Superman. I got back that Tuesday night, spent a few days catsitting, and took advantage of temporarily living with an oven to bake chocolate-chip cookies with a friend, Janna. As it was the weekend, Janna and I ended up at a football match after the cookies were done, watching Ankaragucu win with a group of expats and fresh cookies. We extended our luck by going to the Genclerbirligi match the next day, where Gencler also won. So I'm rocking a 60% win percentage for Ankara games I've watched. I should get a stipend for watching these.
That Monday, I again headed to the airport and flew to Izmir, to give a speech at Izmir Economics University. This one was to be on my research, so I was a bit more excited to give it. I stayed at a hotel on the sea, fronting onto Izmir's seaside promenade, and spent a lot of time just enjoying the utterly fantastic weather and laid-back environment. On Tuesday, I headed to the university, where I met up with the AC Director, chatted for a bit, got my photo taken for some sort of publicity purpose, and headed to my speech room...only to find it empty. The AC Director had scheduled my speech, on Turkish Foreign Policy, at the exact same time as a symposium on Turkey's entry to the EU, held in Turkish. If I were a Turkish student, I know which one I'd be going to, and it wouldn't be mine. The Director then mentioned that the student body was up in arms over Obama's statements on April 24th* and would probably boycott anything American for the next week or so. Wonderful. So there ended up being a grand total of 3 people at the lecture, which morphed into more of a one-on-one conversation and which took much less time than anticipated. It all worked though, I took the bus back downtown, met up with Deirdre, a Fulbrighter in Izmir, for dinner, and then we checked out Izmir's expat bar, where we passed the 'good yabanci' test by being able to speak Turkish. We ended up chatting with a British NATO guy for a bit, who didn't think too highly of my choice of football teams, before heading back. I had almost a full free day the next day, which I spent strolling the Kordon (promenade), doing some shopping (the gorgeous weather convinced me to stock up on summer clothes; of course it's been 60F in Ankara ever since), and exploring some side streets. Before heading to the airport, I made a small culinary discovery: patlican boregi, or eggplant borek. Borek usually comes in cheese, potato, spinach, and ground meat varieties; this patlican variety was delicious and smoky. I'm going to have to do some kitchen experimenting with borek, clearly.
After arriving back in Ankara from Izmir late Wednesday night, I had a few days to do laundry, have a simply delicious BLT at the Red Lion with friends, and repack before heading out again last Sunday, to Kayseri. Kayseri is a Central Anatolian town, just south of the Cappadochia region, mainly known for industry, pastirma (a really garlicky, sausagelike product), and manti. I was chiefly interested in the last item, as it's my favorite Turkish food. My speech here was at Erciyes University, again on Turkish Foreign Policy. Luckily this time I had an audience, with 60-70 people attending and giving me great questions afterward on American imperialism, America's position on Armenian genocide, whether America is in the pocket of Israel, and why America didn't give Turkey more money after World War II. I love question-and-answer sessions like that! The AC Director there was a bit of a dynamo: she works full time at Erciyes, and is a PhD student at ODTU, so every Thursday at 2am, she takes a 5-hour bus to Ankara, has a full day of classes, and takes a 5-hour bus back at 5 that night to turn around and teach the next day. She had serious pull with the bus companies in Kayseri. After my speech, I met up with Candace, a Fulbrighter from Istanbul who was giving a speech the next day. We went to dinner with the Director at a traditional Kayseri restaurant, where I had manti of course. It was pretty delicious, although as they are traditionalists they don't have the whole wheat, spinach, or fried varieties that I love so much in Istanbul.
The next day I hopped a bus back to Ankara, where I again changed out my luggage and turned around the next day to take a bus to Bursa. Bursa is 6 hours from Ankara, and I lucked out by getting Kamilkoc's Rahat bus, which is a bit like business class in an airplane (or maybe closer to economy-plus; but they have big leather chairs and satellite TV and internet, so I can't complain). It was pretty uneventful, and I got in to Bursa late enough to grab a light dinner, find my hotel, and write my speech (...). Thursday I got up, checked out, and took the Metro to the Bursa Chamber of Commerce, where their American Corner is. The building looks like a giant pyramid, so that was snazzy. I had lunch with the AC Director and her boss, before giving a speech on the American tradition of the State Fair as a microcosm of American Life. Good thing I did that History Day exhibit on the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, and good thing I know my Minnesota State Fair. The talk was to a group of about 20 Turkish students, and the fun part was that they spoke almost no English. This meant that I got a translator, which was cool but also a bit different to get used to, as I had to pause after every sentence to let her translate. The questions this time were again all about Armenia, the US' position on Armenia, what Americans thought about Turkey, Americans' view on the Conquest of Constantinople, and US foreign policy failures through history. It was a bit like a mental ping pong match, and felt like I was back in my debate days. The students also told me I look like Tansu Ciller, who is Turkey's first and so far only female Prime Minister. She's pretty heavily linked to some corrupt dealings, so I'm thinking it's time for a haircut to put an end to that resemblance. After a few more questions about education in America, I headed off to the bus station, caught a bus back to Ankara, and got in late last night. Finally.
I do have one more speech, but it's in Ankara, so I don't have to travel for it. While I do love travel, I'm looking forward to being able to actually attend research lectures in Ankara, and football matches, and being able to buy produce and other perishables. It doesn't last too long though, as the Fulbright conference starts late next week on the coast.
Hope you all are doing well!
kib,
-R
*April 24th is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day in many Western countries; Obama's remarks that day didn't specifically use the term 'genocide', but used a term close enough to earn Turkish ire and damage Turkish pride. The strength of the response to Obama's remarks in Turkey is a little difficult to explain, because honestly it's such a sensitive issue here that it's hard to understand the scope from outside Turkey.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Journeys to coffee-drinking lands
The past few weeks have, as per usual, been a bit of a whirlwind, as I pop in and out of Ankara like the most seasoned business traveller. Luckily, not all of my travel is for business. Easter weekend, I headed out to Istanbul on an overnight bus to catch a way-too-early flight to Rome for the holiday. I flew in Friday, arriving midmorning and catching the train (somewhat whimsically named the Leonardo Express, after Leonardo da Vinci) into central Rome. I had booked a hostel for my first night, and was meeting up with Kevin and his sister the next day and joining them at a bed and breakfast for the next two days (or so we thought, story below on how that didn't quite work). Luckily the hostel was 4 blocks from the train station, so I was able to find it quickly; not-so-luckily, my room wasn't quite ready yet. So I dropped off my bag and went out to wander the area.
I ended up walking down a high-end shopping street before finding the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiano, which was immense and overdecorated and beautiful. The most striking thing about though, to me, was the confessionals lining both sides of the church: they all had small signs indicating which languages the priest inside spoke, and I think they must have had almost every language spoken in Europe (not Turkish though, I checked). I spent the rest of the day wandering around in shock over Italian prices: I paid 4.5 Euro for a cappuccino and just tried not to convert anything to lira.
The next day I got up bright and early to check out of my hostel and check in to the B&B; good thing I gave myself extra time, as it took a decent amount of time to find the place--people in the neighborhood had never heard of the street name. I fortuitously ran into Kevin, and we headed up to check in...only to be told that they had no record of our reservation. After a brief internal panic (after all, it was Holy Saturday and we were right outside the Vatican), we were able to get a room for one night, use their internet to get another hotel for the next night, and negotiate extra bedding. The hotel guy's English was a little less than spectacular, but he was Peruvian, so I got to bust out my painfully rusty Spanish to get on the same page. Good times. We then headed over to the Vatican to pick up our tickets for Easter Mass and meet up with Kevin's sister, who'd been travelling through the region. Easter Sunday was great: we got up to see warm weather but overcast skies, which was perfect for sitting outside for a few hours. We walked over to St. Peters and waited in a mob-like line before getting in to the Square, finding the seating area, and looking for seats. We were lucky and got some of the last chairs. Mass was quite nice, the music was beautiful, and the service sounded beautiful as well although it was in Italian of course so I didn't understand all of it. The readings were in various languages, as were the intentions. Apparently our section of the crowd appeared on Swiss television twice. After Communion, Pope Benedict ended Mass and went up to his balcony to give his Easter blessing. This part was really cool, as he went through blessings in dozens of different languages. As the crowd heard their language, they'd cheer and hold up flags from their home countries. I was again listening for Turkish, but to no avail, maalesef. I did hear Arabic, Tagalog, and Esperanto though. We left after that, and decided to try and get far away from Vatican City for lunch, to try and avoid the masses of people also looking for lunch. After a nice stroll across the Tiber, we ended up at a very cute side-street cafe, where I had gnocchi and the waiter looked horrified at the prospect of serving spaghetti carbonara with a cappuccino. Ah tourists, we are so gauche.
The rest of the trip was predominantly spent meandering from one historic site to the next, with frequent stops for gelato and cappuccinos. On Monday we took a rather circuitous route through the center of the city and ended up on an island in the Tiber, reclining on cement pilings and watching the world go by. It was wonderful, a tranquil center in the hive of activity that is Tourist Rome. That evening I caught a flight back to Istanbul, but not before missing the train to the airport by literally 2 seconds (it was so painful watching it pull away in front of me), catching a cab, ascertaining that I had caught a gypsy cab, and finding another cab for the expensive privilege of a ride to the airport. Ah, travel... I got back to Istanbul at an inconvenient hour, took another cab to the otogar (after midnight, so the Metro was closed and the cabs were night rate, harika), and boarded a bus to Ankara, where I had less than 48 hours before heading out again for another flight out of Istanbul.
Great weekend, all in all, and after my first Easter in Turkey (ended up celebrating with fish and chips in the ODTU student center and listening to Chinese engineering students) I'm quite glad I spent this one in Rome. Maybe if I'm here next year I'll try for Jerusalem...
kib,
-R
I ended up walking down a high-end shopping street before finding the Basilica Santa Maria Maggiano, which was immense and overdecorated and beautiful. The most striking thing about though, to me, was the confessionals lining both sides of the church: they all had small signs indicating which languages the priest inside spoke, and I think they must have had almost every language spoken in Europe (not Turkish though, I checked). I spent the rest of the day wandering around in shock over Italian prices: I paid 4.5 Euro for a cappuccino and just tried not to convert anything to lira.
The next day I got up bright and early to check out of my hostel and check in to the B&B; good thing I gave myself extra time, as it took a decent amount of time to find the place--people in the neighborhood had never heard of the street name. I fortuitously ran into Kevin, and we headed up to check in...only to be told that they had no record of our reservation. After a brief internal panic (after all, it was Holy Saturday and we were right outside the Vatican), we were able to get a room for one night, use their internet to get another hotel for the next night, and negotiate extra bedding. The hotel guy's English was a little less than spectacular, but he was Peruvian, so I got to bust out my painfully rusty Spanish to get on the same page. Good times. We then headed over to the Vatican to pick up our tickets for Easter Mass and meet up with Kevin's sister, who'd been travelling through the region. Easter Sunday was great: we got up to see warm weather but overcast skies, which was perfect for sitting outside for a few hours. We walked over to St. Peters and waited in a mob-like line before getting in to the Square, finding the seating area, and looking for seats. We were lucky and got some of the last chairs. Mass was quite nice, the music was beautiful, and the service sounded beautiful as well although it was in Italian of course so I didn't understand all of it. The readings were in various languages, as were the intentions. Apparently our section of the crowd appeared on Swiss television twice. After Communion, Pope Benedict ended Mass and went up to his balcony to give his Easter blessing. This part was really cool, as he went through blessings in dozens of different languages. As the crowd heard their language, they'd cheer and hold up flags from their home countries. I was again listening for Turkish, but to no avail, maalesef. I did hear Arabic, Tagalog, and Esperanto though. We left after that, and decided to try and get far away from Vatican City for lunch, to try and avoid the masses of people also looking for lunch. After a nice stroll across the Tiber, we ended up at a very cute side-street cafe, where I had gnocchi and the waiter looked horrified at the prospect of serving spaghetti carbonara with a cappuccino. Ah tourists, we are so gauche.
The rest of the trip was predominantly spent meandering from one historic site to the next, with frequent stops for gelato and cappuccinos. On Monday we took a rather circuitous route through the center of the city and ended up on an island in the Tiber, reclining on cement pilings and watching the world go by. It was wonderful, a tranquil center in the hive of activity that is Tourist Rome. That evening I caught a flight back to Istanbul, but not before missing the train to the airport by literally 2 seconds (it was so painful watching it pull away in front of me), catching a cab, ascertaining that I had caught a gypsy cab, and finding another cab for the expensive privilege of a ride to the airport. Ah, travel... I got back to Istanbul at an inconvenient hour, took another cab to the otogar (after midnight, so the Metro was closed and the cabs were night rate, harika), and boarded a bus to Ankara, where I had less than 48 hours before heading out again for another flight out of Istanbul.
Great weekend, all in all, and after my first Easter in Turkey (ended up celebrating with fish and chips in the ODTU student center and listening to Chinese engineering students) I'm quite glad I spent this one in Rome. Maybe if I'm here next year I'll try for Jerusalem...
kib,
-R
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Aleppo, etc.
Time's been slipping away from me, but I'm going to try to get this as up-to-date as possible, because there's so much to update on/anticipate. My last entry left off on the outskirts of Antakya, which Danaijo and I left via bus. We took the bus to the Syrian border, where we had to get off and apply for visas. Ostensibly, Americans are supposed to apply for Syrian visas well in advance from the Syrian Embassy in DC, but that takes a long time and costs somewhere in the vicinity of $130. Plus, I've not been Stateside since last June, so it'd be difficult for me to get my passport to DC. So we decided to chance it at the border. We grabbed our luggage and waited in the border authorities' building for about 2 hours or so while the Syrian officials called Damascus to check whether or not we were allowed in the country. After getting approval, we paid $16 apiece for 2-week visas and were good to go. Unfortunately, our bus hadn't waited around, so we took a taxi the rest of the way to Aleppo.
Our taxi driver was really nice, stopping along the way for food for us, trying to find the hotel we wanted to stay at, and giving us a decent discount on the taxi price when I asked. Unfortunately, he didn't speak and Turkish (or English, or French). This was a little surprising to me, as I'd figured that people around the border would tend to speak a little bit of Turkish. Many people in Antakya speak some Arabic, but apparently the inverse is not true in Aleppo. Maalesef. We couldn't get to the hotel we'd intended to stay at, as it was full, so our taxi driver dropped us off at one that was apparently 'cheap'. We walked inside and quickly did an about-face: it was over $100/night. Luckily, the concierge was able to direct us to the central hotel area, where we found a pretty awesome room for substantially cheaper. That settled, we set out to explore a little bit and find dinner.
Aleppo was like a different world compared to Turkey. It was noticeably more desertlike, the shops were all smaller and independent (compared to Turkey's mix of independent shops and Turkish chains), and perhaps most glaringly, women were veiled. In some cases, fully veiled--we saw women walking around in not just the chador, but also a sort of small black scarf draped over their entire head, made of thin material through which they peered at the streets. I've never seen a woman in Turkey wear that, and I've seen quite a few women in Turkey.
Anyway, that night we had a delicious dinner of street-side falafel, walked through a pedestrianized shopping street, bought scarves, and retired for coffee and bed. In the morning, we headed out for fresh juice and the Grand Mosque, which is one of the older mosques in Islam. As another sign that we weren't in Turkey anymore, we of course had headscarves with us, but weren't allowed inside even the mosque courtyard til we'd donned large, shapeless, button-front robes over our clothing. The mosque was beautiful, and immense. It also was on the edge of the bazaar district, which we happily plunged in to after turning in our shapeless robes. We spent quite a bit of time ambling down aisles, bargaining, and avoiding the English-speaking touts, and managed to make it out with a respectable number of purchases at pretty decent prices. We were really amused when we found out that the name of the shop we'd bought pashminas at was "Oscar Wilde"; we had a great conversation with the owner, who was really interested in America, as his boyfriend was at Princeton. I think Danaijo came closest to buying a carpet in Aleppo; the prices there were the best I've seen, and they had some gorgeous ones. The ones we saw were predominantly Iranian, so the designs were very different than the Turkish/Kurdish/Armenian designs I'm familiar with. They use an entirely different color palette as well.
After wandering some more through the bazaars, and getting wonderfully lost trying to find a fabled amazing restaurant, we ended up having falafel again before heading to the bus station to hop a bus for Turkey again. We got there to find that the busses had all left for the day, so we had to take a cab. Luckily, the cab drivers at the station spoke a fair amount of Turkish, so I was able to bargain the cost down and get a cab to Gaziantep instead of Antakya. The border crossing this time was a breeze; I don't think many tourists come through the Gaziantep road's border, so the Turkish border official made us take as many Turkish tourism brochures as we could carry, even though half of them were in German. We got to Gaziantep in the late evening, and met up with my friend Alex, who's teaching English at the local university, after a brief adventure on the Gaziantep city busses.
We pretty much just made dinner and crashed at Alex's place, before getting up to explore the city the next day. We ended up at the very edge of an industrial part of town after taking a city bus, and finally made it downtown in time for lunch and shopping and baklava. Gaziantep's bazaar district is pretty adorable, and there are really good deals to be had; it's much more relaxed than the Istanbul bazaars, and the local handicrafts are better quality. We spent a lot of time chatting with shopkeepers and learning about handicrafts, with me translating between the shopkeepers' Turkish and D's English. It was a great linguistic exercise. After shopping, we stopped at a cave cafe for a narghile and baklava, which were both delicious. I'd wanted to stop by Gaziantep's museum, which is probably my favorite museum in Turkey, but when we got there, at about 4:35, the exhibit halls were closed, even though the museum closed at 5. Ah well, that's Turkey.
We met up with Alex for dinner, after she finished her teaching for the day, at the best restaurant in town. As I've mentioned in earlier entries, Gaziantep food is unique in Turkey, and unlike traditional Turkish cuisine. We had a great bulgur and lamb dish (D's was lambless of course), and for dessert the waiter brought us something I'd never even heard of before: Gaziantep coffee. It was fabulous, even if it wasn't strictly coffee. Gaziantep coffee is made of pistachios, roasted like coffee beans and brewed in milk. It smelled of chocolate and tasted of deliciousness. We then all headed back to Alex's place to grab our bags before D and I headed to the otogar to grab our overnight bus to Ankara. With my previous Gaziantep-Ankara bus experience (see October 2008 entries) still fresh in my mind, we'd purchased tickets in advance, and had verified that we had seats and a reputable company. We boarded the bus, and settled in to sleep. Sadly, that was easier said than done as the bus proceeded to stop hourly between midnight and 4am. Oh boy. We did make it back to Ankara just fine though, and nobody had to sleep on the floor, so that was a success in my book.
In Ankara, we headed to my place first to drop a few things and collapse before heading to my friend's apartment, where we were staying as I was catsitting starting that day (Saturday). We dropped more stuff, took stock of our exhaustion, and headed out for Ulus and Ankara's citadel, which we climbed and explored for a bit before heading to Kizilay. In Kizilay, we walked throught the subway and a few streets before meeting up with a group of expats at a bar to watch a football match. I'd never met those particular expats, but the football match meetups are part and parcel of the Round Ball in Ankara blog (ankarafootball.blogspot.com), whose co-author I've known for quite some time.
I'd never been to a football match besides my younger siblings' games before, so I was quite excited. We met up at a bar in Kizilay before the match with a Scottish teacher who's been in Turkey off and on for a few decades and a few Bilkent folks, generally here for a year as Communications Skills Instructors at Bilkent's English language preparatory program. After a quick lunch for D and I, and a beer all around, we headed en masse to 19 Mayis Stadyum, where both Ankaragucu and Genclerbirligi play their home matches. The match we saw was Ankaragucu, who were playing Sivasspor; I'm sure this doesn't mean much to most of my readers. For perspective, Ankaragucu is fighting relegation and is I think 4th from the bottom in the league, while Sivasspor is the top-ranked team in the league. Clearly it was not going to be a knock-out win. The stadium had 2 different security checks, where we were patted down and had to surrender any coins or bottle caps we had so we wouldn't throw them on the field later. At each checkpoint, there were maybe a dozen male police officers, and one female police officer to check the few women attending the match. It was a bit interesting to see how few women were actually at the match; there were 4 in our group, but maybe 10 others total.
We found decent seats and settled in to watch the match. I don't think D or I really followed which player was doing what, but the first half was pretty closely-fought, and ended scoreless. Much more interesting than the match (to us) was the crowd: Ankaragucu supporters tend to be young, male, and energetic, and the area behind the goal was full of guys on their feet and chanting the entire game, their section undulating as they waved their scarves and gestured in unison. It was really cool to see. I tried to figure out what the crowd was shouting, but aside from one ridiculously easy cheer ("La-la, la-laaaa, Ankaragucu!"), couldn't distinguish many words. In the second half, Sivasspor showed why they were top-ranked, and outplayed Gucu quite a bit. The game ended with Sivasspor winning by 2 or 3, and the Ankaragucu supporters showed their displeasure by turning their backs for the last few minutes.
After the game, we all headed back to Kizilay to discuss the game, and after a bit D and I headed back up the hill to have dinner at one of my more-favorite restaurants in Ankara, Spice. It's an Indian place, and we both had delicious dishes, and D tried raki for the first time. It wasn't her favorite beverage, but then there's a time and a place for raki, and it's not all-the-time and everywhere. It's traditionally eaten with fish, but as D doesn't eat fish, it went decently with her Indian food.
After dinner, we were so exhausted. We headed back to the apartment and D packed before we grabbed a few hours of sleep. The next morning I got up at 5-something to get Danaijo to the airport bus. I looked outside to see...a snowstorm, with a few inches of snow already on the ground and driving winds of heavy snows. We headed out early, but still just barely made it to the Havas bus before it left for the airport. I took the same taxi back up the hill, and the roads were so bad the taxi couldn't make it up the last bit and the driver and I had to abandon the cab. The entire time I was a bit terrified that I'd get a call from D saying that her Ankara-Istanbul flight had been cancelled, but luckily the flight got out fine and I spent the rest of the day watching the storm from my fantastic hilltop vantage point.
And that was Danaijo's and my epic Turkish-Syrian adventure, briefly.
kib,
-R
Our taxi driver was really nice, stopping along the way for food for us, trying to find the hotel we wanted to stay at, and giving us a decent discount on the taxi price when I asked. Unfortunately, he didn't speak and Turkish (or English, or French). This was a little surprising to me, as I'd figured that people around the border would tend to speak a little bit of Turkish. Many people in Antakya speak some Arabic, but apparently the inverse is not true in Aleppo. Maalesef. We couldn't get to the hotel we'd intended to stay at, as it was full, so our taxi driver dropped us off at one that was apparently 'cheap'. We walked inside and quickly did an about-face: it was over $100/night. Luckily, the concierge was able to direct us to the central hotel area, where we found a pretty awesome room for substantially cheaper. That settled, we set out to explore a little bit and find dinner.
Aleppo was like a different world compared to Turkey. It was noticeably more desertlike, the shops were all smaller and independent (compared to Turkey's mix of independent shops and Turkish chains), and perhaps most glaringly, women were veiled. In some cases, fully veiled--we saw women walking around in not just the chador, but also a sort of small black scarf draped over their entire head, made of thin material through which they peered at the streets. I've never seen a woman in Turkey wear that, and I've seen quite a few women in Turkey.
Anyway, that night we had a delicious dinner of street-side falafel, walked through a pedestrianized shopping street, bought scarves, and retired for coffee and bed. In the morning, we headed out for fresh juice and the Grand Mosque, which is one of the older mosques in Islam. As another sign that we weren't in Turkey anymore, we of course had headscarves with us, but weren't allowed inside even the mosque courtyard til we'd donned large, shapeless, button-front robes over our clothing. The mosque was beautiful, and immense. It also was on the edge of the bazaar district, which we happily plunged in to after turning in our shapeless robes. We spent quite a bit of time ambling down aisles, bargaining, and avoiding the English-speaking touts, and managed to make it out with a respectable number of purchases at pretty decent prices. We were really amused when we found out that the name of the shop we'd bought pashminas at was "Oscar Wilde"; we had a great conversation with the owner, who was really interested in America, as his boyfriend was at Princeton. I think Danaijo came closest to buying a carpet in Aleppo; the prices there were the best I've seen, and they had some gorgeous ones. The ones we saw were predominantly Iranian, so the designs were very different than the Turkish/Kurdish/Armenian designs I'm familiar with. They use an entirely different color palette as well.
After wandering some more through the bazaars, and getting wonderfully lost trying to find a fabled amazing restaurant, we ended up having falafel again before heading to the bus station to hop a bus for Turkey again. We got there to find that the busses had all left for the day, so we had to take a cab. Luckily, the cab drivers at the station spoke a fair amount of Turkish, so I was able to bargain the cost down and get a cab to Gaziantep instead of Antakya. The border crossing this time was a breeze; I don't think many tourists come through the Gaziantep road's border, so the Turkish border official made us take as many Turkish tourism brochures as we could carry, even though half of them were in German. We got to Gaziantep in the late evening, and met up with my friend Alex, who's teaching English at the local university, after a brief adventure on the Gaziantep city busses.
We pretty much just made dinner and crashed at Alex's place, before getting up to explore the city the next day. We ended up at the very edge of an industrial part of town after taking a city bus, and finally made it downtown in time for lunch and shopping and baklava. Gaziantep's bazaar district is pretty adorable, and there are really good deals to be had; it's much more relaxed than the Istanbul bazaars, and the local handicrafts are better quality. We spent a lot of time chatting with shopkeepers and learning about handicrafts, with me translating between the shopkeepers' Turkish and D's English. It was a great linguistic exercise. After shopping, we stopped at a cave cafe for a narghile and baklava, which were both delicious. I'd wanted to stop by Gaziantep's museum, which is probably my favorite museum in Turkey, but when we got there, at about 4:35, the exhibit halls were closed, even though the museum closed at 5. Ah well, that's Turkey.
We met up with Alex for dinner, after she finished her teaching for the day, at the best restaurant in town. As I've mentioned in earlier entries, Gaziantep food is unique in Turkey, and unlike traditional Turkish cuisine. We had a great bulgur and lamb dish (D's was lambless of course), and for dessert the waiter brought us something I'd never even heard of before: Gaziantep coffee. It was fabulous, even if it wasn't strictly coffee. Gaziantep coffee is made of pistachios, roasted like coffee beans and brewed in milk. It smelled of chocolate and tasted of deliciousness. We then all headed back to Alex's place to grab our bags before D and I headed to the otogar to grab our overnight bus to Ankara. With my previous Gaziantep-Ankara bus experience (see October 2008 entries) still fresh in my mind, we'd purchased tickets in advance, and had verified that we had seats and a reputable company. We boarded the bus, and settled in to sleep. Sadly, that was easier said than done as the bus proceeded to stop hourly between midnight and 4am. Oh boy. We did make it back to Ankara just fine though, and nobody had to sleep on the floor, so that was a success in my book.
In Ankara, we headed to my place first to drop a few things and collapse before heading to my friend's apartment, where we were staying as I was catsitting starting that day (Saturday). We dropped more stuff, took stock of our exhaustion, and headed out for Ulus and Ankara's citadel, which we climbed and explored for a bit before heading to Kizilay. In Kizilay, we walked throught the subway and a few streets before meeting up with a group of expats at a bar to watch a football match. I'd never met those particular expats, but the football match meetups are part and parcel of the Round Ball in Ankara blog (ankarafootball.blogspot.com), whose co-author I've known for quite some time.
I'd never been to a football match besides my younger siblings' games before, so I was quite excited. We met up at a bar in Kizilay before the match with a Scottish teacher who's been in Turkey off and on for a few decades and a few Bilkent folks, generally here for a year as Communications Skills Instructors at Bilkent's English language preparatory program. After a quick lunch for D and I, and a beer all around, we headed en masse to 19 Mayis Stadyum, where both Ankaragucu and Genclerbirligi play their home matches. The match we saw was Ankaragucu, who were playing Sivasspor; I'm sure this doesn't mean much to most of my readers. For perspective, Ankaragucu is fighting relegation and is I think 4th from the bottom in the league, while Sivasspor is the top-ranked team in the league. Clearly it was not going to be a knock-out win. The stadium had 2 different security checks, where we were patted down and had to surrender any coins or bottle caps we had so we wouldn't throw them on the field later. At each checkpoint, there were maybe a dozen male police officers, and one female police officer to check the few women attending the match. It was a bit interesting to see how few women were actually at the match; there were 4 in our group, but maybe 10 others total.
We found decent seats and settled in to watch the match. I don't think D or I really followed which player was doing what, but the first half was pretty closely-fought, and ended scoreless. Much more interesting than the match (to us) was the crowd: Ankaragucu supporters tend to be young, male, and energetic, and the area behind the goal was full of guys on their feet and chanting the entire game, their section undulating as they waved their scarves and gestured in unison. It was really cool to see. I tried to figure out what the crowd was shouting, but aside from one ridiculously easy cheer ("La-la, la-laaaa, Ankaragucu!"), couldn't distinguish many words. In the second half, Sivasspor showed why they were top-ranked, and outplayed Gucu quite a bit. The game ended with Sivasspor winning by 2 or 3, and the Ankaragucu supporters showed their displeasure by turning their backs for the last few minutes.
After the game, we all headed back to Kizilay to discuss the game, and after a bit D and I headed back up the hill to have dinner at one of my more-favorite restaurants in Ankara, Spice. It's an Indian place, and we both had delicious dishes, and D tried raki for the first time. It wasn't her favorite beverage, but then there's a time and a place for raki, and it's not all-the-time and everywhere. It's traditionally eaten with fish, but as D doesn't eat fish, it went decently with her Indian food.
After dinner, we were so exhausted. We headed back to the apartment and D packed before we grabbed a few hours of sleep. The next morning I got up at 5-something to get Danaijo to the airport bus. I looked outside to see...a snowstorm, with a few inches of snow already on the ground and driving winds of heavy snows. We headed out early, but still just barely made it to the Havas bus before it left for the airport. I took the same taxi back up the hill, and the roads were so bad the taxi couldn't make it up the last bit and the driver and I had to abandon the cab. The entire time I was a bit terrified that I'd get a call from D saying that her Ankara-Istanbul flight had been cancelled, but luckily the flight got out fine and I spent the rest of the day watching the storm from my fantastic hilltop vantage point.
And that was Danaijo's and my epic Turkish-Syrian adventure, briefly.
kib,
-R
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Ridiculous amounts of photos
To save everyone the pain of wading through the several-hundred photos from my last trip (and so my grandmother can see them, Hi Grandma!), I'm featuring a few highlights here:
Flags outside Bogazici's gate in Etiler; The 3 big parties (AKP, CHP, MHP) are all represented.
Danaijo and I in the Yerebatan Sarnici, or Basilica Cisterns
Sultan's Loge at the Aya Sofya; the royal family would use this so as not to be disturbed by the great unwashed masses during prayertime.
Danaijo and I in the balcony of the Aya Sofya.
Topkapi Palace and the view behind it. Gorgeous even on a gray rainy day.
Me and a fountain outside the Sultan's bedroom. The bedroom itself was in its own building, in the middle of the family section.
D wasn't trying to get my eyes in this one, but it turned out kind of cool. That's the Yeni Cami (New Mosque) behind me.
Troy. Those different wall sections are all from different Trojan cities. This is why I'm not an archaeologist.
As I get more uploaded to Flickr, I'll get more up here as well.
kib,
-R
Flags outside Bogazici's gate in Etiler; The 3 big parties (AKP, CHP, MHP) are all represented.
Danaijo and I in the Yerebatan Sarnici, or Basilica Cisterns
Sultan's Loge at the Aya Sofya; the royal family would use this so as not to be disturbed by the great unwashed masses during prayertime.
Danaijo and I in the balcony of the Aya Sofya.
Topkapi Palace and the view behind it. Gorgeous even on a gray rainy day.
Me and a fountain outside the Sultan's bedroom. The bedroom itself was in its own building, in the middle of the family section.
D wasn't trying to get my eyes in this one, but it turned out kind of cool. That's the Yeni Cami (New Mosque) behind me.
Troy. Those different wall sections are all from different Trojan cities. This is why I'm not an archaeologist.
As I get more uploaded to Flickr, I'll get more up here as well.
kib,
-R
Monday, March 23, 2009
Taking the long way
So, my last post left off on the way to Canakkale. Canakkale is the jumping-off point for both Troy and Gallipoli, but because we only had a week, we were skipping Gallipoli. We got in past midnight; the bus ride down was kind of nice, as the bus drove down the Gelibolu Peninsula before taking a ferry to Canakkale, and the bus itself was new and had satellite television instead of a DVD player. So we got to catch up on our Turkish news and soap operas.
Monday morning bright and early we struck out from our hotel to the minibus garage, where we hopped a bus for Truva (Troy, in Turkish). After a decent 30-minute ride through villages and along the coast, we arrived at the front gates, where we bought a ticket, flashed my MuzeKart, and walked down the access road to the excavation house and large wooden Trojan Horse model. It was a little tacky-wonderful, and had a cabin/playhouse thing built on top of its back. It would have made for a pretty awesome treehouse. D and I headed in, and started down the one path that didn't have Japanese tour groups. We ambled for a bit between bluffs and ancient stone walls helpfully labelled with "IV", "II", and "VII" to indicate which Trojan city that particular section was from. After rounding a bend, we got to the good parts: the Trench, where the German-American explorer who discovered the site bulldozed through most of the top cities to get to the Troy II layer, and temple remains, and city walls and entrance ramps. The interpretation was pretty decent, with explanatory signs up every so often. We were trying to take in everything, which wasn't quite the pace the tour groups were setting, so we ended up alternately caught up in a group and passed by them a few times over. About halfway through the winding path, we noticed a branching-off path with a small sign that said "CAVE" with an arrow. Naturally we had to check that out, so we wandered down to this little wooded area with a manmade cave that was probably used for water storage and later other storage. It was really pretty, and set off a bit from the main site. On our way back to the entrance of the site, we made a quick backtrack to see the main gate, which we'd somehow completely missed the first time 'round. Then it was back to the main entrance, where we killed time waiting for the minibus by checking out the 2 open gift stalls (it was clearly not the high season: there were perhaps 2 dozen stalls, but only the 2 were open). We could have bought many, many Trojan Horses, in a variety of sizes. What an opportunity...
Back in Canakkale, we wandered through town to the bus station, where we picked up tickets to Izmir before heading back to the waterfront, stopping en route to pick up some borek for a light on-the-bus lunch. We had time to check out Canakkale's Trojan Horse before we left, which was much more gritty and impressive than Troy's version: it was a prop from the Hollywood movie Troy, released a few years ago.
We trundled off to Izmir on an afternoon bus that got in a little later than we'd expected, and hopped a servis shuttle to Buca, the area of town where my Fulbright friend Deirdre lives. She's an English teacher at one of the universities in Izmir, and had offered to let us stay the night. We met up with Deirdre and stopped by her gorgeous flat to drop off our things before heading out for lahmacun and pide. We had a great evening catching up and chatting over wine and baklava, before heading off to bed so we could catch our flight the next morning.
Tuesday morning, we bade farewell to Deirdre and set off once again to Izmir's airport. We flew from Izmir to Adana, which was wonderful as a bus ride between the two would have been probably 12-14 hours. Not all that fun. We landed in balmy Adana and went straight to the bus station, where we hopped a bus for Antakya. A short 2 hours later, we disembarked in downtown Antakya and wound our way through the side streets to the Catholic Church, where we'd planned to stay the night. Antakya gets quite a few pilgrims passing through, so the Catholic Church in town has rooms for travellers that are really nice, and not very spendy (I can't recommend it highly enough, everyone should spend a few days in Antakya at the Catholic Church). I'd stayed there before, when I was in town in August for the Armenian festival in Vakiflikoy. When we walked in the courtyard, the place was teeming with Italian tourists, but we sat down and chatted with some of the Turkish kids that always seem to be in the courtyard til things quieted down somewhat. We spoke with the priest to arrange our room, dropped off our bags, and headed out to this hole-in-the-wall restaurant that I'd remembered as being excellent. The place is called "Hummuscu ve Baklaci", and it has 2 items on the menu, hummus and bakla. D's a vegetarian, so a place that didn't even have meat on the menu was a good choice. We walked in and ordered one of each, to split. The owner made both the hummus and the bakla from scratch in front of us. I'll spare the hummus details, as it's pretty well-known, but bakla is a thinner spread made chiefly from mashed bakla beans stewed in I believe oil, then mixed with spices, hot peppers, lemon, tahini, and garnished with pickled vegetables and tomatoes. They were both delicious. Fully sated, D and I wandered through the central part of town, along the river, to the bazaar district. I had been hoping to pick up another pair of the mad awesome pajama pants I'd found in Antakya in August, but they were nowhere to be found, so I settled for buying a shoulder bag, as mine gave up somewhere around Izmir. D found some decent scarves, and we had a nice chat with the headscarf shop employees before heading back to the Catholic Church. We'd intended to chill for a bit before heading back out to grab a late dinner, but ended up just falling asleep; after all, we'd travelled something like 1000 miles just that day. In the morning, we went out in search of breakfast and ended up in this tiny basement tostcu in a dilapidated business center, where we had the best egg sandwiches outside of West Africa. The lady running the shop wasn't quite sure what to do with 2 yabancis in her shop, and was quite anxious to hear what we thought of our sandwiches--we reassured her that they had been delicious and huge. After breakfast, we headed to the Antakya Museum, where we wandered through the impressive collection of mosaics, before grabbing our bags and heading to the Church of St. Peter. This is the first physical Christian church in the world, and is where the term 'Christian' was first used. I had tried to visit it in August, but it was closed. This time, we were able to take a dolmus most of the way there, but still ended up dragging our luggage up the winding road to the church's hillside perch. When we got there, the ticketseller said "Oh, I watched you guys struggle up the whole way; why didn't you drive?" We got our tickets (this was also a MuzeKart site, as was the Antakya Muze; that card was a Very Good Procurement) and entered the church. It was really nice and quiet, as we were the only visitors, and quite small: the original church had been added to by the Crusaders, who gave it a front wall with some pretty blatantly Crusader-era decoration. The interior had a spring in one corner, fragments of mosaics and frescoes, and an escape hole out the back, so that celebrants could get out if the nonCatholics in town decided to round them up during services. It was all pretty simple, of course, but just impressive with the weight of history. We stuck around for a bit to take photos and watch the city of Antakya, which spread out from the foot of the hill.
Once down from the Church of St. Peter, we walked back to a main road and grabbed a dolmus to the bus station. From there, we grabbed a bus headed to Aleppo, but that will have to wait for the next post. I have photos of the Istanbul part of our trip, as well as some of the Troy portion, up on Flickr; inshallah I'll get the rest up soon!
kib,
-R
Monday morning bright and early we struck out from our hotel to the minibus garage, where we hopped a bus for Truva (Troy, in Turkish). After a decent 30-minute ride through villages and along the coast, we arrived at the front gates, where we bought a ticket, flashed my MuzeKart, and walked down the access road to the excavation house and large wooden Trojan Horse model. It was a little tacky-wonderful, and had a cabin/playhouse thing built on top of its back. It would have made for a pretty awesome treehouse. D and I headed in, and started down the one path that didn't have Japanese tour groups. We ambled for a bit between bluffs and ancient stone walls helpfully labelled with "IV", "II", and "VII" to indicate which Trojan city that particular section was from. After rounding a bend, we got to the good parts: the Trench, where the German-American explorer who discovered the site bulldozed through most of the top cities to get to the Troy II layer, and temple remains, and city walls and entrance ramps. The interpretation was pretty decent, with explanatory signs up every so often. We were trying to take in everything, which wasn't quite the pace the tour groups were setting, so we ended up alternately caught up in a group and passed by them a few times over. About halfway through the winding path, we noticed a branching-off path with a small sign that said "CAVE" with an arrow. Naturally we had to check that out, so we wandered down to this little wooded area with a manmade cave that was probably used for water storage and later other storage. It was really pretty, and set off a bit from the main site. On our way back to the entrance of the site, we made a quick backtrack to see the main gate, which we'd somehow completely missed the first time 'round. Then it was back to the main entrance, where we killed time waiting for the minibus by checking out the 2 open gift stalls (it was clearly not the high season: there were perhaps 2 dozen stalls, but only the 2 were open). We could have bought many, many Trojan Horses, in a variety of sizes. What an opportunity...
Back in Canakkale, we wandered through town to the bus station, where we picked up tickets to Izmir before heading back to the waterfront, stopping en route to pick up some borek for a light on-the-bus lunch. We had time to check out Canakkale's Trojan Horse before we left, which was much more gritty and impressive than Troy's version: it was a prop from the Hollywood movie Troy, released a few years ago.
We trundled off to Izmir on an afternoon bus that got in a little later than we'd expected, and hopped a servis shuttle to Buca, the area of town where my Fulbright friend Deirdre lives. She's an English teacher at one of the universities in Izmir, and had offered to let us stay the night. We met up with Deirdre and stopped by her gorgeous flat to drop off our things before heading out for lahmacun and pide. We had a great evening catching up and chatting over wine and baklava, before heading off to bed so we could catch our flight the next morning.
Tuesday morning, we bade farewell to Deirdre and set off once again to Izmir's airport. We flew from Izmir to Adana, which was wonderful as a bus ride between the two would have been probably 12-14 hours. Not all that fun. We landed in balmy Adana and went straight to the bus station, where we hopped a bus for Antakya. A short 2 hours later, we disembarked in downtown Antakya and wound our way through the side streets to the Catholic Church, where we'd planned to stay the night. Antakya gets quite a few pilgrims passing through, so the Catholic Church in town has rooms for travellers that are really nice, and not very spendy (I can't recommend it highly enough, everyone should spend a few days in Antakya at the Catholic Church). I'd stayed there before, when I was in town in August for the Armenian festival in Vakiflikoy. When we walked in the courtyard, the place was teeming with Italian tourists, but we sat down and chatted with some of the Turkish kids that always seem to be in the courtyard til things quieted down somewhat. We spoke with the priest to arrange our room, dropped off our bags, and headed out to this hole-in-the-wall restaurant that I'd remembered as being excellent. The place is called "Hummuscu ve Baklaci", and it has 2 items on the menu, hummus and bakla. D's a vegetarian, so a place that didn't even have meat on the menu was a good choice. We walked in and ordered one of each, to split. The owner made both the hummus and the bakla from scratch in front of us. I'll spare the hummus details, as it's pretty well-known, but bakla is a thinner spread made chiefly from mashed bakla beans stewed in I believe oil, then mixed with spices, hot peppers, lemon, tahini, and garnished with pickled vegetables and tomatoes. They were both delicious. Fully sated, D and I wandered through the central part of town, along the river, to the bazaar district. I had been hoping to pick up another pair of the mad awesome pajama pants I'd found in Antakya in August, but they were nowhere to be found, so I settled for buying a shoulder bag, as mine gave up somewhere around Izmir. D found some decent scarves, and we had a nice chat with the headscarf shop employees before heading back to the Catholic Church. We'd intended to chill for a bit before heading back out to grab a late dinner, but ended up just falling asleep; after all, we'd travelled something like 1000 miles just that day. In the morning, we went out in search of breakfast and ended up in this tiny basement tostcu in a dilapidated business center, where we had the best egg sandwiches outside of West Africa. The lady running the shop wasn't quite sure what to do with 2 yabancis in her shop, and was quite anxious to hear what we thought of our sandwiches--we reassured her that they had been delicious and huge. After breakfast, we headed to the Antakya Museum, where we wandered through the impressive collection of mosaics, before grabbing our bags and heading to the Church of St. Peter. This is the first physical Christian church in the world, and is where the term 'Christian' was first used. I had tried to visit it in August, but it was closed. This time, we were able to take a dolmus most of the way there, but still ended up dragging our luggage up the winding road to the church's hillside perch. When we got there, the ticketseller said "Oh, I watched you guys struggle up the whole way; why didn't you drive?" We got our tickets (this was also a MuzeKart site, as was the Antakya Muze; that card was a Very Good Procurement) and entered the church. It was really nice and quiet, as we were the only visitors, and quite small: the original church had been added to by the Crusaders, who gave it a front wall with some pretty blatantly Crusader-era decoration. The interior had a spring in one corner, fragments of mosaics and frescoes, and an escape hole out the back, so that celebrants could get out if the nonCatholics in town decided to round them up during services. It was all pretty simple, of course, but just impressive with the weight of history. We stuck around for a bit to take photos and watch the city of Antakya, which spread out from the foot of the hill.
Once down from the Church of St. Peter, we walked back to a main road and grabbed a dolmus to the bus station. From there, we grabbed a bus headed to Aleppo, but that will have to wait for the next post. I have photos of the Istanbul part of our trip, as well as some of the Troy portion, up on Flickr; inshallah I'll get the rest up soon!
kib,
-R
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Before taking the long way
Hey folks,
I figured I should start at the beginning of my 'Highlights of Turkey' week with Danaijo, so I'll back up to the Saturday before last, when I had a day to spend in Istanbul before picking D up at the airport that evening. I'd stayed with my friend Cat, of my previous Kartalkaya adventure, so we headed out bright and early for some menemen (by far my favorite Turkish breakfast food, and what would be my favorite Turkish food ever, if not for the wondrousness of manti). Cat has a local menemenci across the street from her, so we had breakfast al fresco and I learned about the shop's rad intercom system: the shop supplied tea to all the shops in the neighborhood, but it wasn't efficient to just send a kid around constantly and ask if folks wanted tea, so there were several intercoms located around the neighborhood, in shops and on the street, and shopkeepers would just buzz over when they needed a glass or two. The speaker was above the cooking surface, so the menemen guy'd listen to Ahmet from around the corner saying he needed 3 glasses, send off the tea boy, and continue cooking. Brilliant. I cannot believe I've lived here so long and not noticed this ingenious system. At least I've noticed the cab call boxes...
Thusly fortified, Cat and I set off up towards Etiler to photograph some election flags. Local elections are at the end of March, and the parties are going all out: in addition to the household appliances mentioned in an earlier post, flags from the major parties are everywhere in the cities, blanketing major intersections, and vans with candidates' photos plastered to their sides drive around all day blaring patriotic party campaign music. A particularly catchy one in Antakya (sadly for Danaijo, it was stuck in my head the rest of our trip) just repeated "Simdi CHP zamani!" ("Now is CHP time!") ad nauseam. Anyway, we photographed our way to Besiktas, where we parted in a pouring rain after stocking up on bootleg dvds; while I was on the hunt for a travel book that included Syria, Cat ended up at a CHP rally with a bunch of politically-active women from GOP (in Ankara, that's the ritzy neighborhood, but in Istanbul, it's one of the more distressed neighborhoods).
I ended up not minding about missing 6 hours of party speeches and songs, because while walking around Tourist Central, Istanbul, I picked up something mythical and wonderful: a MuzeKart. For background, in August the government raised prices for all museums and sites it manages (so, pretty much everything but Dolmabahce Palace and the Basilica Cisterns), while removing the option of a student discount. This meant that Topkapi, had I had the urge to go see both the main part and the Harem part, would have been 35 lira just for me. I felt this to be outrageous, and thus hadn't seen Topkapi, but I did cough up 20 lira for the Hagia Sophia. There is one way to avoid having to pay (outrageous amount) for all those tourist sites: buy a MuzeKart. This 20-lira card, with your photo badly scanned to the back, allows you in to all state-run sites across Turkey for free, for a year. Awesome. The only catch is that it's only for Turkish citizens. No 20-lira pass for yabancis. I had heard, though, that within the past month the rules had relaxed enough to allow students at Turkish universities to also buy MuzeKarts, at a discounted price of 10 lira (because they're, you know, poor students). Armed with my ODTU ID, I braved the line at the Hagia Sophia to try my luck...and it worked! I didn't want to say anything while getting it in case they decided I didn't sound Turkish enough, but mere hours before picking up D I had scored a 10-lira card that would halve our total admission costs at every museum we visited (aside from the Cisterns, but I successfully argued for the Turkish student discount there).
So, fresh from my exciting MuzeKart buying, I headed off to the airport. Apparently at Ataturk International one is not allowed into the baggage claim area if one has not just disembarked from a plane, so I hung out with a bunch of liveried drivers with fancy name-signs, looking for American-looking people as they departed baggage claim. After a group with matching Yale sweatshirts trundled by, Danaijo walked out, and we had our emotional reunion before heading down to the Metro to head back to Sultanahmet. Once settled at our hotel, we then had to get back on the light rail line, take it to the end, hop on a bus, and slowly make our way through rush hour traffic to meet up with Cat for dinner in Arnavutkoy. This would've worked much better if the bus we were on had gone to Arnavutkoy. Instead, we took an unexpected turn in Ortakoy and ended up in some bus depot, with a confused driver asking where exactly we wanted to go. Oboy. I'd even asked when we got on if the bus went to Arnavutkoy.
No matter, we got on another bus, and headed back to Ortakoy, where we took a quick detour through the handicrafts bazaar there on the waterfront before grabbing a cab to Arnavutkoy. Once finally there, we grabbed Cat for dinner at Bodrum Manti (if you've read my other Istanbul entries, you may recognize the name; this is because Bodrum Manti is perhaps my favorite restaurant in Istanbul), where D had her first authentic Turkish meal, kitir ispanakli manti, or fried spinach manti.
Given that D had just gotten off a double-digit-hours-long plane ride, we didn't do much else til the next morning, when we headed out bright and early to the Aya Sofia, before heading to the Basilica Cisterns (they're just cool; I think I've been there 3 times now, and I never get tired of them). After the Cisterns, we headed over to the Blue Mosque before noticing that it was closed for prayer time, so we ambled over to Topkapi, stopping for fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice en route. Topkapi was, in a word, overwhelming. We passed through gate after gate, entering room after room, all absolutely gorgeously decked out in the heights of Ottoman fashion. Detail was everywhere. Tiles were handpainted. Pillows and sofas were richly embroidered with silver and gold thread. Mother-of-pearl inlay was on quite a bit of the woodwork. It was gorgeous. We went a little out of order through Topkapi, and ended up at the very back, where the private quarters open up to a view of both Europe and Asia across the Bosphorous. I simply cannot use enough adjectives to describe the opulence of the setting or the Palace itself. After the Sultan's family quarters, we went through the Treasury. If I said the rest of Topkapi was overwhelming, this was at least triply so. It felt like going through House on the Rock (in Wisconsin, also a cool site, but not quite so pedigreed as Topkapi). There were jewels and thrones and artifacts from the Royal Family. There were medals and awards. But most impressively, there were religious and historical artifacts ostensibly from pretty much all the major players in Muslim (and therefore Judeo-Christian) accounts. There was Moses' staff. Swords from Mohammed aas well as from all his major male associates. The Prophet's beard hair. Other relics from Old Testament prophets. The hand of St. John. The head of St. John. The artifacts went on and on, winding through rooms to the sound of the Quran being read aloud. We figured at first that it was a recording, til we turned a corner towards the end and ran into a little cleric perched on a stool, singing the text into a microphone in front of him as screens to the side scrolled the Turkish and English translation of the verse he was currently singing. Pretty cool.
By that time we had seen so much, my eyes were aching, so we wandered over to the Galata Bridge, where we snagged a few beanbag chairs and had lunch while watching the fishermen above us and the boats below us. Quite nice. After lunch, we went through the Spice Bazaar and its side streets, and spent an enjoyable time haggling over some copper pots and coffee sets. With those purchases in hand, we headed back towards the Blue Mosque to try and find a carpet shop. Normally I avoid carpet shops like the plague, but D had mentioned maybe buying a carpet if she could find a good deal, so we stuck our heads into a shop, to see what we could find. The guys in the shop were naturally quite friendly, and eager to show us 'just the perfect' carpets. They piled up carpet after carpet on the floor, asking us to mention when we saw ones we liked, so they could set those aside to cull the pile slowly but surely. Unfortunately, they didn't show any kilims until I specifically asked, and even then just brought out one half-hali half-kilim, and a few brand-new, machine-made kilims that were as soulless as any beige wall-to-wall. D quite liked the half-and-half carpet, so I asked how much they wanted for it so we could start working our way down. Their original asking price was literally over 4 times what the carpet should have been. Were we wiser, we'd have walked out immediately. Since we weren't that wise in the ways of carpet shops yet, I expressed shock at the outrageous price, and reminded the salesguy that we were students (...close enough) on limited budgets. We managed to knock a few hundred off the price before we decided it was time to check out the selection at a few of the neighboring shops. While we were packing up, we kept chatting, and the salesguy lowered the price significantly. He really didn't want us to check out other shops. We headed out anyway, with the promise that we'd return, as I was hoping that the selection in other shops would be at least closer to what I'd seen in Diyarbakir. Unfortunately, Sunday afternoon is not a popular carpet-buying time, and the other shops either didn't have a great selection, had no staff, or argued with D when she told them she wanted to see pieces with kilim elements. So back we went to the first shop, where after much more discussion and side ponderings on the merits of a few smaller rugs, we felt like we could make a deal, and for a decent price: 500-600 for a medium-sized half-hali half-kilim for D, plus a newer smaller kilim for me. We were within one hundred lira of our tipping point with the salesguy, and finally got him down to our price. Fantastic, no? Wrong! At that point, the owner of the shop (who had been observing, with the occasional comment) stepped in to say that the price for D's rug was 1800, and that there was absolutely no way he would consider going under 1800. What??? We were not amused. (It definitely was not an 1800 lira carpet) We marched out, and decided that carpets were not going to be an Istanbul purchase on our trip. With that enlightening shopping experience under our belts, we picked up our luggage and headed to the Otogar, where we grabbed a bus out to Canakkale that evening. And that will have to be another blog entry, where D and I take perhaps the most circuitous route ever between Istanbul and Ankara.
A quick note on post-travel goings-on: I finally, after a year and a half here, have made it to a football match. I've actually made it to 2, one for Ankaragucu and one for Genclerbirligi (both local Ankarali teams). Both times 'my' team didn't win, or even score, but it was pretty darn fun; today's match featured a hockey-style body check. I've also been meeting up with a few of the other Ankara Fulbrighters, including a new Fulbrighter just in from Greece, and got to an ARIT lecture on historical embroidery which was actually quite charming. It's been busy.
But more of that inshallah in the next post,
-R
I figured I should start at the beginning of my 'Highlights of Turkey' week with Danaijo, so I'll back up to the Saturday before last, when I had a day to spend in Istanbul before picking D up at the airport that evening. I'd stayed with my friend Cat, of my previous Kartalkaya adventure, so we headed out bright and early for some menemen (by far my favorite Turkish breakfast food, and what would be my favorite Turkish food ever, if not for the wondrousness of manti). Cat has a local menemenci across the street from her, so we had breakfast al fresco and I learned about the shop's rad intercom system: the shop supplied tea to all the shops in the neighborhood, but it wasn't efficient to just send a kid around constantly and ask if folks wanted tea, so there were several intercoms located around the neighborhood, in shops and on the street, and shopkeepers would just buzz over when they needed a glass or two. The speaker was above the cooking surface, so the menemen guy'd listen to Ahmet from around the corner saying he needed 3 glasses, send off the tea boy, and continue cooking. Brilliant. I cannot believe I've lived here so long and not noticed this ingenious system. At least I've noticed the cab call boxes...
Thusly fortified, Cat and I set off up towards Etiler to photograph some election flags. Local elections are at the end of March, and the parties are going all out: in addition to the household appliances mentioned in an earlier post, flags from the major parties are everywhere in the cities, blanketing major intersections, and vans with candidates' photos plastered to their sides drive around all day blaring patriotic party campaign music. A particularly catchy one in Antakya (sadly for Danaijo, it was stuck in my head the rest of our trip) just repeated "Simdi CHP zamani!" ("Now is CHP time!") ad nauseam. Anyway, we photographed our way to Besiktas, where we parted in a pouring rain after stocking up on bootleg dvds; while I was on the hunt for a travel book that included Syria, Cat ended up at a CHP rally with a bunch of politically-active women from GOP (in Ankara, that's the ritzy neighborhood, but in Istanbul, it's one of the more distressed neighborhoods).
I ended up not minding about missing 6 hours of party speeches and songs, because while walking around Tourist Central, Istanbul, I picked up something mythical and wonderful: a MuzeKart. For background, in August the government raised prices for all museums and sites it manages (so, pretty much everything but Dolmabahce Palace and the Basilica Cisterns), while removing the option of a student discount. This meant that Topkapi, had I had the urge to go see both the main part and the Harem part, would have been 35 lira just for me. I felt this to be outrageous, and thus hadn't seen Topkapi, but I did cough up 20 lira for the Hagia Sophia. There is one way to avoid having to pay (outrageous amount) for all those tourist sites: buy a MuzeKart. This 20-lira card, with your photo badly scanned to the back, allows you in to all state-run sites across Turkey for free, for a year. Awesome. The only catch is that it's only for Turkish citizens. No 20-lira pass for yabancis. I had heard, though, that within the past month the rules had relaxed enough to allow students at Turkish universities to also buy MuzeKarts, at a discounted price of 10 lira (because they're, you know, poor students). Armed with my ODTU ID, I braved the line at the Hagia Sophia to try my luck...and it worked! I didn't want to say anything while getting it in case they decided I didn't sound Turkish enough, but mere hours before picking up D I had scored a 10-lira card that would halve our total admission costs at every museum we visited (aside from the Cisterns, but I successfully argued for the Turkish student discount there).
So, fresh from my exciting MuzeKart buying, I headed off to the airport. Apparently at Ataturk International one is not allowed into the baggage claim area if one has not just disembarked from a plane, so I hung out with a bunch of liveried drivers with fancy name-signs, looking for American-looking people as they departed baggage claim. After a group with matching Yale sweatshirts trundled by, Danaijo walked out, and we had our emotional reunion before heading down to the Metro to head back to Sultanahmet. Once settled at our hotel, we then had to get back on the light rail line, take it to the end, hop on a bus, and slowly make our way through rush hour traffic to meet up with Cat for dinner in Arnavutkoy. This would've worked much better if the bus we were on had gone to Arnavutkoy. Instead, we took an unexpected turn in Ortakoy and ended up in some bus depot, with a confused driver asking where exactly we wanted to go. Oboy. I'd even asked when we got on if the bus went to Arnavutkoy.
No matter, we got on another bus, and headed back to Ortakoy, where we took a quick detour through the handicrafts bazaar there on the waterfront before grabbing a cab to Arnavutkoy. Once finally there, we grabbed Cat for dinner at Bodrum Manti (if you've read my other Istanbul entries, you may recognize the name; this is because Bodrum Manti is perhaps my favorite restaurant in Istanbul), where D had her first authentic Turkish meal, kitir ispanakli manti, or fried spinach manti.
Given that D had just gotten off a double-digit-hours-long plane ride, we didn't do much else til the next morning, when we headed out bright and early to the Aya Sofia, before heading to the Basilica Cisterns (they're just cool; I think I've been there 3 times now, and I never get tired of them). After the Cisterns, we headed over to the Blue Mosque before noticing that it was closed for prayer time, so we ambled over to Topkapi, stopping for fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice en route. Topkapi was, in a word, overwhelming. We passed through gate after gate, entering room after room, all absolutely gorgeously decked out in the heights of Ottoman fashion. Detail was everywhere. Tiles were handpainted. Pillows and sofas were richly embroidered with silver and gold thread. Mother-of-pearl inlay was on quite a bit of the woodwork. It was gorgeous. We went a little out of order through Topkapi, and ended up at the very back, where the private quarters open up to a view of both Europe and Asia across the Bosphorous. I simply cannot use enough adjectives to describe the opulence of the setting or the Palace itself. After the Sultan's family quarters, we went through the Treasury. If I said the rest of Topkapi was overwhelming, this was at least triply so. It felt like going through House on the Rock (in Wisconsin, also a cool site, but not quite so pedigreed as Topkapi). There were jewels and thrones and artifacts from the Royal Family. There were medals and awards. But most impressively, there were religious and historical artifacts ostensibly from pretty much all the major players in Muslim (and therefore Judeo-Christian) accounts. There was Moses' staff. Swords from Mohammed aas well as from all his major male associates. The Prophet's beard hair. Other relics from Old Testament prophets. The hand of St. John. The head of St. John. The artifacts went on and on, winding through rooms to the sound of the Quran being read aloud. We figured at first that it was a recording, til we turned a corner towards the end and ran into a little cleric perched on a stool, singing the text into a microphone in front of him as screens to the side scrolled the Turkish and English translation of the verse he was currently singing. Pretty cool.
By that time we had seen so much, my eyes were aching, so we wandered over to the Galata Bridge, where we snagged a few beanbag chairs and had lunch while watching the fishermen above us and the boats below us. Quite nice. After lunch, we went through the Spice Bazaar and its side streets, and spent an enjoyable time haggling over some copper pots and coffee sets. With those purchases in hand, we headed back towards the Blue Mosque to try and find a carpet shop. Normally I avoid carpet shops like the plague, but D had mentioned maybe buying a carpet if she could find a good deal, so we stuck our heads into a shop, to see what we could find. The guys in the shop were naturally quite friendly, and eager to show us 'just the perfect' carpets. They piled up carpet after carpet on the floor, asking us to mention when we saw ones we liked, so they could set those aside to cull the pile slowly but surely. Unfortunately, they didn't show any kilims until I specifically asked, and even then just brought out one half-hali half-kilim, and a few brand-new, machine-made kilims that were as soulless as any beige wall-to-wall. D quite liked the half-and-half carpet, so I asked how much they wanted for it so we could start working our way down. Their original asking price was literally over 4 times what the carpet should have been. Were we wiser, we'd have walked out immediately. Since we weren't that wise in the ways of carpet shops yet, I expressed shock at the outrageous price, and reminded the salesguy that we were students (...close enough) on limited budgets. We managed to knock a few hundred off the price before we decided it was time to check out the selection at a few of the neighboring shops. While we were packing up, we kept chatting, and the salesguy lowered the price significantly. He really didn't want us to check out other shops. We headed out anyway, with the promise that we'd return, as I was hoping that the selection in other shops would be at least closer to what I'd seen in Diyarbakir. Unfortunately, Sunday afternoon is not a popular carpet-buying time, and the other shops either didn't have a great selection, had no staff, or argued with D when she told them she wanted to see pieces with kilim elements. So back we went to the first shop, where after much more discussion and side ponderings on the merits of a few smaller rugs, we felt like we could make a deal, and for a decent price: 500-600 for a medium-sized half-hali half-kilim for D, plus a newer smaller kilim for me. We were within one hundred lira of our tipping point with the salesguy, and finally got him down to our price. Fantastic, no? Wrong! At that point, the owner of the shop (who had been observing, with the occasional comment) stepped in to say that the price for D's rug was 1800, and that there was absolutely no way he would consider going under 1800. What??? We were not amused. (It definitely was not an 1800 lira carpet) We marched out, and decided that carpets were not going to be an Istanbul purchase on our trip. With that enlightening shopping experience under our belts, we picked up our luggage and headed to the Otogar, where we grabbed a bus out to Canakkale that evening. And that will have to be another blog entry, where D and I take perhaps the most circuitous route ever between Istanbul and Ankara.
A quick note on post-travel goings-on: I finally, after a year and a half here, have made it to a football match. I've actually made it to 2, one for Ankaragucu and one for Genclerbirligi (both local Ankarali teams). Both times 'my' team didn't win, or even score, but it was pretty darn fun; today's match featured a hockey-style body check. I've also been meeting up with a few of the other Ankara Fulbrighters, including a new Fulbrighter just in from Greece, and got to an ARIT lecture on historical embroidery which was actually quite charming. It's been busy.
But more of that inshallah in the next post,
-R
Friday, March 13, 2009
A city a day is the Bonkano/Danaijo way...
I'm sitting in Gaziantep, updating briefly before heading off to dinner, afterdinner things, and an overnight bus to Ankara. This week has been a whirlwind of cities and adventures: my friend Danaijo flew into town Saturday night, and we've spent the week since travelling from İstanbul to Çanakkale, to Troy, down to İzmir, flying to Adana for Antakya, over the border to Aleppo in Syria, and back across and up to Gaziantep. It's not a route Lonely Planet would ever recommend, but we,ve seen a great and varied swath of the country, and it's been quite fun. I'll leave the detailed explication til I'm back in Ankara, but a few short bites for now:
-Syria is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. And incredibly cheap. I was a little sad that we could only see Aleppo, but it means I'll just have to return to see Damascus, Homs, Palmyra, and everything else. Also it is delicious, we had falafel every meal, and lıtres of squeezed-in-front-of-us fruit juice.
-Fulbrighters are awesome and hospitality-ful, we stayed at a friend in İzmir's place and also at a friend here in Gaziantep. Both of them have bent over backwards to get us directions, dinner, and anything else we could possibly need while staying with them. It's also great to catch up, as I hadn't seen Dierdre since Thanksgiving, and Alex since Şeker Bayramı. They're both teaching English, and having such different experiences to mine as a researcher in Ankara.
-We still have bought no carpets. Maalesef. I was fairly certain either Danaijo or I would end up with at least one in İstanbul or, failing that, Aleppo or Gaziantep, but it seems fated not to be. We have seen a loooooot of carpets now though, and I'm fairly certain we're both minor experts in regional carpet variations and quality differences by now. We also have a newfound disdain of İstanbul carpet shops; we spent an hour chatting and haggling down to a more-than-fair price until the carpet seller we were talking to suddenly raised the price by almost 1000 lira and refused to reconsider. Inanılmaz. Maybe I'll just have to head back to Diyarbakır for my Turkish carpet...
All right, that's all from Gaziantep. kib,
-R
-Syria is gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. And incredibly cheap. I was a little sad that we could only see Aleppo, but it means I'll just have to return to see Damascus, Homs, Palmyra, and everything else. Also it is delicious, we had falafel every meal, and lıtres of squeezed-in-front-of-us fruit juice.
-Fulbrighters are awesome and hospitality-ful, we stayed at a friend in İzmir's place and also at a friend here in Gaziantep. Both of them have bent over backwards to get us directions, dinner, and anything else we could possibly need while staying with them. It's also great to catch up, as I hadn't seen Dierdre since Thanksgiving, and Alex since Şeker Bayramı. They're both teaching English, and having such different experiences to mine as a researcher in Ankara.
-We still have bought no carpets. Maalesef. I was fairly certain either Danaijo or I would end up with at least one in İstanbul or, failing that, Aleppo or Gaziantep, but it seems fated not to be. We have seen a loooooot of carpets now though, and I'm fairly certain we're both minor experts in regional carpet variations and quality differences by now. We also have a newfound disdain of İstanbul carpet shops; we spent an hour chatting and haggling down to a more-than-fair price until the carpet seller we were talking to suddenly raised the price by almost 1000 lira and refused to reconsider. Inanılmaz. Maybe I'll just have to head back to Diyarbakır for my Turkish carpet...
All right, that's all from Gaziantep. kib,
-R
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
Small Things
In contrast to the last few epic posts, here's a short one, of still-shorter collected thoughts:
-Elections are coming! At the end of the month, Turkey has its local elections. Campaigning has been fierce; I personally was somewhat put out to find that I do not reside in one of the cities where the municipal government is handing out free washing machines in a blatant vote-garnering bid. This was especially distressing as my washing machine broke today, with about 2/3 of my seasonally-appropriate wardrobe still locked inside. Harika.
-Accomplishment of my February: I got YouTube to work. I am a technological master. Ok, maybe I followed a set of clear directions, but it involved monkeying around with my system and fiddling with settings.
-Some things you don't think about when looking at differences between life in Turkey and life in the US. Milk is one of them: I've been on a bit of a milk kick lately, and have run up against several issues: 1. most milk sold here is shelf stable. To me, this just tastes off. 2. There is pasteurized, refrigerated, goes-bad-in-4-days-or-less milk available in the grocery stores, but nothing larger than 500 mL. Also, there is typically one row of milk cartons, hidden next to 10 rows of Ayran cartons, which are next to the other containers of Ayran. Turks love their Ayran. 3. While some of the 'shelf-stable' milk is 'Light', all of the refrigerated milk is whole. Not even 2%, whole/ This takes some getting used to. It does make for great chocolate milk though.
-In this article, a Parliament commission notes that 15% of Turkish students bring guns or knives to school. Not such a good thing. I don't know much firsthand about the primary and secondary education system here, but from what I've heard and read, it's extremely difficult for children coming through the public school system. Turks with any money send their kids private, and if that's not possible, they supplement the public school educations with private exam prep schools.
-As you may have noticed, I'm trying out a little bit of a new look for the blog; I like it so far, but we'll see how it goes.
-Elections are coming! At the end of the month, Turkey has its local elections. Campaigning has been fierce; I personally was somewhat put out to find that I do not reside in one of the cities where the municipal government is handing out free washing machines in a blatant vote-garnering bid. This was especially distressing as my washing machine broke today, with about 2/3 of my seasonally-appropriate wardrobe still locked inside. Harika.
-Accomplishment of my February: I got YouTube to work. I am a technological master. Ok, maybe I followed a set of clear directions, but it involved monkeying around with my system and fiddling with settings.
-Some things you don't think about when looking at differences between life in Turkey and life in the US. Milk is one of them: I've been on a bit of a milk kick lately, and have run up against several issues: 1. most milk sold here is shelf stable. To me, this just tastes off. 2. There is pasteurized, refrigerated, goes-bad-in-4-days-or-less milk available in the grocery stores, but nothing larger than 500 mL. Also, there is typically one row of milk cartons, hidden next to 10 rows of Ayran cartons, which are next to the other containers of Ayran. Turks love their Ayran. 3. While some of the 'shelf-stable' milk is 'Light', all of the refrigerated milk is whole. Not even 2%, whole/ This takes some getting used to. It does make for great chocolate milk though.
-In this article, a Parliament commission notes that 15% of Turkish students bring guns or knives to school. Not such a good thing. I don't know much firsthand about the primary and secondary education system here, but from what I've heard and read, it's extremely difficult for children coming through the public school system. Turks with any money send their kids private, and if that's not possible, they supplement the public school educations with private exam prep schools.
-As you may have noticed, I'm trying out a little bit of a new look for the blog; I like it so far, but we'll see how it goes.
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