The End?

Hey! 

I leave for the airport in 30 minutes, and will be back in the states TONIGHT. This summer has gone by really fast. I learned a lot of Turkish, met a lot of people, but I honestly cannot wait to get home. My life is going to get a lot more complicated when I arrive, so I wanted to get this post done before then. 

Wednesday night was awesome. We went to "İmroz," a meyhane (bar/restaurant that serves mostly rakı and mezze) that is run by a Greek family. We each paid 50 TL for all you can eat and drink. I had so much feta cheese, bread, calamari, salad, and rakı. I sat across from one of the other professors from our program named Özlem Hanım, and chatted with her. She was hilarious and matching us drink for drink. I also met a nice Turkish woman who will be applying to grad school at my school in the spring. I chatted with the TWO KADIRS (2006 people know them well) for about 2 hours that night, about everything. They are so friendly. I sent 2. Kadir Generation Kill to watch, and 1. Kadir will be at Purdue for the next 5 years for a PhD in Linguistics (Turkish Sign Language). So I will hopefully see him again soon. My last cab ride here was with the fattest cabby I have seen so far in this country. He had to recline his seat to accommodate his mass. I got us the standard 15 TL daytime rate back, and we all slept really well. 

Yesterday I woke up, went to the Boğaziçi store to get some stuff, and ran into 1. Kadir on the way back. We had breakfast and chatted about life in America, and what he can expect. Then I went down to the old city for the last time to check out the Archeology Museum with Michael, Laura, and Lauren. They had a really cool exhibit that showed stuff they have found in the last couple of years while working on the subway system. They found a whole ship from 1100, intact, buried in the ground. Evidence of the old Byzantine port here. Michael left us there because he had a train to catch at 10pm to Bulgaria, where he will begin his long journey to Vienna. I parted ways with the girls at Kabataş because I needed to go get some stuff at Akmerkez. We all spent a few hours packing up, and then went to the Petek, that fancy view near campus, one last time to hang out and have snacks and beers. There were some street dogs there that made me nervous, so I gave them my börek far away from where we were sitting. A Turkish couple (students) sat across from us and offered us some of their food. They were playing music on their laptop: REM, RHCP, and other American stuff. We all headed back around 12:30am and said our goodbyes to Hannah, who had to catch a 6am flight. I am going to miss her, she is hilarious. Anyway, right now I am finalizing the suitcase situation. I just had tea and chatted with the gatekeeper, Hakan, for about an hour. The bus gets here in 30 minutes. I have about 12 hours of flying to do today. Time travel, really. It makes my head spin. Anyway, I look forward to seeing you all again soon! I'll miss Istanbul, but not as much as I miss my family. I can't wait to get back! Love you guys! 

Done!

Hey folks,

So I just took my proficiency exam, and am now officially done with everything here. Waiting until Friday to fly home, and I can't wait to get back. 

Saturday night's boat trip was pretty epic. It was a mustache themed party, and the girls who organized it actually got enough fake mustaches for everyone. There were some really, really good ones. Our boat bumped a multi-million dollar yacht as we were leaving the pier, and the respective captains exchanged profanities and hand gestures for a while. We traveled as far south as the Arnavutköy Camii, and then kind of looped around between the two bridges thereafter. The boat was big enough for 30 people to dance closely with one another, and the crew was friendly and chatty. Everyone brought their own drinks and snacks, so the boat was full of beer, wine, rakı, and chips. Everyone had a great time, by the looks of the pictures. We must have looked pretty fucking weird to the folks hanging out in Bebek when we got off the boat in fake mustaches and drunkenness at 2:00am. We all walked to the waffle place and got delicious Turkish waffles full of bananas, kiwis, strawberries, caramel, etc. etc. Then we all got into cabs and went back to campus to sit on the lawn and hang out/drink some more. 

I was really surprised to see so many kids out and about on campus as late as it was. We sat on the lawn, playing with cats and speaking Turkish until 4:45am. There were still people outside playing volleyball or something when we left. I spent a good amount of time trying to locate the source of this mewing that heard in the bush next to me. I found the cutest goddamn kitten ever, but the bastard was too quick for me and kept escaping back into the bushes. Again, fun was had by all. Sunday consisted of sitting around, finishing Generation Kill (amazing!), and working on my final paper. Great success. 

Monday was the last day of classes, yesterday was the final exam, and today was the proficiency exam. I presume I did decently enough on each. It's like Enya says, "Only Time." Yesterday after class I went to the Kapalıçarşı to try and get gifts for people. I failed. I dunno. I just feel like that stuff is cheesy now. Who knows. I will probably go back tomorrow. Argh. BUT I did succeed in getting myself another pair of linen pants that I can actually wear outside the house. They are tan. I will be covertly comfortable at all times. We stopped by Güllüoğlu, the really tasty bakery, on the way back and the guy was really friendly and let us try stuff and gave us a bargain on some baklava, so we bought a pound and promptly ate it. Last night we hung out and watched 2 hours of Arrested Development and a half-hour long documentary called "Tabu" made by some kid from Boğaziçi. It was really interesting. The guy made cards for the game "Taboo" that said stuff like "Kurdish problem," "Armenian Genocide," and "homosexuality" on them, and videotaped a few groups of students playing the game with them. I will try and get it on my computer so some of you can see it. Then we started talking/arguing about religion, and I went to bed. No sense in it, I already have all the answers to my religious questions. 

We gave all our teachers flowers and cards today, and I realized that I am really going to miss Sabahat Hanım. She is so awesome. I will have to write her a postcard from time to time. 

Now it is time to nap and get ready for the blowout party tonight at some big dinner/drink hall where one of the other teachers will be singing. Should be fun! 

See you all soon.

Sweating, Prostitutes, and Rakı

Hey all,

So Thursday night a few of us went out to Taksim to get some eating and drinking and dancing done. We started out at this cool place that probably seated 30 people total, and was on the top of a building. I met a very cute Turkish girl who is a friend of a friend here, and we all went out dancing at Araf after we ate. The music there is so great. They played one song that was hilarious, and that I had never heard before. I think it was from the 90s...This is it. The Turkish girl kept touching my thigh at dinner when she would talk to me. It was weird. I didn't read anything into it; I think they do that instead of touching arms here. But it was a bit odd, nonetheless. Because one of our TAs was with us, we tried to speak Turkish for most of the night, which is always a lot of fun. We stayed out until almost 3:00am, sweating like animals on the dance floor. 

Friday was our last day of Reading and Writing classes, and that night we were invited to Sabahat Hanım's house for dinner. She lives near Akmerkez in a nice little apartment. Asuman made us more mercimek köftesi, and there was a lot of food. We sat around for a few hours just chatting. Our grammar professor also came by. Sabahat Hanım told us that she used to live in Taksim, until about 8 years ago. Her neighborhood was full of gays and prostitutes, she said. Her neighbors were prostitutes, and so were a lot of her friends there. She is such a badass. She doesn't drink anymore, because she said she used to drink 2 "things" of whiskey a day. I think "things" meant like quadruple shots of whiskey. Clearly, she is an academic. She is probably the most adorable old lady ever, too. And she called me "oğlum" (my son) when we were leaving. 

After we all left, around 10:00pm, the group headed to Taksim on the bus. I met up with Mert and his friend Ege, and Sydney and her friend, and the five of us headed to a meyhane to listen to some live Roma music and drink rakı. Before we left the meeting place, though, a crazy guy came up to us and started complaining about the Arab women in çarşaflar (whatever they call it in Arabic, the whole-body veil). I could barely understand him, but he kept pointing to my beard and Ege's beard. Then we hit up the meyhane. It was awesome. The darbuka player was nuts. I don't know how he didn't get exhausted after like 10 minutes of playing as fast as he was. There were, naturally, a few very attractive Turkish girls there, so I married all of them. 

Sydney and I tried to meet up with people from our other group after Mert and Ege left (Mert had a final today at 9am, but stayed out until 2:30am with us...hero), but couldn't get ahold of them until it was too late, and we had bought some beers and were in the cab heading home. Our cab driver turned out to be really chatty. When I asked if we could get the daytime rate to Rümelihısarüstü, he said "What an İstanbullite you are!" And from then on we chatted about all kinds of stuff, and the topic eventually came to what a "Turk" really is. He agreed that there is no such thing as a "pure Turk," because everyone has ancestors from outside the country. Then he started quoting the Koran and saying that God made the different nations so that they might know each other. This is also great and pleasant. Then as we got near our dorm he started talking about how "çingeneler ve yahudiler" ("Gypsies and Jews") commit crimes because their ancestors were incestuous. I suggested that Roma and Jews have been oppressed for centuries, and that if anyone commits crimes, it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with their living conditions. And also I said that we (meaning Sydney, myself, and by extension, the USA) try to avoid such racism as much as possible. 

It really, really upsets me when otherwise reasonable Turks pull out this racist shit toward the Roma and Jews. As if they have ever even met a Jew in the first place. Their grandparents, great grandparents surely did, because there used to be a LOT of them in Istanbul and "Turkey" more generally. The Ottomans even accepted the Jews from Spain readily after the Reconquista. Everyone here loves fucking conspiracy theories, and I think when this combines with less than tolerant political discourse from far-right nationalist parties, people are far too eager to equate Israeli political and military policy with Judaism. They don't do that with Americans, at least not when they meet one. As for the Roma, I think that racism is more akin to the anti-black racism in the USA, because people here see Roma as committing a disproportionate amount of crime, and instead of trying to empathize with the struggle of those live in awful conditions, they immediately attribute the crime rate to race or ethnicity. Far be it from me to claim that the USA isn't racist, but I would be shocked to find a cab driver that would be that openly racist. The worst part was, our cab driver was an educated man. He had friends in other countries. Oh well. Can't win every battle. 

Today I had my old Akbil confiscated and was given a new one because the guy at the Akbil stand put the wrong amount on it. That made me sad, but hey, at least I have an Akbil still. 

Tonight I am going on a party cruise with a lot of kids from my program. It should be fun and relaxing. More to come as it develops. 

Aya Sofya and the Curious Barber

Hey guys, sorry it has been a while.

Just one more day of classes, and I will be back in DC Friday night and then off to Cincinnati the next morning. 

Tuesday I went with Jessica down to the Ottoman Archives to help her apply for a research permit. She just started learning Turkish this summer, so needed someone to translate for her. We took the bus and tram down to Gülhane and hopped off. The gate was guarded by three cops with submachine guns, like every other goddamned building in this city. Cops with machine guys are everywhere, and they always hold the guns with their finger really, really close to the trigger, or just down at their side, which would make it all to easy for an enterprising thief to steal one. Anyway, these cops were very friendly and helpful despite all appearances. I told them we had her shit, and needed the building where we should take it. It was really close. The archive grounds are really calm and quiet, which is odd considering it is right in the middle of the busiest tourist district in the city. We walked into the research salon lobby, and I again explained that we had her "documents" in order. They then walked us to the building next door, and we were in business. I really like getting to say "documents" in everyday conversation. It's badass. I recommend trying it. 

The woman working in the permit office was incredibly nice and helpful. She and I discussed Jessica's form and she suggested that she change some of the phrasing on it to make it broader. So in effect, it massively expanded Jessica's research capabilities. She can now access any of the Ottoman maps they have in their collection, and any of the documents pertaining to Balkan policy, or economic policy. That is a shit ton of stuff. And on top of all that, she got her ID made right then and there, and could use it that day, after about an hour. 

In that hour we decided to head up to the Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia). It was crowded, but I have my Müze Kart, which I used here with great success. The guards out front were telling tourists that the long line to the right was for Müze Karts, which are "for Turkish only." Ha! If only they knew. I snuck past the peasant line and walked right up to the turn-style with my card, swipe it, and was in. It saved me 20 TL. Some tour guides approached us and thought we were Russian, and then French, and they said to each other "oh, he knows Turkish" because I had said "Evet" and "Hayır" (yes and no). So I turned to them and said "My Turkish is actually pretty decent." Then they saw my museum card and said "you must be Turkish if you have one of those." Damn straight. 

Aya Sofya never ceases to amaze. It is so fucking huge. You could park a hundred brontosaurs in it. There was still scaffolding there, since they are working on the dome. I love that place. Probably the coolest building in the world. They have huge nets spread over the main doorways to keep birds from flying in, but I think it would be better to just hire an 80 year old Korean War veteran (thousands of Turks fought in Korea for the UN) and have him post up with a rifle next to the entrance and shoot the birds out of the sky as they flew past. He should have a mustache and swear almost constantly. We wandered around for about an hour, and managed to find the Viking graffiti this time. Last time I was here I didn't see it. It is pretty badass. They carved it either in the 700s or 900s. Just their names. I love how nothing changes. The mosaics are beautiful, as is expected. One tourist girl, probably English or American, said "It's soooo shiny!" What the fuck do you expect? It's made of fucking gold. GOLD. 

After the Aya Sofya, we parted ways and I headed back to campus while Jessica researched. On the tram there was a heavyset man with a fascist nationalist mustache standing next to me. He was breathing heavily, but I wasn't sure if it was because he was angry at me for having a leftist beard or because he was just fat-sighing. 

Wednesday was haircut day! I got a TON cut off. Probably too much. Also he trimmed by beard SUPER short. I actually kind of like it this way. It is handsome, the beard. It's weird not having a mustache long enough to grab with my lower lip, though. I miss my cookie duster. Now, I can't get food out of my mustache without looking like a pervert, whereas before I didn't have to stick my tongue out so far to reach it. Sleazeball. My barber was really friendly. We chatted the whole time, and it turns out he is really interested in America and health insurance reform. Also he wants to cut hair there. He was proud of the fact that Turkish barbers tend not to rely too heavily on the trimmers and use scissors instead, and that they talk to their customers. We talked about wages, living costs, all kinds of stuff. At first, he said, he thought my hair was dyed. He and I are going to be Facebook friends. 

That night I headed to Istiklal with Sydney and Allison to look for a kemençe, or Black Sea Fiddle, for Sydney. We also wandered from store to store looking for a t-shirt we had heard about featuring a hippo and the phrase "THINK AGAIN." We couldn't find it for the life of us, but ultimately called a friend who had seen it and found it. It only came in girls' sizes, which sucks. But the good news was that we found a really nice little shop that sold kemençes and we talked to the guys for a while. They cut her a great deal, and offered us tea, and even went to a different store to get her a traveling case. I, on the other hand, spent $20 on a really small, but effective, darbuka. It will fit in my suitcase! I am pumped to bug the hell out of my neighbors with it. I got some Patatas french fries with BBQ and mayo for dinner, because I am on a diet. 

I need to get ready to go to a dinner party at my reading professor's house now, so I will get caught up entirely tomorrow afternoon. Have a great Friday! 

The Sickness Passes

Feeling better, at least in terms of the guts.

Woke up at 9:00am, and decided to take advantage of the extra bit of the day provided to me by the sickness of the day before, so I showered and headed out to the Kariye Museum, which is located at Edirnekapı, one of the ancient entrances to old Constantinople. There are still huge walls that cut the old city peninsula off from the mainland, but now they are perforated by broad avenues and cart paths. I took the 28 bus from Beşiktaş, which was probably the oldest public transit vehicle I have ever been in. It had a hard time going faster than 30mph. I rode it to the end of the line, Edirnekapı, and when I got out, asked an elderly gent from my bus if he knew how to get to the museum. He told me to come with him, so I did. We walked a few blocks, and he gestured with his hands, tapping his left arm and pointing, probably forgetting that I had asked him in Turkish. So I asked if he meant I should turn left, and he smiled and said yeah. 

It was no problem finding it after that. The place was gorgeous and perfectly sized for the type of museum it was. I handed the ticket booth attendant my paper Müze Kart and student ID so she could print out my ticket, but instead she gave me my ID back with a PLASTIC, OFFICIAL Müze Kart. It was incredible. These are not given to foreigners. It means free access to museums all throughout Turkey for one full year. It has my picture on it and everything. So for me, this is a huge coup. It means I get into Aya Sofya for free. Some people have to pay up to 20 TL. Suckers. Kariye was absolutely gorgeous, it was quiet, in a quiet neighborhood, and full of the best mosaics I think I have seen. They weren't in as good condition as those at Fethiye, but that was because the Ottomans covered up the human images with plaster, which had to be carefully removed by restorers in the 1960s, I think. Pretty sure they left Fethiye alone. I wandered around the place, taking photos and enjoying the shade but sweating, literally, like a whore in church.

I left after about a half an hour, and decided to walk along the city walls a bit. They really are huge. They are 30+ feet high in many places, and clearly must have been really frustrating to anyone who wanted to get in, friendly or not. I saw a kid flying a kite next to the Hadrian Gate (Edirnekapı), and saw a man holding a small box with some holes in it. The box was moving in his arms. I kept walking. Then I saw another man with a box, similar in size and with holes. Then another. And then a man with no box. In his arms was a rooster. I walked a bit further, and found the source: I had stumbled across a chicken bazaar. It was clearly a Sunday-only deal. Men trotted out their best chickens for sale, and each was tied by one foot with string to a larger piece of fabric stretched along the ground. There were also ducks. People were talking about them, how great they were, how much they would cost, and also telling kids not to torment them. I was probably the only foreigner within a considerable distance, and must have looked so confused. A live chicken market? Next to Constantinople's walls? What?

I decided to leave before I ended up buying one and bringing it back to Superdorm, and walked a ways until I caught a bus to Eminönü, the area near the Galata Bridge. I then caught the tram back up the hill to the Kapalıçarşı (literally, the Covered/Closed Bazaar, but we call it the Grand Bazaar!), only to find out that the Grand Bazaar is closed on Sunday, which in Turkish is called "Pazar Günu," or "Bazaar Day." The irony is lost on them. I asked an old man sitting by one of the entrances if the bazaar was really closed, and he said yes. And then I came back with a zinger the likes of which Turkey has never seen: "Well then," I said, "I guess this really is a kapalı çarşı!" HA!!! He laughed, I laughed, until our eyes were red from tears, and the sun had long since set. 

I was going to go to the Aya Sofya but I started to feel like crap again, so I took the tram back to Kabataş and then hopped the bus back to Superdorm. Sunday was hot. I really don't know how all these women here manage to wear headscarves and trenchcoats in this weather, but if they are that committed to it, imagine how well they would do if Turkey would let them wear them at universities. 

Some randomness.

Today a girl in my class said "the waitress threw feces" when she meant to say "the waitress laughed." They are amazingly close. 

I learned today that in Japan, old folks complain about young rock and roll music types sitting on the floor of subway cars rather than in the seats. Rough stuff.

My friend Jill just told me, as we ate ice cream down the road, that her family is intensely related to the show "The Wire." Her dad is portrayed in season five, and worked for the Baltimore Sun, where he originally hired David Simon. Her brother? Script supervisor for the series. Ed Burns? Taught at her high school and suggested she go to Brown, which she did. INCREDIBLE.

Anyway, that is what is up now. Important day in my life for a number of reasons.

Castles, and Puking on Them: My Weekend

Well, I can tell you right now that I am well rested.

Friday after class, instead of our normal conversation hour, we all went down to Ortaköy and ate some kumpir on the rooftop of a moderately priced restaurant. Kumpir, for those who haven't heard me rave about it before, is the Turks' take on the baked potato. They actually scoop out the contents, mix them with cheese and butter, and put them back in before loading it up with anything and everything you'd want. I had olives, olive spread, beet sauce, and much, much more. They gave us all order sheets, like at a sushi restaurant, where we would check off the stuff we wanted. In the name box I wrote "Cihangir," instead of Kevin. Cihangir is easily the most kickass Turkish name, apart from Ayhan (Lord of the Moon), because it means, quite simply, "Conqueror of the World." When we handed the waiter our slips, he looked through them and asked "Who is Cihangir?" I said "I am. Nice to meet you." He laughed and shook his head, and did the same when he handed me my potato. My guess is that it's not really a common name, but rather reserved for those in history who have actually conquered the world. 

My bad.

After lunch we walked to Beşiktaş to sit and chat on the sixth floor of a cafe overlooking the main drag in the neighborhood. We had cherry mixed with bubble gum-flavored tobacco, and it was really nice. While there, I learned a children's rhyme that you can say for no reason. It's more of a play on people's names, except it means "Lord (Name) shit on the rock, and the rock broke from end to end." Pretty classy. The Turks have a thing for shits breaking rocks. They have a saying for a big shit that translates as "cracking the marble." In other news, this morning I saw an elderly man pissing in plain sight as I rode past Dolmabahçe Palace on the bus. I wonder if anyone said anything to him, or if that is just another privilege you get here upon retiring, like getting a seat on the bus. 

Friday night we all stayed in and watched that shitty "Ottoman Republic" movie again. It was just as bad the second time, but I caught more of the dialogue in the absence of the bus engine's noise. After the movie, at around 9:00pm, someone rang the doorbell on my friend Ryan's apartment. It was a man, probably in his 40s, American, and looking generally concerned. I immediately asked if he wanted us to keep it down (we were laughing pretty hard at the movie), and he said yes, but also that he wanted whomever had vomited out their window and into his living room below to never do it again. Wow. When Ryan and I closed the door, we turned and looked at his roommate, who was sitting on the couch. 

Me, to Ryan's roommate: "What the fuck did you do last night? Did you puke into that man's living room?"

Roommate: "No!"

Ryan: "What did you do last night?"

Roommate: "I passed out on this couch." NOTE: COUCH IS RIGHT NEXT TO THE WINDOW.

Me: "Is it really a stretch to believe you stood up and vomited out the window?"

Roommate: "I have no memory of doing it."

Ryan: "You just said you passed out."

Roommate: "I also don't remember the cab ride home..."

Ryan: "You are fucking getting them some nice baklava. Tomorrow."

That was the extent of Friday night. We then went upstairs to the girls' rooms and chatted, and eventually ordered some mantı, that tasty Turkish lasagna stuff. It's pretty heavy food, and I felt like it was a bad idea as soon as I started eating it. Forgetting that, I went to bed and set my alarm for 8:00am, so that I could make the ARIT boat trip in the morning.

By the time we got down to Bebek to meet our boat, I was feeling like a piece of shit that could crack the marble. I couldn't tell which way the catastrophe was coming, only that it was. We boarded the boats, and made our way north up the Bosphorus toward Yoros Castle, aka The Genoese Castle (MISNOMER!). The boat ride actually helped a lot, as the movement of the boat on the water was really soothing. Our boat came dangerously close to hitting a huge tanker, but hey, the captain must be a professional, right? We docked at Anadolu Kavağı and began the torturous ascent to the castle, which sits on a hilltop many hundreds of feet above the straits. The weather wasn't as hot as it could have been, but the walk, which was probably a mile long and up a slope that even cars have a hard time with. Needless to say, when we got to the top, I wasn't feeling like standing in the sunlight with the rest of the group while our guide explained the design of the place and its history. I could hear just fine from the shadows with the stray dogs sitting near me on the ground. I stayed there after they all went into the castle, and pretended to be fiddling with my camera while other Turks passed by, so they didn't think I was a fucking creep. Then I summoned the strength to get up, walked into the castle, sat near the group again, walked a bit more, and then made my retreat. I noticed yesterday that right before I am about to vomit with 100% certainty, my salivary glands go into overdrive. So once I felt that, I knew I was in trouble.

I made a move toward the exit and huddled down next to the wall in a place with a gorgeous view of the Black Sea and the mouth of the Bosphorus, and proceeded to violently empty the contents of my stomach beside a castle built almost a thousand years ago out of stones first carved 2200 years ago.

This was my view.

The good news, though, is that I felt a lot better afterwards. Well enough to joke about it, even! Har har har. Right after puking, while I was washing my mouth out with water, a Turkish guy walked through the tiny hole in the wall to enter the castle, and left his cooler outside. I grabbed it and handed it to him through the hole. When I came through, he said "I thought you were a foreigner," to which I replied "But I am a foreigner!" And then we chatted for a bit about what the hell I was doing there, of all places. I met up with the group again and we headed down the hill, and I was all happy about how great I was feeling after erupting, Pompeii style, on the castle grounds. 

This turned out to be a mistake, and I am certain that Zeus, whose temple remains were used to build the castle, must have heard me boasting about how it wasn't so bad, because after we boated a bit further up the straits to our lunch location, I almost immediately ran to the bathroom and did a low-budget sequel to the smash hit original release. It was the worst meal of my life. I had to sit there, miserable, and watch people eat and drink for two hours. I tried to sleep, but couldn't, and then it started to rain. I was waiting for a dog to bite me, or a midget to kick me in the shins. Fortunately that didn't happen, and as soon as we got the signal to go, I hustled as fast as my now-weak legs could carry me back to the boat and promptly fell asleep in the hold. I stayed there for the rest of the afternoon, sleeping, with one brief interval in which ARIT Director Dr. Greenwood and I chatted about "Ice Truckers" and "Deadliest Catch." Then he and the Byzantine expert professor from Penn told me about some of the cooler shipping disasters to befall the Bosphorus in their lifetimes, the majority of which have been spent in the city. 

After we arrived, I got off and immediately started recruiting folks for a cab back home. Then one of the ship-children said they found keys, which were mine, and fortunately tossed them to me from the boat. Last time I was here, there was some concern that I had forgotten my iPod onboard. What the hell is wrong with me? Ryan and I cabbed it back (which reminds me, I owe him money) and I immediately went to bed. It was 5:00pm. I woke up today at 9:00am. I will finish the tale later, but suffice it to say, I feel a lot better after 16 hours' sleep.

We Did It! We Solved the Problems!

Hey all! 

I just got back from a screening of "The Passenger" (1975), starring Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider. It was amazing. Don't expect a lot of action, dialogue, or exposition. Just a really nicely paced, slow, beautifully shot film about escaping. I really liked it, and would like to own it. 

Today was pretty great. It was Easy Thursday, meaning we had grammar, listening lab, and speaking classes. In the lab, we listened to a song by the composer Züflü Livaneli, and watched an interview with him. I know this guy's books. We've read two of them in Turkish at Georgetown. He is kind of pop-ish, but he writes really well and it's easy enough to read that I don't need a dictionary for every single paragraph. Today in speaking class we had a two hour discussion on minorities of all sorts. My teacher taught us how to say "shove it up your ass," which I will teach you right now:

"Götüne sok!" 

We also talked about economic, political, sexual, and ethnic minorities. We solved all of Turkey's problems in literally two hours. We are awesome. Lunch today at the Urfam Lahmacun place was soup and a lahmacun. Afterwards we had a lecture about Dede Korkut, the Oghuz Turkic literary hero and man of legend. His stories date back to between the 13th and 15th centuries, and according to what I have read, have their roots in the much older Alpamysh epic, which is found among Turkic peoples from Siberia to Turkmenistan. This bad boy is 14,000 verses long, and people would memorize it. And this one is still not longer than the Kyrgyz Manas, which is 500,000 lines long. These guys know how to sit and listen.

The lecturer talked about the similarities between the Dede Korkut stories that emerged later and the pre-existing Greek mythologies. There is a story about a cyclops, which many believe actually predates both stories, and there is a story about going to the underworld to reclaim a soul that resembles a Greek story very closely. I asked the professor afterwards if he knew of any versions that have the Turkish and old Turkic parallel translation, but unfortunately there isn't one. I bet if I wrote it, it would sell a billion copies. But no matter, my friend Ryan found it in the original Turkic online, and also found a kickass website for all things Turkic, including mp3s of people singing the old Central Asian epics, like the Alpamysh. I have been listening to a Kazakh bard sing it for an hour and a half now. It is fantastic. I can pick up some words here and there, like the words for horse, woman, bride, and my.

Dinner was at the other Urfam place, owned by the same people and located right across the street. We call this one the "nice" place, because they give you better free shit and have kebabs. I got the eggplant salad and a soup. It was so fucking good. It will take some adjustment to get used to not having eggplant ready for me wherever I go, but in its place we have burritos, so...

Oh, so further proof that the Turks are insane drivers. First off, they always seem to drive toward you if you are in the street for any reasons. That must be clear otherwise what I tell you next will make no sense. I guess this is just as much proof that they are insane as it is that they don't care about animals as much as you'd like to think they do. As we were walking to the movie, meaning down the hill to campus, there was a dog on the SIDE of the road. A delivery guy on a moped was coming down the hill, slowed down, and actually tried to hit the dog with his scooter until it got off the road. Fact. Also, the rich people here are horrible to their cars. They grind clutches, squeal tires, slam brakes, and do it to their Mercedes, Land Rovers, and Maseratis. Even taking a turn at 15 mph is too much for some people. I honestly have no clue how people survive the roads on a daily basis, especially when you consider that the bus drivers routinely do not give a fuck about anything. 

Anyway, the moral of this story is that Jack Nich0lson kicks ass, and Dede Korkut knows how to use the internet. I am coming home in exactly 2 weeks. I am excited but will miss this place, as can be expected. I am working on a "Turkey Bucket List" of shit to get done before I go. Let me know if you think of anything. Saturday is the big ARIT boat trip!! 

 

See that guy up top? That's me. Or it's Fatih Sultan Mehmet.

Hey folk(s).

Sorry for the delay. I have been busy and the internet has been busy being a bitch. Monday was pretty low-key. We listened to Orhan Gencebay's "Batsın bu Dünya" in lab, which I had been listening to the night before while doing work, so that was fun. It's a great song. Yesterday was a bit more exciting. After class we went to the 1453 Panorama Museum. This is a museum in the sense that it has posters on the walls that contain facts. Other than that, it is basically a monument to the conquest of Constantinople by Fatih Sultan Mehmet (Mehmet the Conqueror) in 1453. Hear me out. It was awesome. The structure of the museum is basically this: a large antechamber that features a kickass video about the battle, replete with Turkish nationalist imagery and intense music and CG effects, and the main chamber is an 80ft-diameter dome that is a really, really good painting of the battle at one of the city's old gates. The city used to be surrounded by really badass walls (some of which still stand today), and so the Ottomans had to shoot the walls with enormous bombard cannon. This is painted. Also pictured are crazy-eyed Turks on horseback wearing cheetah furs. 

The experience was interesting for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the fact that a great percentage of the people there (outside our group) were women wearing headscarves or their husbands. I saw one man praying while admiring the painting and the military music. It was weird. There were sound effects in the massive chamber, too. I took a bunch of pictures, but I think maybe a video will better demonstrate what I am talking about. The painting itself was incredibly well done, they nailed the perspective. I was really, really impressed. 

Also impressive was the gift shop, where I got three things, awesome things, for 13,50TL, or under $10. One of them is a poster. The museum is a testament to the resurgence of this concept of Ottomanism being the ideal. It's pretty silly for the most part. Some Turks really like to play up the tolerance aspect of things, while others enjoy it more as a means of displaying the glories of Islam and Turks generally. 

Dinner after we got back consisted of "ev yemeği," or "home cooked food," except this stuff was at a restaurant. Well, restaurant that consisted of a woman in what was, essentially, a home kitchen, but with a lot more tables. She makes different stuff every day, and yesterday I had some sarma (dolmas) and some patlican böreği (eggplant börek). It was easily the best börek I have ever had, and it will definitely find its way back to my stomach again soon. Incredible. We watched the news while we were there. More floods up on the Black Sea coast. The news here really likes to exaggerate stuff that doesn't need exaggerating, like car crashes, explosions, and floods. Last week in lab we watched a news report on flooding, and it had a clip of a house collapsing. Last night, in their report on the new flooding, they used that same clip without saying it was from last week. Senseless stuff. It is almost as frustrating as watching the American news. Almost. 

Today I gave my reading teacher some allergy medicines. She got excited thinking they were from America, and then was disappointed but still grateful when I told her I got them at the eczane down the road. Then later in class she referred to Ankara as "the countryside." It was hilarious. She is a born and raised Istanbullite, and they tend to hate Ankara. 

Oh! We watched a movie on Monday called "Korkuyorum, Anne," or "Mom, I am scared!" It was by the same director as "Hayat Var," that depressing movie I complained about last time. But this one was hilarious and great! There was a whole plot line about a kid hiding from his circumcision. HA! I will try and find it and bring it back to screen. In the meantime, though, I will have to watch "Casino" and "Shoot 'Em Up," (Turkish title: SHOOT EVERYONE) which I bought last night at the bootleg store. While there, two Turkish men were looking for movies from America with subtitles or dubbing, and I helped them pick some out. It was really funny, because they would ask me what certain movies were about, especially those with two women on the cover. I think they were hoping for porn. One of them turned out to be about lesbians, but when I said it was a love story, they became less interested. After I paid and was leaving, one of them said "come here" and showed me some of the bootleg perfume they sell there. He sprayed it on my hand and I jokingly said "nice." Then he sprayed my chest with it FIVE TIMES. I walked home smelling like a cheap Turkish whore. Fantastic. 

I have to email an assignment to my teacher now, so I will rap at y'all later. 

Beşiktaş! Okyanus! Yunus! Devrim!

It's been a long weekend. 

Friday night was incredibly fun. We all took cabs down to the Bebek Pier and took a ferry across the Bosphorus to Kandilli, where my friend's boyfriend was waiting in his car to take us over to his house for the night for a barbeque. We managed to fit 8 people in his tiny coupe, seatbelts on. I was in the passenger seat with my blonde friend sitting on my lap. She had to stick her head out the window because the car's roof was so low. It was hysterical. The area around Kandilli is a bit more conservative than our neighborhood, and so the mere fact that a girl was on my lap is scandalous enough, not to mention the fact that I have fiery red hair and hers is intensely blonde. When we were driving away, a group of older guys were sitting nearby and had been watching us all climb in, so I flashed them a huge smile and a thumbs up as we passed with my friend on my lap, and they all laughed and waved. When we arrived, the driver started to roll up the windows and my friend was like "Aaaaah!" Her head was getting caught. It was hilarious. She said "That would be the lamest decapitation ever." 

The house was incredible. Four stories, furnished like a fancy hotel, with an elevator, a backyard, and a huge TV, not to mention the rooftop balcony. Pictures will come later. We basically spent the entire night drinking beer, eating BBQ (köfte, sucuk, eggplant, etc.), and chips. Lays has a chip here called "A La Turca," and it basically combines the best qualities of Cool Ranch and Nacho Cheese Doritos on a slightly thicker corn chip. Incredible. The setup was great, with beanbag chairs and nice weather, and the view from the house was of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, and of the castle right next to our campus. Fantastic. The best part, though, was the fact that a lot of the people at the party were Turkish, which meant I got to practice Turkish the entire night. I learned some great slang, like the quicker way to say "I'll fuck your c-word" and the equivalent of "dropping a deuce." These are the slang words you won't get in Lonely Planet, much less from the top linguists in Turkey, who teach us.

Saturday morning, we had planned on going to the Old City to meet up with our program-organized tour group. We arranged with the director to meet up around 11:00am, but our friend had to drive his brother to SAT prep-class (yeah, SAT) so we couldn't get there until around 12:00. So we called them to find out where they would be so we could meet up, and she said to just not come, and not worry about it. We asked "are you sure?" But she said to just not come. We felt bad, but she insisted. So instead we got a huge börek breakfast feast and then caught some cabs home. The plan was to regroup, shower, and then go see Harry Potter at 7:00 at Kanyon.

Before that, though, Jessica suggest that it was an "Alo Servis" kind of Saturday, which I totally agreed with. Poor Nihan spent 9 minutes on Skype with the McDonald's people trying to place our orders. The idiot man asked for my name 3 times, since it was my cell number. She had to spell it out using "K as in Kanyon, E as in Evet," blah blah blah. Three times. It was hilarious. So my name was turned into a pretty badass string of Turkish words:

"Beşiktaş Ocean Dolphin Revolution!"

After enjoying McDonald's and "Ocean's 11," we managed to take the bus toward the theater, but missed our stop and ended up walking for 15th minutes the wrong way (well, the right direction but wrong road). Instead of the mall, we found a go-cart park and a dead end. We then caught a cab and the driver was explaining to us that he was very happy because he was going to a wedding that night, and that there would be a kemençe there, the Black Sea fiddle, of sorts, and that he loved those very much. He definitely took us the longer way, but it was worth it to see the back streets of the area, really narrow, dark, and dirty. It's hard to imagine (but here very easy to find) that such a crass monument to wealth as Kanyon can exist next to such poverty, but it does. 

Harry Potter was, as expected, entertaining and well put together. I really enjoyed the way they designed the dream sequences, that was very cool. I haven't read past the third book, and hadn't seen the last movie since it came out, so I was asking Sydney every couple of minutes who some people were and what was going on, but I got the gist of it. I have to say, the scene in the cave was genuinely creepy. Naturally, there was a smoking break. There was also a commercial for spreadable cheese that featured a talking puppet brain with one eye asking small children why they liked the cheese. Let me see if I can find a picture of it...OR A VIDEO.

So there you have it, the brain shouts at children.

Right after the movie we took the subway to Taksim to hang out and go dancing. The subway stations here are absolutely enormous and unnecessarily so. You have to walk five minutes to get to the exits. And once we did, for some reason I was getting pissed off at everyone on Istiklal. Not sure why. Maybe I am getting ready to come back to the states, and that was just a flash of homesickness. Maybe it was because I felt pressure to pick a place to eat and also wanted to make sure none of us got stabbed. Add to that the assholes who stand outside of their restaurants speaking English to every gringo that walks by, and you've got a headache. We eventually settled on a place called "Otentik," which means, you guessed it, authentic. It featured (I found out after we sat down) an old woman in the window making bread and gözleme, what I have deemed Turkish quesadillas. That's what I ate, and it was great. Thin bread stuffed with goodies like olives, cheese, or meats. The place was furnished with fake rocks, fake plants, and a little waterfall thing. It was pleasant, if only because it got us off the street. In case you can't tell, I probably wasn't in the mood for Istiklal last night. 

We wandered down toward Tünel to the cheaper bars, and there were no tables available for us, so we walked all the way back to the old standby, 7. Kat Teras. We ran into someone from our program there, who is Turkish and whose sister lives here. She was surprised we knew about it. We had a few beers there for cheap, and then headed to a place called "Jolly Joker," which we had heard would have live music. We got in free (because there were four cute American girls and me in our group), and there indeed was a real live Turkish cover band. They sang American top 40 songs and Turkish top 40 songs. They were actually really good, but the place was a bit too much like America for me to get totally into it. 

But actually, it was also a bit too Turkish at the same time, because there was no shortage of creepy, sad men trying to manage to sneak up behind the girls and dance on them. I got tired of playing surrogate boyfriend and they got tired of having to pay attention to where they were dancing, so we left. One of the guys was following us, until we lost him in a crowd by the exit. Afterwards, we went to Araf, that Balkan dance club that ex-pats just adore. The vibe there is always great, but last night it smelled like a woodland creature's vagina. We stayed about 30 minutes and then finally made the trek back home. Our cab driver, shockingly, admitted he didn't know how to get there, but I told him I would show him and he agreed to give us the daytime rate. We arrived at Superdorm at around 3:45am. I was supposed to drink tea with Hakan, the gatekeeper, when we got back, but he was at the other entrance (to the parking garage). I slept until 2:00pm today, because we didn't get much sleep Friday night. 

I showered and got a text from Sydney saying she and Michael were down in Sultanahmet and wanted to meet up to go see Küçük Aya Sofya, one of the places we really wanted to see on the tour we missed. So I hustled down to meet them. Had to take a bus, transfer buses in Beşiktaş, hop on the tram at Kabataş, and then walk down the hill in Sultanahmet to find them. Asked directions once, and the guy gave them accurately, but I passed a really old, formerly Byzantine-looking mosque and thought that might be it, so I stopped by and asked a guy there if it was Küçük Aya Sofya. He said yes, so I called Sydney and asked where they were. Turns out, that guy was an idiot. I continued down the hill for another 200 feet and found them and the mosque. It was beautiful, and is in the process of being restored, like every other mosque here, in preparation for Istanbul being the cultural capital of Europe next year. I love that, if not for the fact that it probably is one of the cultural capitals, then for the fact that Europeans are probably so pissed about it.

We drank some tea and read through a newspaper we found there for a bit. Apparently some Turkish girl found out her boyfriend of 2 years had been cheating on her with her best friend, so she posted a photo of him jokingly wearing women's clothes on Facebook and sold a bunch of his stuff online for 1 TL, including a soccer ball signed by the Turkish national team. Note to self: Turkish women do not fuck around. We got lunch at Doy Doy, the great restaurant near the Blue Mosque that I went to with Emmie and Kent and Cole three years ago. We got to hear the call to prayer from the Blue Mosque, which is one of my favorites. After we ate, we walked to the mosque and had a look around inside. It's huge and beautiful, but not my favorite. Süleymaniye still is. Now it's time for homework and maybe some hookah later. This week is "yoğun" and "meşgül," or dense and busy with school business. Excitement abounds. 

Take care, have a great Sunday! 

Quickie Poo

Hey!

So it's Friday, and I am getting ready to head to Asia for a Big Lebowski house party with my friend's boyfriend. This week has been busy with school stuff. Our reading teacher is the sweetest lady ever, but she gives us an ungodly amount of homework. But she also wears linen pants and gives me lots of snacks in class, so it is impossible to dislike her. Also, she has invited us all over to her house next week for a drinking session. She is in her 70s and wears velcro shoes. She is awesome. She confused the English word "cub" with "pub," and said "lion pub," and then said quickly "well, you can see what I'm thinking of." Hilarious. She also told us that the plastic wares sellers on the streets nowadays sell inflatable sex dolls. 

It is really fucking hot today, and I forgot to baste myself in sunscreen this morning. I can tell a difference, even if I don't burn. At the same time, though I kind of like tempting the sun to catch me. It always does, though, the bastard. Today was so hot we were all cursing the window in our classroom that some industrious janitor or maintenance guy had locked shut by screwing two screws into the window frame above the window. It would, in all likelihood, let a fierce sea breeze in, and would probably be comfortable to the point of distraction. This, as they say, cannot be. Olmaz! Olmaaaz! 

Yesterday we had another lecture (my first in two weeks due to illness), this time about public-private relations in Turkey. It was really interesting, the professor has just finished an 8-year study of attitudes throughout the country. Let me grab my notes so I can share the more interesting findings with you, the curious reader...

Okay. More than a thousand respondents in 1999,2004, and 2008. The most recent batch of people were asked to rank their concerns. Out of a list of 20, the number one concern is unemployment, followed by the GLOBAL ECONOMIC CRISIS, inflation, education, and "other." At the very bottom of the list, interestingly enough (or not), was Cyprus. In terms of levels of trust felt toward certain institutions/people: #1 Armed Forces, #3 Police, #5 Universities, and then way down at the bottom were newspapers/journalists, TV news, politicians. It looks like Turkey's got its own military-industrial-academic complex. 

6.1% said that a politician should be an exemplary Muslim, and 3.0% said they must be a man.

Since 1999, there has been a general improvement in the conception of institutional fairness. It was interesting that at no point did the speaker or the research mention the fact that the huge changes since 1999 seem to coincide with the rise of the AK Parti. I wonder if there is any connection apart from coincidence. 

Okay, boring stuff aside, we learned two awesome words: titiz (pronounced titties), which means meticulous, and karşılıklılık, which means reciprocity. I like writing that one a lot. Karşılıklılık. Fuck, these construction workers outside are loud. They start working at 7am and don't stop until 7pm. The courtyard I overlook is basically an echo chamber. The acoustics are so great that seagulls come from all over Turkey to scream at my window in the morning. I swear to God, they sound like howler monkeys. 

I am probably going to nap for a bit in my linen pants before taking the boat to Asia, so I will holler at you all tomorrow night. We have a gezi that will likely last all fucking day. OLD CITY, HERE I COME.

Oh, so I'm listening to "Bim Bam Baby" by Sinatra. He's kind of an asshole in this song, commanding his significant other to clean up the house. "Grab a mip map mop and a brim bram broom and clim clam clean up the rim ram room because your bim bam baby is coming home tonight." If I were in their shoes, I'd tell him to go fick fack fuck himself.

What? Scorpions? Here? No. You're kidding. Really?

I just got back from a party at my TA, Asuman's, apartment near campus. It was on the top floor of her building, and her view is probably the best view of the city that I've seen yet. For those of you familiar with the layout of the area (Michelle), her building is right behind the mosque, and just past the North Campus. Basically right behind the photocopy place. Of course I forgot my camera, because I am a fucking idiot. She cancelled our conversation hour today so that she and Didem, the TA for the other Advanced class, could make food for all of us. And boy, was there food. We're talking real delicious homemade Turkish cuisine. Mercimek köftesi, melons, potato salad (imagine a healthy version), etsiz çiğ köfte, watermelon, chips, and cheeses. Tons of it. Everyone brought something to drink, too, so there was plenty of beer, wine, and rakı. There were about 18 people there at the party's peak, all on her incredibly comfortable and spacious balcony overlooking the European side of the city, with a view stretching from the first bridge all the way north to Şişli and beyond. 

As we approached her building, down a narrow alley, there were some younger girls hanging out in front of the door. I was carrying what must have been a 20 pound watermelon in one hand and a bag full of beer in the other, and lifted the watermelon up to ring the doorbell. They heard me speak Turkish and started laughing uncontrollably. Can't blame them, it's fucking absurd. 

I really like hanging out with the people in my class and the other advanced class. Everyone is really interesting and has a lot to contribute. This, of course, was made even more incredible by the presence of rugs on the patio, along with pillows and a hookah and a beautiful sunset. Asuman even brought out her reed flute and played a bit for us. I practiced my Japanese skills with Shiho and Tokiko, and of course the Turkish was everywhere. It was a really great evening. Murat also told me about this Iranian folk hero who represents strength because during the martyrdom of Ali, he had an arm cut off while carrying something heavy, so he switched the heavy thing he was carrying to his other arm. They cut that off, so he put it on his head, and then they cut his head off. This really upset the guy's kid, and lots of stuff ensued, but önemli olarak bir tartışma mı olacak? Biz henuz bilmiyorduk. 

Evet. 

However, upon leaving, Asuman told me that the doorway to the attic, located just above the front door to her place (which is like a palace compared to mine, and probably half the price), is "where we put akrepler." They have found 6 akrepler this summer so far. "Akrep ne demek?" I asked, like an idiot. It means scorpion. Yeah, she has scorpions in her building. Unless she is joking, which for some reason I doubt, she said the last one they found was on her bed and was three and a half inches long. They have the equivalent of mothballs for scorpions in their landings. I about shit. I spent the weekend in Cappadochia and saw no scorpions whatsoever. Now I find out they were all waiting here for me. WTF. No. If I see one, it is dead. Dead with a pocket knife in its back. I don't care where it is or when. Stab. Fuck that. No patience for the wicked.

Interestingly enough, the hands of a clock are called "scorpions," possibly because they look like its tail. I have mentioned my feelings of scorpions before, but in case you missed it, they are awful. Just awful. No thank you. 

Now I have to sleep in my shitty dorm with paper thin walls and hope to God a scorpion doesn't land on me. 

Next time we do it, everyone will bring food and drink. Homumuza gitti. Tamam o zaman öbür tarafa gideceksiniz. Iyi Şanslar! Daha iyi olacak. 

It is clearly bedtime, so I bid you all adieu. Goodnight! 

Cappadocia: It('s) Fucking Rocks, OR How I Lost Three Pounds in One Day!

Hey everybody, I am back! Back from the Anatolian heartland. And back with a nasty case of the pukes and the shits, or as I like to call it, the "Mondays." I must have eaten something bad on Friday or Saturday, because since then I've been in and out of the bathroom. But enough about my gastrointestinal problems, let's talk about Cappadocia! It('s) fucking rocks! 

We left Thursday night after our midterm for Cappadocia, the region of badass rocks and alien invasions made famous(er) by the shitty Turkish film "Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam," which I have mentioned earlier. Before we left, though, I managed to meet up with Leslie, who was visiting the city for the weekend with the Ankara CLS group. We hit up 7. Kat Teras again and then smoked some hookah off of Istiklal before I headed with Sydney to catch our bus in a very sketchy parking lot near a wedding party place. We met up with the others and to our surprise our bus arrived, as stated on the internet. 

The Turks take their buses very seriously, I gather, and have assigned seats like an airplane, and snack and meal service. Our guide's name was Murat, a twenty-something with a degree in tourism and soccer player hair. Our assistant, the guy who brought us tea and snacks, was Fırat. The driver, Sinan. Sinan, judging by his voice, used to smoke 3 packs a day, and has seem some shit. He has a tightly curled white Jewfro and a thick black mustache. He looked like the Turkish Einstein, and was just as wise. Over the course of the weekend, he took a shine to me and started calling me "Havuç Bey," or Mr. Carrot. This I allowed only after expressing my preference for carrot over "red." 

The drive out there was pretty rough. I can't really sleep well on moving vehicles, despite the seat next to me being empty. This was exacerbated by the music videos and AtlasJet ads that were looped on the TV screens. I need to find out who sang one of the songs, though, because I think I am going to marry her. Not sure yet, I need to ask her dad. I managed to sleep fitfully in 20-30 minute increments, starting at 4:00am. I woke up at one point to see a massive white body of water outside the bus. It was Turkey's second largest lake! The Salt Lake (Tuz Gölü). I was geeking out because I am reading a book called "Salt," and it was actually on my lap at the time. We stopped twice on the trip, once after being on the road for only 2 hours. It was a creepy, creepy rest stop that looked like a sadder version of a Cracker Barrel gift shop, except with more dried nuts and berries. The highlight of this particular stop was the fact that the bathroom attendant guy who collects your fifty cents when you come out actually fucked up his only task: he gave me a lira back after I gave him a lira. WIN! 

Our final stop before getting to our region was at a fancy rest stop near the Salt Lake that featured, among other things, overpriced tea. It was after this stop that we really started getting into the trip's cool bits. The area that Cappadocia occupies is really hilly/mountainous and pretty dry. The land was once full of active volcanoes, and that is why the surface is covered in volcanic rock, which is in turn why the crazy rock formations appeared: pumice is very soft, and is eroded easily by wind and rain. The landscape makes it easy for a surprise to appear around a bend in the road, which is exactly what happened as we approached our first stop, the Ihlara Valley. We rounded a bend and saw a huge rock face jutting out of the earth with dwellings carved into it. Whaaaat? Yeah, the people who used to live here carved holes in cliffs all over the place and lived in them. They were early Christians with a lot to be scared of, apparently, because they built their homes like fifty feet off the ground in the cliffs. I have no idea how they got to the. I didn't see any steps. Maybe they rode dragons. Friendly ones.

The Ihlara Valley was incredible, a 14km long canyon, essentially, full of ancient churches and dwellings. We walked just a bit of it, because to see it all would take all day, but what we did see was awesome. I can't think of a better place to hide your churches than there, except maybe for our third stop: the Underground City! This place was 8 levels of rooms and tunnels...UNDER THE GROUND. Apparently there are as many as six cities like this around there, and in total they housed as many as 20,000+ people. NUTS. You can't tell where it is! All the shit around it was built recently, back in the day it was just a hole, literally, in the middle of a field. There was lots of crouching going on there. It leads me to believe that early Christians were a small, nocturnal species with enormous eyes, well suited to cave dwelling. 

The second stop, which I shall describe out of order to keep you on your toes, was the Crater Lake. It was an enormous lake in a crater that I think was formed by an extinct volcano (as the region is full of them). It's surface area was probably .75 sq mi. It was gorgeous. GORGEOUS. We wandered further up and over the hill overlooking it and took pictures of the landscape on the other side. The place seriously looks like Rohan from LOTR. Seriously. It was there that our tour guide, Murat, came up to me and said "I think you know some Turkish." It might have been because I was laughing at his jokes and nodding in understanding at everything he said. He asked me if I or anyone else with me would prefer English (he speaks some) to Turkish explanations, and I told him that we were here to learn Turkish and didn't want to inconvenience the Turks on the trip. So that was settled.

We stopped at a winery in Nevşehir to talk with the owner about local wines, and try some. The red wine was the suck, but the white wine was great. So we got three bottles and enjoyed them later on the balcony of Sydney's hotel room, which had a great view of downtown Ürgüp and a crag with caves on it. For lunch, the lunch that I believe was the start of my troubles, we had a delicious pot roast with eggplant, beef, potatoes, and other stuff that makes me shit. It was really, really good, and the restaurant was gorgeous. The arrangement was like a hamam, sort of, with a central dome and chambers radiating off of it. They had live music in the middle, playing old Ottoman songs. Songs that enchant the bowels. Friday night, the six of us (from my program) wandered the streets of Ürgüp, and found our way to the top of "Wish Hill," which had one of the most incredible, if not the most incredible view I have ever seen. You can see for probably 25 miles in every direction. And we were there as the sun was setting, and casting incredible light and shadows over the mountains and cliffs in the distance. It's the kind of stuff I wish I could share with you all in person. I took a video and some pictures, but they don't do it justice. We could see the top of a mountain off in the distance, behind other mountains, that was covered in snow. We're talking a serious mountain. Mount Erciyes. It is a 12,000ft tall extinct volcano that according to one Roman historian provides a view from the top of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. It was certainly the tallest thing I have ever seen from the ground, and I was 70km away from it. 

Saturday morning we started the day off right with some sweet panoramic views, I bought some linen pants to wear at home, and was given a nice little Nazar bead by one of the shopkeeps for speaking Turkish with him. Then we headed down toward the Fairy Chimneys, proper. Peribacaları are what the Turks call the stone formations caused by the erosion of the metamorphic rock that covers the region. They have a few main shapes, which you can see in my pictures eventually. We wandered as far into this particular site as we could given the time we had, and managed to get away from everybody else and explore. I also managed to pee in the Anatolian wilderness! An Eagle Scout's dream. The whole place was nuts. People carved houses out of the Fairy Chimneys hundreds, if not a thousand years ago, and many people still live in them today. Some of them even have satellite dishes. I was warned that there were scorpions around, but I luckily didn't see one. If I had, that sonofabitch would have been dead quicker than he could have said "Merhaba." I hate spiders, and scorpions are like the Megazord of the arachnid family. There is absolutely no need for pincers and a stinging tail. None. That is just excessive, like a laser sight on a shotgun. 

I have to say, the weather was incredible. I got some sun, naturally, but on Friday it didn't get higher than 72 degrees or so because it was cloudy. Saturday it might have been 80, and Sunday too, but it wasn't humid at all. That was especially handy at the first canyon we visited, where there were probably 300 steps to get in and out. So many steps, in fact, that the Turks all took a cigarette break before attempting them. Everywhere we went involving rocks and the outdoors had variable amounts of climbing, depending on how much fun you wanted to have. It was a bit more manageable for me, with my fear of heights, because instead of sheer rock faces they were sloped steeply instead. It makes a difference, for some reason. After checking out the Fairy Chimneys near Üçhisar, we headed to a halı, or Turkish rug, studio. This place was fancy. Today most of the rugs for sale in Istanbul are made in factories in China, but when they aren't, they are usually made by young girls and women. They usually develop arthritis and eye problems at an early age due to the meticulous detail and knot typing required. This studio, probably one of the more expensive in Turkey, was staffed by women between 20-40 years old. Each had in front of them a loom and a patter to work off of. The owner gave us a presentation on the particularities of Turkish halı rugs versus the Chinese ripoffs and everyone else. It's all about the knot you use, the material you use, and the material that the rug's "skeleton" is made out of. Also, knots per square centimeter are crucial. Their rugs have 400 knots of silk per square centimeter. That means for a rug with the area of 1 square meter, you have 4 million knots. To complete that, it takes one woman working every day an entire YEAR. Their rugs, accordingly cost a shit ton of money. The smallest ones were anywhere between 6,000-10,000 TL. The big ones, fuck. He showed us some in his showroom (after plying us with free wine) that were 100,000+ TL. They were gorgeous, but the highlight of the display were his rug hauling henchmen, each dressed in matching denim shirts and jeans, and each six and a half feet tall and built like Abe Lincoln. We joked that he probably made them himself and calls them "The Twins." While people were looking at the rugs and contemplating not buying them, this gorgeous woman who worked at the studio as a sales rep came over and started talking to me in Turkish, and then when she asked if it was a hard language, I told her German was harder, and then we started speaking German. And then we got married. 

Saturday night was the night of violent illness, but despite that I still went to the Türk Gecesi, or Turk night, with the group, and paid 30 TL for an open bar and unlimited appetizers, of which I had none. No drinks, no food. I just watched the dancing and fought back the onslaught of lord knows what. One of the dancers was hotter than hot, she was hot Hot HOT! Anyway, I could write like 10 different papers about that event. It was the epitome of Orientalism (excluding perhaps outright colonization). It was completely objectifying, especially the belly dancing that came later. Granted, I appreciate the belly dancing for a number of reasons, not the least of which being the bellies. Their muscle control is enviable from a martial arts standpoint, too. Anyway, I married the hottest of the dancers. Outside of the restaurant (where I went to get some air) I could see hundreds of stars. It wasn't the thousands I was hoping for, but it was certainly an improvement over Istanbul. All the Turkish women in our group expressed concern that I wasn't enjoying myself at the Türk Gecesi, but I explained that I was ill. They all were really nice about it. I guess it's not taboo to say diarrhea here, because they were all asking me about it. Hell, maybe they LIKE talking about it. Wouldn't that be fucked up? After we got back, I spent the night in the bathroom, listening to Turkish pop songs on the music video network. One of the songs was a really offensive song about a woman who decided that she wanted to make this guy's food for him and wipe the sweat off his brow and pamper him and obey him. Maybe that's what made me sicker. That and some bad meat.

Sunday I felt a lot better, but refrained from eating much of anything besides some French Fries. We went to the Göreme Open Air Museum, which is kind of the über-touristy spot in the region, but also a fascinating place full of old churches and dwellings. There are pigeon dwellings carved into the cliffs all over the region, and at Göreme, Murat told us that one reason was that the pigeon eggs were used to make the paint for the frescos in the old churches. Most of the paintings were actually really bad, like a five year-old did them, but some were fantastic. The fantastic ones were not done in simple red paint. I mean, the bad ones were REALLY bad. But think about it, the people who carved houses on cliffs out of solid rock were probably not the most graceful people on earth, and certainly could be expected to be a bit rough-handed. While we were there we paid homage to "Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam" by taking some pictures holding up rocks and punching Michael. When people walked past we explained what was going on, and they laughed. Everybody knows the movie here. Before Göreme, though, we hit up a pottery plant. Same deal as the rug place. Give us tea and try and get us to buy shit. We watched a guy make a pot. It was really cool, actually. One of the salesmen sounded like that guy in "Casablanca" that gets arrested. He was creepy as fuck. He kept bugging me and saying he'd give me half-price on anything in the store. His eyes were bloodshot and I wanted to leave. 

After Göreme, we hit the road back to Istanbul. Along the way, we stopped at the Tuz Gölü and got a chance to walk in it, etc. It was hot there, because the whole beach was salt crystals reflecting the sun at me. I chatted with Murat and Fırat about movies involving the earth being destroyed. It was pleasant. On the ride back, we watched a movie called "Ottoman Republic," which operated on the premise that Atatürk died as a boy, and Turkey never happened. It started off funny, but like many Turkish movies, it became serious and nationalistic. The plot involved the Ottoman Empire remaining an American mandate, and the Sultan being the puppet of the Americans, who were the villains. At one point, one of the Princes Islands was going to be given to Greece (a very clear appeal to current nationalist sentiments, because there is a Greek Orthodox monastery there that Turkey needs to re-open if they want into the EU). At another point, the Sultan gives his support to the resistance movement and is promptly forced to abdicate. The movie ends sadly, and with the Sultan saying "If only there could have been a strong leader, a hero to liberate us from the beginning." Then it cuts back to Salonica in 1888, as it did at the beginning, and showed little boy Atatürk getting back up (he fell out of a tree at the beginning). Some of the Turks on the bus were actually crying. WTF. It was so stupid. I asked one of the guys my age what he thought, and he called it a lot of nonsense. Of course, he later told me he doesn't drink and that he lives in Eyüp, which is a really conservative religious neighborhood near Fatih. So maybe he doesn't like the Atatürkism that was prevalent in the film. 

But to be fair, the second movie was NATIONAL TREASURE DUBBED INTO TURKISH. Yes! It's so good. It provided a nice counterpoint to the Turkish nationalism, but did so with a plot and special effects. Very nice! It ended just as we reached Istanbul. The trip back lasted a lot longer than the trip there, since it was during the day. We left at 2:00pm and got back at midnight. We walked from where the bus dropped us to Taksim and caught two cabs. I told the drivers very specifically how I wanted to go back to campus, and he started to disobey me and I was like "Didn't I say to go from Beşiktaş?" And he was like "Beşiktaş?" As if he was going to go a quicker way. My ass. I know exactly where he was going to take us. Fucker. Anyway, we got back without being screwed, and now I begin the long process of adding photos to Flickr. I highly recommend anyone who ever comes to Turkey comes to Cappadocia. It was the perfect weekend trip. Gorgeous, interesting, full of history. Just don't eat bad meat.

Be Back Monday

I am going to Cappadocia tonight, will be back Monday with stories. Have a nice weekend, folks!

For a 1000 space years!

Sorry for the delay, I have been pretty busy with work during what has otherwise been an uneventful week. After Sunday's Rape Forest Adventures the week became incredibly densely packed with Turkish delights, otherwise known as a shitstorm of reading and grammar homework. The movie we watched on Monday was called "Hayat Var," and is a play on words meaning both "There is life," and "Hayat is here/exists," as the main character is a 13 year old girl named Hayat. This movie, apparently like all other Turkish movies, involves your standard plot: No plot, a rape, sadness, illness in the family, a street boy love interest, prostitutes, a parentless household, and animal abuse. Also boats and a dysfunctional education system, and a baby being threatened. I don't understand why there isn't an audience for this stuff in the States. 

Fortunately, while doing homework, Sydney and I decided to watch the Bourne Trilogy this week. One film a night. We just finished it up. They are so fun. Tonight I decided that at some point in my life I want to take stunt driving classes. Last night we watched "Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam," probably one of the worst movies ever made. It came out in 1982 after the military coup and subsequent military government (led by Evren and later Özal) made getting Western movies exceedingly difficult. It tells the story of a wizard alien who tries to destroy the earth so he can suck the blood out of everyone, but is foiled by earth's protective shell formed by concentrated brain molecules. He needs to get a brain to destroy the earth. And he will stop at nothing. NOTHING. He sends all his henchmen: zombies, mummies, guys in furry costumes...everyone. Too bad for them that Cuneyt is there to kick their asses with karate and the BRAIN SWORD, a sword that looks like an 8th grader's wood shop project spray-painted gold. The version of the movie that we had featured some of the worst English subtitles I've ever seen, on par with the Chinese Episode III copy that has been floating around online recently. I think the whole movie is on Youtube, and it's totally worth checking out. It features a score that essentially consists of the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark repeated over and over, and outright steals entire sequences from Star Wars IV: A New Hope. They don't even bother using Empire Strikes Back. We think, but aren't sure, that the earth is a Death Star. At one point a wise man tells our hero that in the past (the film is set way in the future) the monotheists banded together after being inspired by the Bektaşi Sufi Muslim order, built underground cities, and fought the aliens under the leadership of, you guessed it, Jesus Christ. You have to watch this movie.

Today walking home from class I heard someone shout my name, looked up, and saw Dave's friend Mert walking toward me. I didn't realize he was in the city! It was awesome. Will definitely have to hang out with him soon. We had conversation hour today in the Urfa Kebab place while it rained cats and dogs outside. In Turkish, I think the saying is that it is raining broken shards of plates, or something. Terrifying. I went to Metrocity Mall, next to Kanyon, to look for a cheap linen shirt to wear in Cappadocia this weekend. Instead I got a long-sleeved t-shirt for $6. Is blue! Is nice! Tomorrow night I take a night bus with 5 of my friends to Cappadocia for the weekend. It has underground cities, cave churches, and all kinds of crazy natural rock formations. It's geographically unique in the world. And I'm going to take pictures and debase myself there for 72 hours. My goal, honestly, is to take a cab out of town into the desert so I can look at the stars and listen to some music on my iPod. This month is the best month, allegedly, for stargazing, or as the Turks call it "Dream Founding." I fucking love Turkish. They call comets "Stars with Tails." It's like that word decided, like the kid in the Tin Drum, that it would never change with the times. Anyway, I am pumped to get out of the city and into the Milky Way. Too bad the bus ride lasts 13 hours each way. Can you say Benadryl? I can. 

I love this city. It is so fucking insane. I realized today, as I was walking back from the mall, that the reason the curbs here are almost a foot high is probably just to keep cars from using the sidewalks as lanes. Drivers here don't give a fuck about anything. They treat their cars' enginges and brakes like shit. But no matter how crazy it is now, I am SURE that it was even crazier 30 years ago. We had to read an article by Orhan Pamuk yesterday describing all the old street vendors who would wander the neighborhoods back when he was growing up. The place sounds like a fucking circus. The knife sharpener guy just sharpens shit on the street, and children would come hang out with him and play in or watch his sparks. The brass cleaner would light fires in the middle of the street to clean the brass. There were people wandering from door to door screaming at the top of their lungs trying to attract customers. Imagine 10 grown men on your street screaming things like "KNIFE SHARPENER!" "MILK! MILK!" "TOMATOES!!!" "THRIFT STORE MAN MAN!!" or, my favorite, "BEAR TAMER!"

Yeah, that's right. The ayıcı, or bearman, is a man who would, until it was RECENTLY banned, walk around with a fucking BEAR on a LEASH in the city and force the bear to do tricks. Yeah, BEARS ON LEASHES. Sparks flying everywhere, sharp knives, fires, old milk, and creepy guys who sell women's dresses do not make a wholesome environment for children. Imagine the street: bears shitting and fighting on the corner while latchkey kids play in the sparks of the knife sharpener and a crazy man shouts "tomatoes" into his truck-mounted microphone. 

My reading teacher told us about how she has called the cops twice on this blind man who walks down her street playing an organ into a loudspeaker. WTF. She is hilarious. Well, I need some sleep before my midterm and trip tomorrow, so I will leave it at that, and will be back Monday to write about the weekend! 

Remember: THE PEACE IS IN THE FUTURE! 

The Rape Forest and Beyond

Today was a long, exhausting day. Saturday, not so much.

After that crazy party that I managed to somewhat accurately summarize at an ungodly hour Saturday morning, I slept until 2:00pm Saturday afternoon. My suitemate, of course, had to Skype fight with his girlfriend at 10:00am. He talks so loudly that the girls upstairs can hear him. 

Saturday was an incredibly lazy day until around 10:00pm, when I went to Taksim with a few others to try and find this place called "Araf" that allegedly played Balkan DJ music. We took the university shuttle bus there, and I had the distinct privilege of sitting among a group of sleazy Turkish guys who were creepily fawning over these two Chinese girls they were with. I have seen this group around before, and they're just a generally frustrating group: Turkish Bros. I mention them because I wanted to complain about something that troubles me a great deal about younger Turkish guys of a certain type and their behavior toward their girlfriends. They are really into this whole semi-headlock style of walking with their ladyfriends, where the girl is actually completely under their control. Usually this is done either with a hand around the back of the neck, which is such a raw expression of male dominance it is disgusting, or they have their arm so far over the girl's shoulder that she is basically in a headlock. It is gross, annoying, and from the looks of the girls, not something they enjoy. Usually this is done by guys in aggressive V-neck shirts with the crappy haircut that I will have to photograph for you to see. 

We ate at Seventh Floor Terrace again, and this time noticed that in addition to "Wegetable Salad" and "Manifoods," the menu also featured "Cigarette Pie," their translation of my beloved Sigara Böreği. Also "Brain" is listed on the menu with no qualifier. After leaving we headed toward Galata Tower because one of us thought it was that way. It wasn't, and we found it 30 minutes later and after asking directions from an ice cream guy. He was really friendly and even wrote them out for me. He said he used to work that way. So we followed his directions, but a grammatical idiosyncrasy involving the verb "to pass" meant that we ended up in the wrong place, and again asked directions until we found it. There is a saying in Turkish, "You can ask your way to Baghdad." Truth. Turns out the other possible understanding of his directions was the correct one. The place, called "Araf," was on the top floor of an apartment building. I love that. The ground floor and the top floors are usually bars or clubs, and people live in between. 

This place was a blast. It had low ceilings, loud techno and soul music, and a great crowd of Turkish people, mostly in their late 20s or early 30s by the looks of it, dancing enthusiastically to James Brown remixes and smoking like chimneys. We danced with them as long as we could before leaving to catch the 2:00am shuttle back to campus. We had to get up early for our trip to the Belgrade Forest. We will definitely go back. 

The Belgrade Forest is a massive forest north of the new business district, located in Sarıyer. It has been an officially protected area for at least 250 years, and for most of that time was a favorite destination for officials, picnickers, and the sultans who would day trip the shit out of the place. Whenever we got closer to paved roads in the park, there were tons of picnickers. The Belgrade Forest also has a reputation for being the Rape Forest, according to Alison's boyfriend. We aren't sure why. Probably because lots of rapes occur there. But needless to say, many an inappropriate joke was made as we passed narrow paths and abandoned picnic sites. The purpose of the trip was to check out the old Ottoman waterworks in the area, with our tour guide being an adventure tourism business owner who also knows a ton about the city's water history. Mission accomplished, and in a much more linear and tolerable fashion than the Edirne trip or the trip through Fatih.

Almost as soon as we got off the bus, a crazy old Turkish man wearing a light brown blazer with a cane topped by a deer's antler in one hand and prayer beads in the other approached us and wanted to improvise some poetry for us about the forest. It was unintelligible, but we all agreed that it was good, if for no other reason than that we want to be that guy someday: 70+ years old, drinking in the forest, and free-styling mad rhymes at foreign kids. He just sauntered right up to us as our guide was talking, and patiently waited for a break in the conversation so he could poetry slam us. 

We checked out three big old dams and their reservoirs. They still provide some water to the city, but only about a day or two's worth each year. To get on one of them we had to walk across a narrow, slick marble wall that was about a foot wide. Water on the left, concrete ditch on the right. I was nervous as hell, even though it was only about eight feet high. It was worth it though. We visited the dams in the order they were built, and it was really obvious that over the course of the 100+ years during which they were built that major advances in engineering had been made. The last one featured that distinctive curve and angled structure that is so apparent in the Hoover Dam. After passing the last dam, we still had about an hour's hike to get to civilization, aka the tiny restaurant near the road where we would eat lunch. On the way there, we passed countless piles of cow shit and also a picnic organized by the Büyük Birlik Partisi.

This political party is the successor/political front for the right-wing, ultra-nationalist, Islamist contingent of the National Movement Party (MHP). This group split off from the MHP because the MHP wasn't religious enough. They are essentially fascists. But apparently they love picnics just as much as the next guy. I got stares like whoa when we walked past, because my beard resembles that of a leftist. These folks had their party flag hanging up over their tables, and it was really intensely mustachioed thereabouts. 

One remarkable characteristic of the forest, interestingly enough, is how young all the trees are. There are very few huge trees. This, we learned, is largely due to the fact that when Sultan Mahmud II tried to disband (re: slaughter) the Janissaries in the early 19th century, he only got about 6,000 of them. Many of the rest hid in the Belgrade Forest, robbing folks to survive. It got so bad that Mahmud II said fuck it and set the forest on fire, and had his new European-styled army posted on hills waiting to shoot the men fleeing the flames. We saw some of the trenches dug by the sultan's troops. That's one theory. My theory is that Turks who picnic know very little about fire safety. Case in point: they ignore the signs, which are everywhere, that say "DO NOT START FIRES." Also, the leave books of matches on the ground, which is covered in pine needles and dried leaves. 

All in all, the trip was incredibly sweaty but fun. We got to see Turkish families in their element: relaxing with family and friends, cooking good food and playing soccer or hanging in hammocks. Hammocks that were being rocked by someone. We passed one big family playing a guys vs. girls game of soccer, and our guide asked "Who is winning? The women?" The guys responded "Friendship is winning here." I really liked that. 

When we got back to the dorm, a few of us went and grabbed some sour cherry and pomegranate wine to enjoy while we did homework. It was delicious and incredibly weak, like about 8% alcohol by volume. Oh! Then we did scalp tick checks. Ticks are a thing here. Leslie just told me she got one today in Ankara. No problem though. But in Istanbul, people can get lyme disease, or worse, fucking hemmorhagic fever from Africa. Someone got that last year and died. So yeah, ticks are a thing here. 

My back sweats too much. I should get a surgery to fix that, or just stop wearing backpacks here. Nothing too hysterical happened today, it was just a decidedly pleasant and rape-free day spent in the woods.

One for the Record Books

Today was one of the better Fridays on record.

The day started out well enough, difficult vocabulary quiz aside, with us discussing hipster fashion in conversation class. After classes ended, a select group of us, those willing to GO THE DISTANCE, went on a "gezi" to ASIA. We took a "vapur," or huge boat full of people, to Kadiköy, which is in ASIA. When we got there, we immediately went to a restaurant called "Çiya." This place is famous for its Ottoman cuisine. Ottoman cuisine is older than traditional Turkish food, like döner and lahmacun, and is a bit more exotic in terms of flavors. With this in mind, I had "Vişne Kebabı," or Sour Cherry Kebab, and for dessert, I had candied tomatoes. Both were like nothing I had ever tasted before. Amazing. 

I left our group after lunch to head back to the dorm. I had made plans, important plans, to see "Public Enemies," or "Halk Düşmanları," with my friends here. I love Michael Mann, and my cousin is in it as an extra, so needless to say, I was excited. We caught the bus to Akmerkez, but only after a hilarious wait where I was the only guy in a group of nine girls, all lined up like a buffet at the bus stop. Every car driven by a man slowed down as it passed. So fucking creepy. The movie was awesome, despite the 10 minute smoking break in the middle, during which they showed trailers for OTHER MOVIES. WTF. 

After the movie, though, the night got even better. We headed to Taksim in a cab that was unmarked, which I should have noticed beforehand. It was my bad. The guy took us for a ride. I questioned his route, and he said the neighborhood we normally would have passed through, Beşiktaş, was crowded. We paid as much as we would have from our dorm. Asshole. But when we got to Taksim, we called Kazakh Mariya and met up with her and a bunch of others from our group at a house party one block off Istiklal. The guys who owned the place new my old Turkish TA from Georgetown, Elçin, and were both really friendly. They also happened to be incredible musicians. Their place was full of Turkish and Indian drums. Everyone took turns playing them along with the music on the stereo. It was so fun! I started getting the hang of a few more complex rhythms on the darbuka, the drum I want to learn, by the end of the night. The hard part is figuring out how to strike it to make different sounds.

The guys, Börte and Erdan, both played fucking incredible darbuka pieces together, and then later each took a turn on their saz, which is a beautiful Turkish stringed instrument that, in my opinion, has no note that isn't beautiful. They played old songs like "Uzun ince bir yoldayım," and then mixed the saz and the darbuka. We danced, played tambourine, and chatted uptil 3:00am. It was incredible. They had a real kettle drum from India! They had four darbukas. One of the guys told me he had been playing for 20 years, and only later did I find out that 10 of those years were spent in the deserts of Egypt. AMAZING. Easily one of the best live shows I have ever witnessed. 

On the way out, we left them our email addresses, because they have a band called Loca Luna, and are going to be playing at one of Spain's largest music festivals, and the volunteered to send us their demos. They told me that their usual monthly parties attract Turkish pop stars like Teoman, who is HUGE. These guys are totally legit. Their apartment is one block off the most crowded street in the city, and their average party size was 150 people. As I was leaving, I told them again how much I wanted to learn the basics of the darbuka, and they said they could set me up with a nice drum and have me over for some lessons and do some recording. I hope they email me, because I will totally take them up on that. Dream come true!!!

Tonight was so much fun. Great movie, great people, dancing, music, and drinks. Also, our cab driver on the way back was incredible. We got the daytime rate at night, and he was really talkative with me. He told me that next time I have to call the cheating cab drivers a "son of a whore." Then he said I didn't look American, but Sydney and Allison did. He was hilarious. He said Turkey's prime minster is Obama. I think he likes America...

Okay, enough of my drunken rambling. Goodnight!!!

Patata!

Hey!

So yesterday upon waking up from my long nap, I felt well enough to try to go on the "gezi" everyone was taking to Sarıyer, a place up near the Black Sea. I thought the bus left at 3:30, so I hustled over to campus and found an empty bus stop. This was at 3:35. Thinking that since there had been talk of a boat, the bus might just take them to the Bebek Pier, I walked down the Murder/Martyr Hill and then the mile or so to the pier, again finding it empty. I sat there for twenty minutes or so, waiting for the next boat, but it didn't come. So I kept walking south along the water until I figured out what I wanted to do. Go to Kanyon.

I hopped on a bus headed for Kabataş, which is where the tramway starts. I got off and entered the subway tunnel, which has a funicular that takes you from the bottom of the hill up to Taksim Square. Once I got there, I got on the subway and took that all the way to the end, or 4. Levent, thinking that was the right stop. Turns out just normal Levent (the stop before it) was the right one. So I walked the mile and a half or so back and found the mall, Kanyon. The area it is in is interesting in that it is totally a recently developed area but still largely looks like shit. So much new stuff here is spoiled by the fact that just by being in this city, things get covered in dust, smog, trash, etc. It is a very lived-in city. Like a college dorm, in some ways. The streets are all totally stained, and the walls are all covered in tacky posters. 

Anyway, Kanyon is a sweet mall to look at and walk through, and for a number of reasons. Like Akmerkez, it attracts only the city's wealthiest clients, so naturally there are countless beautiful women wandering around spending a fortune on Banana Republic scarves and what not. Oh, also, it has an Apple Retailer. Not an Apple Store, mind you. I have been through that nightmare before (see old blog for details). I went back in to check the prices on the latest MacBook models. Between 3,500-4,000 TL, depending on the options, or almost $2600. I didn't even pay that much for my Powerbook FIVE years ago. All the AirPort prices were in Euros. Consumer electronics in Turkey are staggeringly expensive. I wandered around the Remzi Kitabevi (bookstore) for a long time, and finally settled on a pocket sized Redhouse Turkish-English-Turkish dictionary for 7 TL, or about $4.75. It's great. Afterwards, I walked the whole way back to my dorm, and actually managed to get back at the same time as everyone else. It was about five miles, I think. It was a deceptively long walk. 

Last night while doing work, we watched "Casablanca" in the girls' apartment. Wow. I had never seen it before, and I immediately fell in love with it. It's so cool to think that the movie was made WHILE WWII STILL BEING FOUGHT. Nobody knew then how it would end. Humphrey Bogart makes me want to smoke cigarettes and wear white jackets. I was a bit pissed off at Ingrid Bergman's character for a while, but eventually warmed up to her. Brilliant movie. Made me proud of American cinema for a minute. But then I remembered Transformers. 

Today was a full day. Felt well enough to stay for all my classes. Today in the language lab we got to watch yet another Turkish sitcom. This one, admittedly, wasn't as terrible as the last, but it still featured an overbearing Turkish husband and his goofy wife. In this episode, Ihsan (the guy) was forced by his wife to pick a hobby. So he wants to learn how to fly! HA! She doesn't like the idea. But then he makes a joke about how it is safer to fly in Istanbul than it is to walk, because cars can't hit planes. HAHA! IT IS FUNNY BECAUSE IT IS SADLY TRUE. Out lecture today was about Ottoman self-imagination. Basically, about how the late Ottoman Empire related to its pre-"Westernizing" reforms. The lecturer described the word "Westernization" as a masculine, penetrative act. It was actually a pretty interesting talk, and would have been almost fun if it hadn't been for the fucking insane heat today. Our TA told us today that some Turkish weathermen were saying today, like idiots, that the heat index would be 60 degrees Celsius, or 140 fucking degrees Fahrenheit. Oh, really? Really? This is why nobody takes Turkish media seriously. Someone else's TA heard 80 degrees Celsius. That is 176 degrees. Seriously. Weatherman. Read a book. In reality, it was about 90 degrees Fahrenheit today with a humidity approaching 100%. It actually rained for 10 minutes today, and so naturally, the roads and sidewalks were slick with disgusting smog film. 

Homework time included a screening of "Pirates of the Caribbean" and the making of pirogues stuffed with mashed potatoes and cream cheese. I fried the onions. Gourmet! After homework, Allison and Sydney and I went out to Taksim for a couple hours. I didn't have anything to drink (well, I had Turkish coffee) because I am on antibiotics, but it was still a great time. On the walk back to the main road we stopped at a snack shop called "Patata," which sells only French fries covered in various sauces. The signage is fucking adorable. Each fry has a face and each sauce is represented by a different hairstyle on the fries. We got "barbekü." Amazing. Served in a paper cone like falafel. So good. If someone wants to open a franchise in Adams Morgan with me, we could make a million dollars. A MILLION DOLLARS. Fucking potatoes and sauces and labor = our only costs. Besides rent and utilities. On the way back, we saw two compact cars driving on a main road with probably six guys in each car sitting on the doors and standing out of the moonroofs chanting something. I couldn't make it out entire, but it sounded like "Fuck Beşiktaş." Bad news, given that was the neighborhood they were in. Some other cars started getting closer to it, and they were trying to open the doors. It was almost creepy, but then our cabbie decided to zoom past them on the wrong side of the road. Kind of glad he did. Didn't want to witness a murder, or worse, another stupid ass shoving match between two guys with awful haircuts and tight jeans. 

Now, I am going to study for a vocabulary quiz and prep myself mentally for our trip to Kadiköy tomorrow. IT IS IN ASIA! I WILL BE RETURNING TO ASIA TOMORROW. Also, hopefully getting a cell phone tomorrow as well.

PS: We totally saw some prostitutes tonight. OMG THEY EXIST HERE IN THE WORLD'S BUSIEST TRANSIT POINT FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING. Sad.