After being too tired or too deep in Thrace to update this thing, I am finally back.
Friday night was unforgettable for a couple of reasons. The night started off well with me grabbing the bus down to Taksim with Allison, Nihan, and Sydney. We had probably the worst driver ever. I don't think he knows how to drive a manual. People were almost falling over the entire time. But we got there safely, and headed to meet up with a couple of the other guys in our program. We ended up finding them at a place called "7. Kat Teras," which means "Seventh Floor Terrace." It was an extremely narrow, extremely awesome bar/restaurant on the top floor of a SIX story building. That's right, I counted. But now that I think about it, they might have just added the seventh floor...yeah, okay, it checks out. The bar was actually on the rooftop, with a retractable roof. The view was incredible and so were the prices. $2.25 for a half a liter of Efes beer. Not bad, but that still didn't stop the Turk at the table next to us from ordering the girl he was with a Miller Lite in a bottle for 6 TL, or $4. They served it with a lemon in the mouth of the bottle, and it fell in, which I guess just DOESN'T happen here. So we watched him try to get it out using toothpicks and his fingers for about five minutes before offering him my knife, which also didn't work. Then I told him that it's fine and people do it all the time, and his girlfriend just gave up and drank it.
After leaving that place and being abandoned by the other guys, we decided to go meet up with Allison's boyfriend at a bar nearby (all the bars are nearby). It was a very American-styled bar, with lots of hot young folks standing around drinking and talking (very uncommon). Usually you find small groups of people sitting at tables. The only problem with that place was the pricing. A bit much. But it would be a good place to practice my Turkish, so I might go back. We decided not to stay long, and then moved on to a bar that happened to be right next to the place we went to on the first night. We chatted about all kinds of stuff, like how the guy at the table next to us was staring at Sydney the entire time. This continued until he finally approached us and asked in broken English if he could join us. We said yes. He was harmless, and I was there with them so nothing would have happened anyway. Also we were all finishing our last beers. So it turns out the guy just got a masters from Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, or Middle East Technical University. That is the place I would have gone if I hadn't stuck around DC, actually. So we chatted in Turkish for a while about various things, like how this guy works for Raytheon and works on close air defense projects.
We were interrupted after a few minutes by a Roma ("gypsy") musician playing a darbuka and singing an old Turkish song, probably about love or drinking. After the first verse, I asked him in Turkish "could you teach how it is played?" This was, of course, a great idea. He immediately handed me his drum, saying "buyurun," which means a LOT of things, but mostly just "please."Immediately I slapped out a couple bad rhythms, and after he couldn't take it anymore, he came around the table behind me, grabbed my wrists, and said "be free," and moved my hands to a simple beat. I kept playing it after he let go. Then he started singing again. Then other people around us (there were tons) joined in. And then they started clapping along to my beat. It was really, really fun. I will never forget it. I've been talking about taking darbuka lessons since I got here, and to get my first one on a street in the bar district on a Friday night was more than I could have ever hoped for. After the song ended, everyone clapped and I about passed out I was so happy. I gave him all my change, which probably amounted to $5.
Right as we were leaving, the Turkish graduate told me, as we waited in line for the "bathroom" (a closet with a toilet built in the staircase) that he and many other people hate what the US has done in Iraq but that he, along with the others, is hopeful that President Obama will bring about a more peaceful world. All you can say to someone like that is "I hear you." We got a cheap cab back to the dorm and hit the hay around 3:00am. Saturday was our day trip to Edirne, and we were leaving in the morning.
Speaking of the morning, I have to sleep now. I will get this all caught up tomorrow, and will start uploading the 200 pictures I took this weekend, too. Saturday was a llllooooonnnng day.
you played drums in a bar! yay!!
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