This Yabancı Life

A bit of an announcement: New blogthing

2010-03-29T10:29:00.003-04:00

I've started a new blog project, after realizing that I've let this one get far too neglected. I think most of the issue was a lack of focus or overarching theme for this blog, so my new blog is focused specifically on the things, people and places that combing to make up my Istanbul. Check it out! I will probably keep this one up, but clearly on a bit of an abbreviated posting schedule.

My new blog project's over at This is my Istanbul.

Kolay gelsin

Gebze, part II

2010-03-07T07:17:00.000-05:00

It was time to leave and travel on to Gebze's Coban Mustafapasa Cami, the old mosque in Selcuk that was the setting of several OHB paintings. Unfortunately, it was pouring and the streets were overrunning with water. We made a dash for the dolmus, and headed uphill to historic central Gebze, where we found the mosque and learned from Em about various Arabic inscriptions and architectural elements of the structure. We also ran into a guy who seemed to be affiliated with the mosque in some way, Zeki, who showed us around the turbe (tomb, of Coban Mustafapasa, the guy who built the mosque) and got us in to the balcony of the mosque. By that time though, we were soaked to the bone and not about to take our shoes off again, so we sent Matt in to report on the interior from the balcony. After he got back, we headed back to the street and picked up a bus to the train station. The bus was full of preteens, who whispered between themselves the entire ride about whether we were speaking English, Spanish, Russian or Arabic (Arabic?? Really???). Once at the station, we were really glad to dash on to the train and enjoy the scant warmth from the train heaters – we were still soaked to the bone and it was about 35 degrees Fahrenheit out, so from that standpoint were pretty miserable. Gebze was awesome though, and Eskihisar is situated just beautifully on the side of the Marmara, with a harbor full of small fishing boats and the Osman Hamdi Bey house museum fronting on the water. In like May, it'd be the perfect get-out-of-Istanbul daytrip. From the reactions of the people at the house, the mosque, and on the bus, it was clear that not many foreigners actually visit Gebze, which is a pity. It was gorgeous.

Osman Hamdi Bey's seaside house

Gebze'de gezmek, or Why everyone should travel with art history grad students

2010-03-07T06:47:00.001-05:00

With a former-Istanbul-resident friend in town, the normal tourist things are off the activities list, because we've both been there, done that. So yesterday, Em's first full day back in the 'Bul, we headed out to the edge of the city for some sightseeing and antics – to Gebze, a feature of very few guidebooks.

In about two years, Gebze will be a summer weekend jaunt of choice for Istanbullus. I have no idea why it isn't already. Gebze is awesome. So awesome.

Em and I ambled our way out the door and down to Karakoy about midmorning, where we caught the ferry to Haydarpasha to meet up with Matt, a Fulbright teaching assistant from Kayseri, and grab the banliyo train out to Gebze. The banliyo is the suburban train, and Gebze is the last stop. It is not technically in Istanbul, it's actually in Kocaeli province and much closer to the city of Kocaeli itself, but it is reachable on Istanbul public transit, which is always a plus when you're carless. But I digress.

After a nice hourish train ride, past the Marmara coastline and some light industrial zones, we ended up in Gebze, where it had clearly just stopped raining. We found a road sign for Eskihisar, the bit of town where the waterfront and the Osman Hamdi Bey museum are located, and set off, winding through some gorgeous summer homes in the back streets.

At this point, I should point out that Em's a grad student, and Islamic/Ottoman art is kind of her thing, and Osman Hamdi Bey is most definitely her thing. Osman Hamdi Bey is a bit of a rock star – he's perhaps the best-known Ottoman painter, and also the first Turkish head of the Imperial Museum. In his spare time, he founded the Academy of Fine Arts in Istanbul (now Mimar Sinan University), built the Istanbul Archaeology Museum and directed the first Turkish-helmed archaeological dig. So he's kind of a big deal.

By the time we got to the waterfront and found OHB's stately house, it was closed for the lunch hour. We decided to take our lunch hour as well, and headed next door to a decent place for some tavuk in various forms and some catch-up gossip. We then headed back to the museum/house, and found it still locked, so we headed across the courtyard to the two-storey administrative complex adjacent to try and find someone with a key.

Well, we did find someone with a key, but much more awesomely we found the museum's Saturday painting circle! We walked in to this room to find a dozen women painting and chatting away over tea, supervised by an instructor who'd occasionally lean over someone's shoulder to suggest some technique or another. They were really excited to see us, and we were really excited to chat with them, but first we had to see the museum itself, so one of the painting women detached herself from her canvas and brought us over to the house to check out Osman Hamdi Bey's abode.

The museum itself was excellent. Everything was preserved just as it was when OHB lived there, and they had a lot of original artifacts, furnishings and furniture. Em about died when we opened a door dividing the study and a gallery, and the guard casually remarked, "oh, Osman Hamdi Bey painted that door, that's his original painted flowers you're touching."

The house had a lot of reproductions of OHB paintings (many are in the Pera or the Sabanci museums), and Em gave an impromptu lecture on his painting hallmarks (He painted himself into a lot of his paintings, or his wife, and he used a lot of locations in Bursa. Also, because he was in charge of the imperial archeological collection, he painted a lot of pieces from the collection into his artwork, many of which are pretty identifiable.).

The second floor of the house had a few rooms of OHB's painting supplies, including one with wax figures recreating the setting for one of his paintings. The house itself was gorgeous, with some beautiful late-19^th-century Ottoman fixtures. The security guard showing us and the painter (a German woman, Marita, who moved to Turkey some 30 years ago) around the house was really impressed by our enthusiasm about the house, and gave us DVDs with the story of Osman Hamdi Bey produced by the municipality.

After the tour, we headed back through a light rain to the painting studio, where we had tea with a whole group of painters and chatted about their art, OHB, Eskihisar, and pretty much everything else. They were all pretty talented, and were painting in pretty varied styles. I may have finagled an invite to join their Saturday classes.

A Tale of two taxis (and a bonus bus ride)

2009-12-02T16:57:00.001-05:00

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,

Life in this fair city

2009-10-25T14:43:00.003-04:00

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

2009-10-20T13:35:00.000-04:00

So I'll inshallah get a more descriptive post up soon, but this weekend I ran across the Bosporus Bridge from Asia to Europe as part of the Istanbul Intercontinental Marathon. I didn't run the marathon, I peaced out about 5 km in, but I did get to run across the bridge, which was all kinds of cool.

2009-09-21T07:04:00.002-04:00

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

Ramazan days

2009-08-26T13:38:00.002-04:00

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

Summer in the city

2009-08-16T09:24:00.003-04:00

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

Thoughts on the neighborhood

2009-07-18T10:45:00.002-04:00

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.

And now for something a little different

2009-06-23T13:52:00.001-04:00

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

Just a quick update

2009-06-06T16:20:00.005-04:00

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

Big news for my 100th post

2009-05-30T04:30:00.003-04:00

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

Tekirova Pics, and This Week in Ankara

2009-05-23T15:43:00.003-04:00

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.

If a group of unicorns is a glory, a group of Fulbrighters is definitely a pride

2009-05-18T10:39:00.002-04:00

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

A succession of cities

2009-05-08T09:17:00.003-04:00

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.

Journeys to coffee-drinking lands

2009-04-26T18:33:00.002-04:00

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

Aleppo, etc.

2009-04-15T11:52:00.003-04:00

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

Ridiculous amounts of photos

2009-03-24T09:44:00.002-04:00

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

Taking the long way

2009-03-23T11:38:00.003-04:00

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

Before taking the long way

2009-03-22T19:40:00.003-04:00

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

A city a day is the Bonkano/Danaijo way...

2009-03-13T11:23:00.003-04:00

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

Small Things

2009-03-04T16:52:00.002-05:00

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.

Baby, I'm a Star!

2009-02-25T11:39:00.002-05:00

Well, maybe not a star, but as close as I'm ever going to get: yesterday, I went to Istanbul to film an episode of a Turkish cooking show with a friend of mine! It was a riot.

The Show: The show is titled "Turk Lezzeti", which translates to something like "Turkish Flavor" or "Turkish Taste". It's a new show, so it'll start airing in April, and my episode should air in May. It's on TRT International, which is available in Europe and the US, as well as Turkey, so if you folks back home have incredible cable, you might be able to see me. The concept of the show is that every episode, they take 2 yabancis (foreigners) and teach them to make a Turkish dish, while chatting in Turkish about why, exactly, they are yabancis in Turkey.

How I got on a Turkish TV show: Internet-savvy yabanci that I am, I frequent several forums for expats living in Turkey. Usually it's really kind of boring/depressing, because everyone lives in Istanbul, so all the information and events are in Istanbul, so I end up skimming a lot. One of them had a post last week mentioning that a studio was looking for yabancis with free time during the week to film a show. Since I set my own schedule, and thus have all the time in the world during the week, I emailed the contact info given. They called back that night, asked if I had a friend that wanted to go on with me, and set up a date and time. I figured I could easily find another Fulbrighter for this chance of a lifetime (or at least, chance of a grant-time). I originally was going to go on the show with a friend from Ankara, but there was a scheduling conflict, so I ended up meeting up with my friend Emily in Istanbul to do the show (for those that read semiregularly, Emily was one of my partners-in-crime for my Bursa trip).

The Big Day: I boarded a bus to Istanbul bright and early Tuesday morning after a little-too-late night. I took Nilufer this time, which I'd never taken before; they were good, probably about Metro-level in quality. My one complaint was that even though it was the "Express" bus to Istanbul, we still stopped at a rest station for 30 minutes. Some things don't change... I got in to Istanbul by 2:30, and got downtown to Besiktas by 3:30. I'd wanted to stock up on some DVDs for awhile, so I headed to the Buyuk Carsiya to check out the DVD markets. One of my regular go-to places had remodeled since the last time I stopped by, and now has new releases prominently featured, a much shorter waiting time, and bulk-purchase discounts. Excellent. I picked up Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, a season of The Wire, the Shawshank Redemption, and Run Lola Run, all for 30 lira (that's currently under $20, so that's pretty awesome, although apparently not as awesome as Ecuadorian DVD prices). While I was perusing DVDs, I noticed one's Turkish title, because it was so odd: literally, it translated to "Flaming chicken." Intrigued, I looked closer, and saw that it was "The Hot Chick." I think maybe that one should not have been literally translated...

I finished up my shopping and headed to the ferry docks to meet up with Emily, who was coming straight from her calligraphy lesson in Asia. We grabbed a cab, showed the cab driver the address to the studio, and off we went. Side story, the cab driver looked at the address, said "I don't know where that is, but we'll get there," and ended up one building over. Pretty good navigating. We had a bit of fun trying to get in to the studio, as the building had about 7 different entrances, not very helpfully labelled, but we finally got to the right place by about 4:45.

We were ushered in, past the set, and back to the dressing room, where the host was getting her makeup finished up. We said hi to a bunch of people before getting our hair done. The stylist put my hair in a style that I've never done myself, and don't know that I would do, but it looked ok. He finished it off with more hairspray than I thought the can could hold. Next Emily got her hair styled and sprayed, and then we got the makeup treatment. Turkish makeup is of a slightly different style compared to American makeup trends (which clearly I stay up to date on, ya?), and Turkish television makeup is just amazingly over the top. They do not hide from colors that I thought were awesome in middle school. Also, they're big fans of the sparkles. I was up first, and after a few layers of various foundation-type ephemera, the makeup lady got to work on my eyes. She started with some neutral tones that I actually rather enjoyed, before moving to a blue that I think is best described by the name "peacock," or perhaps "Mimi on the Drew Carey Show". That was my main eyeshadow color. It was finished off with some glittery product and ridiculous amounts of mascara, before she moved on to stark blush (the contrast was...almost tuberculosis-patient severe) and glittery lip gloss. I wasn't dressed for clubbing, but my face would have been perfect for hitting up even Reina (the best/most expensive club in Istanbul, where the real partiers go). It was absurd, but awesome. Emily was up next, and got a similar treatment, although as she's blonde, her main eyeshadow color was pink, instead of blue.

Artistry

Thus suitably television-ready, we headed out to the set, where we hung out and chatted with the crew as they prepped the ingredients and dishes for the filming to begin. We also chatted with the host, who asked us some questions to ascertain our Turkish levels and told us about the episode we'd be filming. We were making 2 dishes: muhallebi and güllaç. These are both milk-based puddings, so we got a dessert episode. We got miked up, did our sound checks, and got told by the cameramen where to stand for the best viewing angles.

Side note: any Scrubs fans out there might recognize muhallebi, from the episode where J.D. yells at Omar the Turk for stealing his pudding, "O benim muhallebim, Omar!" I used that line a few times on-set, dork that I am.

Finally, it was time to start the show! We counted down, listened to the theme song, and started in. The host introduced each of us and interviewed us briefly on our backgrounds before launching into a description of the dishes we were making. We got started on the güllaç, heating milk and sugar wıth some rosewater while I crushed some walnuts and mixed them with cinnamon. We chatted a bit about what Emily and I were doing in Turkey, and where we were from, and then the host decided I wasn't well-versed in walnut-crushing and took over while we waited for the milk to boil. We talked about when güllaç is traditionally consumed, which is during Ramazan, and I had to pretend to not know when Ramazan was so she (the host) could explain to me that it moved by 10 days each year. Once the walnuts were well and truly crushed, and the milk had boiled, Emily and I got started assembling the güllaç: We started with a layer of güllaç dough, which is like yufka or phyllo but specifically for this dish, and then added a ladleful of milk and a sprinkling of walnuts. We then added another layer of güllaç dough, and continued for maybe two dozen sets of dough, milk, and walnuts. At the end we poured all the leftover milk over the top, and let it sit while we watched the host work on the muhallebi.

Emily and our finished Güllaç

We made Sakizli Muhallebi, which is made with sakiz. In English, sakiz is 'mastic,' but neither Emily nor I had heard of such a thing before. The host had us each try a piece and... it's a similar taste and concept to gum arabic, although a little less jawbreaker-like in consistency. It's not a flavor I'd've thought to add to pudding, and certainly not one that I'd choose to highlight. But, I think it was added to serve as a jelling or binding agent, as we really couldn't taste it in the final product at all. We added the sakiz to milk over heat, along with (again) sugar and rose water, and a few other ingredients that I've forgotten. Once it started a decent rolling boil, the host stirred for a few minutes and then poured it into three smaller dishes while the crew stopped filming to help set up the set for the last part of the show, the tasting.

The guy in charge, pondering muhallebi placement

While the crew argued over what size of plates to use, Emily and I got to decorate the güllaç, using pomegranate seeds and the leftover walnuts. We embellished the pudding with a large pomegranate heart, with walnuts sprinkled around the edges. The crew really enjoyed it, and got quite a few closeups of the heart güllaç. When the set was ready again, we joined the host on-camera to try our creations and wish our audience a heartfelt "Affiyet Olsun!" (Bon Appetit). The cameras cut, everyone applauded, and the crew all came up to grab some güllaç.

We all stood around and chatted for awhile, and we asked the host where she'd learned to cook. It turned out that she'd studied in Paris, at Le Cordon Bleu, which was pretty impressive. She also told us that she has a cookbook, and is sending us copies of it, which I'm very excited about. I chatted with one of the camera guys for a bit, who was really excited that I was from Ankara, as he said much of the crew was also from Ankara. We talked about neighborhoods, and apparently they're all from Aşağı Ayrancı, which is literally down the street from me.

After a bit, we headed back towards the dressing rooms, where we filled out paperwork, asked about airdates, and got 80 lira apiece to cover our travel expenses. The guy walking us through the paperwork told us that the show will start airing in April, and will be on 3 times a day, 10:30, 3ish, and just after midnight. I'm not sure if it's on every day, but I'll find out once it starts airing. Our episode will appear sometime in May. We also may or may not be mailed a copy of our episode on DVD; I wasn't quite sure on that part, but I really really hope it's the case, because my brief Turkish cooking show stardom is something I want to preserve for posterity. If I do get a copy, rest assured I'll post it here.

We got a ride to Arnavutkoy from one of the crew, and arrived there just in time to meet up with my friend Cat (also Emily's roommate) and her visiting relatives for dinner. The restaurant was on the 4th floor of a building, overlooking the Bosphorous, and as we climbed in view, Cat's reaction to our heavily-made-up faces was priceless. It was a little something like: Cat: "Oh hey guys, you made it....Oh My Gosh! Relatives, my friends do not normally look like this". Laughter, of course, ensued. After a great dinner of fish and mezes, I said my goodbyes and headed to Taksim to catch a bus back to Ankara. I got in at 5am, and promptly headed to bed, exhausted but exhilarated.

The experience was so fun; both the host and the crew were great, and clearly were used to yabancis with much less Turkish. We wowed them with our grammar and vocab, which felt quite nice. This is something that I never would have thought I'd be doing, yet there I was, bantering with the host and crushing walnuts on a Turkish cooking show. I find it bemusing. It was such an incredible experience, and it's such a great story.

In my still-crazy-but-not-as-glamorous everyday life, I went to pub trivia last week, where my team won again, beating a team of my friends by a scant half-point. So we're writing questions for next month. Over the weekend I went to a Beer Festival at the British Embassy's pub, which was quite nice and a chance to have some non-Turkish brews. This weekend I'm heading out to Safranbolu I think, with friends of mine from Istanbul; Safranbolu's embarrassingly close to Ankara, and I've never been. So that'll be good. In my spare time, I'll be hitting up my guidebooks again, doing some planning for March, when my good friend Danaijo is visiting. So life will be full, but not really so busy.
On that note, I'm off,
kib,
-R

The Kindness of Bolulilar

2009-02-14T07:36:00.002-05:00

I went skiing yesterday, with a friend from Istanbul. It was one of the most wonderful, absurd, and essentially Turkish days I've had yet. Cat and I had decided to meet up Thursday night in Bolu, a town of about 120,000 located directly between Istanbul and Ankara, to hang out and do a little skiing at Kartalkaya, the nearby ski centre. As Bolu is just 2 hours from Ankara but apparently 5 hours from Istanbul, I got to town first and got busy checking hotel prices and bargaining. I was quite pleased with myself, as I managed to get this gorgeous hotel down from 160 lira/night to 100 even, but in the end we went with the 75-lira place across the street (Bolu and Kartalkaya have reputations for being very expensive, and this is a case in point: I've never paid over 20 lira/person for a hotel in Turkey, except at Palandoken, which was an all-inclusive package ski deal). Having secured that, I grabbed a sandwich and a coffee before meeting up with Cat. We had a great time catching up and gossiping, of course, and turned in early so we could get up early Friday and hit the slopes.

Friday morning we got up unconscionably early, because Bolu is still 40 km from Kartalkaya, so we had a bit of a journey ahead of us. We asked at our hotel about transport options up to the ski centre, and were told that there were no busses or dolmuses, and that our only option was a taxi. We were a bit shocked, as we'd heard there was a bus up, and were determined to not take a ridiculously-expensive taxi. So we headed for one of the town's squares, and stopped at a shop to ask if they knew of a way to get up to Kartalkaya. They suggested the Belediye, which is the town hall/mayor's office. While we were a little confused as to how the mayor's office might be able to help us go skiing, we set off for the Belediye, and ended up on the second floor, asking I think the mayor's secretary about ways to get to Kartalkaya. They had us wait, and offered us tea while they got on the phone. When the woman came back to us, she told us that a taxi was our only option, but that we were now Guests of the Mayor's Office, so we could get a special discount on the taxi: 70 lira instead of 100 lira. We were a little nonplussed, as 70 lira one-way was still more than we were hoping to spend, but we were a little stuck, so we agreed and she went off to call us a cab. A few minutes later, she came back, to report that she had cancelled the cab, as a man in the office had offered to drive us up. The guy turned out to be the Chief of Police. We headed out of the Belediye, running into the mayor on his way in, and stopped to chat for a bit with him. He, like most people we'd met so far that day, seemed a little bemused by us. We headed out with the Chief of Police, Erol, stopping by a police building briefly to pick up a friend of his, a woman named Eylem. Erol had called her to come along because she spoke English, as he didn't know that we spoke Turkish. We had a really fun ride up the mountain, chatting the whole time about Bolu, what they did, travel, and why we were determined to get up the mountain. Part way up, the car got stuck, and we had to rent snow chains from these guys on the side of the road. Erol wouldn't let us pay for them, even though he was driving up only because we wanted to go to Kartalkaya. We eventually made it to one of the mountaintop resorts, Dorukaya, and Erol and Eylem came in with us for a tea before heading back down the mountain. Again, they wouldn't let us pay for the tea, or anything for gas for the trip. We repaid them as best we could, by giving them some of my freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, which they had never seen before and really appreciated (this is how I spread my Fulbright goodwill--one cookie at a time, apparently). Before they left, Erol took the cafe manager at Dorukaya aside and told him that as we were Guests of the Mayor's Office, he should help us find a cheap way down the mountain once we were finished skiing.
We said goodbye to Erol and Eylem, and headed to get our skis and passes. We were able to successfully bargain down the ski rental price by 15 lira, and the lift passes by 10, although the passes were still exorbitant. We headed out, and started skiing finally. It was decent skiing; the best part about the slopes is that they were almost empty; I don't think there were more than 15, 20 people there skiing that day. Of course, this was partially because the winds were so high that all but 2 lifts were closed, but it was still quite nice and empty on the slopes. Cat grew up in Colorado and could ski before she could walk, so we were at very different skill levels, but I improved a bit and even skied off course a bit with her (not necessarily successfully, but it was pretty darn fun). I stayed pretty much on red pistes, as those were what was open. The snow was fierce; it whipped around in the wind, and the falling snow was roughly the consistency of unflavored Dippin Dots, so on the lifts we had huge pellets slapping into our faces. It was a bit like being sandblasted with sea salt.
After we'd spent a full afternoon skiing, we headed back in to Dorukaya to figure out how to get back to Bolu, so we could grab dinner and a bus back to Ankara and Istanbul. We talked to our guy Ahmet, who Erol had spoken with earlier, and he checked around before telling us that there wasn't anybody heading down the mountain that evening who could take us with, and offering to call us a taxi. We figured our luck couldn't be awesome twice in one day, and asked him to get us a discount on the taxi if he could. While we waited, we chilled with some sahlep and cookies (incidentally, they were the perfect post-ski snack). Ahmet came back, and told us that "there would be no taxi". We were a bit perplexed, but then he told us that there was a bus we could hitch a ride on. One of the guys on the bus came to escort us, and we started talking. It turned out that we were on the local university's ski club bus, heading back to Bolu after a week on the slopes. And the guy we were chatting to was a basketball player who had spent a good part of last year playing ball and studying in Lithuania. The entire bus was pretty interested in us, and we spent the trip down the mountain chatting and singing loud Turkish songs at the top of our lungs. Our basketball player friend offered to help us buy our bus tickets and take us to dinner, so when we got out at the town center, we did just that. We ended up at his family's restaurant, a manti restaurant (manti might just be my favorite Turkish dish...) just off the main street of Bolu. We met his father, his cousin, and his 5-year-old cousin, who was adorable and had just spent a month in America. The 5-year-old was incredibly excited to practice his English skills with us. As we sat down and started chatting, we heard our names being called: we looked up to see Eylem, from earlier that morning, having dinner at the same restaurant, with her father. We ended up all eating together, and she admonished us to be safe with our adventuring. It was a really great meal, delicious, and a little bizarre to be eating with our friend from the morning and our friend from the evening ride, along with their respective families. After taking a quick photo and attempting to pay for dinner (the owner wouldn't let us), we dashed off to the bus station, and on our respective busses, back to our cities and flats and everyday lives.
I was just blown away by how the Bolulilar we met just went out of their way to help us out and get us where we needed to go. And they all refused payment; we saved over 150 lira at least, figuring in 2 taxis at a ridiculously discounted rate plus dinner plus tea. And we had great conversations, in both Turkish and English, got to share some Americana through the guise of chocolate chip cookies, and were Guests of the Mayor's Office. Simply Incredible. Cat was one of my travel buddies both in Cappadocia and in the Southeast; I'd say we're pretty legendary travel companions.
And Bolu is just a fantastic city full of wonderfully nice people.

-R

Erzurum

2009-02-07T17:17:00.002-05:00

This is me in one of the Georgian churches we visited while not skiing, last weekend in Erzurum. This is also my new haircut, it was about time and then some.
-R

News and Notes

2009-02-03T17:13:00.002-05:00

Well it's been a bit of a whirlwind, as per usual. I got home from my last trip a few weeks ago, had just enough time to relax, unpack, and catch up on errands, and then left again. This time, just for a long weekend, to the east of Turkey. I flew to Erzurum with a few (...or 16) friends to go skiing at Turkey's best ski center, Palandoken. We had a great all-inclusive deal Friday through Monday, as most of the folks going were diplomats, with 9-5 M-F-type jobs, so couldn't just leave whenever as I generally can. It didn't turn out quite as we'd expected: Palandoken normally has a good 2-3 metres of snow cover, but due to the worst snowfall in remembered history, they had a whole 10 cm. Not exactly decent ski weather. A few of us did head out Friday to see if it was at all skiable: I went down the only open run once, and decided I didn't need to ski over rocks and ice, and that was the end of that. We did day-trip to another nearby ski center, at Sarikamis, on Saturday, which was excellent. They did have snow, luckily, and I worked my way up from a blue hill to a black, so that was good. We were a motley collection of skill levels, but everyone ended up with at least one partner to hit the pistes with. Sunday we took pretty easy, after a thoroughly enjoyable Saturday night at our hotel, venturing out to Erzurum for lunch to try the regional specialty (cag kebap, it's grilled horizontally, oooOOOooo...) and stroll for a bit. I headed back early with two of the others, and we took a walk up a pist, avoiding the occasional skier and rock. We got to the top right as they were closing the gondola down, and luckily got the very last gondola down the mountain. At the bottom, we met up with the rest of the group for tea and cards before shifting over to dinner, and more cards.
Monday was also a bit of a late start, as we checked out and packed up before heading out to see some relatively-nearby Georgian churches. They were a bit out of the way, in tiny villages way off the main road, so it took awhile to get there. They were beautiful though; fallen into disrepair, and in one case roofless, but majestic and imposing nonetheless. They were also really fun to clamber over. That took most of the day, and we returned to our hotel to pick up our luggage just in time to head to the airport for our 7pm flight back to Ankara. It wasn't quite the skiing holiday I'd anticipated, but it was a lot of fun, and I got to know some really great folks, so it was worth it. Also, from that trip plans were made for more skiing, closer to Ankara this time, so I really can't complain.
This week, I'm doing a bit more catch-up, and hopefully going to a lecture on the Yoruks (a minority group in Southern Turkey) and kilims (Turkish carpets). I'm also starting to take a look at what exactly I'm doing after my Fulbright finishes, which is frankly terrifying, but I suppose it's good to look earlier rather than later, and to have a few options, inshallah. I'll also be preparing to give a presentation on my research to 3 different audiences, in Izmir, Bursa, and Erzurum, organized by the Embassy. The talks won't happen til April, but it'll be good for me to figure out what I should and shouldn't mention.
Ankara is surprisingly warm for February: it was 6 Celsius today, and it rained last week. I remember the last winter I was here, they had record snow and had to call in the military to clear roads around ODTU's campus. I think I prefer this winter.
On that note,
kib,
-R

Coastal Warmth!

2009-01-17T13:39:00.002-05:00

Hey folks,
Am ensconced in s warm hostel in Skopje, finally updating this, checking email, etc etc. We got here this afternoon from Prishtina, Kosovo, which we arrived at from Montenegro and Croatia. We've gone from the icy bitter cold of Sarajevo, to the blinding sun and pleasant warmth of Mostar, to the rain of Split, Dubrovnik, and Kotor, and then back to the cold and ice of Zabljak. Skopje is still chilly, as it's inland, but luckily not hat-and-scarf weather.
A whirlwind update from last time:
Mostar is charming; it may be our favorite town on the whole trip. It was a little quiet, nice and warm, and we stayed with this wonderful couple who brought us fresh homemade cake and tea in bed. Life was great.
From Mostar, we daytripped to Medugorje, Roman Catholic pilgrimmage site since the early 1980s, when 6 teenagers first saw an image of the Virgin Mary. It was beautiful; they've built a massive church, lots of areas for devotions and rosaries and ways of the cross all over and around the town. It was, however, very strange: the town is clearly set up for receiving thousands of tourists a day, which it does get in the summer. But I think we were the only 2 tourists in town. We had the church, and Apparition Hill almost entirely to ourselves, and the restaurant where we grabbed lunch opened just for us. We really appreciated the town, but both agreed we'd really dislike it in summer: we saw photos, and it's absolutely wall-to-wall pilgrims. As it was, it was incredibly peaceful and contemplative, and we had a great day there.
Next up was Split, where we saw the old walled city in the rain. It's the site of Emperor Diocletian's retirement palace, and the city was kind of built up inside the old palace. It's incredibly picturesque and fronts the Adriatic. We just spent an afternoon there, before heading on to Dubrovnic, which was a little similar setup, a walled city on the Adriatic. Both Split and Dubrovnik were so fun to just stroll around and appreciate. The not fun part for us was that Croatia is more developed and threfore much more expensive than everywhere else we'd been. Still, we were able to stay with a family in Dubrovnik, who shared their homemade carob liqueur and told stories of their travelling days.
From Croatia, we headed to Montenegro, first to Kotor, which was gorgeously set on the water, surrounded by mountains on 3 sides. In the morning the fog and coulds kind of rolled over the mountains towards the city, it was incredibly picturesque.
From Kotor, we caught a bus to Podgorica, and then on to Zabljak, which is in Durmitor National Park. During that bus ride, we switched from balmy if damp warm Adriatic weather to cold mountain air; it was a bit of a surprise getting off the bus to snow again. At Zabljak, we went skiing, as one does when one is in Zabljak. It was adventuresome; I'll write more later of course, but suffice to say we got more stories from our day skiing than any other day on our trip.
From Zabljak, we headed to Kosovo, where, due to a ridiculously fast bus and fast customs, we arrived at 2:30 this morning. Arriving at a bus station at 2:30am when one was not planning on grabbing a hotel is not fun; luckily the security guard let us into the bus station, which actually had couches, and the bus station cafe opened at 4:30, so we could collapse into chairs with tea and books. We went through Prishtina, the capital of the Kosovo region, pretty quickly as it's a smallish town. It's also a fun town: to get to the city center we took Bil Klinton Bulevard until it met up with Mother Theresa Street. I enjoyed Prishtina.
We then hopped a bus to Skopje, where we've pretty much done nothing but relax so far; we'll see the town tomorrow before heading Istanbulward. It's been quite an adventure, and we're entering the home stretch...

kib,
-R

Another city, another hostel, another internet cafe...

2009-01-10T10:07:00.003-05:00

A few thoughts on Sarajevo:

-A few of you have asked about the gas crisis and how it's affecting our trip. Well, today we found the most visible sign: Sarajevo's eternal flame has gone out, because there's not enough gas to power it. Yeah. We've also found that most of the hostels in town have shut down their larger, cheaper rooms because those rooms don't have electric heating, and there is no gas for the central heating. Thankfully, while our hostel here would win absolutely no awards, it is warm and does have hot showers, neither of which we were sure we'd find in Sarajevo.

-One thing that I've found really interesting here is the appearance of microcredit institutions. This is the first time we've seen them in Eastern Europe, and there are a fair few of them, around the city.

-There's still damage from the shelling of the city in 1992-1995 visible on many buildings in town. It's a little odd to think that in my lifetime, this city was a war zone.

-Bosnia is soooo Turkish, it's incredible. They have borek, kebap, mercimek corbasi, and patlican salatasi in the restaurants. The cafes serve Bosnaski kafe (Turkish coffee, by another name; a little less thick though). The cake shops sell baklava (in servings 4-5 times the size of Turkish servings) and helva. The guy next to me at this internet cafe is speaking Turkish to his friend. The hotels have names like Merak (Curiosity) and Yildiz (Star). The district with all the shops and restaurants is called Bascarsi (the head/chief market). It's wonderful. I think I will really enjoy Bosnia.

Sarajevo is, as much as Eastern Europe has been, beautiful and cold. We saw a few churches, mosques, and monuments today, including the Latin bridge, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, thus sparking World War One. It was incredible. The other highlight of our day was finding an English bookshop, so we are now fully stocked and ready for many long bus and train rides to come. As long as they're in daylight hours.

kib,
-R

Epic Joyage

2009-01-07T12:00:00.002-05:00

A few things:

-Kel and I have decided we are horrible backpackers. First of all, we don't have legit backpacks--we're travelling around with a school-size backpack and a laptop backback, respectively. Our hostelmates without fail have legit, backpacking backpacks. Second, unlike many of the other backpackers in our hostels, we're in bed by ridiculous-o-clock early, because we're usually exhausted from travelling/staying warm/climbing citadels. Third, we have a bad habit of just showing up in a city, and looking for a hostel once we get out of the bus/train station. Thus we end up like last night, when our train got in to Bucharest after 9, we started walking towards a hostel, got lost, had to take a cab (which ripped us off by a factor of 3, but the end total was still under $5), found that hostel dark and shut down, and took another cab to another hostel. That cab got really ridiculously lost, and we ended up having to call the hostel owner for directions in Romanian before finally showing up at 11:30pm, hoping they actually had rooms. Luckily, winter is most definitely the off season for this region, so they had beds. The last way (for now) that we are just bad backpackers is our choice of time to go voyaging: these areas are clearly set up for summer tourists, generally, and most backpackers come through Eastern Europe once it's not iced over. Oh well... We add our own distinctive flair to our travelling.

-Mishaps so far: I lost my phone yesterday in Bucharest, presumably to a pickpocket. I'm really more unhappy about losing the number than the phone. Kel was grazed by a car this morning, also in Bucharest (don't worry parents and Grandma, she is fine). She stepped into the second part of a 2-median road without looking in the right direction, and a car clipped her with its rearview mirror. Luckily, the car saw her and was braking, and her 4 layers of coats/shirts took away most of the force, so she pretty much was just grazed and scared the living daylights out of both me and the driver, who stopped and got out to yell at us in Romanian. I have spent the rest of the day making sure she looks both ways.

-Both Bulgaria and Romania love love love American pop music. Particularly Katy Perry's "I kissed a girl". I think we hear it at least 3-4 times a day, usually interspersed by Rihanna. Some of these songs I've never heard before, because I'm a square and don't follow new music and such.

-There is a ridiculous Turkish influence here, mostly apparent in food, vocabulary, and traditional music. They've got the same soups, stuffed dishes, stews, and other traditional foods. There are a noticeable few Turkish words in Bulgarian and in Romanian, although not really enough for me to get by speaking Turkish. And the traditional music is verry similar, played with the same instruments and occasionally the same melodies. Of course, the Bulgarians and Romanians will vehemently deny it, as there's still quite a bit of resentment for the Turkish invaders here, even though they were Ottoman and centuries ago. Some things take awhile to change...

On that note, we have a train to catch, so I'll update from another computer, in another country. Hopefully a warmer country.... We think we'll be heading from Belgrade to Sarajevo, then out to the coast to Mostar, Split, Dubrovnik, and points south. Of course, we change our plans nearly every day, so we'll see what happens...
kib,
-R

C-c-c-cold

2009-01-07T03:39:00.002-05:00

We made it to Romania, after a fun travel experience (taking a bus to the one border town with an international ticket office still open, buying said tickets literally 7 minutes before the office closed, and then getting to wait around 7 hours in a not-heated-after-midnight train station for our 3am train). When we got in, we headed straight up to Brasov, in Transylvania/the Carpathian Mountains, where we collapsed at a hostel and later worked up the strength to tour the town a little bit. Brasov is a really charming town, it had a skating rink in the center, right next to the town Christmas tree, and a little Christmas-y market selling gingerbread, handmade mittens and hats, and the like. Kel bought handknitted wool socks, and I bought a handmade hat there, and we both agreed those are some of our best purchases on this trip yet. At dinner that night, the restaurant had boiled wine--we clearly are no longer in the Muslim world.
Our next day in Brasov, we headed out to Bram, to see Dracula's Castle (they call it Bram Castle, and Vlad the Impaler visited it like once, but it's the traditional castle of Dracula). It was magnificently imposing, and Bran itself was an adorable village, clearly swarming with tourists in the summer, but laid back in the winter. We bought handknitted mittens there, which are also some of the best purchases we'd made thus far; my leather driving gloves may suit just fine in Ankara, but in the mountains of Romania they were not cutting it. After Bran, we headed over to Rasnov, which has a more impressive on the interior castle, with a catch: you have to climb several hundred stairs to get there from the village. In that weather, it was a little painful, but we did it and it was worth it. Still, we were soooo glad to get on the heated bus back to Brasov afterwards, where we met up with some other folks from our hostel for dinner. That night, we watched a vampire movie with a guy at the hostel, Vampire Hunter, which we figured was only fitting given where we were.
The next day, we got up and out of town early to get to Curtea de Arges, to see their Princely Court and 16th century Monastery. Our bus ended up taking 5 hours after in broke down on a mountain road and we had to wait for a replacement bus; that was fun. Curtea was snowy and beautiful; we walked a few kilometers between sights, and their monastery was gorgeous and full of art that was a little different than what we saw in Bulgaria. We headed from there to Bucharest, via the smallest train I've ever seen, and are currently there, where we've yet to see the town butwill do so today before heading out tonight inshallah, for Belgrade.
kib,
-R

Quick update from the road

2009-01-03T04:12:00.002-05:00

Kel and I are in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, which is fun to say. We went through Sofia relatively quickly (again, museums were closed, although the museum gift shop was open at least--I seem to be particularly gifted at travelling on holidays that result in the closure of buildings), but still saw everything important.
We got in to Veliko Tarnovo last night, so are doing the see-everything thing today, but so far this is a wonderful town. I could quite easily come back, especially in like May, when it's not ice-covered. Our hostel is cozy and chill, and the owner so far has gone out of his way to pick us up at the bus station, go over maps of the town and potential touring routes with us, and give us info on the train to Bucharest; they also include light dinner and breakfast in the price, so it's a fantastic deal for a backpacking hostel. After we got in and got settled, we went out for dinner to this fantastic restaurant with literally over 500 items on their menu. It was ridiculous--page after page of delicious-sounding dishes. The food was amazing as well--Bulgarian food has a Turkish influence but is a bit heartier, which makes sense because it's definitely colder here. On the way back from dinner, we could see the fortress complex above the town, all lit up--Veliko Tarnovo was the capitol for centuries, so it has a huuuuge fortress complex, which we're seeing today.
That's all for now,
more from Romania,
-R

An open letter to the town of Plovdiv

2008-12-31T08:19:00.002-05:00

Dear Plovdiv,

You had such potential. Lonely Planet argued that you were perhaps the most enjoyable town in Bulgaria. Your old quarter seemed full of churches, museums, a mosque, and ruins--perfect for the first stop of our trip. Granted, we did arrive at your doorstep at 6am, but that was due to ridiculously fast lines at the border, not our own planning. Thank you for the train station, where we killed time for 2 hours before striking out to see your sights, that was much appreciated.
However, I must say I'm disappointed in you. I can understand the churches being closed during Mass, but locked up immediately after Mass? There are tourist shop windows inside all three churches we attempted to visit, so clearly you accept that tourists visit these places and are used to them coming to the extent that you have various religious tchotchkes available for purchase inside the churches. To lock them up so we can't actually see them is a bit cruel. Same with the mosque--I know once we crossed the border, we switched out major religions, and Muslims are no longer the majority, but you have the oldest mosque in the Balkans right in your downtown, and you keep that locked as well? We were 0-4 for religious building viewings in your town.
And then there are the museums. Not a single one open? The Old Town is pretty much entirely museums, we couldn't even get into the ones that weren't on our itinerary. I know there are fewer visitors in the winter, but most of them had winter hours posted, and were clearly not open during those hours. And you'd think if they're closed for the New Years holiday someone would have the decency to put up a sign, even in Bulgarian. Apparently not. Even the wine museum was closed. It was like negative 10 degrees out, we were really looking forward to that museum and its wine tasting. But no, we had to trudge back to the train station, to board a train to Sofia before noon, when we'd planned on spending the entire day seeing the charms of Plovdiv, freezing and wholly disenfranchised by this allegedly-endearing town.
Your one saving grace, Plovdiv, was your Roman ruins: they were outside and open-air, and thus could not be closed. It was, however, cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, so even that, and wandering through your array of modern statues downtown, was not so pleasant and really rather hurried.
Now, I can see the potential, Plovdiv. Had all the museums been open, and the churches and mosques been unlocked, and more of your fine retail and dining establishments been open before we left (I'm as big a fan of a lie-in as anybody, but shops and cafes are normally open before noon, no?), and especially had it been about 30C warmer, you may have been an adorable little town. But it's painfully apparent that winter is just not your forte. At all.
Hugs,
R and Kel

We did make it to Sofia, and are figuring out where our hostel is before heading out for some fantastic-sounding Bulgarian food. We may never take a train again though, after this 4-year-old across the aisle screamed for the entire 2.5 hour ride from Plovdiv to Sofia. We also may never have children. Jury's still out.

Frustrations with individual cities aside, Bulgaria is a great country so far. The Cyrillic alphabet is taking a little getting used to, but we're getting it down slowly but surely, and can say 'yes,' 'no,' 'where is,' and '2 student tickets please' so far, so pretty much we're set. We had breakfast at a great cafe in Plovdiv that had a featured beverage that was half Coca Cola, half coffee. Clearly these are my people, I've been drinking Diet Coke and coffee mixes since high school. The border crossing was decently straightforward, as we were the only non-Turks, non-Bulgarians on the bus. Last night in Istanbul, we got in with enough time to hie to my favorite restaurant, Bodrum Manti, for dinner before heading to buy tickets and get to the bus station. At the bus station in Istanbul, we had some time to kill, so we followed some signs Kel saw to what may be the world's sketchiest Internet cafe. It was in this sub-basement level of the bus station, in this maze of shops and commerce businesses that clearly had been abandoned for quite some time. It looked like the set of a horror movie, and it smelled like one too. When we got back to the main level, we saw a huge, clean, non-sketchy internet cafe literally right in front of our noses, that we somehow had missed entirely in our singleminded determination to choose the least legit business in the entire Istanbul bus station (a difficult task, as those who've spent time there are well aware). So much for an auspicious start to the trip...

Hope you all are doing great!
Happy New Year,
-R

Holidays

2008-12-29T15:46:00.002-05:00

Well it's quieted down somewhat here in Ankara--I gained 3 houseguests, lost two, and now am gearing up to take off for a jam-packed tour of Eastern Europe with my sister. This week has been mostly settling things up and packing/buying wool socks and other warm things in preparation for the snowy wilds of the Balkans; Lonely Planet casually mentioned that the part of Romania we're passing through gets to -35 Celsius in the winter. Oh boy.
Last week I picked up Kel and her 2 friends in Istanbul, after some miscommunication on meeting points and rain. We headed straight out to Arnavutkoy, to drop my stuff off at my hostel and then to have manti at my favorite Istanbul restaurant, Bodrum manti. They all got different kinds of manti, and we stayed for coffee and got free dessert, so it was a good time. We then headed over to ARIT, where I was staying, because there was a lecture there that night by a professor from Princeton. I'd been told it was going to be about Ataturk, which I was excited about, but when we got there, the guy started talking about 14th century Ottoman expansion into the Balkans, so we were a little bewildered. It was a really interesting lecture though, and we met up with friends and fellow Fulbrighters of mine at the reception afterward. ARIT, incidentally, is the American Research Institute in Turkey, a very awesome organization with offices, libraries, and hostels in Istanbul and Ankara. I stayed at the Ankara hostel when I moved in August.
We took the bus back to Ankara Tuesday, after Kel and her friend Katelyn toured Dolmabahce Palace and the 3 of us headed over to Kadikoy for the Tuesday Bazaar only to be told that the Tuesday Bazaar was "finished". We were a little confused, and later saw a news report of policemen violently suppressing something at the Tuesday Bazaar earlier that day, so I'm not sure what was going on in Asian Istanbul that morning. Our bus back to Ankara was a little interesting: the ticket man called it a 'bistro bus,' because it was 2 levels, and the bottom level had a 20-seat cafe, serving hot snacks. It was pretty darn cool. It also had wireless internet, but I sadly neglected to bring my computer, so couldn't enjoy that.
Wednesday, I sent the three travellers off to Ulus to see the citadel and Museum while I made stew and danced around my apartment to Christmas music. Once they got back, we all headed to the Vatican Embassy for midnight Mass, which was at 7:30. We arrived early enough to snag a pew, but over half of the people who showed up ended up standing in the back, in the aisles, and even behind the altar. It was packed. There also was beefed-up security, as there was at least one Ambassador and his family there (I think it was the French Ambassador). The Papal Nuncio celebrated Mass, which was very cool as I'd never seen him before; the Papal Nuncio is the Vatican's Ambassador, an archbishop in his own right, and usually assigned to a posting for life. They are awesome. Mass was beautiful: all the songs were sung in English, Latin, French, and Turkish, and there were songs in Tagalog and an African language as well. The readings were in Spanish and Portuguese, and the Gospel was in Arabic (and then in English by little kids). After Communion, some of the members of the African community here in Ankara sang 2 songs and danced through the center of the church, which was really lovely. A friend of mine tried her hand at matchmaking and found a Marine to sit next to me for Mass; he was nice but a little confused by all the Latin as he wasn't Catholic. Anyway, he seemed nice and is also here for a year, but I never end up running into the Marines in the city (maybe they go to all the student bars that I never get to). After Mass, there were homemade Christmas cookies and spice cakes and wassail in the church library, and I introduced my posse of houseguests to an Arabic-speaking acquaintance of mine, who proceeded to chat with them for a good while. As we left, he told me Kel's Arabic was "super", so that was nice.
Back at chez moi, we had an enjoyable Christmas Eve of chicken stew, hummus, and Love Actually. Kel and I got to talk with the extended family via Skype, and opened our gifts over video; we both got lefse boards, and were inordinately excited about that. The next day was a bit of a lazy day: my posse went off in search of Anitkabir while I got some work done, and we watched Christmas movies all day. I didn't really want to cook, so we went to my neighborhood traditional Turkish restaurant for guvec and gozleme, which they'd not had before. The next day, Katelyn and Tommy both skipped town, one for the airport and a flight home, the other for Istanbul and a flight to Serbia, so it was a little discombobulated around the old apartment. I had my last Turkish lesson, which was bittersweet, as I really enjoyed those lessons and learned quite a bit.
Friday night Kel and I met up with several of the Ankarali Fulbrighters for dinner at Sedir and dancing at the Turkish American Association's 'Send in the New Year' party. The party was a lot of fun, and we all danced dorkily, as is our wont. It helped that I think we were the only yabancis in the room. Kel wowed the crowd with her snazzy Ecuadorian-night-club dancing, and Joan and George I think were polka-ing it up at one point, so we were an eclecticly fun group of dancers.
The weekend was pretty much given over to working on this round of grad apps, planning out our trip, and watching way too many movies (I have to get my fill of internet before going computerless for the entire length of the Balkans, you know). I stopped by ASTI to see when we could get a bus to Plovdiv, which is our destination in Bulgaria, and was slightly disheartened when, after asking the Varan representative "Bulgaristan'a gidiyor musunuz?", he responded with "I'm sorry, I don't speak English." Fantastic. At least the Metro rep was appreciative of my Turkish and had 6 busses to Bulgaria, to boot.
The whole neighborhood loves Kel; every single checkout girl stopped to ask if we were sisters, and how long she's in town, and such, as well as the corner shop guy next door and the restauranteurs down the street. Today I stopped by one of the grocery stores without Kel, and the checkout girl asked if my sister had left already, in a slightly worried tone; I explained that she'd be in town for a few more days still.
It snowed here for Christmas, which was wonderful, and again on Sunday, which really brought winter to the city. I'd forgotten how much I love taking a walk while the snow falls. We should see plenty of that up north; I'll probably be ready for another trip to Gaziantep or Antakya by the time we get back.
I'm heading out tomorrow for Istanbul, and then on to the shiny metropolis of Plovdiv, and then beyond to the great cold wonders of Eastern Europe. I'll try to keep this updated on the road, and inshallah will be able to upload pictures from larger cities along the way.
Hope your holidays were/are relaxing and wonderful,
kendine iyi bak,
-R

A Few Pics from Bursa

2008-12-20T17:45:00.002-05:00

Ceylan and me in our headscarves outside the Yesil Cami, so named because of its green-tiled interior.

Minarets at Yesil Cami; I really love minarets, they're so beautiful, and generally pretty well-designed and unique.

Part of the tomb complex at Muradiye Cami; there are about a dozen buildings, each with several-to-quite-a-few people buried inside, mostly royal. Apparently, every single imperial son buried there was murdered by a member of their immediate family for succession reasons.

Kebabci Iskender's crack doner-shaving team; serving up portions of the original Iskender Kebap. Also note how ridiculously bundled-up I am--I think I'm wearing 4 layers in this photo because like an idiot I went on vacation in December in the mountains with sweaters but not a coat. Also notice how fast that guy's hands are moving, he is a meat-shaving master.

It's been a quiet few days here in Ankara; pretty much I've just been cooking, shopping, and catching up with folks here there and everywhere. Kelly landed this morning in Istanbul, where she's doing the tourist thing in Sultanahmet for the weekend, and where I'll pick her up on Monday as long as she doesn't get horribly lost in Besiktas.
I also have apparently become one of the identifying characters of my neighborhood, the old men at the kuruyemis/corner store next to my building notice when I'm gone for a few days, and love telling me how great my Turkish is (unfortunately, it's entirely hyperbole, but I appreciate it), and the checkout people at the grocery store half a block down the street compete to get me in their line. I'm hoping it's because I'm an endearingly odd yabanci, but who knows...
On that note,
kendine iyi bak,
and hope all you-all are having a great holiday season!
-R

This Ankarali Life

2008-12-18T21:22:00.002-05:00

Lots has happened since my last blog update (I know, I've been remiss): I finished my language grant, went on vacation, and had the usual motley adventures that seem to spring up when one lives in this city. I sadly can't go into too much detail without taking up way too many paragraphs, so I'll give the Cliffs Notes version:
Met up with my friend Jim for Thanksgiving, which was really fun; it was good to see someone I've known longer than 4 months, and adventures ensued. Came back to a crazy few days of grad school applications and last-minute Turkish lessons before the language part of my grant officially ended and Kurban Bayram began. Kurban Bayram (or Eid, if you're an Arabic speaker, or Tabasky if you're from Niger) is the sacrifice holiday, and every family slaughtered a sheep. I did not; what would I do with a sheep? I did venture out that evening to go grocery shopping, only to find every single shop on my street other than the bakery closed. So I had pogaca and chocolate-chip cookies for dinner. So traditional, and so healthy. I was really relieved to see the stores reopen slowly over the rest of the week, so I could buy some pomegranates and vegetables. At the end of the week, I hopped a bus to Bursa, which is a bit south and east of Istanbul, to meet up with 2 Istanbullu Fulbrighters for a whirlwind vacation. Bursa is famous for its silk market, its textile industry, being the birthplace of Iskender kebap, and the Yesil Cami, or Green Mosque. To gloss over a lot of history, the Ottomans kind of hung tight there for a bit before conquering Constantinople. Ceylan, Emily and I had Iskender kebap at the restaurant that invented the dish: there is a line out the front of the restaurant all day long, and when you enter they ask you how much Iskender kebap you'd like. There's nothing else on the menu. Once you're seated with your kebap, they have waiters walking around with pitchers of hot melted butter to pour over the kebap.
A side note: Iskender kebap is kebap meat (so, usually beef, lamb, or a combination of the 2), shaved doner-style onto a plate with chucks of bread lining the bottom. The meat is then smothered in yogurt and usually something tomatoey as well. It's wildly unhealthy, but delicious, and is named after Alexander the Great. It's said to have been his favorite dish, but then again the Turks say a lot of things.
Anyway, in Bursa we also went through the silk han (marketplace), spent a lot of quality time in the bazaar, had some pretty excellent salep (it was pretty darn cold out). We also spent a lot of quality time in mosques: Bursa has 3 decent-sized and historic mosques, and Emily and Ceylan both are studying Islamic art. Our first mosque was the Yesil Cami, which was gorgeous. The caretaker turned on the lights just for us (after we spent a lot of time trying to see green tile patterns in the semidarkness), and even let us go up and explore the Sultan's Loge, where the Sultan's family prayed. It's on the second level, so the royal family didn't have to brush up with the ordinary people, and was pretty cool. The other two mosques had some interesting parts, but had both been extensively damaged and restored on the interior, and really not very well. The Ulu Cami in particular was this huge gorgeous old building pretty much whitewashed on the inside and decorated with Arabic script, which I think normally looks beautiful but which was really overdone there.
I got back to Ankara late, and spent the rest of the weekend unpacking, before my next houseguest showed up: Kirk, another Fulbrighter from Istanbul in town for a few days to meet with professors and such in Ankara. I spent some quality time shopping for warm clothes for my sister when she shows up fresh from Cairo's warm climate, had a fantastic lasagna with some Fulbright friends, and have been working on the odds and ends that invariably clutter life for most of this week. Next week, I'm heading to Istanbul to catch a lecture on Ataturk, which promises to be interesting, and to pick up Kelly and her 2 friends from Cairo and shepherd them back to Ankara just in time for Christmas (with a stop at the best restaurant in Istanbul and one of the 3 best in Turkey en route. Gotta get my manti fix).
I'm looking forward to Christmas, although it'll be a little weird being the only ones celebrating. There are decorations up all over the city, particularly in the shopping malls, but they're for New Years. They have New Years trees, decorated in red and green, with New Years presents underneath. New Years lights are everywhere. And there are even New Years Santas. It's a little bizarre, but definitely appreciated.
That's about it for the time being; I'm slowly uploading more photos to Flickr, and have part of my Bursa trip up so far. I'll try to post some highlights here later.
Kendine iyi bak,
-R

Weekend activities in this neck of the woods

2008-11-23T14:31:00.002-05:00

So I'm finally relaxing after a whirlwind of a weekend, only to pick right back up for another busy week. Life in Ankara is surprisingly full.
Thursday my friend Cat arrived in town, for Fulbright Thanksgiving later in the weekend, so I headed over to where she was staying and had a little Seker Bayram adventurers' reunion with her and Corey to start off the weekend. Friday, I got up in time for my Turkish lesson before heading to the 5M Migros to stock up on Thanksgiving ingredients, attempt to find vanilla extract (fruitless, there is apparently no vanilla extract in Turkey), and buy an immersion blender for Cat. I got back in time to get all gussied up for the St. Andrews Ball, put on by the British Embassy.
The St. Andrews Ball was an interesting experience. It was much smaller than the Marine Corps Ball, but was held at the same location, the Swisshotel. I got there Friday night to find media and television crews everywhere. Apparently, I walked in right behind the Fenerbahce football team. They were still in the lobby when I came in. For my American readers, this is roughly equivalent to going to a hotel in New England that the Patriots just checked into (or, if you're a Doffing, the Twins, in Boston ;) ). I got a few photos, but really don't know which player is which. It was exciting though. I met up with Cat, Corey, and Corey's boyfriend in the lobby, and we headed down to the ballroom and chatted for a bit with the rest of our tablemates. I knew just over half of the folks at our table, but everyrone was really nice, and I ended up sitting next to a New Zealander that I'd had dinner with before and a Japanese diplomat who spoke fluent Turkish and not-so-fluent English, and who I ended up spending most of the meal chatting with in Turkish. I was able to hold my own in discussing why Turkey shouldn't join the EU, and Turkish cinema, and my research, but my brain hurt afterward.
The ball was a celebration of Scotland, so everything was Scottish. Every table had a bottle of Scottish whiskey on it. The meal started out with a ceremonial cutting of the haggis. The owner of my favorite Ankaran Indian restaurant got up and gave a speech in a fantastic Scottish brogue (I understood one word, "knife") before flourishing a huge knife and spearing the haggis. It was pretty fun. We were then served haggis, which was interesting and actually not half bad. Dinner was not so Scottish: prime rib and other normal and delicious food. The menu was entirely in Scottish though, so I'm not sure exactly what all else we had.
The after-dinner entertainment was entirely Scottish dancing: highland social dances, reels and the like. It started out kind of interesting, and I did dance with my Japanese diplomat friend, but after awhile it got to be a little much: every song had a new dance that had to be taught to everyone, and we kept waiting for a DJ to come in, or for some more contemporary dancing. In the end, we left I think just before midnight and headed over to a French friend of Corey's' place. I got in pretty late, and was pretty exhausted the next morning when I had to get up to let in my houseguests.
Saturday morning, bright and early at 9:30, Tracey, Deirdre, and Alissa arrived at my place from the otogar. These 3 are Fulbright English teaching assistants out towards the coast in the West, and had taken an overnight bus from Izmir to be in Ankara for Fulbright Thanksgiving, which was later that day. Luckily for me, they were also exhausted, so we all went back to sleep until a much more decent hour. I finally had to get up to get started making my dishes for Fulbright Thanksgiving: I was bringing mashed potatoes, hummus, and wild rice (so, an absurd amount of starch). My houseguests brought an apple pie with them from Izmir and make a chocolate pie at my place, before we all headed over to Corey's. There was a really great mix of people at Corey's: all but two of the Ankara Fulbrighters, and my 3 houseguests and Cat; I think we were 15 altogether. One of the Ankarali Fulbrighters brought her 4-year-old daughter, who was absolutely adorable and precocious. Given the age range of the Fulbrighters (we go up to at least the mid-60s), it felt like we had a whole family spread there.
Fulbright Thanksgiving was delicious. We were able to get a turkey from the US Embassy (they fly them in for the Embassy community, so it was a Butterball and everything), and figured out how to make it, even though I think only one of us had ever made one before. Everyone brought a dish or several, so we ended up with broccoli-cheddar-bacon salad (Joan hoarded bacon bits from the States just for it), carrot-lentil salad, cacik, hummus, vegetable spreads, stuffing, gravy, homemade breads, 3 kinds of potatoes, wild rice, and I think more that I can't remember. It was oh so very American. After the dinner, we sat around in food comas and caught up on everyone's life and projects, and played a little Turkish Scrabble (the rules are a little different: you have to play with verb stems instead of the whole verb, and plurals aren't allowed, nor are any suffixes). Once we'd recovered from dinner a bit, we had dessert, with the pies, several kinds of cookies, and a wonderful, wonderful fruit salad (pomegranates are a good good thing) before settling down for more chatting and a nice game of UNO (it's so much easier to play when the 4-year-old will tell the whole table what cards she can see in peoples' hands...). It was just such a great day, and so nice to have that familiar Thanksgiving experience. I hadn't seen some of the Fulbrighters since orientation, so it was great to catch up, and we all got to do a little bragging and venting about living in Turkey.
After those few crazy days, I've taken it easy so far today. My houseguests left this morning, and now I've got to make and get through my to-do list before heading out for Thanksgiving part II, ex-Bay State Road edition.

Before I go, I thought I'd leave you all with this: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/english/domestic/10419495.asp?scr=1
which I find really amusing. It's even more amusing when you realize that a second court order has been enacted to ban YouTube, which does absolutely nothing more than the first one and thus is entirely superfluous. I love this crazy country...

kib,
-R

Some Nemrut Pics

2008-11-17T16:10:00.001-05:00

These are the statues on the West face of Nemrut Dagi, before sunset

Sunset from Nemrut Dagi. I don't remember the last time I was so cold. It was gorgeous, though.

Me and one of the statues on the East side

Real life, Ankara-style

2008-11-17T15:08:00.002-05:00

My last few posts have been primarily about my Seker Bayram trip, but now that I've finally got all my photos of that online, I figured at this point I'll just post more detailed captions on Flickr and move on here to more recent events. Finally.
Life just gets busier and busier here. I'm currently taking one class at ODTU, and have two different Turkish tutors. Last week, I started volunteering as a substitute English teacher for refugees through the Ankara Refugee Support Group and Meryem Ana, the church at the Vatican Embassy; those classes are twice a week. My first day there was quite a fun challenge; the refugees speak pretty much no Turkish, and I speak neither Arabic nor Farsi, so I got to put my acting skills, such as they are, to good practice. I'm not sure how often I'll actually have the opportunity to teach, but I hope to be able to return relatively often.
Last weekend was pretty darn busy for me as well. On Friday, I had my Turkish lesson (luckily, the closer one, not the 1.5-hours-away one), and then skedaddled over to Ulus to go to a hamam with 3 of my fellow Fulbrighters. It was fantastic; we went to Tarihi Merkez Hamami, which is an 18th century hamam and still very much a neighborhood institution. It was also, compared to Istanbul hamams, wonderfully cheap: 20 lira for the works, compared to up to 60 in Istanbul's main hamams. We got scrubbed within an inch of our lives and then wandered back to Cankaya, where we met up with a few more Fulbrighters for dinner. On Saturday, I met up with my friend Jen for lunch before we got mani/pedis, which we'd won at the ARIT open house. When we got to the salon for our 1pm appointment, we were told that the person who did the mani/pedis on our certificates wasn't in til 4. So we left, and I ran a few errands, before meeting back up at 4. We didn't get out of the salon until after 6, which was kind of an issue, as we were both going to the Marine Corps Ball that night, which started at 6:30. After a mad scramble back home, into my dress, into makeup/accessories, and up to the Swisshotel, I arrived fashionably late just after 7, just in time for the presentation of colors and the speeches. The ball was really fun; a wide section of the diplomatic community was there, as well as 4 or 5 of us Fulbrighters, and a sizeable contingent from the USO (including the Ying Yang Twins, which was kind of cool), who were on their way through Ankara on a whirlwind tour. After the speeches, they served dinner, which was followed by a live band and later a DJ. It was a great chance to catch up with folks I don't see as often as I should (for all we live in the same city...), and I kept running into people I knew (for a city of 5 million people, Ankara is really a small town, where everybody knows everybody). After dancing with friends and other folks, I cut out just after midnight, a la Cinderella. This weekend, I've got another ball to go to, this one hosted by the Brits, which should also be a lot of fun, as Fulbrighters from out of town are in Ankara for the weekend and coming along.
Speaking of this coming weekend, it looks to be fun and a half: we're celebrating Fulbright Thanksgiving this Saturday, with most of the out-of-town Fulbrighters coming in for the weekend. We have a real turkey (surprisingly less than easy to find in a country with the same name), cranberry sauce, and are potlucking everything else. Most of the outlying Fulbrighters I've not seen since orientation, so it'll be great to catch up on everything.
Other than that, life continues to be steadily busy, and I continue to learn more and more Turkish, and more about Turkish foreign policy every day. Next week, I'll be taking off for Thanksgiving for a little ex-RA expat reunion, Madrid-style. Stay tuned for pics.
kib,
-R

The Rest of Bayram: Sanliurfa

2008-11-08T06:33:00.000-05:00

In my quest to finally get up-to-date on this so I can write more on current happenings in my Ankaran life, I'm going to try and get the rest of my Bayram trip posted all at once here...
We got into Sanliurfa (also known as just plain Urfa) after dark on Tuesday night of the Seker Bayram holiday. We grabbed a taxi to take from the bus station to our hotel (we'd called ahead and reserved a room from Diyarbakir; one of the perks of knowing decent amounts of Turkish).
When we got in the cab, we immediately noticed that it had no meter. The driver was attempting to leave the parking lot of the bus station when we asked him how much it was going to be to take us to our hotel; it’s a good thing we asked, because he quoted us 10 lira, for a trip that we knew had to be much cheaper. When we told him that there was absolutely no way we ere going to pay that, he tried to argue that we were getting a really cheap rate, and tried to drive off with us in the cab, at which point I opened my door to keep us at the bus station til our money situation was resolved. We finally all agreed on 5 lira, which was still too much but at least not exorbitant. The cab was sketchy as heck, too; one of my travel companions was more than a little freaked out by the whole situation, but we got to our hotel with no additional fuss. When we got there and checked in, it was clear we were getting out of The East: the front desk had a wireless router, had we schlepped our laptops along we could’ve had wireless internet. Next time...
Our hotel was pretty nice; our room had an enclosed balcony and breakfast was included in the price. In the morning, we had bread, olives, tomatoes, and cheese in the ambitiously air-conditioned breakfast room before setting out to the tourist center of Urfa. Urfa is really handy for tourists in that pretty much everything one would want to see in the city abuts one central park/public space. It’s brilliant, as you can see everything, and you know where absolutely everything is. It also works well for Urfa’s guide program: the city has a program set up where high school students interested in careers in the tourism industry guide visitors around for free, to practice their English (or other foreign language of choice) and their tourist demeanor. Longtime readers of this blog might remember Le Xuan and my adventures with our incredibly overeager tour guide, Cebrail, last time I was in Urfa. Luckily, we must have looked like we knew what we were doing this time, as we attracted no would-be guides (or perhaps they were all at home for Bayram, but either way it worked out great for us). We got to the complex of mosques that mostly mark major events in the life of Abraham (he was born/lived in the city), and explored/took pictures for a bit. After a half hour or so, Corey and I left Cat to meticulously photograph everything interesting and headed downtown to find a travel agency for our Nemrut plans. We’d both been through Urfa before, so this ended up working out great. We set off through the (largely closed) bazaar, and ended up taking an unexpected scenic route through a really old neighborhood on our way back to the city center. Once we got to the main business street, we found that the tour company we’d hoped to use was closed for the holiday. We stopped by another agency, which catered predominantly to Turks, and were a bit discouraged to hear that they only had a tour planned that Friday or Saturday for Nemrut (in order to get over to Antep, and then back to Ankara on time, we pretty much had to go up Nemrut that day, Wednesday, or the next). With the promise of a phone call to see what our options would be for getting a tour organized for the next day, we headed out and decided to stop by our hotel to see if they could help us find an open tour operator. They luckily had the cell phone number of the company we’d originally tried to stop by, and the owner of the company headed straight over to our hotel to meet us. We had a good long chat over the logistics and options of doing a tour to Nemrut, debating back and forth over whether to see both the sunrise and the sunset, or one or the other, whether we could squeeze into a car, or whether he thought he could find more people and make a minibus a better idea (2 of our friends from Gaziantep were joining us in Urfa for the Nemrut part of our trip, making us 5, which would have been a squeeze in a car with a driver). We ended up bargaining down the price and deciding on the two-day trip option, leaving the next morning, seeing both sunset and sunrise on the mountain, and the being dropped off in Adiyaman the next day to catch a bus to Gaziantep.
After settling all the details of our Nemrut tour, Corey and I met up with Alexandra and Erin, the English Teaching Assistant and English Language Fellow living in Gaziantep. We all met up with Cat for lunch at Halil Ibrahim Sofrasi. We’d been at a restaurant of the same name in Van and it was amazing, so we were hoping for the same experience in Sanliurfa. It wasn’t quite as fabulous, but it did have great patlican kebap and overlooked the main tourist park area. After lunch, we strolled through one of the mosques and around the sacred carp stream before heading up to the fortress (I’ve explained what the various parts of Sanliurfa’s mosques and such are in my posts about Sanliurfa 3 years ago, if you’re interested, check out my April entries from 2006). We spent the afternoon on the fortress, strolling, chatting, and taking some really fun photos. While we were on the fortress, we met a teacher who had been a Fulbright Teacher Exchange participant last year; she taught science in the Bronx, but is back in Istanbul this year teaching. She and two of her friends were also on vacation in Sanliurfa, and thinking of going up Nemrut the next day. After chatting with the 3 of them for a bit, we climbed down from the citadel and struck off to find dinner. Sanliurfa is known for its “Turkish Night” dinners, in restaurants in old Ottoman mansions. We headed to one, only to find it completely booked for the night. Luckily, with our mad Turkish skillz we were able to talk to the host, and he called around to other restaurants, found one with open places, and had them send a guy over to bring us to the right place. Bizarrely, we bumped into Juliya (the former Fulbright teacher) and her friends, and had dinner with them. Dinner was really good; they had a set menu, with 2 different soups, mezes, and a communal kebap platter with chicken, kofte, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. The real fun part, though, was the music: they had a traditional Ottoman/Turkish band, which played folk songs for literally hours. There was a Turkish package tour group there, and they all got up and danced around the dinner tables, more enthusiastically than skillfully. I got some video shots of the music and dancing, which are mostly up on Flickr. After a bit more dancing, we headed back to our hotel, because we had to be up eeeearly for our trip up Nemrut.
And, as this is already ridiculously long, I think I’ll leave Nemrut to another post. Photos of Sanliurfa are finally up on my Flickr account though!
-R

Bayram: Diyarbakir

2008-10-28T19:14:00.003-04:00

So I left off after Van in my previous post, which was really just the beginning of our epic journey. After we felt we'd given Van a good go-through, we hopped a bus to Diyarbakir, by way of Tatvan and Batman, which took most of the day. Aside from the hideous yellow bus decor, the ride wasn't anything to complain about; the first part was along the shore of Lake Van, which was beautiful. We got in to Diyarbakir just in time for the breaking of the fast for the last day of Ramazan--the streets were full of hungry people in a celebratory mood.
We checked in to our hotel (it was bright orange and silver outside, with flamingo-pink rooms, pretty darn fun), where they gave us the top floor room with city views from 2 sides. They were pretty excited to have us stay there, the front desk staff also brought us tea to our room and called to ask if we needed anything else. I think at least some of it had to do with the fact that they were like 20-year-old guys who clearly did not spend much time around girls of a similar age...
Anyway, we set out to find dinner, which is surprisingly difficult in places that really celebrate Ramazan if you're trying to eat after Iftar: restaurants open for the Iftar meal, everyone eats exactly at sundown, and if you get there later, there is no food. We ran into this problem in Diyarbakir, but finally found this back-alley 3-storey restaurant with an open table on their roof, and had a great meal of kebaps and roasted vegetables while watching cats fight in the ruined house below our rooftop seats. On our way back from dinner, we stopped at a han (old caravansary) and spent some time looking at/learning about carpets and chatting with a very nice shop owner. Protip: the cheapest carpets (and they were beautiful) I've seen in Turkey are in Diyarbakir.

The next day we got up bright and early to explore the city. Diyarbakir, like Van, has breakfast salons, which are a fantastic idea: they have full breakfast menus, but will generally just bring you a full Turkish breakfast: boiled egg, honey, thick cream, several kinds of cheeses, olives, cucumbers, tomatoes, and lots of bread to eat everything with. It's a good start to the day, especially if (like me) one is not a morning person.
From breakfast, we checked out bus prices to Urfa and climbed the city walls for a bit, getting increasingly perturbed by the Incredibly Loud Explosions we kept hearing. The packs of small children running around with guns also were a little disconcerting. We finally figured it out: the kids had all been given toy (...mostly toy) guns for Seker Bayram, and were out in the streets having epic gun battles with their friends, shooting up the town with pop-cap guns, BB guns, and fireworks for added effect. They also were smoking up a storm, but that's more normal for the area than gun-toting child gangs.

This is, on a micro level, what we found in Diyarbakir; I took this in the old Armenian Church, where these kids live with their families. These kids are pretty young--the older ones were out in the streets having more intense mock battles.

So we explored the walls, which are really fun to clamber over, and have stunning views of the Tigris River Valley (...and the poor section of Old Diyarbakir on the other side).

After that, we headed over to the Chaldean Church, which I'd not seen the last time I'd been in town. It was beautiful, and still in use, albeit by like 4 families (not a lot of religious minorities in Diyarbakir, really). We got a tour by the very nice caretaker, who also gave us Bayram candy (Seker Bayram is a little like Halloween in that kids go around to all their neighbors and relatives to get candy and money). We then headed to the old Armenian Catholic Church, which is not functioning as it has no roof or interior contents. It is beautiful though. From there, we dodged the rain on our way over to the Syrian Orthodox Church, which is designed a bit more like Byzantine churches, and still in use. At each church, families lived in the courtyards; I can't imagine what it must be like to grow up living in a church, they all seemed pretty proud of where they lived though. And the courtyards were pretty cute.

The Chaldean Catholic Church

The Armenian Catholic Church

The Syrian Orthodox Church

After seeing the churches, we wound our way through several back alleys to find Taranci'nin Evi, or the poet Cahit Sitki Taranci's house, which is now a museum. It was pretty simple, with models of late Ottoman daily life and samples of Taranci's work and correspondence. I really enjoyed it, because Taranci is one of my favorite Turkish poets, and I spent a lot of time translating him for my directed study a few years ago. While at Taranci'nin Evi, we ran into some teenage girls in Diyarbakir with family for Bayram. They were really nice, and we chatted for a while about school, what we were doing in the region, and such. After we left the poet's house, we ran into them in another part of the city; they were so bubbly and eager to talk with us, and we were more than happy to speak more Turkish.

Taranci'nin Evi

By this time it was getting to be about time for our bus to Sanliurfa, so we looked around for a restaurant, decided we weren't that hungry, and then found...an egg sandwich stand! Those of you who were in Niger with me might remember that I'm quite a big fan of the humble egg sandwich; it's pretty much the perfect meal, and not too big. This one sadly had no onions or Maggi, and had Turkish ketchup instead, but was really good. We enjoyed our sandwiches and then ambled over to find the bus to the otogar, where we headed out of town to Sanliurfa, arriving late that night.
I find it odd that I've been to Diyarbakir twice now and both times seen guns in the streets and heard explosions in the air, but both times were not normal days for Diyarbakirlis. There's something about that city though, I really love it, and I think it might be my favorite city in Turkey. I certainly will be back.

Alright, that's more than enough for now; as the pics above suggest, I've loads of new photos up on Flickr; the ones of Diyarbakir's Armenian Church are particularly good, for my usual photography standards (if I do say so myself). Hopefully I can get the rest of Bayram up here soon and then move on to more recent things, finally...

And I'm back (at least for now)!

2008-10-28T16:19:00.002-04:00

Hey folks!

Apparently the Turkish judicial system figured that banning all of Blogger and Blogspot in reaction to one or two blogs it found offensive was not a good deal. At least for the moment, Blogger is back up and running.
The latest news on what caused the banning is that a television channel pushed for the ban because there were a few blogs, hosted by blogger, that detailed how a sports-loving Turk could watch their soccer/football matches of choice online for free, instead of paying for this channel's premium sports service. Yeah. A bit of an overreaction, no? A pretty detailed (and in English!) article can be found here.
One thing that was news to me is that Turkey has blocked over 1100 websites; I've come across a few, but definitely nowhere near 1100. I would love to see a list.
As a short update on life-at-the-moment before I return to the rest of my Bayram trip, my days have been getting more and more full here, as I've started up Turkish lessons again with a vengeance. One of my tutors is based out at Bilkent University, which takes me over an hour and a half to get to, so for every 3-hour lesson, I'm gone for over 6 hours. Not so easy to get things done.
This weekend, a friend of mine stopped in Ankara on his trip round the world; I hadn't seen him since he graduated BU 3 years ago, so it was great to catch up and do a little gossiping about our mutual acquaintances (that'd be you, Boyd House residents...). I took his to Anitkabir for some good old Turkish nationalism and personality cult fun, and we explored my neighborhood. I made the discovery that the bakery across the street from my building is gourmet and goooood; also spendy, but not ridiculous, so this may be a bad discovery for me in the long run. After Kevin left for the bus station and Goreme Sunday morning, I went running with my running club and headed to the expat-ish meet-up at Minna's in the evening. Apparently, I have become a regular at Minna's, which is a bit odd, because I'm not normally a regular at anything.
Monday I went to the Ambassador's residence, as one of my friends and fellow Fulbrighters was giving a speech there. It was on Ataturk in the Turkish War of Independence, so all the military guys with the Embassy were there, as well as pretty much the entire Turkish military leadership (I don't know exactly who they all were, they stuck to themselves a bit). That was a bit overwhelming, I don't normally hobnob with military brass, but the speech was really interesting, the food was great, I met up with a lot of friends there, and I met a military attache from the Embassy and am now going to the Marine Ball in November. Now I've got to find a dress...somehow I neglected to bring a formal to Turkey...
The rest of the week is far less highbrow for me: I had class today, where we discussed how Turkey was totally in the right to take Alexandretta, no doubt about it, what there are no Arabs there. We did get to more neutral ground, but it is fun to study Turkish foreign policy inside Turkey itself, that's for sure. I have more Turkish tutoring sessions throughout the week, and am starting with a new tutor on Friday who's supposed to be excellent, so I'm excited about that.
Today was damp and rainy, perfect soup weather, so I made a large pot of chicken vegetable stew. I still have yet to try out my oven, as it's under the sink and a little scary looking, but I hopefully will soon, as I've not made chocolate-chip cookies since arriving in Turkey, which is a bit of a travesty.
Ok, this is more than long enough, so on that note I'll leave off,
-R

Access to the site denied

2008-10-25T09:10:00.000-04:00

Hey folks,

I'm more than due for a much longer update, but just wanted to get this post up quickly. As of this morning, Blogger has been blocked in Turkey. When I attempt to access any Blogger site/blogspot address, all I get is large red letters notifying me that "Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir."
I'm still working out what I can do for posting; I'm currently using a proxy but inshallah can find a better solution. Stay tuned.
I feel like such a rebel now, posting on my banned blog ...
Kendine iyi bak,
-R

2008-10-14T18:51:00.001-04:00

In the SouthEast, photo by the fabulous Cat

Starting Point: Van

2008-10-07T16:33:00.003-04:00

For Seker Bayram, I headed to the Southeast with two good friends, Cat and Corey. We flew to Van, and made our way over to Gaziantep, by way of Nemrut and a few more places.
This is our second day, on top of Van's castle, which is right on the shore of Lake Van. The area is ringed with mountains, and it's just beautiful. It's also pretty large as old fortifications go, so we spent a good long while clambering the length and breadth of it. Van (pronounced "von", like the von Trapp family) is not so south, but very east; it's near the Iranian border. We were there for the last few days of Ramazan, so we were able to have the Iftar (sunset fast-breaking meal) with what seemed like half the town's population; it was quite an experience, and delicious food as well. We took a day trip out to Hosap to see a medieval Kurdish castle, only to be told by helpful primary school children that the castle was locked for the day. Whoops. No minibusses would stop and pick us up for the 60 km ride back to Van, so we ended up driving back with a very nice Kurdish businessman from Van and his 10-ish-year-old son. We were stopped by 3 checkpoints, and while the driver's credentials were scrupulously checked, and the vehicle pored over, the soldiers really didn't seem to give two hoots about us. It was really interesting to see though. When we got back to town, we got a little lost on our way to Van Kale, got directions to the dolmus stop by this really nice woman who invited us to her family's Iftar (we sadly already had reservations, but it's very representative of Vanlis, that she'd invite the 3 of us home less than 5 minutes after meeting us). We made it to Van Kale just before sunset, and got some great exploring and sightseeing in before the storm on the neighboring mountains got uncomfortably close and started lightening. At that point, we skedaddled down the citadel and grabbed a cab back downtown and to our Iftar. At least during Ramazan, there is really just one place that you should eat at in Van: Halil Ibrahim Sofrasi.
Oh, except for breakfast: Van has a Breakfast Street, literally a street filled with breakfast salons. I'm not a breakfast person, but I can get behind the idea of Breakfast Street. It was gooood stuff.
Alright, more stories later, I'm going to bed. Most of my Van photos are up on Flickr already, check them out! Quality-wise, they're much better than my Antakya pics...

In Van, Southeast Turkey

2008-10-07T13:34:00.003-04:00

Last Sunday, atop Van Kale overlooking Lake Van at sunset. First stop on our whirlwind Southeast highlights tour.

Orientation, Ankara-style

2008-10-07T12:56:00.004-04:00

So I figured before I started regaling you all with my adventures in the East, I should back up and get around to writing about Fulbright Orientation, which was a week and a half ago, right before we left for vacation. It was held in Ankara, literally 3 blocks from my apartment, which was pretty darn handy for me, at the Turkish American Association.
The Istanbullus all came to Ankara together the day before orientation, so I met up with them when they got in for lunch. Afterwards, they wanted to see a bit of the city, so I took them up to the citadel and we watched the sun set as the call to prayer echoed around us from mosques surrounding the hill. It was really beautiful, and I think the call to prayer from citadels is one of my favorite experiences here in Turkey. We got a lot of chatting in on the way to and from the citadel, so I got to know more of the Istanbullus (as well as an ETA from Balikesir, who we bumped into at the hotel). On the way back, we stopped at this great fish restaurant in Kizilay before strolling back to their hotel; I felt like quite the tour guide showing the whole group around my city, and hopefully dispelled some of Ankara's reputation as depressing and dull (it really isn't, folks; I like my city!).
The actual orientation lasted 2 days, and consisted mainly of various academics, Embassy personnel, and Fulbright folks giving informative sessions. While the sessions varied in their informativeness, I couldn't help but note that a lot of the information they presented would've been useful for me 3 months ago when I arrived, but was pretty much useless now that I'd moved in and took care of bureaucracy myself. Oh well, this seems to be the way Fulbright works. It was a great chance to meet the whole Fulbright staff though, as well as the other Fulbrighters. I'd known about most of the other Student Researchers and English Teaching Assistants, as we'd been exchanging introductory emails over the summer, but it was a surprise to meet several Lecturers, Senior Researchers, and Teacher Exchange Fulbrighters. They all were really nice, and quite a bit older than most of the student researchers and ETAs. As a bonus, almost all of them are based in Ankara, and at least 2 (and their significant others) are in my neighborhood. So that was good to find out. I also got in touch with my professor from 2 years ago at our welcome reception at the Ambassador's residence; she's the wife of the head of the Turkish Fulbright Commission, and I took Communications in IR from her when I studied abroad here before, small world (the class turned out to be primarily an English class, but it was awesome, and I learned quite a bit). On the second day, we toured the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, which is a really nice museum, but it was my 4th time there, and my 3rd time had been just about a month ago, so I wasn't quite as thrilled as I could have been.
The Museum does have a great collection, and does have material written in English, but, as with most Turkish museums, really has a dearth of explication, which could've added so much to the experience. Maybe in my next life I'll design museum exhibits...
After the museum, the plan was to let us explore Ulus, and wander back towards Cankaya, but the weather was not exactly conducive for such things. It started pouring, so after a bit I grabbed a cab back to Cankaya along with George and Joan, a couple who were staying at the same research hostel I'd stayed at when I first arrived in Ankara. On our way home it started hailing, so I'm thinking it was a good idea to abandon the Ulus plan.
We ended orientation with an informal get-together at Corey's; it was really nice, as at first it was only the Ankaralis, so we had a good chance to bond before the other folks showed up. It's really interesting to see what other people are doing, and what their connection to Turkey is--some of the older folks have been coming here for over 30 years, while many of the ETAs have not had any Turkish experience, and are going to be located in disparate cities with less of an English-speaking infrastructure. I'm really so impressed at how well they've managed, living on cities with very little English when they speak no Turkish. Lord knows I've had days when I've wanted to throw in the towel, and I'm surrounded by expats and speak Turkish.
It looks as though it's going to be a good year, Fulbright-people-wise, and I think I'll be doing quite a bit of travelling to visit the non-Ankaralis (actually, I already have, but that's a story for my next post, on my vacation).
On that note,
-R
(P.S. I'm uploading new photos as I type, check them out :) )

In which Cat's Turkish family saves the day

2008-10-05T04:56:00.003-04:00

I am just back in Ankara after my whirlwind tour of the Southeast with my intrepid travelling companions Corey and Cat. Stories, photos, videos, and details will of course be forthcoming later, but I just had to tell you-all about our incredible trip home last night.
We'd arrived in Gaziantep on Friday, and before leaving the otogar went to buy tickets home on a Saturday overnight bus. We started at the better companies, feeling that a splurge at the end of our trip would be pretty nice, but quickly found out that it might be a problem getting home. The first 4 or 5 companies we talked to only had tickets available for Tuesday night, a full 3 days after we wanted/needed to return. So we went round every single company, asking even the sketchiest of places whether they had 3 tickets on Saturday evening to Ankara. It looked like we'd have to send 2 people home Sunday midday and one person home immediately Friday afternoon for a bit, until finally, at the last place, the ticket sellers said that yes, they had 3 tickets, and could even seat 2 of us together. We were obviously happy and relieved, paid for the tickets, and left to see Gaziantep and visit our friends there.
All this was well and good until last night. We got to the otogar in plenty of time, double-checked with the guys that sold us our tickets that we were in the right place and at the right gate, and pretty much chilled until our bus arrived. When it did, it looked a little sketchy: it had no company name on the side of it, and didn't even enter the otogar, we had to walk out to the street to get on. So we get on, and there's someone in one of our seats. And their ticket says they have that seat. At this point, we start to freak out a little that the company double-sold our seats, and immediately grab our other seats right before another group of people gets on and tries to take them. The bus attendant comes up, is very confused, looks at everyone's tickets, and gets on his cell phone and starts yelling at someone on the other end about how they sold seats twice. This went on for quite awhile before another guy came out from the ticket office, looked at everyone's tickets, and then told us that our tickets were for Sunday night. At that point, we got kicked off the bus, and off it went to Ankara.
So there we were, at 10:30 pm, in the Antep otogar with no transportation for another 23 hours, tired and really wanting to be on our way home. We were also really frustrated, as we'd asked for Cumartesi (Saturday) tickets, been told we were getting Saturday tickets, and been given Sunday tickets. And, of course, this being the end of Bayram, all the busses were full that night, as were all the flights the next morning. To say we were disheartened would probably be a bit of an understatement.
This is where Cat's Turkish family came to the rescue. For a tiny amount of backstory, Cat's boyfriend is Turkish, and his family kind of looks after her in Istanbul; they're very cute and very maternal. They also are the kind of people who can get things done. So, Cat called them, explained the situation, and put them on the phone with the bus company officials. It was very interesting listening to the bus official's side of that conversation; he started out with a lot of "the yabancis are lying, they're wrong, they asked for Sunday tickets" and ended suitably chastened. Cat's Turkish mom then spoke via phone with a second bus company, and got them to find us spots on an 11:30 bus later Saturday night. This was after every single bus company had told us there was absolutely no room. So we switched our tickets to the real Saturday night bus with the second company and waited. The bus finally got in at about 12:30, 1am, and we had to wait for everyone to get on, because although we had tickets, we had no seat assignments: we were told there would be 2 empty seats, and that the 3rd one of us could take the bus attendant's jumpseat next to the driver. It wasn't ideal, but it got us home.
So we wait, and the attendant finally gestured us on the bus, and there are no seats. None. Not only that, there are 3 other guys also standing in the aisle, also seatless. Fantastic. At this point, we're thinking we'll have to stand in the aisle for the entire 10 hour bus ride.
Luckily, even though being 3 young female yabancis couldn't entice anyone to give up their seats for us, it did apparently entitle us to the front stair area, whereas the other seatless guys were relegated to the back stairwell, all together. Corey and I shared the jumpseat, while Cat sat on the stair leading to the aisle, next to the driver. The jumpseat was definitely not made for 2 people, and neither Corey nor I slept for more than about 10 minutes. I also was on the side closer to the bus driver, which was enjoyable at first when we chatted about what we were doing in Turkey, but less enjoyable when he kept trying to pick me up and get my phone number. Internally, I was cringing of the thought of 10 whole hours of politely deflecting repeated requests for "senin cep numarasin" in Turkish while trying not to fall off my half-chair in my exhaustion. That's when I noticed the stairwell underneath the jumpseat looked low enough to sit in. So, at the first rest stop, I crawled under to the stairwell and slept there. Glamorous it was not. I did at least luck out and get a real seat for the last hour or so when a guy got off the bus early; that was pretty blissful. The other 2 were able to grab some sleep as well, but we rolled in to town pretty darn exhausted. I think the rest of my day will be pretty much napping and showering, and maybe uploading some photos; thank goodness we were able to get in today instead of tomorrow morning, or I'd've been a zombie for my classes.
I think the moral of the story is that if one ever, ever travels during Bayram, one should get one's tickets back to civilization well, well in advance. Or, at the very least, not try to get back to Ankara/Istanbul on the weekend. Well, I suppose I'll know next time...

The rest of my trip was really great; I have lots of experiences to relate. We climbed 5 castles or castle-type constructions, got shot with bb guns by little kids in Diyarbakir (something about that city is just crazy, but I really do like it for some reason), and had baklava in the Baklava Capitol of the World, Gaziantep. They'll have to wait until I have a little more sleep in me though :P
-R

2008-09-23T16:42:00.002-04:00

The last week-ish has been full of excitement, adventure, and what-have-you. Not really, but it makes for a better opening than "It's been really busy," no? I started out my first week of school by trying to register for the only class Fulbright will fund, Turkish, only to be told that there was no set time, no set place, and there may not even be a class if the professor couldn't find enough people to fill 8 spaces in the class. Fabulous. I made it to one of my classes last Thursday, Turkish Foreign Policy, only to find that I'd already read the textbook last year for my thesis (probably a good sign for my thesis, but not so good for the class). Luckily, that was an undergrad class, and the grad class on the same subject looks to be very interesting, so it works out well. It also appears as though there are enough students for the Turkish class, although classes are on Thursday and Friday for that, so there goes my formerly free Friday.
The weekend was occupied first by internet issues (always exciting to troubleshoot in Turkish, let me tell you), then by a full day of expat activity. Sunday I met up with a friend to walk up to the Vatican Embassy for Mass, which I did not get lost for this time, or get in a bus crash. Considering my track record, this is excellent. Before Mass, I met a Princeton Ph.D student here for a year to learn both Turkish and Ottoman from scratch. We talked for a bit about Turkish, living as expat students in Ankara, and such, and he seems like an affable guy. After Mass, we stayed around for coffee (again, they serve real coffee after Mass; in Ankara, this is a wondrous thing) before I had to hightail it home to drop off church apparel, grab running apparel, and get to the hash house harriers meeting point. The run Sunday was in this rocky valley-ish place, and most of it was up, up, up, then straight down before climbing up again. I most certainly got my workout for the day :P Afterwards, they had a barbeque, which was really nice and a good chance to chat and to practice my conversational Turkish with some of the folks. We got back to Cankaya just in time for me to rush back, change again, hit up an internet cafe for 10 minutes, and get to Arjantin Cad to watch a friend performing at a cafe with a whole group of folks from the Refugee Support Group, plus my friends from Mass that morning. It was a really great relaxing time; Erin has a beautiful voice and the ARSG folks are really interesting people.
This week, I've attended a few more classes and run round all over the place trying to get documents in order for Fulbright and my apartment. Inshallah that's all done for the time being... Later this week I have Fulbright orientation finally, which should be a fun time; I'm looking forward to finally meeting the other Fulbrighters not in the city. Everyone's research sounds fascinating, so I can't wait to pick a few brains about their subjects.
Next week is Seker Bayram ("Sugar Holiday"), the end of Ramazan, where Turks visit family and celebrate for a few days with feasting and fellowship. ODTU's shut down for the week. Not to be left out, I'm also heading out on vacation, with a few friends, to the SouthEast. I think it'll be much calmer than my last trip to the region (see my early April 2006 blog entries for those stories), and the fact that all 3 of us speak semidecent Turkish will be an enormous help/ The region is absolutely gorgeous, and we're hoping to end up at Nemrut Dagi, which is a mountain with giant stone heads a la Easter Island on top. Expect copious amounts of pics when I get back (and inshallah I'll even catalogue the ones up on Flickr at the moment...).
On that note,
hope you're well!
-R

Just a few quick thoughts

2008-09-16T17:02:00.002-04:00

1. I have internet! Harika! It only took 3 flatmates, the boyfriend of one, on the phone from Germany, and a TTNet service rep, but it's here and it's working!

2. My new blender makes hummus better than anything I've ever seen. This is awesome.

3. I have a new roommate; there are now 3 of us, my second roommate is a German Turk in the same program as the first. She seems very nice and I think she'll be here for a few months; don't worry, though, future visitors, I still have guest room abilities!

4. First day of school tomorrow; it's also my registration day, so I don't know what I'm taking when yet. I do think I have Fridays off though :)

On transitions and bus accidents

2008-09-14T11:14:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow, my full research grant starts, and I'll officially be a Fulbright researcher here. I've been here on a supplementary Critical Language grant up til now, tasked with learning as much Turkish as I can sram into my brain. I'm still on the language portion, which will run concurrently with my regular grant until December, but now my main focus of being here will switch to Turkish foreign policy. It's a bit of a transition.
Of course, this month so far has been all about that transition: I now have a flat and a roommate, and on Friday I picked up my residence permit, so I am now a legal resident of Turkey for the next year. This week, I'll be getting Internet, registering for classes, starting my classes, and figuring out my Turkish lessons. So I feel like I'm at long last fully settled. It's kind of nice.
My week was full of errand running and such, although this weekend my intestinal system finally surrendered to the sketchy Ankara water and I came down with a pretty fun bug; luckily after living in Niger I am well-versed in intestines and anti-biotics. Still, I took the weekend pretty easy to recuperate. Today, I figured I'd get up and about and go to Mass, since I was confident I could find it this week easily. However, things happened, as they do here in Turkey: I took a bus, because it went within a few blocks of the Vatican Embassy, and while trying to make an illegal left turn, it got in an accident. Fun times. Everyone was just fine, both in the car we hit and on the bus, but the bus was in no condition to finish its route, so I set off walking, got lost, and somehow ended up on Ataturk Bulvari, 4 blocks from my apartment, half an hour after Mass was supposed to start. So I didn't make it this week. It was a little strange of a morning. Next week I'll try again, and inshallah the bus won't hit anything or make illegal turns and such.
On that note,
ttyl,
-R

2008-09-08T11:42:00.002-04:00

Today I went back to ODTU, for the exchange student orientation. It was a little weird, both because I'm not technically an exchange student and because I'd already sat through the exact same orientation two and a half years ago.
The morning session was decent; they had a coffee break, which was awesome as they served real coffee, which I've already mentioned is thin on the ground here. I also got to meet some of the exchange students--there are a loooooot of them! Last time I was here, there were maybe 60, and now there are 125, from all over Europe, the Middle East, and North America. I met students from Sweden, the UK, Ukraine, and Hungary, as well as quite a few from the US and Canada. Most are just here for the semester, but I did meet a few who are here for the year, so hopefully they'll be turn out to be decent folks. It was interesting talking to the exchange students, and realizing how limiting living on campus is: some of them had spent time in Istanbul, and some knew the campus decently well, but none of them had really got outside of campus and seen the city. It really seems a bit isolating, looking at it from the other side. Of course, they can visit each others rooms and dorms any time, and meet up on campus much easier, so I shouldn't gloat too much.
After the coffee break, I headed over to the Emniyet to try and get my residence permit. I was hoping to get there before they closed for lunch, but alas that was not to be, so I spent 45 minutes waiting for the security personnel to get back from lunch so I could even enter the building. Once inside, I spent a good two hours in line, getting my documents looked at, being told to go elsewhere, getting my documents looked at there, going back to the first office, etc. etc. until finally I was all paid up, had all my letters and documents stamped, and got everything turned in. I can pick it all up on Friday, at which point I can finally apply for an internet connection. I cannot wait. It was really interesting waiting in line at the Emniyet: the other students in my student permit line were pretty much all Central Asians. There were Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, an Azeri, an Afghani, and I think a Russian. My friend who got her permit in Istanbul mentioned that they were pretty much all Eastern European at the Emniyet there. It's curious as to why each group seems to have congregated in their particular city; I would guess it's for geographical reasons, but if you're coming from Kazakhstan, I'd hardly think an extra 5 hours on a bus would be at all daunting. Curious.

I also while unpacking found my journal from the last time I was here. I found it humorous and quite prescient that one of my first entries observes "The Turks seem to view the world through Turk-colored glasses..." It's just as true today.

-R

Benim Dairem, falan filan

2008-09-06T11:11:00.002-04:00

Sadly, I still don't have internet in my flat, but should by the end of this week. So there's some decent news. I also yesterday went to get my residence permit renewed at the Ankara Emniyet (..."security office", roughly, I think): I headed down to Kizilay, found a dolmus that said "Emniyet" on the side, and hopped on...
Only to have a nice hourlong ride through the completely wrong part of the city. The Emniyet that the dolmus passed wasn't the Emniyet I needed to go to. On the way back to Kizilay, this guy on the dolmus who spoke a little English asked me where I was trying to get to, so I showed him my residence permit and told him I needed to go to the correct Emniyet. By this time I'd figured out which dolmus I needed to go on, but he insisted that I could get there via subway, and was pretty persistent, so off I went on the subway line to Ankamall. Thankfully, when we got there it was indeed the right place. Ankara did yabancis a great favor by putting their Emniyet right next to pretty much the largest grocery store in Turkey: Ankamall is a shopping mall, anchored by a 5M Migros (Migros is a chain of grocery stores; the size of the store is proportionate to the number of Ms starting the name: MMigros is neighborhood supermarket sized, MMMigros is typical large suburban grocery store sized. MMMMMigros is massive). It's very recognizable.
I headed to the Emniyet's yabanci ofisi, and handed in all my paperwork, only to be told that my paperwork was Istanbul paperwork, and that I needed to fill out the exact same information on a form that was identical to mine except for the font. Bureaucracy, I love it so. The guy behind the yabanci desk then told me that the person who processed residence permits had left at 3:30, so I'd have to return this next week to get the renewal. Then he looked at my passport and saw that I'd been in the country for 2.5 months already. Apparently, even though the Fulbright office assured me I'd be fine, and getting my residence permit up to 3 months after entry would not be a problem, it was indeed a problem. The guy disappeared to go talk to someone about it. I started panicking and trying to guess whether they'd deport me, and if I'd be allowed back in the country. Luckily, the guy came back and told me I just had to pay a fine. But it was a tense few minutes for me. :P
After getting information but no residence permit, I headed over to the magical MMMMMigros for some shopping. It was wonderful. It even had an organic section, and prices were cheaper than at all the grocery stores by me. They even had premade salads/greenery other than iceberg lettuce, which I haven't seen in any other grocery store. It was fabulous. I bought a blender, magic-bullet-style, which promised recipes inside for 10-second mousse, and chicken salad, and smoothies. Sadly, the recipe booklet was not inside, so I'll have to experiment on the mousse (I don't know about the chicken salad...). It came with a juicer attachment, so I think I'll have fun experimenting in the kitchen with it. It was a good impulse buy, and it means I can satiate my hummus fix.
This weekend's been pretty quiet so far: today I spent the morning figuring out how to use my washing machine, whose cycles are helpfully labelled only as "A", "B", "D", "M", and "X". I tried M, and it seemed to work decently, except for the part where it took 2 hours for a single wash cycle. Maybe next time I'll try "A"... Tomorrow, I'm getting up early to try and find the Vatican Embassy for Mass, which should be fun and potentially an adventure as it's a ways away from my apartment. After that, I think I'm running with the HHH again and then getting my place ready for my potential roommate, who gets in to town Monday. So that'll be fun.
Hope you-all are doing great,
-R

My New Apartment (You can come visit!)

2008-09-04T11:32:00.002-04:00

So I finally have a bit more time to write about my time so far in Ankara. I've been here for about 2 weeks; I spent the first week and a half at the American Research Institute in Turkey's Ankara researcher guesthouse. It was gorgeous, and I highly recommend it if your research ever takes you to Turkey. I would have stayed there for my entire grant, except they have a 3 month limit on stays...
So I moved, to a great apartment literally 4 blocks downhill from the guesthouse and the Fulbright offices (this is absolutely the easiest move I've ever done). I now live in Cankaya/Kavaklidere, just off of Ataturk Bulvari near a large park and many embassies. The building next door to mine has both a supermarket and a nice restaurant, and there's an upscale bakery across the street. The neighborhood will take a little getting used to I think, but I really like it so far.
My apartment itself is pretty darn nice. It's a 3-bedroom, as Turks don't really do 1-bedrooms or studios (they stay home til they're at the 2-bedroom stage of their lives, even in/after college). I'm inshallah getting a roommate next week, so that'll leave me with a guest bedroom/laundry-drying and ironing room. It came furnished, as I did not want to have to run around Turkey trying to find decent and cheap furniture immediately upon arriving. I'm already doing more than enough running around. I think I'll have to start having dinner parties, as I have a massive heavy dark wood dining table; otherwise, I'll have a very impressive computer desk... The kitchen will take some getting used to: most Turks don't have ovens like you'd think of ovens--instead they use toaster ovens. I originally thought that my apartment came with no oven at all til I found mine hiding beneath the sink.
The apartment is I think a mix of really nice and kind of strange: it has new appliances, it even has a washing machine, but it has a spot of water-damaged floor in the living room. And the bathroom is newly tiled and the bedrooms all have new hardwood floors, but the half-bath is a terrifying pit of despair that I am pretty sure I will just seal off and never ever enter again. So it's got character. And little by little, I'm moving my stuff out of suitcases and making the place my home instead of simply a home.
And of course you are all incited to come visit! After all, I have a guest room now.
-R

just a quick update...

2008-09-02T11:23:00.002-04:00

Hey folks,
So lots is new since my last post, I've moved for one, but that'll have to wait til I either get Internet in my apartment or find a free wireless spot with a plug, as I'm on limited battery power. I figured I would, though, update with a wholly exasperating observation: Turks almost never tell you they don't know something, at least in the customer service/business front-counter world.
Last Thursday, I closed on my apartment, and to get the cash for my deposit (USD, they're pretty fond of the $ still for some reason) I needed to cash in some of my travellers cheques. No big deal, I thought, I'll just go to a bank and take care of that early. Oh, but boy was I wrong. The first bank sent me to a second, which sent me to a different branch, which suggested two different banks, and by the end of the day I had visited 10 banks, walked over 4 miles, and had not cashed any of my travellers cheques. Every single teller I talked to told me that a different bank "absolutely," "guaranteedly" would accept/exchange travellers cheques. It was moer than a little frustrating. I started crying in the second HSBC I visited, the eighth bank I'd been to that day, after they almost exchanged my travellers cheques, only to say "oh wait, these are American Express travellers cheques, we don't accept these." And of course all these transactions were in Turkish, so about half the tellers would, noting that Turkish wasn't my native language, ask the lobby at large if anyone spoke English, at which point I would try to explain that I did, really, understand what they'd told me in Turkish, but would have to sit through the same explanation, this time in questionable English. And of course at each bank I had to take a number and wait in line for 10-40 minutes. I was in various banks for hours on Thursday. Incidentally, if you're planning on going to Turkey with travellers cheques, the PTT will cash them, I've found. IsBank will as well, but they want to charge 30 YTL per check. For reference, a $50 travellers cheque is currently worth about 55 YTL. If one was particularly desperate, I suppose that might be an option.
And this week, I get to go through the whole thing again, luckily at a slower pace. I tried to get internet set up for my apartment (sadly, all my neighbors saw fit to secure their networks) this morning, and after having checked with the TurkTelecomNet website that post offices here were licensed resale points for their internet services, headed off to my post office, and asked for internet. They handed me an internet sign-up form, so I figured I was golden, filled it out, and handed it back in. At that point, they told me (twice, in Turkish and English....) that I needed to go to the more central post office in Kucukesat. So, after a wifi cafe stop to check the address, I headed out to Kucukesat, and waited in line at that PTT, only to get to the front and be told that they couldn't sell me internet, and that I'd have to go to the Turk Telekom office for that. They gave me directions, and off I went again, only to find the TurkTelekom offices definitively boarded up and locked. Fantastic. At least this time, I think I've wised up and will not spend time walking to 10 places on the advice of people at each preceding place. Instead I just asked my waitress, and I'm pretty sure that tomorrow I'll be able to get my internet at least ordered, if not set up. This lack of internet at home is really not fun.
On that note, I'd better save my battery. Stories from my first legit week in Ankara (I went running with the Hash House Harriers; it was quite an experience), along with pics of my new apartment, will be forthcoming pending internet, of course,
Hope everyone's doing splendidly,
-R

Rest of my Tatil and settling in

2008-08-23T14:23:00.002-04:00

So I left off my last post with my adventuresome ride to Antakya. We were pretty glad to get in to Antakya's shiny new otogar, even though we were immediately set upon by would-be drivers offering to take us to Aleppo. Sadly, that will have to wait for a different trip, as my visa doesn't yet allow me to reenter the country. We hopped a dolmus into town, nodding politely to the dolmus attendant's rant on the evils of America and war en route. Once in the center, we found our hostel (we were staying at the Catholic Church in town, which has a hostel for pilgrims), and waited around/grabbed lunch/waited some more to check in. We were pretty grimy and exhausted, so the rest of the day we just rested, shopped a bit in the bazaar, and grabbed an amazing, amazing dinner.
Antakya is really a unique place in Turkey. It's in the Hatay province, which used to be a French protectorate, then part of Syria before Ataturk annexed it in 1938 for WWII strategic purposes. It's a very interesting meld of Turkish and Arabic culture, and is the only part of Turkey that eats hummus (clearly, I was ecstatic about that part). Our first lunch in Antakya was at this tiny, tiny restaurant that served only hummus and bakla (not baklava-- bakla is a hot dish also based on chickpeas, and also very, very good after an Istanbul kebap summer. Prices in Antakya were also Arab-inspired, and I bought a pair of pants that I'd seen in Istanbul for a standard price of 20 ytl for 5 ytl. I also bought a shirt for 2,5 ytl, which proudly proclaims that "life is beatifull." Oh yes, beatifull.
Antakya is most well known not for it's intriguing Turkish-Arab culture but for it's ancient history: you may know it by it's Roman-times name, Antioch (and to get there, you pass through the Cilician Gates). It's the site of the very first Catholic Church in the world (by many accounts), founded in a cave above the current city by St. Peter himself. I visited, but it was closed for August vacation, so I only got to see the outside, sadly. It was awesome from the outside though. Later in history, the city was captured by Crusader kings. Even today, there's (for Turkey) a sizeable Christian community in Hatay; Rough Guides says there are 4000.
Our second day, we met up with a friend of Alyssa's who was coming in from Syria; she'd spent the summer in Damascus and spoke Syrian Arabic, which would be not so helpful in Turkey, except that most people we ran into in Hatay also spoke Arabic. Before she got in (she tried to come up on Friday, but in Syria they take religion seriously and that's mosque day--no busses to the border), Alyssa and I checked out the Antakya Museum. It's gorgeous: the region has lots of archaeological sites with Roman mosaics, and so many of them were still in really good condition. I have dozens of photos, many with stories, so I'll post the link to that part of my Flickr account once I upload them. They had statues and a very nicely preserved excavated tomb as well, but the mosaics were really the centerpiece of the museum.
The Catholic Church hostel was really great, run by a woman (Zeynep Hanim) who lives on the property, and really cheap: just 20ytl per night each. We got a room, private bath, and a kitchen. The guidebooks had all said that guests were expected to attend Mass, which we didn't mind, especially once we found out Mass was at 7pm, not 7am. The weekday masses we went to were pretty small, just the token folks who hung around the church and us, and was in Turkish, which was pretty awesome. The church had booklets printed with the prayers and Mass protocol in Turkish, so we could follow along and know what we were saying/singing, instead of half mumbling til we got to the "Amen." They're clearly used to non-Turkish visitors. While we stayed there, 2 big groups of Italian pilgrims came through; they just walked through the church, prayed, and left, but they tended to arrive right before Mass, delaying Mass. Sunday Mass was really great; I was the only one of the three of us who went, as the other 2 were exhausted from our big day (more on that in a bit) and also weren't Catholic. The tiny church was filled, with people standing out the back door. Most of the Mass was in Turkish, but the Gospel was read in both Turkish and Italian. I suspect this is because there was a large expat contingent, and I believe they were mostly Italian, but I'm not positive. Anyway, it was really a great experience, and they closed with "When the Saints go Marching In" in Turkish.

But my big experience Sunday was a different service, in a small village an hour-and-a-half outside of Antakya. Sunday morning, Alyssa, Jen (her friend from Syria), Lee(a friend of ours from our summer program, he came to Antakya a day after us) and I headed to Vakifli, the last remaining Armenian village in Turkey. The title is a bit of a misnomer: many Turks live there, and people in the village spoke Turkish to our hearing more than Armenian, but it still has Armenian roots and a strong Armenian connection. We were there for the Armenian Catholic Church's (they're in with the Holy See! the more you know)Feast of the Assumption of Mary, which is apparently their biggest feast day celebration. We were told it started at 10, so we got there right before then, but the Mass didn't begin until 10:10 or so, when the priest and the choir (and 2 priest-helper guys? kind of between choir members and deacons, they seemed) entered the front part of the church and started up. Even though there were probably at least 200 people milling about in the church courtyard, only maybe a dozen or so old ladies were actually sitting in the church, attending the service. We grabbed a pew and sat to take it all in. It was a beautiful service: it was entirely in Armenian, so we understood pretty much nothing, but it reminded me of Orthodox services. For starters, it was looong: about 2 and a half hours, I believe. There was a little fence/gate separating the parishioners from the choir and priest; it was split spacewise maybe 40-60, with 40% of the church area being occupied by the altar and various related things. The choir members kept wandering in and out throughout the whole thing; at one point, they all were gone, and it was just the priest and his helpers up in front. The choir was made up of people looking to be ages 7-maybe 65, but the leader was this girl (she can't've been over 20) with a beautiful, carrying voice; I heard that during choir practices and such, everything is very strictly age-hierarchical, while during Mass, the hierarchy is instead in order of singing talent.
The parishioner/Mass attendees also wandered in and out during the service, and while the numbers actually in church grew larger and larger, I don't think there were more than 50 people inside at any one time, and that was for Communion. Communion was fascinating, because the women all veiled for it: they grabbed scarves from in their handbags or around their necks to cover their hair, but only for Communion. Anyway, it was perhaps a little fortuitous that everyone in the church courtyard didn't crows in to the church, because it was stiflingly hot in the church, maybe hotter than I'd been all summer.
After the in-church portion of Mass, the priest and choir processed out the back of the church and to the courtyard, where they proceeded to bless a tablefull of grapes. Apparently, in the Armenian Catholic tradition, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary also is used to celebrate the grape harvest. After the grapes were blessed, everyone pressed forward and got a vineful. From there, the priest and choir went to 4 carpets laid out in the middle of the courtyard and did some sort of prayer/blessing there as well; I got video of this part and will upload it to Flickr inshallah soon. It was pretty interesting. After that, it looked like the Mass part of the day was done, so we chilled in the courtyard for awhile, looked at sour cherry products for sale in a small booth, and headed down to the main road to figure out how to get back (we'd taken a taxi from another town in the morning, but Vakifli is like, Byron-small or smaller, so there were no taxis there). We stopped at a tea garden for tea and water, and after chatting for a bit and finding a dolmus, we ran into an Armenian-Canadian woman, who told us more about the feast day, and also said that it was an annual pilgrimage for Diasporan Armenians, hence why so many people were there. She also told us that we'd missed the very end part of the ceremony at the church, where they hand out stewed mutton and wheat: apparently, in the times of the massacres, the Armenian communities of Musa Dag ('Mount Moses', where Vakifli is located) only had sheep and wheat, which they put into big pots, one for every village (there were 6 Armenian villages on the mountain then) and survived off of for 53 days under siege until the French rescued and evacuated them. It sounded like an odd recipe, but I tried some, and it was quite good on bread.
Our Armenian-Canadian friend also told us that we were ridiculously close to the sea, so after hearing that, and after having sat in the oven of the church for 2.5 hours, we decided to stop at the shore on the way back to Antakya. We took a dolmus to Samandag and walked to the waterfront. Samandag is a Turkish resort town, and it was pretty cool, as we were the only yabancis there. The water was so warm it was almost hot, and translucently blue. The Mediterranean hadn't been on our agenda when we left Antakya, so we swam in our clothes, which worked well til we had to get back on a dolmus to get back to Antakya. When we did finally make it back, we were pretty exhausted, and pretty much just napped and packed (and churched, for me) until grabbing a quick dinner and seeing Alyssa and Jen off to the otogar (they were headed to Cappadochia overnight).
Monday morning, I finished my packing, headed out for a brief bit, and then headed to the otogar, where I headed to Adana. Adana is about 3 hours northeast of Antakya, and is the 4th largest city in Turkey. You may have heard of it because Incirlik air base (US military) is located there. I planned to do a bit of sightseeing there before catching an overnight bus to Istanbul. On my bus from Antakya to Adana, I sat next to this adorable red-headed two-year-old and his mother, who were on their way to a beach holiday in Mersin. They were great travelling companions, until the poor kid got a little bus-sick and threw up. He kind of looked like Dan when he was 2, if Dan had been close-cropped instead of having that adorably curly mop. In Adana, I did some bargaining with various companies (after my Ankara-Adana bus ride, I was not about to risk a repeat experience), and ended up getting a ticket with Metro, who is towards the high end of the middle level of bus companies. I then headed into the city to see what I could find. I visited the Sabanci Mosque, which is the third largest mosque in the world; it's really new (like, last-decade-new), so there wasn't much historical intrigue, but it was huge, and nice. I then stopped by one of Adana's 2 museums where I found out that both museums were closed on Mondays. Bummer. I wandered a bit more, and ended up at this swanky restaurant for dinner, where I had an amaretto iced mocha. It pretty much made my whole body smile, it was so good. As Adana was also closer to 40 C than 30 C, it was very much appreciated. After my dinner, I skedaddled to the otogar and headed out for Istanbul. My seatmate was this very nice old lady, and it was I think her first bus trip. We chatted for a bit about Adana and Istanbul and what I was doing in Turkey before tuning in to the bus movies and then sleeping. In the morning, she got off at the first Istanbul stop (Istanbul is so big, there are multiple otogars and usually tertiary drop-off locations as well; it takes over an hour and a half from the first Istanbul stop to the Otogar), and I got a new seatmate, Ayse, who was travelling to Istanbul with her husband and 2 kids for a visit before school started. We had a great talk, and when she heard that I wanted to return to Adana, she gave me her cell number so that I could get to see "the real Adana" when I go back there.
Once I got into Istanbul, I had a lot of time to kill; I had pretty ungainly luggage, so I didn't really want to trek all over the city or go all out and be touristy. I ended up on Istiklal by about 9am, where I snagged a table at a cafe and chilled all morning, updating my blog and such. In the afternoon, I took the ferry to Asia to buy my train ticket for that night (heading to Ankara; the train is conveniently about 8 hours, or enough to actually sleep, versus the 5-6 hour bus), found that the only seats left were in 4-person couchettes, got a 20% student discount (I will really miss being a student someday), and took the ferry back. Once back in Taksim, I called Fulbright to make sure I could still pick up my luggage that afternoon, and handled the entire phone conversation in Turkish. I was pretty proud. As I had to pick up my luggage by 5, and would then be encumbered by 5 bags of various sizes, I decided to grab an early dinner, at Istanbul's best Chinese restaurant (it happened to be on the way the the Fulbright offices). My meal was great, and my waiter was very curious as to what I was doing all by myself and how I knew Turkish; we chatted for a bit, and then at the end of my meal he gave me 10% off. It was just a really great Turkish-speaking day for me.
I picked up my baggage and headed right to Haydarpasa (the train station), getting there about 5 hours before my train departed. Luckily, I had a 400-page journal of an early West African explorer to read, so I chilled in the waiting room. On the train, I had 3 Turkish women seatmates, all of whom were very nice and 2 of whom had also never ridden on a train before. Before we left, I had an awesome Turkish experience, when one of my compartment-mates, walking down the corridor, found a group of Italian tourists trying to communicate with the ticket man in English and went "wait, my friend speaks English and Turkish!" So I got to translate for this group of 10 Italian tourists who wanted to trade seats with other passengers so that their party could sit together; it was pretty exhilarating being able to explain back and forth. They finally got things settled, and I went back to my compartment, and woke up bright and early in Ankara, where I headed to my hostel.

Many apologies for this novel of a post; I was going to post some about my activities in Ankara, but I think this is quite enough for one update and will try to update some more fun things, like pics or videos, in a much more timely fashion.
Hope you all are doing well!
-R

A little break in Ankara, and the craziest bus ride of my life...

2008-08-19T04:52:00.002-04:00

Hey folks,
I'm in a cafe on Istiklal Cad in Istanbul at the moment, working with definitely-not-enough Internet time, so this'll have to be brief til I get to Ankara and stable Internet, inshallah tomorrow. So my summer program ended last week, and it was kind of bittersweet to see most of my Istanbul companions head for home. But, it also was nice, because it meant I had time for travel. Wednesday night, Alyssa, a friend from class, and I took an overnight bus to Ankara, en route to Antakya. We planned it to have a one-day layover in Ankara, which worked well for me because it meant I could bring my huge suitcase and leave it at the Fulbright Ankara offices. We got in pretty darn early after a decent bus--we took Metro to Ankara, which is a more than decent bus company (spendy, to my cheap student sensibilities, but great value. They also have female bus attendants, which pretty much noone else has). We found the Fulbright offices (they're in a really pretty neighborhood), dropped off our bags for the day, were able to shower at the Fulbright office, and headed out to explore my city. We first headed to Anıtkabir, which was even better not ensconced in snowdrifts, as it had been last time I visited. There were a scattered few other tourists there, and the mausoleum part was very pretty and quiet. We then went to the museum part, which is awesome/. It's such a glorification of Ataturk; they have ll his books, and his guns, and his bathrobe, and even his dog, which they stuffed after it died. The next part of the museum is all paintings of the formation of the Republic and portraits of early Republican figures, in between re-created battle scenes, complete with ambient battle noises, of Ataturk's major battles. The final part is row after row of dry clippings and documents about the early Republic, and Ataturk, and Ataturk's aims, all set to overbearing Republican anthems. They sound like the soundtrack to those Soviet propaganda clips shown in high school history classes. It's excellent, although the anthems are a little headache-inducing after a bit.
After fully appreciating Turks' love for Ataturk, we headed over to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, which I appreciated quite a bit despite them no longer offering student admission. From there we made our way through Ulus, down to Kizilay, and over to Cankaya to pick up our bags before the Fulbright office closed. Heavily laden, we tried to find a restaurant listed in Rough Guide as being "eccentric", but it was shut down, so we went to this fantastic brasserie instead: I had a chicken caesar salad, and it was fantastic and delicious, and a strawberry daiquiri, which was similarly excellent. I think I shall have to remember that restaurant for while I'm in Ankara...
After dinner, we made our way to the bus station to catch our night bus to Adana. We were going to Antakya, but had been told that we'd have to switch busses in Adana, so we bargained tickets down to 25 lira and were set. Or so we thought. While loading our bags on the bus, two soldiers guarding a prisoner in chains got on the bus. We were a little nonplussed. We were even more nonplussed to get on the bus and find one of the soldiers and the prisoner in our seats. They wanted to switch seats with us so that the second soldier could be closer to the prisoner, which we were more than fine with. The bus attendant, however, was not, so we got to play musical chairs a few times and finally ended up sitting directly in front of the prisoner, the 2 soldiers, and some sort of military commander who had joined them. The commander I don't think had bathed in the past week or so; still, he was a comforting presence because the soldiers looked all of 16 and both had huuuuge, foot-and-a-half-long guns, and we figured with an authority figure along there'd be less of a chance of an accidental discharge.
Once we got that sorted out, we figured out that our bus actually went through Adana to Antakya, which was where we wanted to end up, so we asked the bus attendant if we could extend our tickets through Antakya, and he said we could, but wanted to charge us an exorbitant sum to do so, so we decided to just get a new bus in Adana. On the way out of the Ankara otogar, the bus engine quit. Luckily the driver got it working again, but on top of everything else it was less than auspicious.
I drifted off a bit, but woke with a start when the bus attendant started the movie for the trip: he chose a Turkish film about demon possession and a Greek Orthodox priest. So the speakers (the mute buttons were broken, of course) were full of demonic roars, and screams, and random Turkish. I think I understood the whole movie though, so that's a bright side there. :P
When we got to Adana, the bus driver didn't want to pay the otogar fee, so they dropped us off on the side of the highway, at 5 am, to take a servis vehicle to the otogar. We got to share the servis with a family who was transporting literally hundreds of pounds of fish food, so much so that we couldn't get out of the vehicle at the otogar til they'd unloaded a good deal of it. It was bizarre. We found a much, much better bus to take us to Antakya thank goodness, and arrived there with no more issues, but that Ankara-Adana bus ride was I think the craziest bus ride I've had here. A note to the wise: avoid SAS bus company. Like the plague.

-R

The last few days at Boğazici

2008-08-12T15:34:00.003-04:00

My summer program is done! I took my final exam and my final oral placement test today, and tomorrow will take the final written placement test and move out of the dorms. The next few weeks are going to be a little interesting, as I don't really have housing yet, but inşallah everything will work out nicely: I'm heading on a bit of a vacation down to Antakya tomorrow night, via Ankara, so I'll be off gallivanting in southern Turkey for a bit before returning to Istanbul, grabbing my luggage, and moving into ARIT's guesthouse in Ankara while I apartment-hunt. Tentatively, I'll be in Ankara next week.
Last weekend was pretty great. Since almost everyone else in the summer program is leaving, everyone's been keen to get some last shopping and sightseeing in. On Saturday I headed sown to Sultanahmet with Abby, to check out a palace. We first grabbed lunch at a restaurant abutting the Aya Sofia, and impressed the waitstaff with our mad Turkish skillz. That's the nice part about the touristy areas of town, that they're so amazed by any amount of Turkish proficiency, as almost all the yabancı tourists speak not a word of Turkish. Anyways, we finished up our lunch and headed over to Topkapı, where we waited in an epicly long line only to find out that they wouldn't accept our student ID cards for the student discount, and that the regular cost of admission came out to 35 YTL each. As that's ridiculous, we decided to not see Topkapı and instead headed down Eminönü through this really gorgeous park to the Galata Bridge, which we took over to Kabataş, and from there walked over to Dolmabahçe Sarayı (Palace). It was closed by the time we got there, but their clock-tower cafe was open, and was serving slushy iced beverages (a rarity in Turkey), so we grabbed a Bosphorous-side table and enjoyed our slushies.
On Sunday, Abby and I returned to Dolmabahçe Sarayı, and after waiting in another epic line (they shut down the ticket booths because the palace reached its maximum capacity at one point) got our 2 YTL students tickets. Dolmabahçe Sarayı is gorgeous; its courtyards and gardens were just beautiful, as were the rooms and halls of the Selamlık and Harem. I generally just got photos of the gardens, as I didn't buy a camera ticket, but I did get a photo of the room where Ataturk died-- Ataturk lived in Dolmabahce for his final years, and had his own suite of rooms in the Harem. His bedspread was a giant Turkish flag representation. It was pretty darn neat. The palace itself was a glory of conspicuous consumption: everything that could be decorated, was decorated, and the furnishings were all red plush, or gilded, or crystal. The ceilings were all gilded and painted with cringeworthy floral motifs. The main palace had a 4.5 ton Waterford crystal chandelier in the hall used for official government business. It was a wonderful celebration of gaudy excess. I loved it.
After Dolmabahçe, I headed back to Superdorm before meeting most of my class to head to one of our professor's house. Betül (our professor) and her rommate and neighbor had made all kinds of Turkish food, and we came equipped with ingredients for a wide variety of American foods, so it was a pretty amazing night of cooking, dinner, and talking. We had these amazing lentil,parsley things wrapped in lettuce leaves, and macaroni salad Turkish-style (no eggs, made with yogurt instead of mayo), eggplant salad, and this sweet wheat-type dish that is hard to describe but kind of like a crumb crust. We students made brownies, a nectarine pie, a boiled peach dish, and this amazing mushroom-garlic-onion dish. It was a really great night; Betül is just adorable, as are her friends, and we talked and laughed for hours in Turkish and English. We really had a good class of folks this summer, so şt was nice to have a bit of a send-off.
The early part of this week has been a flurry of packing, studying, making travel and luggage arrangements, and so on. I'm really looking forward to Antakya: it was originally part of Syria until it was given to Turkey in a referendum, and is the only part of the country that eats hummus (Turkey, although partly Mediterranean, does not do hummus or falafel, as a general rule)ç It also is a hotbed of early Christianity: it's where the term 'Christian' was first used and the site of the first cathedral. The province also is home to the last surviving Armenian village in Turkey. So it's pretty cool. It takes forever and a day to get there though, so we're taking a bus overnight to Ankara, hanging out in my city for a day, and taking another overnight bus to Adana, where we'll grab a dolmuş to Antakya. My travelling companions are returning through Cappadocia, so I may return via Konya or Antalya, depending on whether I'd rather see beaches or religious conservatism and derviş orders. It should be really fun, and I'm sure I'll have scads of photos to overload my Flickr account with when I get back.
Hope you all are doing well,
-R

2008-08-06T17:08:00.002-04:00

Hey folks! It’s been awhile since my last post, sorry, but it’s the home stretch of my summer program; inshallah things’ll quiet down in a few weeks. Last weekend I was quite the tourist: I headed down to Sultanahmet with Robin to see Aya Sofia. Last time I was here, I was put off by the steep admission fee, but I figured to actually live here and not see the Aya Sofia of all things would be pretty inexcusable. We found the entrance, and were a bit nonplussed to see the middling-sized line of tourists waiting to buy tickets and get in, but we got in the line and waited, fending off would-be guides as we waited. We had been told that we’d get the Turkish student rate, which is the only discount offered by Aya Sofia, but apparently our summer Bogazici student ID cards weren’t convincing enough to the ticket sellers, so we had to pay 20 YTL instead of 10. I was pretty put out, and wish I would’ve thought to bring my old ODTU ID with me, but I suppose that’s the way life works. We walked into the Outer Narthex and just stopped, stunned: Aya Sofia is devastatingly beautiful. I’ve seen a good number of mosques, and even a fair few churches here in Turkey (not to mention the churches-turned-mosques), and they’ve been incredible, but for the most part they pale in comparison to the Aya Sofia. We wandered from the Outer Narthex to the Inner Narthex, checking out the architecture and mosaics, and then entered the main part of Aya Sofia. It’s simply cavernous. The Blue Mosque was built (roughly 800 years later) to have exactly the same size central dome, but Sinan had to support his dome with four huge pillars, which takes away from the floor plan and the cavernous feeling. It’s really almost impossible to describe, so I’ll direct you to my photostream, where I’ve uploaded the ridiculous amount of photos I took (Aya Sofia pics are currently on pages 3-7):

After we left the Aya Sofia, we met up with Callie in Sultanahmet and went over to the Yerebatan Sarnici (Basilica Cistern), where our student IDs were perfectly fine. It was amazing; I think it may be my favorite place in Istanbul, from a tourist perspective.

It's incredible to think that the entire complex was undiscovered for centuries, until sometime in the last century someone tried to expand their basement and got quite a surprise. There are even fish in the water, apparently before the Cistern was discovered, people in Sultanahmet used to be able to drop fishing lines through their basements and catch fish. Not too shabby a setup. My photos from the Cistern aren't completely organized/labelled yet, but inshallah they will be by the end of this week.

After the Cistern, we headed to the Spice Bazaar for some shopping; Callie and Robin leave next week, so it was serious souvenir time for them. I was just along for the experience, since it's definitely not my souvenir-shopping time yet, but I really didn't mind because I enjoy the Spice Bazaar. It's hands-down better than the Grand Bazaar, much fewer touts and salesmen and desperate sales tactics, although those all can be found at the Spice Bazaar as well. We wound our way through the main bazaar, where I bought some delicious, delicious red pepper paste (it's like tomato paste, but spicy and made with peppers, it's nearly impossible to find in the US), and then through the side streets, which are also filled with bazaar vendors. We spent a good few hours there. Finally, after a last stop at a kitchen goods shop, we made our way back towards the light rail, stopping at Yeni Cami en route. I toured Yeni Cami last time I was here, and I just find it really charming; it has incredible tilework, which separates it somewhat from the other similarly-sized great mosques of the city, and it's generally quieter than the other tourist mosques. And of course, I love a short opportunity to wear a scarf. From there, we walked over the Galata Bridge and hopped on the light rail to Kabatas, where we grabbed a bus back to the dorm.
That night, the collected residents of room 201 headed over to Cat's, a friend of mine, house to catsit her kitten and use her kitchen. After a kitchenless summer, I was amazingly excited to cook again, and Callie was pretty darn excited to bake chocolate-chip cookies. I made a chicken-vegetable sauce with pasta, which was refreshingly non-greasy compared to the Turkish food we'd all been living off of, and I boiled some peaches and served them with brown sugar. It wasn't at all my best effort, but it was amazing to cook again; cathartic even. The cookies turned out incredibly good, and we ate them while watching Ratatouille with Turkish subs for Callie's bf. It was a needed night off/night in. And the kitten is adorable; he has the biggest ears proportionally I think I've ever seen on a cat.

This week has been generally full of class, afterclass Turkish activities, and homework; the positive part of this is that my spoken Turkish is getting noticeably better. Yesterday I went to a lecture on Modern Turkish State and Society, which was right up my alley, and pretty darn interesting. The professor had some interesting points on the progressiveness of the early Turkish Republic. Sadly, he only got completely through the 1950s, before having to rush through the rest of the 20th century in 10 minutes, but it was definitely a worthwhile talk. Today, my class went to a sweet shop for our conversation session, and it was really nice; I just got profiterol (a nice, safe choice for chocoholics like me), and avoided the chicken-and-gelatin dessert (although I think I will have to try it at some point, bilmiyorum). Over the weekend, I'll be studying and packing, as finals are next week and I must leave the dorms midweek. After that, I'll be anchorless for a few weeks til I get settled in over in Ankara, which I'm excited about. Finally.

In non-my-life news, Today's Zaman had an article about Turkey's role in the management of complex conflicts in the Middle East, which is pretty much what my thesis discussed and which is part of what I'm researching this year. The article is here for your reading pleasure. It briefly mentions quite a few issues I've been following closely, especially the shift in relations over Cyprus, so I was pretty pleased to see it.

On that note, I'll leave off til next time
-R

The AK Parti, the Constitutional Court, and me

2008-08-01T17:42:00.002-04:00

Hey folks,
As many of you know by now, earlier this week the Turkish Constitutional Court voted to dock the AK Parti half of their funding from the state. This is pretty good news, as the banning of the party, and the removal of many of its political leaders from politics for several years, seemed more likely. It was a close vote: the Court came within one vote of banning the party.
The AK Parti was under scrutiny because of what the chief prosecutor termed threats to the secularism of the state. The AK Parti made headlines internationally this year when its politicians passed legislation ending the ban on headscarves in public universities. This is a little misleading though, as they had to amend the Constitution to do so. That whole arrangement caused quite a bit of excitement here, but ultimately the Constitutional Court reversed the changes. This played a large part in the indictment against the AK Parti, as it was used in arguing that the AK Parti was influenced by Sharia law, or had allowed religion to influence its governance of the secular state (clearly there's much more to the issue, I just wanted to give a little background).
Had the AK Parti been banned, Turkey would have had to hold new elections, as the AKP is the majority party at the moment, and one can only speculate on who would have emerged with the majority. There was even speculation that the aftermath of such a ban would have resulted in such turmoil as to 'necessitate' a military coup; many arrests have been made here this summer of suspected members of a secretive group allegedly attempting to bring about illegitimate change in government via instability and intervention. It's all a little Agatha Christie-esque. There's still speculation that the secretive group, Ergenekon, might still be up to something; I guess we'll see. In any case, it's been a fascinating week here on the political side.
My week was perhaps not quite as fascinating; I've already written about the first part of the week, and the second half has been pretty relaxed. On Wednesday I played Turkish Monopoly with my class; it was strange because the game used Turkish Lira instead of Yeni Turkish Lira, and evidently had been produced sometime in the middle of the rampant inflation of the late 90s/early 00s, as I think 20,000 lira was roughly equivalent to the US version's $200 (in today's adjusted currency, that'd be 20 YTL). Our TA had never played Monopoly before, but somehow quite handily beat us all; we're pretty sure she is secretly a ninja. After that, I headed back to Superdorm before heading down to Cat's apartment in Bebek for some pie-baking; her boyfriend was flying in on Thursday, so she wanted to make a peach pie for his family. As I am a fan of baking and currently kitchenless, I was more than willing to head over with one of my roommates for a communal pie-baking effort. Thursday was mainly given over to class and such, although I did find time to reread Pride and Prejudice and order in bruschetta with one of my roommates. Today was pretty nice as well; Callie and I walked down to Cat's after class briefly before walking over to Bodrum Manti in Arnavutkoy (best manti in the country, I'm positive of it) and then heading to Besiktas for some shopping. I picked up some DVDs (feeling just a little foolish for the number of romantic comedies I requested), and then we hit up this huge bookstore, so Callie could look for Turkish childrens books. I browsed around and found the English-language novel section, which comprised 2 shelves. I was pretty excited, as I'd somehow neglected to bring any books with me other than the one I read on the plane and some tomes on foreign policy and the middle east. Sadly, a good half of the English books they had were ancient Greek and Roman authors, and I just didn't think that Aristotle would make light summer reading. Just as I was about to give up on having any fresh reading material, I saw a volume by Mungo Park, who I immediately recognized as the Scotsman who, in the late 18th century, discovered Niger. I didn't know that his journal was in print, but apparently it is, and thus I am now slowly working my way through his Travels in the Interior of Africa; I think it'll last me a decent while.
This weekend I'm really excited to finally see the Aya Sofya, which I disn't see last time I was in Turkey because I wasn't fond of the idea of paying admission, and the Cistern, which should be just awesome, before heading through the Spice Bazaar. My roommates and I are jointly catsitting for a friend, so we'll be spending Saturday night cooking and baking up a storm in the cat's apartment (the joys of kitchen access, let me tell you).
It's a bit hard to believe that I have only a week and a half left of this summer program; I still need to figure out when exactly I'll be moving to Ankara, and how exactly I'll get my stuff there. The program has been really good so far, although the grammar has at times been more of a review than a new lesson for me. I think my vocab has vastly improved, so perhaps I am at a Turkish elementary-school kid's level, rather than a preschooler's level in my speaking ability. Maybe by the end of the year I'll be at middle school level--I'd be pretty content with that.
On that note, I'm off to bed,
-R

Hamam mi? Tamam.

2008-07-30T09:11:00.003-04:00

So now that it's quieted down somewhat here since my last post, I've been enjoying the culture and such. Ever since I found out I was returning to Turkey, I've been really looking forward to one thing: the hamams. I am a fan of the hamams. In Ankara, we'd go to these wonderful ancient little neighborhood hamams, somewhere in the order of 500-700 years old, filled with little old Turkish ladies (and younger Turkish women as well, but they were pretty popular among the septuagenarian crowd). For under 30 lira, I could get an amazing relaxing break, scrub, and massage, all in this gorgeous marble chamber with scalding-hot water and steam everywhere. It was fantastic.
In Istanbul though, there are tourist hamams, which cater to both Turks and foreigners. I'm sure there are neighborhood hamams, but they're not at all publicized, and I've no clue where they'd be. So, given that Istanbul in the summer is pretty darn hot and sticky, I figured I'd give a tourist hamam a try.
On my roommate's and the Internet's recommendation, I decided to try Çemberlitaş Hamamı, a hamam built by Sinan and right next to Sultanahmet. A friend of mine, one of my roommates, and two friends of my roommate came along as well, as hamams are quintessentially social experiences (that sounds confusing; there were 5 of us). We took the Light Rail to the hamam, which was handy, as it stops literally right in front of Cemberlitas. After a brief and surprisingly fruitless search for an ATM (seriously? We couldn't find an ATM in Sultanahmet??), we entered and paid the receptionist for the "Traditional Bath". It was definitely pricier than my Ankarali neighborhood hamams, but we got a student discount (being a student in Turkey is awesome; so many perks), so it was 35 YTL each. After that, we turned to the women's side and stripped down to our bathing togs and wraps (in hamams, women are traditionally nude, while apparently on the mens side men always keep their underwear/towels strategically on; in tourist hamams like Cemberlitas, some women choose to wear swimsuit bottoms--everyone is given a cotton wrap to stretch out on though), before entering the main part of the hamam. In the main hamam room, there's a huge heated marble slab in the middle, where you start your hamam experience by stretching out and sweating while chatting. It's not unlike a sauna. Around the walls are marble semienclosed chambers for secluded washing/rinsing, and open faucets/basins also for washing/rinsing. It's a decently large room, with a gorgeous vaulted ceiling with small globe-shaped glass windows that kind of looked like stars.
So, we hung out on the marble slab for probably half an hour, 45 minutes, just relaxing and chatting and steaming. After a bit, the bath attendants motioned that it was time for our scrubs. This is probably my favorite part of the hamam experience: hamam attendants are goood, and when they finish scrubbing you down it feels like you shed your old skin in favor of a brand new one. It is awesome. The ones at Cemberlitas had this pretty nifty soap method: they had a pillowcase in a dish of soapy water, and they'd open up the pillowcase, trap air inside it, then wring it out, forcing out cascades upon cascades of bubbles. I may need to try this with my own pillowcase some time. As the attendants scrub, they exfoliate, and scold you for not going to hamams more often (they're like Turkish versions of Norwegian Grandmothers). They really knead your muscles; I can't imagine getting a massage in addition to the scrub, but some people do-- I think my muscles would melt were they subjected to both a scrub and massage. Anyway, the attendants scrub all over, then take you to one of the secluded chambers to wash your hair. They left us there so we could rinse off a bit before going back to the marble slab to chill a bit more. It took a while for all of us to get scrubbed, as there were 5 of us, so I think we were in there almost 3 hours. After we were done, we rinsed off once more at one of the marble fountains, and then left. It's tradition to cool down after hamaming by sitting and having tea for another hour or so, but members of our party were pretty hungry, so we wandered off to find this amazing kofteci right in Sultanahmet (Kofte is kind of the Turkish version of meatballs, but more unhealthy), where we sat, ate, and people-watched before taking the Light Rail back to Kabatas. Cat, Abby and I decided to walk from Kabatas to Besiktas to catch a bus back to campus, so we set off and got distracted by a number of things. First, we wandered by the Basiktas Iskele, which was fortuitous, as we needed to fill up our Akbils (Akbils are Istanbul's version of Charlie Cards, but there are not so many top-up machines). From there, we got to the Besiktas district, where I showed Cat and Abby the DVD shops where I'd stocked up on bootleg Scrubs episodes and various movies; we spent a good 45 minutes going through the DVD selection of one of the shops and they both ended up with a decent amount of Turkish cinema to tide them over. After that, we finally got on a bus to Etiler, and got back to our dorm roughly 6 hours after we'd started out, exhausted but really clean.
It was just so nice to visit a hamam again, and I enjoyed the tourist hamam experience much more than I thought I would, although I still prefer the non-tourist ones back in Ankara. Cemberlitas was a really beautiful hamam, and I kind of wish I could have taken photos of the architecture. There are a few photos of the building at the hamam's website, which you should most definitely check out: Cemberlitas website

In other news, the court's still deliberating over the AKParti's fate, but folks are hedging their bets and starting to register new parties--one apparently is called the Hak Parti, wonder who's name they're playing off there. The Ergenekon case has been fascinating the last few days though; apparently this shadowy group has for 20 years been attempting to cultivate Turkish-Kurdish tensions to destabilize the country enough to semi-legitimize a military coup. It sounds crazy, and it may indeed be, but it's fascinating as it unfolds.
On that note,
-R

Bombs in Istanbul

2008-07-27T17:44:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone,
So again, I'm absolutely fine; two bombs went off about 2 hours ago in Istanbul, and so far the papers are reporting 13 dead and over 70 injured. It's really not good; this may be (if I recall correctly) the worst attack in Turkey since the HSBC bombs by the PKK in the early 2000s.
On a personal note, the bombs went off in Gungoren, which is about 8 miles as the crow flies from my apartment, so I'm not really near the site, although clearly still closer than I'd prefer to be. I'll be keeping a lowish profile the next few days (although this does not seem to have targeted foreigners--it was in a working-class, non-touristy neighborhood); as I mentioned in an earlier post, the decision on whether to close the AK Parti is expected to be made this week, so political tensions will be high, and this bombing will only exacerbate things. Jenny White speculated in her post about the bombings that they may have been orchestrated by Ergenekon, which frankly makes more sense to me at the moment than the PKK. I suppose time will tell. But for more info:

Jenny White's post, with a concise synopsis: http://www.kamilpasha.com/2008/07/27/bomb/

Turkish Daily News' story, with details: http://turkishdailynews.com.tr/excontent.php?htmlcon=explosionistanbul.htm

BBC's coverage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7527977.stm

It looks as though whoever did this timed the separate bombs so as to achieve maximum harm: by setting off a smaller "decoy" bomb and then detonating a larger, deadlier one once people had swarmed to help the victims of the first bomb. From the photos on TDN, it looks like some of the injured were children, which is just horrible. I really hope that morning brings more information to light, and hopeful prognoses for the 70+ injured people.

-R

Life in this fair city

2008-07-26T15:01:00.003-04:00

So life here in Istanbul has been fairly quiet since my last post; I suppose that's what happens when I update more frequently than every 2 weeks. On Thursday, I was supposed to go to a hamam with friends, but I've been kind of sick most of this week, so we postponed that til next Monday or Tuesday. I've been looking forward to going to a hamam again ever since learning I was coming back to Turkey: it is such an amazing and relaxing experience, and you feel so clean afterward, as if you'd traded in your old skin for a fresh one. Mmmmmm, it's nice... I think we're going to a touristy one this week, and I'll be interested to see how the experience compares to my fondly-remembered neighborhood hamams back in Ankara. I've heard some of the tourist ones require you to wear swimsuits, which would be very different.

Friday was my roommate's birthday, so we celebrated with cake in our room before heading out dancing. I should say rather, before everyone else headed out dancing: I was a little light-headed/passing out-ish, which was like a party only not, so I just made an appearance at the cake part and went to bed, hoping to feel better enough this morning to go to Bursa for a daytrip with Robin and Abby. Sadly, I was not quite up to that, so I slept in this morning and will have to get to Bursa sometime later. I need to get there, as Bursa is famous for its bathtowels and I am currently towelless. Anyway, instead of day-tripping, I had a leisurely morning and then headed over to Cat's (the other Fulbrighter) in the afternoon, as she was also sick, for a convalescing party. It was pretty much exactly what I needed: we had a late lunch of healthy vegetarian food, did some studying while watching my sick-day movie of choice, Pride and Prejudice, and chatted/gossiped/planned/commiserated. She's trying to convince me to do a 10k run in late August (it's called The Human Race, which is reason enough to do it right there), but I am pretty sure I am not yet at that stage in my feeble attempts to become a legit jogger. We'll see.

After returning from Cat's, I did a little more studying before indulging myself with a little American comfort food by ordering in an asian chicken wrap and a smoothie. They were wonderful, even if I do feel a little bad for not having real Turkish cuisine. I do feel all better, so I think tomorrow will consist of studying at Starbucks with a roommate and a friend, and doing a little waterfront exploring as a study break. Then, next week will bring the hamam early in the week and inshallah a daytrip to Edirne next Saturday, where Sinan's greatest mosque is located.

Next week should be just fascinating here, politically: the judge in the case to shut down the AK Parti begins considering the case on Monday, which means the verdict could come as early as Tuesday or Wednesday. If the verdict is to close the party, as it is pretty widely expected to be, it will make my research kind of interesting, and at a wider level will make Turkey very interesting, as they'll have to call new elections and many current politicians will be ineligible for office. The AK Parti members will have to re-form as a new party, which may not be as popular as AKP, so it could be a real power shift. Also, given the whole Ergenekon affair (a shadowy group apparently dedicated to effecting a coup, in the name of Kemalism; lots of arrests of supposed members have been carried out in the past few weeks), civil unrest and even a coup might not be unexpected. Kind of makes me wish I was already in Ankara...

On that note, I'll leave off til next time,
-R

Turkish, the City, and Cappadocia

2008-07-24T13:58:00.003-04:00

So I left off my last post with some of my always-entertaining visa woes. Thankfully, after a helpful visit to the Fulbright Istanbul office, I should be just fine on my current documentation until September, when I'll get my residence permit. I just can't really leave the country til then, which I suppose is fine, as I wasn't planning any extra-Turkey trips this summer.

Last week was pretty hectic for me: I had midterms on Thursday, for all my classes. After a lot of studying and even more procrastinating, I finished up with all of them by 4 on Thursday afternoon. After that, I headed right back to the dorm to pack: we had no classes last Friday, so I went on vacation. Thursday night I took the overnight bus to Cappadocia with 2 of my roommates (Robin and Abby), my fellow Fulbrighter (Cat), and Cat's cousin, who was in town visiting (Nicole). We all rushed to get our stuff packed and to the bus station to try and get an 8 or 8:30 bus to Goreme; this however didn't happen, as Istanbul is enormously huge and it ended up taking 2 hours to get to the bus station via city bus. In Ankara, I lived 5 minutes away from ASTI (their intercity bus station), so this was a bit shocking to me. Anyway, we got to the bus station by 9, figured we'd buy tickets, and head on our merry way to the land of fairy chimneys.
Except, when we got to the first bus company that travels to Cappadocia, we were told that they had no more tickets that night. Uh-oh. One of the bus company representatives told me to come with him to the other Cappadocia-going companies (after a semester of travelling in Turkey via bus, I am in my element, Turkish-wise, in bus stations and thus handled our travel plans), and we headed to 2 other sold-out busses before finally, luckily, getting the last 5 tickets on the 9:30 bus at a third company. We found out later, they actually only had 4 seats available, and kicked some poor guy off the bus to make room for us. Anyway, we did get on the bus, and off we went to Cappadocia.
We arrived in Goreme at about 8:30, after a short stop in Nevsehir (the regional capital, but really boring from a tourist perspective), and after setting off in the wrong direction managed to find our pension and have breakfast. They had French toast, which was so, so wonderful. After checking in and cleaning ourselves up a bit, we struck off to Goreme Open-Air Museum, which is just like 3 km outside of Goreme and a UNESCO world heritage site. I'd been through it the last time I was in Cappadocia, but it is really pretty so I didn't mind going again. When we got there, we found that our Bogazici student IDs got us free admission, which was excellent, as it's normally 12 YTL. We had a pretty leisurely and enjoyable time exploring the cave churches and monastic ephemera, and this time around I sucked it up and paid the extra cash to see the Dark Church, which was totally worth it. The frescoes inside were stunning. I'll post one of my photos below, the rest are on my Flickr account, in my Cappadocia set.

After that, we wandered back to town, stopping by a pottery workshop for one of my roommates before heading back to our pension for a late lunch and some lounge-time. The pension had milkshakes on the menu, and I was really excited as the Turks generally seem to abhor anything resembling a partially-frozen beverage, but I got my hopes up too soon: the 'milkshake' was warmer than refrigerator temperature and the consistency of chocolate milk. So, a word to the wise: don't order milkshakes in Turkey. My lunch was better: I had Cacik, a Turkish garlic-cucumber-minty yogurt dish, served with bread. It was phenomenally good, and I'm very excited because I may actually be able to make it in my current kitchenless situation. We spent the rest of the afternoon poolside (our pension had a pool; they also had a pet dalmatian mix that guides guests on valley hikes--they pretty much rock), before ambling out to a restaurant that we heard had good vegetarian food for dinner. After dinner, we headed to the bus station to buy our tickets back to Istanbul for Sunday night, as after our almost-not-getting-to-Cappadocia, we wanted to ensure we were going to get back ok. We started with the first company, and I was in the bargaining zone. The tickets were originally 55 YTL each, and I got them down to 35 YTL/person, or roughly $28, $30. The prices were so low they wouldn't go through their computer system, so they had to give us handwritten tickets instead. It was pretty nice to be able to almost-fluently use my Turkish there; again, bus station vocab and usage is my best vocab and usage.

The next day, we took an organized tour to a scenic overlook, Derinkuyu underground city, Ihlara Valley, Selime Monastery, the so-called "Star Wars rocks", Pigeon Valley, and an onyx workshop. We originally were going to just go to Derinkuyu and Ihlara using public transportation, but quickly figured out that we'd spend more money and more time commuting than if we joined the tour; and the tour had air conditioning and free lunch. So, we got on the tour minibus and headed out for our day of adventure. Derinkuyu was really neat: the city is 8 storeys deep in some parts, and kind of resembles a human ant colony. The first 2 floors were made by the Hittites, for siege protection in wartime and food storage in peacetimes, and later communities just expanded as they needed. It got the most use as a legit city in the early Christian era, when the Romans weren't so keen on Christianity and sent forces to take care of their uppity new-religion-having population. The people of Derinkuyu chilled in their underground city for several months at a time, with up to 10000 or 14,000 people living just in that city. The other major underground city in the region (there are actually hundreds, but most are just 1-2 storeys) was 8 or 9 km away, and they actually had a passageway connecting the 2. The whole thing was very well thought out and cleverly designed, with multiple blockable entrances, kitchens, a church, a religious instruction room, and just all kinds of passageways. Very fun to climb around in, if a bit low-ceilinged.
After Derinkuyu, we headed to Ihlara Valley, which is in the southeast of Cappadocia. To avoid this being the single longest post of this blog's lifespan, I'll just direct you to my photostream for descriptions of everywhere else we went on Saturday, as I captioned decently well there: flickr.com/photos/bonkano.
We had lunch in the Ihlara Valley, before heading to Selime, stopping en-route to see the infamous Star Wars rocks. They say parts of the movies were filmed in the region, which I can believe. The Selime Monastery was another fun, interesting, and clamberable formation, we spent a good deal of time there before heading to Pigeon Valley to see the pigeon houses and then to the onyx workshop, which was not so thrilling but thankfully low-pressure. After that long and full day, we did some swimming before having dinner at the pension and playing some tavla.
Sunday morning, we got up and set out to hike the Pigeon Valley to Uchisar, which is the name of both a fortress and the village around the fortress, about 3-4 km from Goreme. It was a great hike, full of all kinds of steep hills, and Nicole was nice enough to quiz the rest of us on Turkish verbs taking the accusative, indicative, and ablative particles, so it was a learning excursion. It felt so great to stretch my leg muscles going up and down the valley; I expected to be really sore after getting back but so far that hasn't been the case. Anyway, we got to Uchisar village and proceeded to hike up to the fortress; it's the tallest point in the region, so it was still quite a bit up. We climbed through the interior of the fortress to the very top, where we spent a good amount of time chatting and contemplating before running into a group of American students in the equivalent of our program, but in Ankara. They were pretty nice, and we exchanged thoughts on the language, our respective programs, and travelling in Turkey; sadly they're leaving before I arrive in Ankara. By and by, we hiked back down to the village and decided to grab lunch there before heading back to Goreme. Uchisar is the French tourist hangout in Cappadocia, so all the restaurant and pension signs were in French; I enjoyed that quite a bit, especially seeing some of the Turkish-French mistranslations. Back in Goreme, we had more pool time, played with the pension owner's new kitten, and had pie baked by the pension owners before packing up and heading out. We had a 7 pm bus out of Goreme, which got in to Istanbul at 6:30am Monday morning. Mindful of our fon times getting to the bus station in Istanbul, we asked if the bus company had a shuttle into the city, which they did, so we took that. They failed to mention, though, that the shuttle wouldn't be leaving the bus station til 8am, after the next bus from Goreme arrived. The shuttle took us downtown, where we transferred to an Etiler-bound bus and arrived at the dorms at 8:45, just enough time to shower, drop our stuff off, check email, and be an hour late to class.
It was a pretty fantastic trip; 5 people is a little large a group to travel with, but it did help me bargain down our bus tickets, so I'm not complaining too much. I had a great time relaxing, and a better time exploring the parts of Cappadocia I missed the last time I was there.
It's been a decently quiet week since Monday; I've pretty much been immersed in class and homework. Tuesday my class went to the Kadikoy pazar with my TA; it was fun, and overwhelming, and crowded, as pazars are. Wednesday one of my professors took us out for ice cream at the swanky ice cream chain in Etiler, which was awesome. One of the girls in my class found a large chunk of glass in her ice cream, which was not so awesome, but the manager was wonderfully apologetic and gave us all free Turkish coffees, which was nice. My professor read all our coffee grounds for us after we finished our coffee; apparently there is a guy who will become a larger part of my life, and apparently I bring good luck. We'll see about that.
On that note, I'm out til my next blog post, which hopefully will be sooner than in 2 weeks, like the gap between this and my last post.
-R

A lot going on in Istanbul today...

2008-07-09T17:13:00.002-04:00

If you didn't hear yet, the American consulate in Istanbul was attacked earlier today. 3 gunmen apparently killed 3 policemen/security forces before being killed themselves. It seems like an isolated incident at the moment, but the latest BBC update (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7498772.stm) has linked the attack to the Great Eastern Islamic Raiders Front, or IBDA-C in Turkish, which is linked with al-Qaeda. Time will tell, I'm sure, but it's interesting, as IBDA-C doesn't seem to have been so active for a while now.
Bogazici's campus is nowhere near the consulate, so I've been almost totally unaffected by the attack (really, folks). So while I'll be probably a little more cognizant of my personal safety, there's not much cause to worry.

...at least from that. I'm having some fun times coordinating my residence permit, and apparently may have gotten the wrong kind of visa (but maybe not), which is a bit stressful as I'm required to get my residence permit by late next week, and an essential document for my residence permit application is in Ankara. So, next week I may be dropping in to Ankara for a day, and if I can't get my residence permit in time/have the wrong visa/anything else goes wrong, I'll be heading to the EU to reapply for a visa at a Turkish consulate. I'd really prefer not to do that, so the next few days are going to be a flurry of activity for me.

Hope you-all are doing fabulously,
-R

slowly becoming an Istanbullu...

2008-07-08T09:20:00.003-04:00

I figured I'd best update this to keep up with my flickr account, which is more up-to-date than I think it ever has been. Istanbul continues to be hot, sticky, and humid; the forecast for the next 10 days is roughly 88 and sunny, with nary a chance of precipitation in sight. I would absolutely love a good thunderstorm about now.
My classes continue to go pretty darn well; I think I still speak at maybe a kindergarten level, but at least I can write and read decently. Inshallah by the end of the year I'll be much closer to fluent. Either that or I will only speak in a sort of English-Turkish pidgin...
As part of the program I'm in for the summer, we have weekly lectures in various Turkish-related topics. Our first one was on pop-culture Orientalism, and it was just fascinating. If I didn't already want to study foreign relations, I could definitely see studying popular Orientalism--the imagery is both gorgeous and fun, and it gives a lot of insights to identity and perceptions. The second one was on an Ottoman artist, which wasn't quite my preferred subject, but I still learned quite a bit, which was nice.
This past weekend, I headed to Ortaköy with my roommate Abby, to do some shopping and exploring. Ortaköy has a Saturday bazaar which is reputed to have all the non-food-pazar-stuff you'd ever want at real, not-ridiculous-Grand-Bazaar prices. I know full well that one should never actually buy thıngs at the Grand Bazaar, so this seemed like my kind of pazar. When we got to Ortaköy (after taking the ridiculously scenic route known as 'getting lost in Sinanpaşa'), we didn't quite believe there was a pazar there; the streets did not seem to lead to any sort of large open area in which to host large numbers of random vendors. Then we walked to the waterfront, where we found that the Ortaköy pazar is really more of a street market, like the Marketfest vendors, for those of you reading from Minnesota. They were laid out in long lines along the side streets and alleys all around the waterfront, surrounded by ritzy dining establishments, the local Friday mosque, the synagogue (I kid you not, Ortaköy has a synagogue. It's crazy), and the Istanbul Radisson (if you have a large accommodation budget and want to stay away from the tourist trap that is Sultanahmet, the Radisson would probably be a good choice, fwiw). While it was a little disconcerting to see the restaurants' entryway-ads for 25-lıra meals that I would normally pay 5 for by campus, the prices of the pazar goods were actually relatively reasonable, and I was able to get a few decent deals. I picked up a few pairs of 1 ytl earrings, as well as a headband-ish thing and a print of an early-20th-century German travel poster featuring Istanbul. I don't read German, but I think the print's title, 'Orientalische Eisenbahnen,' means 'Oriental Express.' After spending several hours meticulously going through every vendor's wares, Abby and I stopped at Mado. a tony Turkish ice cream chain, for some refreshment. Abby's ice cream looked good, but my chocolate mılkshake was more like chocolate milk, and not really worth the 7 ytl. Oh well. I guess I'll know in the future, stick with the real ice cream.
On Sunday, I planned to go for a run with Istanbul's branch of the Hash House Harriers, an expat running club. I was so motivated, and set off for the meeting place...only to get horribly lost and walk through the city for an hour and a half. So I still got my exercise in, but not quite in the way I might've preferred; I'll try again to find the HHHers when they hold their next run in a few weeks.

This is getting ridiculously long, so I'll close with a few thoughts:
-Every single night, at 9:30 or 10:30ish, someone sets off large amounts of fıreworks in the neighborhood. I have no idea why.
-I really love Turkish cuisine, but everything is cooked in soooo much oil; I would be ridiculously happy with some grilled vegetables or lean chicken breast about now
-The politics here have been really interesting: several dozen verrry high-ranking/important people were detained last week and are alleged to be part of a shadowy group known as "Ergenekon," which supposedly is trying to take down the current government. At the same time, the current ruling political party was in court last week as well, defending itself from charges of failing to protect/harming the secularism of the Turkish state. If they're found guilty, the party will be banned, as will its leaders, and new elections will most likely be called. Fun times.

-R

Photos!

2008-06-29T08:00:00.002-04:00

My first few batches of photos are up! I'm working on captioning them all, as after a bit one mosque looks a lot like another, so bear with me.
Photos are at: flickr.com/photos/bonkano

And a few brief thoughts:
-I forgot that the Turks put french fries in their sandwiches. I ordered a Mediterranean wrap the other day, and was bemused to discover fries among the chicken and lettuce.

-There is an Istanbul version of Foodler. Yauwa. Also, for every 30 lira you spend on the site, they give you a free DVD. One night in with my roommates = I am now the proud owner of The Illusionist in Turkish.

-I find I have a tendency to switch into Hausa when a word isn't coming to me in Turkish. I'm not really sure why my brain leaps between those 2 languages; perhaps because of the Arabic links?

-I took a walking tour of parts of central Istanbul with my language program yesterday, which was pretty fun, very interesting, and incredibly informative. We walked 7.5 miles to look at mosques, churches, and architectural examples; I woke up a bit late and thus did all that traipsing in flipflops which, in hindsight, was great for the mosques but not for the walking.

-I saw my first abayas in Istanbul yesterday, in the Fatih district. The Fatih district of Istanbul has a reputation as a stalwart bastion of conservatism in a secular city; I didn't realize how true that was. I don't think I ever saw an abaya in Ankara.

This is where I live...

2008-06-27T13:36:00.003-04:00

This, above, is the view on my walk from Superdorm (oh, it's pretty Super) to class. It's stunning, and is probably a large contributing factor to my lack of tardiness so far (9AM is really pretty early for me...). I still can't quite believe I live here, with that view. It's crazy.

This week has been a flurry of activity: Saturday was full of settling in and sleeping, before I headed out to explore the neighborhood and shop a bit with my roommates on Sunday. One of my roommates has been here at BU (this time, BU means Bogazici Universitesi, which takes some getting used to for me) since February, and she's been a bit of a godsend in terms of her neighborhood/campus/bureaucracy/etc knowledge and helpfulness. All of my roommates, or I suppose the more correct term would be suitemates, are just sweethearts, so I think I really lucked out. I have three, and we range from 18-26, California to Boston, so we're a pretty diverse mix.
Anyway, back to shopping: we stopped at a Pasaj to look for some basic plastic cups for one of my roommates, and the owner was a little shocked by our request; he informed us that plastic cups would kill us. We thanked him for his wise advice and continued on...we did eventually find plastic cups at Migros (like an American grocery store, but with an expanded 'stuff you might find at Target' section). While relating this health advice to my other roommate's Turkish boyfriend, he further informed us that eating fish mixed with yogurt would kill us as well. I sense a trend: the theme of my summer may have to be "Istanbul is deadly in strange, strange ways."
My language program officially started Monday, with a placement test, interview, and campus tour. This was pretty stressful; I realized how much vocabulary I had forgotten or only half-remembered. Tuesday we started classes and have been going strong since. My classes so far are sadly a little boring, especially from the grammar side of things, but I'm learning a lot of vocab and really familiarizing myself with speaking and with vernacular usage. I suppose 5-7 hours of Turkish a day will do that.

My impressions of Istanbul so far this time 'round are so different than last time: I think because so far I've stayed in primarily university-adjacent neighborhoods, I've avoided the repellent tourist touts and overcommercialization that struck me last time I visited, in Sultanahmet, Beyoglu, and Taksim. Here in Bebek and Etiler, shopkeepers don't shout at me to "come in! come in! look!", and the shops sell actually useful products, instead of carpets and belly-dance costumes.
The one thing that really surprised me about life here is all the hills. Constantinople, like its Roman Empire sister-capital, was built on seven hills, and unlike Boston, engineers and city planners did not flatten the surrounding hills as the city expanded. Of course, very little urban growth in Turkey was actually "planned"; most of it just kind of...happened, helped along as needed by 'gifts' to the relevant inspectors and officials. Thus, there are a ridiculous number of streets at crazy angles and inclines; some of the footpaths at BU actually tack back and forth, like mountain roads. This would be an adjustment in any environment, but to traverse these roads in 90-degree weather with dripping humidity, carrying 7 or 10 books (depending on the day) is really giving me a bit of a workout. I think I will have amazingly toned legs by the end of the summer.

On that note, I should get going,
Hope everyone's doing great!
-R

I'm here!

2008-06-21T14:24:00.002-04:00

I arrived in Turkey this morning, at about 10AM Istanbul time/2 AM Minnesota time. After a somewhat harrowing wait for my luggage (I think my bags were the last 2 off the plane), I grabbed a cab and headed for campus. In true foreign cabdriver tradition, my driver chatted with me for a bit before telling me that he would totally tutor me in Turkish, and that we should hang out, and to give me his number. So my luck with taxidrivers hasn't changed much since Niamey. I suppose at least he didn't propose :P
My flights were pretty decent; Delta upgraded me to first class for my first flight, which was nice and unexpected. If only that'd been my transAtlantic flight... The transAtlantic flight was also decent, although Delta pales in comparison to the bells and whistles offered by Lufthansa or Air France. There were no seat-back media players, no complimentary newspapers, no warm towels (oh man I love Lufthansa...); it was fine though, and their coffee was pretty good, so that kind of made up for it.
After finding my dorm (I'm in a dorm for the summer program, and will inshallah be apartment-hunting while here), I checked in, dropped my bags off, and headed out to find bedsheets, which I had neglected to bring in the interest of not breaking my already-overstuffed luggage. Apparently, Turks don't use flat sheets, which I don't remember being the case 2 years ago. Anyway, on the way to the shop I had an enjoyable walk along the main road between Bogazici's 4 campuses; I'll probably be up and down the road tomorrow buying other essentials (a fan, cell phone, I've got quite a list). On the way back I stumbled into a children's dance show of some sort. Oops.
After my short shopping excursion, I took a shower and pretty much collapsed and fell asleep, which was pretty blissful, even without a flat sheet. My pagne has turned out to be surprisingly useful: so far, it has served as my towel, my wrap skirt, and my top sheet. Yauwa.
And with that I'm back to bed. More on the city (1. it's huge. enormous. gargantuan.), inshallah with pics, tomorrowish.

-R

2008-06-11T01:49:00.002-04:00

Just a quick update, now that I know when I'm leaving:
I’m flying over to Istanbul June 20th, where I’ll be staying for the summer, studying Turkish at Bogazici University. On/about August 14th, I’ll be moving on over to Ankara, where I’ll be studying at ODTU, taking Turkish lessons, studying independently, and doing some independent research. I don’t know exactly when I’m returning, but classes go til at least mid-June, so it’ll be a full year and change.

My departure date was decided pretty darn recently, so I'm running around here, there, and everywhere trying to pack and get everything done before I leave. Also trying to remember what Turkey doesn't have and experience it before leaving/pack it (peanut butter, Mexican food, shorts, my favorite library system...). It's a fun flurry of activity.

-R

My next adventures

2008-06-02T02:05:00.002-04:00

I’m updating this from the depths of its disuse on the eve of my first few weeks as an alumna of BU to bring it, and inshallah any readers, up to date. Although this past year I spent predominantly in Boston, finishing my degree, this summer I will be returning to Turkey as a Fulbright Scholar to study and research for a year. While in true Turkish fashion the details are still being worked out, I’m flying to Istanbul in mid-June for a seven-week Turkish program, and will move to Ankara at the end of the summer to take classes at METU/ODTÜ and begin my research. I am incredibly excited to have this opportunity, and really looking forward to living in Turkey again and solidifying my Turkish. Inshallah I’ll update this blog with news/stories/adventures, and keep my Flickr account straining under massive influxes of photos.

My research will be on Turkish foreign relations, paying special attention to foreign relations within the context of Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. Some of you may remember, I wrote my thesis on Turkey and Huntington's theory, so I'll be expanding the breadth and depth of that. I intend to travel through the Turkish border regions to better understand the border relations separate from Turkey's foreign policy. It looks to be an interesting time to be in Turkey, and again, I'm pretty excited.

Stay tuned for more info!

-R

...and a belated update

2007-07-11T00:24:00.000-04:00

As you've probably guessed (or seen...), I've been back from Niger for just over a month now. The last few weeks in West Africa were more than a little hectic, of course, as I rushed around trying to finish everything, see everything, and buy as many souvenirs as I could fit in my luggage, all while writing term papers on one of the two working computers. The last week in particular was extraordinarily bittersweet, as I said goodbye to friends knowing full well I'd probably never see them again. It was harder than leaving Turkey, because I know I'll return to Turkey, whereas I don't know if I'll make it back to West Africa. After all, the Hauka spirit said I wouldn't ...
Returning to the US has been fairly good: I spent some time in Minnesota and am now in Boston, and for the most part have reacclimated myself to life in the first world. It's been very difficult to talk about my time in Niger, though: how do you put an experience like that into words? And how do you explain what it's like to live in the poorest country in the world, when there really are next to no reference points for your audience? It's been aggravating and frustrating, as you can probably tell.
On that note, I'll wrap up this post. Who knows what travels I'll undertake next? I wouldn't even begin to conjecture...

2007-04-26T18:09:00.000-04:00

Just thought I'd write a quick note on life in Niamey, as it's been a happening few days. Yesterday, I was fitted for my first spin down the runway: that's right, on Saturday, I'm going to be one of the models in the fashion show of the premier Nigerien designer. I'm pretty excited, it should be fun; a lot of the BU students are modeling, and the clothes are really cute (...I might end up buying what I'm modeling). Today, I spent most of the day at the musee, and then came back to the CFCA and went to a spirit possession ceremony. It was sooooooooo cool! I went with 3 other BU students and Barke, a for,er BUNiger student who teaches at the American school and who goes to a lot of these ceremonies. We left the CFCA at about 3:45 and got to the spirit house at about 4; the musicians were already there and playing away--actually, they'd been there all day, playing since about sunrise. Everyone else was just starting to get there, as in Niamey most ceremony attendees come after work. As people started trickling in (there were probably 30 or 50 people there total), the spirit mediums started dancing to the music: each spirit (there are hundreds) has its own special music and special dance, so when the musicians played a specific melody, all the spirit mediu,s present for that spirit would get up and dance in the dance circle. Some of them were reeeeeally energetic; one guy did Russian splits probably 5 feet in the air, over and over again. The dancing went on for hours; it was about 7 before the first possession happened. This specific ceremony I think was for rain, so they were looking for a few specific spirits - some pretty big ones. Barke's friend, who is also a spirit mediu, and a zima, was the first possessed: he got up, started lurching around and walking around for a bit, and just was very out of it for awhile before the spirit took full possession; he was doing his spirit's "motions" and once the spirit took hold he yelled at the musicians and roared a lot before settling down and consulting with some of the men present. He basically told them instructions about what should be done to make him (the spirit) happy, as well as more specific advice about a certain spirit priest's spirit house, which is currently under construction. While that was happening, another medium was possessed; we could see the prepossession sickness come over the medium, as he started frothing at the mouth before pacing and shaking. When the spirit took full possession, he roared and shook and contorted, and then yelled at the muscians while beating his chest. He then askedfor fire, so the assembled people gave him a lighted bundle of twigs, which he proceeded to hold to his chest and grab with his bare hands. I don't know how, but he wasn't burned, and apparently the mediums never do get burned while being possessed. After that, he too proceeded to hold court, all the while frothing at the mouth and shaking. Barke and us BU students went over to the spirit possessing his friend, and listened to him give readings of other people, who would ask him questions or who the spirit would grab and yell at. It was pretty interesting, even though it was mostly in Zarma. Then, the spirit "read" each of us! He said that Danaijo, Goro, and I are "seeking wisdom" and that we'll never come back to Niger ( he said that Makka would return to Niger in 16 months, which was news to her), and for me individually, he grabbed my hand, stood up, pulled me up so I was standing, and then lifted me up into the air. For real! I didn't quite know what to think! Barke explained afterwards that it's a gesture that means that spirit is looking after me and protecting me, so that's cool. We sat with the spirit for a while more, during which time I got spit and snot all over me from the spirit, which was pretty darn gross ( that's just a thing that tends to happen when you get possessed: you froth and phlegm and your nose runs - glad I'm not a medium). Then, the spirit left the body, which was really cool: it physically threw tself from the body, and the medium flung themselves away, collapsed, and looked really exhausted. The other spirit left his medium, too, and then it was pretty much over: the musicians stopped, people packed up, and we left, after talking to a couple of Barke's friends. We got back to the CFCA at 9, so it was quite a long ceremony. It was really really interesting though: the music was absolutely beautiful, and the dancing was interesting, and everyone there was really nice. The spirits that came tonight were Hauka spirits: from the Hauka family of spirits ("hauka" means "crazy" in Hausa), which is a newish family that's developed in the last hundred years or so, and for good reason: they're white people spirits. For serious, the spirits are different colonial personalities, some are general amalgams of white people, while others are very specific, 'General so-and-so' and such. One of the spirits that came tonight is known for being a drunk, so one of his spirit offerings was a bottle of wine, which they poured on the dance area; and the playing with fire is a very Hauka thing to do.
Just thought I'd tell you guys all about it while it's still fresh in my mind; I don't have photos because they're not allowed, so I can't show you later. I feel like I'm still in a bit of sensory overload from all the sights and sounds and just everything.
-R

updates!

2007-04-11T02:01:00.000-04:00

Hey!

So, it's been a busy few weeks here: the week before last, I moved in with a Nigerien family for a week, which was really fun, then last week I had a pretty big paper due, and then this past week was our second big trip, to Birni'N Konni and Agadez. So I've been movin'-movin'.
Homestay was ionteresting: I lived with the Habibou Family, in the Wadata neighborhood of Niamey. Mme Habibou is an English teacher, and I'm not sure what Mr Habibou does, because I only saw him twice all week. Apparently, though, that's pretty normal for Nigerien families. The kids were adorable: they had Winnie, 17, who's named after Winnie Mandela, Abdou, 12, and Ismail, 2 1/2. There were also two of Mme Habibou's nieces staying with them, Hajira, 15ish, and Hassana, maybe 8ish. They live in a three-room house, which is pretty typical for middle-class Nigeriens; there was a front sitting/living room and two bedrooms, one master bedroom and one bedroom for the girls. They also had a bathroom, but the only running water was from the shower. I spent a lot of time hanging out with the family, watching TV with the kids, and visiting friends with Winnie. On the Tuesday of my homestay, I got to go to school with Winnie, which was a verrry interesting experience; she goes to middle school, so I sat in on her physics class and talked to a whole lot of kids in a mix of French, English, and Hausa. I took a few photos, and have them up on Flickr; I don't have time for a more detailed post right now, but inshallah I'll get the rest of my homestay and trip to Agadez up pretty soon.

Hope you all are doing great,
-R

This week in Africa

2007-03-17T11:06:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone,

This is just a quick update before I leave for my homestay, which starts tomorrow. It should be pretty fun, I'm staying with the Habibous a Nigerien family who I've had lunch with.
First, though, I finally have most of my photos up from Burkina! They're at http://www.flickr.com/photos/26857704@N00/ , all organized and everything...
This week was pretty interesting; there was a new group of Peace Corps volunteers who were sworn in last night, so they've all been in town this week, with PC events as well. On Wednesday, several of us went to a Gender and Development benefit hosted by PC, it was pretty fun, and verrry different seeing 20-something Americans who weren't BU students. I won a traditional outfit at the silent auction, which is actually fairly decent-looking, and we met quite a few Peace Corps Volunteers stationed out of Konni, which is where we're travelling to in 2 weeks. Last night was the Peace Corps swearing-in, which we all went to; it was at the Ambassador's house, which is absolutely gorgeous.
On Wednesday, I went over to the American School to do some after-school tutoring; I had a lot of fun, and the kids were amazingly cute, but I ended up missing my Hausa class, so it might not work for me to return often... Inshallah something will work itself out. I've been at the musee about 12 or 15 hours this week, and finished another handbag; this one is a different design, and part of it is crocodile leather from Zinder. It's really pretty, and it's supplanted my usual shoulder bag for everyday use. Yesterday, I started yet another bag, with yet another design, and this time the bag has a zipper, which I've not done before. I also started using the sewing machine in addition to handstitching, so I've come quite a ways in my leather-making abilities ;-)
Earlier today, we got Internet service on all 3 of the computers here, so hopefully I'll be able to update more frequently; in any case, I'll be able to check my email more than 1ce a day, which I'm looking forward to.
Well, that sums up quite a bit of what's new here, so I'll leave it at that,
hope you-all are doing splendidly,
-R

just a quick post...

2007-03-08T05:35:00.000-05:00

So, I've not been back in Niamey long enough for anything wildly exciting, but I have gotten some of my trip photos online, so if you want to see crocodiles up close and personal (and, as I get more online, stick-men, waterfalls, etc), they're at http://www.flickr.com/photos/26857704@N00/
In other news, I think I've decided to start tae kwon do; I start next week, it should be pretty interesting, because I've never done anything like it before. Wish me luck! I'm staying fairly busy here, what with classes, working at the museum, and my drum lessons; there's a lot to try and fit in to the few months we're here.
It's getting hotter here, it's been 100 and above the last few days; it feels horridly hot, but I know in a month or so it'll be 120 and above, so I shouldn't complain yet. Although, I've been hearing about all the snow back home, and it's making me pretty jealous... At least 6 people have contracted malaria so far; I haven't yet, but I'm sure it'll come when I least want it...and it won't be very fun.
With that, hope you-all are doing great,
sai anjima,
R

How I spent my spring break...

2007-03-06T19:20:00.000-05:00

I’m now back in Niamey, after 11 days in Burkina Faso, and while it’s really good to be back home, I’m really going to miss Burkina. Burkina was soooo different from Niger that it felt like we were much further away than just across the border. The differences in development betwixt the two countries was really drastic; I think it’ll take Niger a long time to get to where Burkina is today.
We started out on the Thursday before last, leaving Niamey at 7:30 bound for the border and Ouagadougou. Since there are seventeen of us, plus the two RAs, the trip leader, Yazi Dogo (I guess he was a chaperone?), the two drivers, and two of Yazi’s sons, we took two vans; it was a little cramped, but pretty fun. The border crossing is about an hour and a half from Niamey, and the crossing itself was no hassle at all. While we were stopped there, I bought a Fanta from a vendor selling drinks to the border traffic; it was a Fanta Cocktail, which they don’t have in Niger. Just over the border, we passed a lake. I hadn’t seen a lake since leaving Minnesota, and they’re all over Burkina. We also passed irrigated fields, which again, are not extant in Niger, and pigs, which no good Nigerien would own, as they’re not exactly favored animals in Islam. We spent the first night in Ouaga, where our hotel was right next to an ice cream café (again, there’s no such thing in Niamey); the ice cream was heavenly, as it was a cool 97 degrees out in Ouaga. A few of us strolled down the main street of Ouaga, which I really can only describe as the Times Square of West Africa; there were soooo many restaurants and boutiques, and real stores selling things like ready-to-wear clothing, motorbikes, and flat-screen televisions. For dinner, most of us went to a restaurant called Happy Donald’s House of Hamburger. For real. It had a huge picture of Donald Duck on the sign.
On the second day, we headed off towards Bobo-Dioulasso, and on the way we stopped at a sacred lake, where we bought a sacrificial chicken for the crocodiles. There were over 140 crocodiles in the lake, which was not all that big; crocodiles were everywhere. Our guides wrangled a couple crocodiles really close, and then (really cool!) we got to ride the crocodiles. It was a little spooky, but very, very fun, and of course photos will be forthcoming. After that, we got to Bobo, and checked in to our hotel there, which was absolutely beautiful; they had parrots and turtles in the lobby, and amazing poolside swings. The next day, we visited the mountain village of Koro, which is high up amongst sheer rock faces; the villagers moved up there years and years ago to avoid a war and just stayed. They have to haul everything up to the village on their heads (like water, and food….ouch). We were told before we went to the village that we weren’t allowed to ask what they did with their dead, and afterwards, we found out why: they eat their dead. It’s a form of ancestor worship, and I think it’s pretty darn creepy; I never expected to be able to say I’ve met people who eat their dead relatives, but there you go. The next day, we saw the Grand Mosquee, which was built in a Malian style, with wooden sticks pointing out of the sides and ostrich eggs on the top of the minaret; we weren’t allowed inside, though, because we weren’t Muslim (that’s the first time I’ve ever not been allowed inside a mosque for that reason…). Later that day, I went shopping in the Grand Marche, which was fun/stressful, and bought fabric with a few friends; the Bobo marche was pretty hectic, we couldn’t walk down the aisles without at least one tout hanging on behind us. In the afternoon, four of us headed back towards the mosque, bought some pottery, and saw part of a Bobo funeral ceremony: it was definitely an experience. We were at the pottery sellers, and we heard a commotion down the street; we looked up and saw two brown figures lumbering down the street, followed by a couple dozen kids. As they got closer, we could see that it was actually two men, covered from head to toe in twine, carrying big sticks in one hand and rope whips in the other. They were walking down the street, meandering a bit, when suddenly one of them took off running, chased a guy standing on the side of the street down, and beat him with the whip. This proceeded to happen several more times, and they walked right up towards us, passed us, and then turned around and walked back and forth in front of the pottery vendors, stopping to hit people occasionally. The woman we had just bought pottery from told us that it probably would be a good idea if we went inside her hut and away from the stick-men, as she was pretty sure we were going to get walloped. Apparently the stick-men are equal-opportunity wallopers. So that was fun. We were able to come back out after a couple minutes, because the stick-men moved further down the street, and I was able to take a few, bad, unobtrusive photos. The next day, we headed to Banfora, a sleepy little town that was really nice after the more hectic Bobo; we went climbing on rock domes at Fabedougou, on the outskirts of Banfora, and it was beautiful, we watched the sun set from the tops of the rocks, and saw mountain goats climbing up vertical heights, it was very serene, except for the fact that there were 17 of us…
The next day, we went to a waterfall complex, which was stunningly beautiful. We went swimming and exploring, and picnicked there before heading to a lake, where we took a pirogue ride and saw hippos. They were amazing. We saw about 8 or 10; and I have video of some of them. The lake itself was really pretty, full of waterlilies, and the water was so clear you could see to the bottom. That evening, we ate at a restaurant called McDonald; it definitely isn’t part of the chain, there was no “ ‘s “, and there was a large picture of Donald Duck on the wall (like at Happy Donald’s…I sense a theme); it was one of the best restaurants I’ve been to in West Africa, they had amazing fresh-made passionfruit and guava juice. The day after that, we packed up and headed off to Ouaga again, to see FESPACO, the African film festival. The festival was really good; I saw an amazing documentary on the first African actress by the first female African director, the director was there, so we got to meet her, and it turns out that both she and the subject of the documentary are Nigerien. There were clips from old Nigerien films in the documentary, and one of them was an African-style Western: the cowboys rode down and shot down giraffes. I think we’re going to try and see if Yazi has a copy of that movie, it looked amazingly cheesy but great. There were a whole lot of really good vendors at FESPACO, from all over Africa, so I went a little crazy shopping: I’m pretty sure I won’t need to buy anything decorative for my future house/apartment ever. Of course, I probably will pick up a few more things here, but at this point I’m not sure I’ll be able to get all my African art back… We kept on running into Nigeriens at the FESPACO market, which was fun, because we could converse in Hausa and Zarma instead of French, which is what we used almost exclusively everywhere else in Burkina.
On Friday morning, four of us got up at the crack of dawn (6AM…ugh) to go see a tribal ceremony at a palace. It was supposed to start at 7:15, so we got to the palace grounds at around 7, but the ceremony didn’t actually begin ‘til about 8:10, so we had a good long wait and played some stellar pictionary in the sand. The ceremony itself was really cool: bunches of tribal dignitaries rode up in dribs and drabs on motorbikes or in Mercedes and arranged themselves in order of rank, and then a horse was led out, all decorated in war gear. The chief came out a little while later, all dressed in red, and they fired off a cannon. Then, the dignitaries approached the chief in groups by rank to pay homage to him. The chief went back into the palace and came out a couple minutes later dressed entirely in white, at which point the cannon fired again, and a guy took the horse by the reins and took off running around the perimeter of the palace. Then, the chief went back inside the palace, the dignitaries left, and the whole thing was over. It was pretty interesting; I didn’t get any photos, though, because we’d been warned before that photos of the ceremony were not welcome at all.
While in Ouaga, I also stopped by their Grand Mosquee, as well as their Grand Marche, which was not so grand: it was deserted, with absolutely no vendors open. A couple of us went shopping at a street market and ended up spending an hour playing a variation of mancala with a shopkeeper in his open-air mask shop; it was really, really fun. Also while in Ouaga, we went to the most amazing Indian restaurant ever; quite possibly better than Boston Indian restaurants. They had lassis, and naan, and amazing masala; we went back twice.
We also took a side trip to an artisan village in Ouaga, which was interesting; it was set up as large pavilions, where you could walk around and see the artisans making handicrafts, then bargain with them for a huuuge variety of crafts; it was a little interesting to see which crafts they did in Burkina that aren’t done in Niger. It was also interesting to see the leather artisans selling things that I’ve made here at the musee in Niamey; they make a killing off what they were charging. We headed back to Niger yesterday, and made it back here after seven or eight loooong hours in the vans; the scenery got browner and flatter as we traveled away from Ouaga and towards Niamey. I was exhausted by the time we got back to the CFCA; I pretty much just dropped my luggage, went to the market to pick up vegetables for dinner, cooked, checked my email, and slept. I’m pretty excited to get back to the muse, start classes again, and generally get back to life in Niamey, but we’ve got several biggish things coming up: homestay is in a week and a half, and then a week after that, we travel to Konni and Agadez, so I’ll be busy…

Hello from Bobo!

2007-02-25T09:55:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone!
This is just a quick update from on the road; I'm in Bobo, Burkina Faso, enjoying trhe fastest Internet connection I've seen so far in West Africa. Burkina is amazing; I just can't get over how different it is from Niger. Burkina Faso is the third-poorest country in the world, while Niger is the poorest, so I didn't think it would be that different, but it's like a whole new world: they have industry here, and more stores, and fewer beggars (although there are just as many people trying to sell you stuff in the streets). It's also greener and wetter; after crossing the border, we saw farms and crops, and lakes/ponds, which we've not seen in Niamey. We stayed for a night in Ouaga, and found a streeet that I can only describe as the Times Square of West Africa: there were dozens of restaurants and bars, with ethnic food, even, and streetlights, and neon signs, and architecture; it was shocking, coming from Niamey. It made me glad that BU's program is in Niamey, though, because I would have an entirely different semester if I was based out of Ouaga; I don't think I'd get as much out of my time here in West Africa overall were I based here. It's amazingly nice to visit, though: I went to the market down the street from our hotel in Bobo yesterday, and they have Coca Cola Light...I haven't seen a Diet Coke in a month, and it was blissful.
My internet time is almost up, so that's it for now; we're heading to Banfora next, then back to Ouaga for awhile
ttyl
-R

2007-02-24T16:39:00.000-05:00

Well, last weekend, the BU group went to Parc W, a huge wildlife park that borders Niger, Benin, and Burkina Faso. We left Niamey at 2 on Saturday, and got to the park by 5. Once in the park, we rode around on the top of our four-wheel drive vehicles, which was amazingly fun. We saw crocodiles, and my car saw an elephant, which was pretty much the highlight of the trip…even though it’s an animal park, there aren’t really tons of animals there, because not many things survive in West Africa. The next day, the only animal our group saw other than guinea fowl was an antelope, which I didn’t see, because I was back at our camp, sick. Yes, I’ve gotten my first African illness, and it was really not fun (in fact, it’s about the least fun I’ve had in years), but at least it’s not malaria, which two of the other students have. I’m just glad that I got over whatever I had so that I can go to Burkina in relatively good health…and that I didn’t miss seeing that elephant.
I spent a loooong time at the museum last week, over 20 hours, and I’ve made some really cool stuff. Yesterday, I finished a purse, which I still can’t quite believe I did; it’s pretty neat, and I did all the tracing, cutting, gluing, stitching, shaping, and I braided and tied the strap. It’s got an adjustable strap, and a magnetic clasp, and it just might be the coolest thing I’ve ever made. I don’t know what I’m making next, but I’m out of leather, so I think it’s moot ‘til I get back from Burkina. My artisan is really great; he speaks Hausa, so I’m learning a lot of the language, and we talk in a mixture of French and Hausa. We have tea every day, and he offers me lunch, but I’m pretty sure if I had lunch at the muse I’d end up in the clinic with some sort of African amoebas… He gets really excited when I get the stitching right, or when I figure out what the next step is before he tells me, and he says "Yauwa!" a lot.
Speaking of Burkina, I’m headed there on Thursday, for eleven days, so I’ll be pretty inaccessible for a while; I might be able to check my email while we’re there, as it is a more developed country than Niger (it has a McDonald’s, for example), but then again, I might not. We’re going to an African film festival there, FESPACO, which should be pretty fun, but I’m more looking forward to the artisan villages that we’ll be visiting and the huge waterfalls (actually, open water of any kind is pretty exciting).
Niger itself has been fun and eventful lately; last night we had no power, so a couple of us headed over to the Marine house to watch movies in the light and air conditioning with the Peace Corps. On Saturday morning, a water pipe broke in our neighborhood, and we lost all our water; it was back on by the time we got back from Parc W on Sunday, thank goodness. And on Thursday, on the way to the musee, Jadi and I walked out into a student protest by accident, which was interesting; we walked out of there pretty darn quickly…It’s been fairly uneventful here other than that, though; and the protest season is winding down, so there shouldn’t be more of that. The power outages, however, will only get worse, we’ve heard, as it gets hotter.
But such is life in Niamey… Always something new and exciting ;-)

on Tuaregs and music...

2007-02-12T09:51:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, about half of the group went over to this old Tuareg’s house for tea and music. It was craaaaazy! The Tuareg, Rissa Iksa, is probably 70-some-odd years old, and he kept up a PG-13 running commentary in French, Hausa, and some other language the entire time we were there. We were actually supposed to visit him the first week we were here, but he was off being nomadic, so we had to reschedule. He played traditional music for us with his wives and some of his kids; I took lots of photos, they use instruments that other ethnic groups in Niger don’t. One of his wives played a half-gourd, floating open-side-down in a tub of water, by beating it with the side of a plastic sandal. One of his other wives played this drum that was shaped like a see-saw; two of his daughters sat on the sides to balance it. There was also an instrument that was a bent piece of metal, with a string tied between the ends, so that it looked like a bow, which Rissa played by putting half a gourd on the metal part, balancing his leg on top of the gourd, and plucking, pinching, and slapping the string. We got to try the bow-looking instrument, and it was pretty difficult, but I got the hang of it fairly quickly. We then learned how to write our Nigerien names in the Tuareg language, which was crazy but cool (the letter that’s roughly the equivalent of “B” looks like a paperclip). After that, Rissa’s family started playing music again, and he made us all get up and dance, Tuareg-style; I have video of it, which I probably can’t get online from here, but inshallah I’ll post it when I get back to the US. After the dancing, we had Tuareg tea (which is Really Not Good, so avoid that if you get the option); they serve you three cups, because the first one is bitter like death, the second is sweet like life, and the third is mellow like love (or…thereabouts; remember, this was all in French and Hausa). Then we got to take turns playing the rest of the instruments, before he gave us a little talk about Tuareg culture and his life, And Then, he gave me his bowed instrument! It was so cool, but so bizarre, and I still am not exactly sure why, as he apparently doesn’t make a practice of giving away his musical instruments, but I apparently picked up the fundamentals of it pretty quickly when he let us play it, so now I have a Tuareg stringed instrument. I don’t have the gourd, but I’m getting one this week, when I start my kalabash lessons; kalabash is a gourd drum, and I can use it with the bow as well as just normally (it’s usually played with metal rings on your fingers). If I can figure out how to get it home, I'll have the makings of a one-woman African band!
Sai anjima,
-R

More News from Niamey!

2007-02-12T09:41:00.000-05:00

I’ve had a fairly busy week; I started my drum lessons, so I can now do basic traditional rhythms on djembe and kalongu; djembe is the largish stereotypically West African drum, and kalongu is a smaller drum that’s played under your arm and is known as the “singing drum” because it changes pitches. They’re both really fun; I think I strained my wrist playing djembe, but it’s definitely worth it. I also made my first leather piece at the Musee; I finished my coin purse on Thursday. It looks really good, especially for my first time making things with leather. I started a new project today, but I’m not sure what it is yet, it might be a wallet, but I really can’t tell from the pieces I’ve got together so far. It’s been so fun at the Musee so far; I really love learning how to make traditional designs, and the leather artisans are really funny and nice; I’m learning a lot of Hausa from them, as well.
On Saturday, we had lunch in Nigerien homes. We split up into groups of twos and threes, so I went with Habiba to Mme. Habinou’s house for lunch; she’s an English teacher, and she named one of her kids Winnie, after Winnie Mandela. She was really nice, and very excited to talk with us about the US, Niger, her kids, and everything else. Lunch was amazing; she made byssop (I’ve really no clue how to spell it, but it sounds like “hyssop”), which is this cold drink made by boiling hibiscus flowers with lots of sugar, and adding vanilla and pineapple syrup to taste; it’s sooo good here, especially when pretty much all we normally drink here is water. She also served this rice dish, but she ground the rice, so it was the consistency of couscous, and she had a red sauce to go with it; it was incredibly delicious. For dessert, we had fresh oranges and bananas, but we were so full we couldn’t eat the bananas, so Mme Habibou made us take them home with us, to eat them later. Saturday night, I went to a reception at the Consular Officer’s house. After having lunch at Mme, Habibou’s, it was a stark contrast, because the Consular Officer’s house was so Western: the furniture wasn’t pushed up against the wall, and they had a lawn, and a pool, and served hors-de-oeuvres that I’ve definitely never seen in Niger before. It was nice, but a little disconcerting. I met a lot of Embassy and Peace Corps people, and talked with the Marines for a bit, then talked about diplomacy with a former PCV, which was pretty fun.
I had my first week of classes last week, and they seem to be going okay. I’m auditing French, but it’s not the greatest class, so I may switch to auditing a class on Nigerien society that’s taught in French, as I’m pretty sure I’d learn either as mush as or more than I’d learn in French 2. Most of my classes are in the evenings, from 7-9, which is nice because it’s cooler out then; during the hottest part of the day, it’s so hot that all anyone wants to do is lay around or take a nap. The computers slow waaaay down, then, as well. I really am not quite sure what to expect when it gets even hotter in a month or so...
My next few weeks are pretty busy: this Saturday, we're going to Parc W, a huge wildlife preserve where there are giraffes, elephants, baboons, and all kinds of cool animals that inshallah I'll see and get photos of. Then, next weekend we leave for Burkina Faso, which should be very fun. I'll try to upload more photos; I've had the best luck uploading them 5 or 10 at a time, so it's taking a while...

Miss you all!
-R

Hello from Niger! (finally)

2007-02-06T06:30:00.000-05:00

Today is my second day of classes here. I have classes every evening, and at 8AM Mondays and Fridays, which actually isn’t as bad as it sounds, because it’s actually relatively cool at 8 AM (Key word relatively, it was 90.5 Fahrenheit in my room at midnight last night). Orientation ended on Sunday, so I finally have a bit of free time and can wander the city in groups smaller than 15 people. Of course, I don’t really know where anything in the city is yet, but that has never stopped me before. On Sunday, we went to Balleyara, which is this huge Sunday market about 90km from Niamey. It was immense, and hot, and noisy, and we were required to stay together in our pack of 15; it felt like we were a circus parade, everyone stopped, stared, and yelled “Anasara” at us (“Anasara” means “white person”, people yell this at us quite a bit). I can’t say it was pleasant, but it was interesting; I did kind of lke the livestock market, where you could buy 200 camels if you so desired.
Yesterday, I had Hausa at 8, and then went to the corner store, where I bought yogurt in a bag for 20 cents. Yogurt, milk, water, and juice come in small plastic bags here; you bite off a corner and suck it out. Actually, if you buy a Coke at the store and don’t drink it right there, they put the Coke in a small plastic bag as well, because the bottles are reused (you can pay like a dollar and keep the bottle, if you really want to). I haven’t done that yet… After lunch yesterday, I headed to the museum, to work with my artisan, Hamza. I have the same artisan as another BU student, Gimbiya, who speaks a bit more French than I do, but she didn’t come yesterday, so I had to try to understand everything in a mixture of French and Hausa (…and I slipped up and spoke Turkish, but obviously that didn’t work too well). It was a challenge and a half: I didn’t realize that he was asking for the telephone number at the CFCA until I got back and asked my RA (whose name is also, confusingly, Hamza), and I did learn the Hausa phrase for “Do you understand?”, but I thought it meant “briefcase” at first… Gimbiya’s coming with me today, though, so hopefully not as many things will be lost in translation, and overall, it’s an excellent incentive to learn as much French and Hausa as possible.
I did walk home from the muse by myself, without getting lost, so I’m slowly getting acclimated to the city. So far, I can reliably get myself to the Musee, the Internet café by the Stadium, the corner store, the copy shop, and usually the petit marche. The street signs are few and far between, so I find myself looking for guideposts like “the pile of burning garbage,” which is half a block from the CFCA and which is how I know I’m almost home and “the shitfield,” which is the shortcut to the muse and which quite literally is a large open field where people (and goats, but mostly people) defecate. It sounds gross, but it’s a handy reference point. There’s garbage everywhere here, it’s indescribable. If you tried to imagine streets covered in garbage, you wouldn’t even come close to the amount of garbage, wrappers, plastics bags, and old sandals littering the streets, the fields, and everything else.
Last Friday, I went shopping, and bought some pagnes in the Grand Marche; pagnes are basically sheets of fabric approximately 3 yards long, which you can either take to a tailor to be made into really comfortable clothing or just tie around your waist as a skirt, which is what I’ve been doing. Hopefully, I’ll get to a tailor relatively soon, as I’ve a lot of clothing I’d like made.
For those of you asking about the heat, it is Hot. Really, really hot. It’s not so bad in the early morning (yesterday, I got up before sunrise, and it was just in the 80s, which was really nice). The air is arid, there’s no moisture in it, so I’ve been drinking more water in a single day here than I have probably in my entire last semester at BU. On the plus side, it’s so hot that the cold showers we have feel amazingly good, especially now that I’m somewhat used to it. There are still trees, and plants, and flowers at the moment, but in a month or so we’ll move into the dry season, and they’ll all die, making the entire landscape pretty much brown, with a hint of tan.
This weekend, we have lunches with Nigerien host families; we were supposed to have them last weekend, but we went to a wedding instead. We didn’t see the actual wedding (it’s an Islamic wedding, and the ceremony itself is not too interesting, the bride and groom aren’t even in the same building), but we were there for the celebration, and the food, which was excellent. We had to eat it with our hands, which is traditional; I’m getting pretty good at it, but I don’t think I’ll be bringing that tradition back to the States.
I’ve been working on translating a Turkish book in my spare time, for a class I’m taking back at BU, which has been really fascinating; I’m learning a lot of Turkish and translation theory, but it means I’ve got Turkish floating around in my head along with the French, Hausa, and residual Zarma also in there…at least I’m at different levels in each language, so I don’t get them as mixed up as I could.
So far, I’ve loved my time here in Niger, it’s really impossible to fully describe what it’s like here, as life here is predicated from an entirely different reference point than life in the US. Still, it’s exhilarating, challenging, and wonderful all at once, and it looks like it’s going to be an amazing semester.

First Reports from Niger

2007-02-04T16:09:00.000-05:00

Note: Rebecca is sharing one computer with 17 other students, so I am putting together several of her recent emails on her blog. Enjoy. Dennis (her dad)

Pictures are available on the Flickr account,

See them at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26857704@N00/?find=rdoffing%40hotmail.com

Today was busy but fun: I got one of my community placements, at the Museum; I'm working with Hamza, a Tuareg leatherworker, which so far is amazingly interesting. For my other community placements, I think I'm going to work with the museum on curating/exhibit design, and I'm thinking I'll also tutor at the American School (great networking opportunities). I also went to a wedding today, or more aptly a wedding reception, for 2 of Yazi Dogo's sons (Yazi Dogo is a West African film star and a teacher for BU Niger). It was really fun, they had traditional food, which we ate communally from big bowls on the floor (as seen in my photos), and several of us ended up playing cards with Yazi's Nigerian cousins for several hours.
Tomorrow, we're going to a huge market, and then on Monday, classes start, so I'll finally have a more normal schedule. I really like Niger so far; everything about it is diametrically opposite to life in the US, but it's beautiful, and interesting. Even the colors and smells are different; everything is a shade of tan/brown; and the smells... well, that's more interesting than good, actually, they defecate in the street here and burn piles of garbage in open fields. I'm starting to know my way around the city, and not get lost, although I still stick out of course. I've learned greetings in both native languages here, though, so I can impress people with my mad Hausa/Zarma skillz. ;-P I'm also drinking more water in a single day than I think I did the entire last semester; I did buy milk the other day though, and it was amazingly nice. They don't have Diet Coke though, just regular Coke and Fanta, so Ive not had many of them.

My address in Niger is;
Rebecca Doffing
B.P.10652,
Niamey, Niger,
West Africa.

I,m at an internet cafe because the power,s out at the CFCA, so I have time to type a little longer of a letter than my last email. I apologize for the horrid punctuation and potentially spelling; I,m using a French keybord; and the letters and characters are all disorganized. I,ve had an amazing time so far; yesterday we took a bus tour of Niamey, had our first Zarma lesson, and got our new names. It,s Bonkano, which means good luck in the head. Apparently, it was the name of this witch doctor who was kind of the Rasputin of Niger in the 70s. The bapteme was amazing! There was the naming ceremony, where we were all called up individually to get our new names, and then there was a huge music performance, with drums and stringed instruments Ive never seen before, and with traditional dancing, and the most famous Zarma singer in West Africa sang a couple of songs. Oh!!!! Guess who was there ? The ambassador!! We met her, and apparently she,s really nice and will probably invite us over for lunch or something. There were 200 peple at the bapteme, it was a really big event. Afterwards, we went out to a bnar and a club with the Marines (there are7 marines stationed here to protect the Embassy, and we met 6 last night, they,re really nice, and they have airconditioned vehicles(soooo nice here) and sattelite tv, so we can watch the superbowl...). Going out was really weird, because when we got to each place, we were the only patrons; more ppl came in while we were there, but at first it was justr us. Also, as we walked from one place to the other we were swarmed with kids and teens asking for "cadeau, cadeau" (presents, so money), and grabbing our arms, which was not all that pleasant. Apparently, though, if you knozw enough Hausa or Zarma to tell them you have no money and to go away, they,ll leave you be, and the annoyance wasn,t enough to put a damper on the night. Today, we went to the museum/zoo, which was really cool. They have all kinds of traditional items, and some really old artifacts, like dinosaur and ancient crocodile bones. We got to see the artisans there as well, which is where a lot of us will probably end up doing community placements. I asked about doing a community placement with their curating staff, and apparently that might be possible, so I,m excited about that.

They,ve kept us really busy here; during orientation almost all of our time is scheduled and planned. It,s very different from the Turkey program! The people I,ve met have all been great; I think the group of students is going to be fairly cohesive, and pretty close. Oh, I met Dane and Maddy, both of whom are very nice; Dane might join my Direct Study for Turkish. I,m roommates with Liz/Habiba, we get along fairly well. We,re right off the computer room, and we share a bathroom with two other girls.
The room is small and sparse, but serviceable; we have one desk, so we better not have ppers due at the same time... The walls are light pinl, and the mosquito netting is lurid pink, and that,s all the decorations we,ve got so far.

Niamey itself is a whole different world. From our bus tour yesterday, and from walking to the museum today, it doesn,t seem very big at all. There are a couple paved roads (the CFCA is on one), but most of them are dirt/dust.
I,ve seen people riding in cars, on cars, on donkeys; on horses, and on camels. There are small flocks of sheep and goats that wander through the streets. The trees are filled with bats (only some of which are rabid) during the day. There,s a wall around the cfca, where we throw our garbage over, and people come scavenge it because we have good garbage; to get rid of the garbage over the wall, they occasionally set it on fire. I stick out like a sore thu,b here; if I thought I had a hard time blending in in Turkey, it,s nothing like here! I really love it so far though, cold showers and all. When I wake up in the morning, it,s absolutely gorgeous out, about _à degrees with a breeze, and the sun,s not high yet so there,s shade, its beautiful, and cool, and refreshing. Then it gets HOT. I have chugged so many ounces of water, its not even funny; its a nearconstant 95/98 from about 10am til after we go to bed. I dont even worry about pit stains, because theyre ubiquitous on Americans here. My room has a fan, but no ac; which is fine for now, but in a month or so it,ll be the hot season, and I,ll be hurtin. I feel pretty much constantly dehydrated so far, even though I,m drinking water from sunup to bedtime, but thats probably because my bodys still getting used to the utter lack of moisture in the air and the heat. Also, the orientation alumni were right in saying I didn,t need sunscreen; I havent burned or tanned, I dont know why, but its kind of nice.
Ill still wear it if Im going to be in the sun excessively, obviously. The dust is oppressive. Its in the air when we walk through town, and its completely coated my feet, but itll only get worse as the weather gets hotter and drier.