Kevinistan

The End?

2009-08-13T23:16:00.001-07:00

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!

2009-08-12T03:51:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-08T10:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-07T05:50:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-03T11:43:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-02T08:45:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-30T14:06:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-07-29T06:52:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-07-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-20T06:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-16T06:59:00.000-07:00

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

For a 1000 space years!

2009-07-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-12T15:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-09T15:02:00.000-07:00

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.

İyileştirdim!

2009-07-08T13:54:00.000-07:00

The aspirin has helped tremendously. I felt so much better today by around 3:00 that I got up and walked like five miles. That's it for now. I just watched "Casablanca" for the first time. Incredible movie! Wow. So good.

Anyway, time for sleeping. Goodnight, moon!

Do you have heroin? (Maybe.)

2009-07-08T01:05:00.000-07:00

I am home sick from school today, or I guess I came home from school. I've had a headache the past couple days that hasn't really been going away. My initial concern was that it was meningitis. Which would be awful. But a few of the people whom I have spoken with, whose opinions I value very highly, have said that it is incredibly unlikely. So it looks like it is a combination of the head and a sinus thing. So I walked to the pharmacy, which here is called the eczane. It's one of the strangest words in Turkish, I think. It is pronounced like "edge" + "zah-nay," which is really weird for Turkish words. Usually the structure is consonant-vowel-consonant, and seeing two consonants with such different sounds together is exceedingly rare.

Anyway, I went there and told the guy I think I have an ear infection and that I needed some decongestants and antibiotics. I had no prescription. But guess what? No problem! Here in Turkey you can get all kinds of shit without prescriptions. Meth heads should book the next flight. I paid 16 TL, or about $10.50, for 20 Sudafeds and 20 Ciproflaxin antibiotics. I later bought some aspirin, and for 20 of those I paid 75 US cents. Something tells me the industry is really unregulated. I brought my dictionary along today so I could translate the drug information. Turns out I needed it very little for the drug descriptions, and very much for the word for "spoon" later on.

I talked to our program director about my sickness, and told her about my meningitis fears. She then told me in rapid Turkish that I should by no means go to the American Hospital here and tell them that. Apparently, and this was confirmed by Prof. Önder on the phone a moment later, a girl went there when she felt like shit last year, and they tested her for absolutely everything, including meningitis, which involves a spinal tap. Turns out she had food poisoning, but she was stuck with a bill in the thousands of dollars. So the goal is to not end up that way. Prof. Önder said it was likely a sinus infection, and said I should give the antibiotics a couple of days to work, and take it from there. My program director, like many of the Turks here, suggested that the heat has made me ill. I tried explaining that Washington, DC is both hotter and more humid, but still, "it's the heat, probably." I wonder why people here think that. I certainly didn't have heatstroke or something. I spent an entire summer here three years ago without getting sick once, and that summer had record-setting highs. I think it's not so much a Turkish thing as it is a European thing. People have crazy theories about ice cubes (they cause ulcers!), air conditioning (you'll get pneumonia!), sitting on concrete (you'll become infertile!), and the heat (you'll get generally ill!). But hey, I have no problem taking any excuse to stay out of the heat.

I think tomorrow I will go get a cell phone, finally. Hopefully not from the same shop where they guy invited two girls from my group to come back after hours. Creeeper. We were talking last night, before watching "Shawn of the Dead," about how girls like guys who play hard to get. One girl said "actually, now that I think about it, I do like a guy more if he plays hard to get." So we decided I should try that here by standing in the middle of a crowd of girls at a bar with a shirt on that says "I don't care about any of you." First step: finding shirt.

I think now is a good time to nap or upload photos to Flickr. So I will update you all later on my health, because I know you're all anxiously awaiting your chance to break into my apartment and steal my shit.

Ice Cream, French Fries, Robots in Disguise! A Very Turkish Christmas!

2009-07-07T07:05:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 3:00pm on Sunday. It was a combination of not getting much sleep on Friday and being on my feet all day Saturday. Regardless, we all did it. I met up with Hannah and Jessica and decided to spend the remnants of the day doing things I wanted to do. We all walked through Etiler, the rich neighborhood, to the McDonalds there, and enjoyed it immensely. Hannah is a blonde, so she got one of each type of dipping sauce for free from the cashier. Bonus. They have Curry Sauce here for the chicken nuggets! The place was pretty empty, so we didn't stay long. We then continued down the street to Akmerkez, the rich people shopping mall, and 10 seconds after entering, something wonderful happened!

I ran into Jill from TLCP 2006! She was with a friend, and was walking out, and was like "Kevin." We chatted for a while and I got her number to so we can hang out later this summer. OMG SMALL WORLD. Hannah, Jessica, and I spent about 40 minutes wandering the shops of the mall, laughing at the prices, before we got to the movie theater and bought our tickets to see Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen. I forgot how hilariously annoying the attendants are at the stores there. I was in the Levis store looking for a shirt that didn't cost 60 TL, and as soon as I came in, this attendant, granted a very hot one, came and stood not even 4 feet away from me. Then if I took one step to the right, she would. Then I tried moving a little faster to see if I could open up some distance between us. No dice. I just turned and walked out. Usually that is enough to stop them. My Turkish American friend here told me that she was pursued by such an attendant, this time, of course, a man, a considerable distance across the mall. He kept asking her to get coffee. Fucking creepy.

Oh, I was talking about Transformers 2. I liked the first movie, violent and brainless as it was. I like giant robots. Anyway, we got into the theater and were the only folks in there except for this 13 year old Turkish kid, who kind of got up and moved two rows further away from us after he heard us speaking English. The ads before the movie were great. One of them was for a 3G phone, and it featured a guy videochatting with his mother and showing her his coffee grounds in his cup so she could read them. It's a common folk practice here to "read coffee grounds" (falına bakmak). Interesting to see it in a high technology ad. Another one featured a man folding up everything in his house and putting it in his pocket, including his wife. Kind of shocking, but very nice! Wife in pocket!

Usually with Transformers, I was expecting the most upsetting part of the movie to be the 5 minute break the Turks put into every movie so people can go smoke. But no. Michael Bay is a racist idiot. Have you seen the movie? There are two Autobot characters that are voiced obviously to be black men. They are called "the Brothers," they constantly fight with each other, they speak only in butchered rap slang, one of them has buck teeth and a gold tooth, both have big ears, and at one point they are forced to admit to Shia LaBoeuafauff that "we don't really do much readin'." I cannot make this up. It was shocking. So shocking, in fact, that it basically ruined what would have otherwise been just an incredibly sexist and violent movie. I will admit, though, that I really enjoyed all the robot fighting and shooting of guns. That was what I came to see. But seriously, fuck Michael Bay. Funny moment: I ordered the "summer combo" at the snack bar, which was advertised as a drink and popcorn. So I asked for a cola to drink, and she froze up, and had to go ask the manager if they give cola with the summer combo. WTF? IT IS A MOVIE THEATER. THE CUP IN THE PICTURE SAYS PEPSI ON IT. It was a whole to-do. They were whispering to each other, and speaking very rapidly. It was really, really unnecessary.

On the walk back, to lift our spirits we got some ice cream from Venus. Three scoops on a cone for $2. One kiwi, one lemon, one sour cherry. All in all, I would say that Sunday was fantastic. A late 4th of July, complete with burgers, giant violent robots, racism, sexism, and ice cream. All we needed were some pork ribs, but let's not kid ourselves. I've got a better chance of finding Michael Jackson alive and in concert here than I do of finding some pork ribs.

Monday was largely uneventful, save for a funny moment at the pharmacy with Ryan. He wanted to get some hydrogen peroxide to clean out his ears (what a good patient!). So we went in, armed with the chemical symbol for it: H2O2.

Me: Do you have hydrogen peroxide?

Pharmacy employee: I'm sorry?

Me: Hydrogen peroxide, for cleaning out the ears?

Employee: You want Q-tips?

Me: No, peroxide. H2O2.

Other employee: H2O2.

Me: Yes, hydrogen peroxide.

First employee: But that isn't for cleaning out ears.

Me: Yes it is.

Other employee: H2O2. Hydrogen peroxide. (Whispers to first employee.)

First employee: Oxygen! You want oxygen!

Me: Sure. Let's look at Oxygen. (She shows me a bottle of "Oxygen," which is a hydrogen peroxide solution.) Yep. This is hydrogen peroxide.

First employee: (Looks at bottle) Ah. There it is.

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Hydrogen Peroxide is Oxygen.

İğrenç! Yabancılar!

2009-07-06T14:13:00.001-07:00

Saturday morning. 8:00am. Knock on my door. It's the girls, and they tell me the tour leaves now, not at 9:00 like we thought. I am out my door by 8:05. Exhausted, head aching, sinuses stuffed, nothing to drink.

Fortunately fruit nectars were provided en route to Edirne. The drive there seemed a lot

shorter than it did in 2006. I tried napping unsuccessfully, and ended up talking with Peter, a youngster in our program. He was taking so many pictures of the nuclear power plant we passed on the way that I had to ask him if he was planning to blow it up. "No," he said, "I just want to prove to my friends that they have technology here." A running joke with his friends, apparently, and so we spent a good deal of time making up things about Turkey, like where their name for sunflower comes from: they call them moonflowers. Seriously. How cool is that? It makes very little sense. The road to Edirne is lined with endless fields of sunflowers, presumably to make either seeds or oil. It is sad to think that so many people devote their lives to producing something that ends up being spat all over the ground in Istanbul.

When we finally arrived in Edirne, it was clear that very little had changed in the three years since I was last there. It was weird being back. Edirne isn't the type of place you need to see twice in your lifetime, much less go to the exact same places twice. But hey, they paid for me. I am please to report, however, that the Heely craze has finally swept into the Balkans. They were on sale! Our first stop was Eski Camii, or Old Mosque, so called because afterwards they built a new mosque. Clever. It was still dark inside, and still orange-striped. I saw a guy snoring loudly next to one of the pillars inside, and decided to take his picture. After the Old Mosque, we hit up the old Bedestan, or indoor bazaar, where, I am again pleased to report, KENT's shop is still going strong. I saw a doll there that looked like it had a black eye, and it really creeped me out. Every shop still looked like a Chinese factory threw up it's extra nonsense into it. Plastic guns, cardboard shit, and socks that look like they were made of newsprint. I guess the one thing that changed was that they had a flat screen TV hanging on a wall in the center, playing Turkish news. Bam. Modernity, live and uncut!

We went to an old karavansaray, which was a kind of hotel for traders who would store things and feed their camels (seriously) here. Now, it is a hotel. An expensive one. While there, it started to rain. It was fantastic to see rain, because we almost never get it in the summer in Istanbul. Also there was lightning. Fact! Turkish has different words for lightning that hits the ground versus that which doesn't. After the fancy hotel, we checked out Üç Şerefeli Camii, or the Three Balconied Mosque. This mosque was considered fucking badass when it was built way back when because one of its minarets had not one, not two, but THREE FUCKING BALCONIES! HELL YES! TAKE. YOUR. PICK. Maybe you want to call your neighbors to prayer from 40 feet up? Maybe they live far away, across the mahalle, and you want to be 55 feet up. OR MAYBE THEY LIVE IN BULGARIA! In which case, you have your pick of the ULTIMATE THIRD BALCONY! Edirne is very close to Greece and Bulgaria. In fact, there are street signs with arrows that simply say "Greece" or "Bulgaria."

Perhaps the most interesting/sad/worth talking about experience of the day happened afterwards, at the Muradiye Camii, or Mosque of Murat. This mosque was closed for remodeling in 2006, so I never got to go inside. Saturday, though, it was finally open. The inside was gorgeous, blue mosaic tiles made by artisans imported from Iran. Some of them were missing, aka were stolen, which is upsetting, but to be expected in a really poor part of town. Also, the mosque had been there for hundreds of years, so the thieves have had plenty of time to get at them. But it was the scene outside the mosque that was most interesting. There was a group of about 10 Roma kids running around and playing in the mosque's graveyard and grounds. When they saw us coming, they all ran up to us and began following us and trying to impress us. One of the kids called me "havuç sakallı," which means "carrot beard." The last time I was there, a Kurdish kid from Batman, Turkey, called me "havuç kafısı," or "carrot head." It was great. These kids started doing gymnastics and breakdancing moves for us, trying to get us to pay close attention. The problem was that they were doing it on wet marble. We were all really nervous that one of them would crack their skull on it, so we tried to stop indulging them. One young girl, probably the caretaker, asked me if I spoke Turkish, and gave a satisfied nod when I said yes, and then walked away. The boys, all probably aged between 4 and 9, assuming they weren't all 40 years old and stunted by smoking cigarettes, were spinning on their heads, and flipping out, and wrestling with each other. There was a weird vibe, though, like we wanted to let the kids enjoy the presence of foreigners there, because they probably almost never see them in that part of town, and they seemed to like having us around, but at the same time, watching them was kind of objectifying. I think overall, though, it was a positive exchange for all of us. They asked us about where we came from, and said "no way, how did you get here?" And when we said "by plane," they were shocked and asked if we were scared. "Is it far?" "Yeah, 6000km." "Wow!!"

After Muradiye, we returned to my favorite hilarious attraction in Edirne, the Medical Madrassa Museum. This time, though, the place was festooned with plaques declaring it a cultural museum award winner. I don't know if the committees that decided all these awards actually saw the place. It's not a museum. It is a building with mannequins. Historically, it is significant as the first location where institutionalized medicine incorporated musical treatment for the mentally ill. They were quick to point out every chance they could that in Europe, at the same time, the mentally ill were tortured and burned. Here, though, they are forever immortalized by some of the most terrifying mannequin displays the world has ever seen.

The rest of the facility featured photos of other museums' objects. The display showing the old Ottoman band that played different types of music to treat different ailments was of course hilarious, but I damn near shit my pants when I walked past it and one of them moved. Turns out, there was a REAL HUMAN among them playing the reed flute.

We went to the mosque on site, and it was nice enough. Still being renovated after at least three, possibly three million years. On the way out, there were three older men doing their ablutions at the fountain in the courtyard, and I overheard their conversation. The words "İğrenç," "türistler'" and "yabancılar" all came up. Disgusting foreigners and tourists. Not very nice. I mean, I can see how we would bother people, being a group of 30 Americans (and two Japanese, two Israelis, and three Greeks, and a Kazakh!) with cameras, but still. Disgusting? Not nice.

Next stop: Selimiye Camii, which was the self-proclaimed masterpiece of Mimar Sinan, the most famous Ottoman architect, and perhaps, one of the most famous architects in world history. It is an enormous mosque, with its design centered around the unification of space in a large, open area. Its dome's diameter is 20cm bigger than that of the Hagia Sophia. The place is enormous and gorgeous. Pictures can describe it better. The youngster, Peter, got surrounded by very friendly older men with white beards and skull caps who were asking him all about himself. One of them passed me on the way to join the others, and awkwardly almost said something, but then didn't. So instead, I smiled and raised my hand in greeting. It was hilarious. Like seven old Muslim men fascinated by this 18 year old American kid with curly blonde hair. When we told him we were going to the balcony level to hear our guide talk about the mosque, the guys were like "it's okay, he can stay here a bit longer." Mimar Sinan, I always thought, sounded like a pretty cool dude. He modeled a lot of his mosques off of Byzantine structures like the Hagia Sophia, and redefined mosque architecture as it was known at the time. His buildings and bridges remain some of the most beautiful in the world, and I always thought he represented a kind of cosmopolitan worldview among architects.

Turns out, he was a pompous asshole. In Selimiye, there is a tulip mosaic that is inverted. Why? Because Mimar Sinan said that his building was SO perfect in every way, that there must be something wrong with it, so he deliberately screwed up that tulip. What a dick! Also, he made his dome the size he did simply so that he could say he bested the pagan Byzantines and to prove the superiority of Islamic architecture. So basically, arguably one of the most beautiful buildings in the world was the end result of a centuries old dick measuring contest. Great.

Our last two stops were the burned out remains of the last synagogue in Edirne, which, our guide mentioned briefly, was attached in the nineteen teens and again in the 1980s. WTF. Really? That's all you can tell us? The way we got there this time was fucked up. We parked our bus in a clearly abandoned bus terminal occupied only by a beat up car blasting techno music and a picnic table with three leering Turks drinking tea and slobbering over the girls in the group. I swear to God, it was like a level from every first-person shooter video game ever. And there was a disgusting mattress, and guard dogs, and lumber yards. And broken glass, and someone stepped on a sewing needle. Why she was wearing flip flops, I can only guess.

The last stop on the whirlwind tour of a city that almost always sleeps was the old train station that is now Trakya Üniversitesi, or the University of Thrace. It was, of course, closed. Apparently the Turkish president, Abdullah Gül, was coming the next day to attend the closing ceremonies of the oil wrestling festival. Yes. Oil wrestling. Men do it here, in capri pants. There is a photo exhibition in Istanbul, overlooking Istiklal Caddesi, and it is one of the most homoerotic things I have ever seen. I wonder if Turkish men realize that.

Anyway, we headed back around 9:00pm. On the way, we stopped at a gas station/rest stop to eat. That's right. To eat. There were dozens of Turkish families napping and picnicking in the parking lot, feeding street dogs and driving gocarts. Inside, the cafeteria was super expensive, and I only ate half my meal, remembering halfway through it that it was gas station food. In Turkey.

Fortunately, I didn't get a rare disease from it (I think). We got home at MIDNIGHT. So much for the Fourth of July. We got some beers and watched "Eastern Promises" rather than go out. Some people went out and stayed out until 6:00am. Unbelievable.

I will get all caught up tomorrow. Not much besides a great Sunday...

Serbest ol! Serbest!

2009-07-05T15:36:00.000-07:00

Hello dear reader(s?)!

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.

Horsed Mansion!

2009-07-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

Well it is 7:11pm here, and I am having a little siesta after the soul-crushing return journey from our "gezi," or small trip, that we took after class with our TA. Class went well today. The same cat returned to the classroom via a different window. Again, I was largely ignored. But this time, it jumped onto Shiho's lap and it was the cutest goddamn thing ever. Kawai neko! Sebahat Hanım was our teacher for all our classes today, since our writing teacher was at the graduation ceremony with her students. She brought us some sigara böreği, which is a type of Turkish pastry stuffed with spinach and cheese. It is IDENTICAL to spanikopita, which the Turks call börek, these ones are sigara because they are shaped like cigarettes. So there you have it.

Our class went down the Murder Hill through the back of campus, and bussed it to the Sabancı Museum, which is an art museum housed in the grounds of the old Sabancı family mansion, which the English translation of the sign inside says is called "The Horsed Mansion." The Sabancı family, along with the Koç family, basically own everything in Turkey. Both families have universities with their name, and are the kind of holding groups you find in Japan and Korea too. Self-made industrialists who then turn into the machine they struggled to beat in the first place. Anyway, they have more money than God, and a lot of it went toward endowing this great museum and amassing a huge collection of Islamic calligraphy. The exhibits we saw were of late Ottoman and early Turkish Impressionist art (they kind of jumped on that wagon a bit late, and were still making it into the late 1960s). Some of it was fantastic, much of it was mediocre, but significant for introducing the medium to the country. The next exhibit was of landscapes and portraits from Lisbon, Portugal. The point, I gather, was to demonstrate that Istanbul and Lisbon have a lot in common, in terms of geography and the historical role they played as points of cultural exchange. Mission not accomplished. I will look into it, though.

The guards at the museum must have been really bored or really afraid of losing their jobs, because they were SUPER attentive. Shop attendants here will follow you around while you look at clothes, but these fuckers were tailing me as I looked at fine art. What did they expect, that I had come to Turkey, red beard and all, to steal one of the mediocre paintings on display? Interestingly enough, I could have. The power in the museum flickered and then cut out entirely about 3 times while we were there. We're talking perfect conditions for someone to grab a painting off the wall and run for it. At one point, I was sitting on a bench, pondering this awesome modern Portuguese rug mural with a friend, and I said "watch the guard while I stand up." I got up off the bench, and the guard spun around so fast I'm surprised he didn't fall down.

PS: one of the Portuguese portraits of a woman in a green dress looked so much like Michael Jackson it was terrifying.

Outside, I saw and heard a Turkish couple above me in the museum cafe pointing me out and chuckling. I think next time I will turn around and shoot daggers at them with my eyes. Or throw knives with my hands.

I decided to walk back with Shiho and Megan along the water, past the Rümeli Hisarı (Mehmet the Conqueror's Castle) and got some tea/Cola at a small spot on the way. One man's shirt read "NOTHING REALLY MATTERS." Another woman's said "MY NAME IS HEART." I want one that says "YOUR SHIRT SUCKS." After the tea, we braved the narrow/non-existent/car-covered sidewalks and then ascended the Murder Hill the back way, through campus. Fuck that hill. Oh my God. It is awful. They might as well just have a rope ladder instead of steps. It's basically the Winding Stair from Tolkien. I did a little research, and discovered that its real name is actually Şehitlik Tepesi, or MARTYRDOM HILL. Of course. Along the way, and probably only because we were on that hill, I managed to finally get a Japanese person teach me a bad word. "Kuso!" It means "shit" in English, and is said only by men. So now I have to say that every time I see Shiho.

I just wolfed down some more börek and need to take a goddamn shower. The Turks have a phrase to describe how you look after something like what I just did. Sucuk gibi ıslandım. I got as wet as a sausage. I honestly don't know what that means. I think it means "I was drenched with sweat." I hope.

You Certainly Look Turkish...

2009-07-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

It's Thursday (or was...I AM IN THE FUTURE), which means it is academic talk day. After lunch at the cheap cafeteria we headed to listen to a talk by a sociology professor (I think) about rural-to-urban migration in Turkey. It was fascinating. The guy studied in America, at OSU, and joked with me about riverboat gambling when I told him I was from Cincinnati. According to this guy, and other sources, as much as one third of Turkey's population, at its founding in 1923, consisted of recent migrants. In the past 40 years, the population of Turkey has doubled. And the last fun fact I will leave you with is that in the gecekondu communities, sort of shanty-like areas that aren't necessarily slums, the reason people built so many mosques was so that the police wouldn't burn down their houses to kick them off the land out of fears of damaging the mosques. This explains why I hear like 30 different calls to prayer at a time. This entire neighborhood used to be full of gecekondular, which literally means "built in the night," as in "this house was built in one night." The roads we have here are basically just paved cart and old taxi and bus paths, which explains their completely useless arrangement.

I came home afterwards and the roommate who has Skype drama with his girlfriend warned me that the cheap cafeteria basically sent him to the bathroom for the entire day and night yesterday. So I have been warned. But it is hard to pass up a $1.50 four course meal when so much of your net worth goes toward being fly.

Michael's laptop, 4 months old and running Vista Home Edition, decided to get the Black Screen of Death, so we spent a while trying to fix it. It fixed itself eventually. So to celebrate, we went to the Urfam Ocakbaşı restaurant near campus. Leaving the dorm, we noticed a swarm of graduating seniors in caps and gowns clogging the gate. I have to say, this graduating class is probably the hottest in the world, and also among the wealthiest. I should have brought my business cards with me. When we got to the restaurant, the dudes there gave us a bunch of free food (in Turkish, ikram etmek means to make an offering, as in a gift), including some lentil köfte, spiced bread, and dipping salad for our pide. We left well fed and all for a meager $5 per person. On the walk back, I got some more of the raspberry cheesecake flavored Oreo-style cookies I fell in love with last night. Thirty-five US cents per sleeve. Amazing. I should have gotten a disposable razor, too, but I am an idiot.

We ran into one of Michael's classmates as we passed by the graduation ceremony, and so I sat on the wall separating the soccer field/track from the main road near campus. Two barbed wire fences also stood between us and the graduates. A crowd had gathered outside, alongside us. One guy handed each of us a pamphlet from the Turkish government's study abroad program, encouraging us to study overseas. I handed mine back to him and told him we already were. He laughed. EVERYBODY LAUGHED.

A moment later, two very attractive Turkish women approached me and asked me how to get into the event. There were definitely 20 much more highly qualified people standing near me. Why the hell do Turks insist on asking the most American looking guy around how to get places? I had fucking cheesecake flavored cookies in my hand and was speaking English! I told them where to go, but still. Last night, this car rolled up next to me asking where the Boğaziçi Pastry Shop was. It was literally 20 feet behind him, clearly marked. It's like they go out of their way to talk to me. Or maybe the people who ask me are just genuinely stupid, and a) don't know how to get into clearly marked areas, and b) don't realize asking a foreigner for directions in your city probably isn't the best idea. Regardless, it's hilariously frustrating. One of these days I might just call them out on it.

Our dorm was decked out for graduation with a Turkish flag the size of a tractor trailer. Classy. It spruces up the building quite nicely.

It's looking like a no-go for the Fourth of July party at the consulate, since I apparently HAVE to go on the trip to Edirne on Saturday. I emailed the Marine who invited us and told him I'd still love to come to their Friday pizza and beer night sometime. We'll see. I think they like meeting new Americans. It's probably a really lonely existence being on consular security detail.

I am exhausted, and have nothing else to report at this point, apart from the fact that I saw a cat halfway up the side of a palm tree today, hanging there. Also it is hot. And I uploaded more pictures to Flickr.

Goodnight!

Weekday

2009-07-01T05:53:00.000-07:00

Today, like yesterday, as you all know, is a weekday. Now that I am getting into the groove here, weekdays will likely be largely uneventful. This means you won't have to suffer through long, boring, plot driven posts, and instead get to suffer through my non-linear thought process.

I am running out of clean clothes. Please send socks and underwear. I don't trust the laundry woman here. Not only does she charge $7 per load, but last time she lost all my socks. That is a risk I cannot afford to take this time. I tried hand-washing my unmentionables, which have spent the last two days sun-drying in my living room. I'll let you know how they feel on my jock. My guess is "not good."

We have been reading poems by Nazım Hikmet in class, and I really enjoy them. He is what Wikipedia calls "a romantic revolutionary." Personally, I like him because he is both easy to understand and a leftist Turk. He met and impressed Atatürk with a poem he wrote to inspire troops on the front lines of the Turkish War of Independence, which makes his deportation from Turkey a couple decades later REALLY ironic. He had his citizenship revoked, and only recently was it reinstated (posthumously). Actually, this past January. Here is a bit of his poem "Otobiyografi," first in Turkish and then I'll translate it:

bindim tirene uçağa otomobile

çoğunluk binemiyor

operaya gittim

çoğunluk gidemiyor adını bile duymamış operanın

çoğunluğun gittiği kimi yerlere de ben gitmedim 21'den beri

camiye kilisiye tapınağa havraya büyücüye

ama kahve falına baktırdığım oldu

I've boarded trains, planes, automobiles

The majority can't

I've gone to the opera

The majority can't go and have never even heard the opera's name

Since '21 I haven't gone to the places most people go:

to the mosque, the church, temple, synagogue, and folk healer

but I have had my fortune told by my coffee grounds

So anyway, I dig that bit. Just wanted to give you a taste.

A cat climbed the fire escape three stories and came into our classroom today through the window. He walked up to the cassette player and was trying to figure out what the hell it was, and then curled up in someone's lap (the Turkish word for "jealous" is kıskanç), and then decided to just sleep in the back of the room like a homeless guy in a courtroom. I talk a lot about cats, probably too much, but goddamn it if they aren't a delightful feature of this fair city. The dogs I could do without. I had to yield the sidewalk last night to a dog literally the size of a wolf. It gave me the stink eye as it walked past, too, as if to say "damn right, bitch." But what can I do? He's got teeth and a med school textbook's worth of diseases.

Today I woke up with my alarm, because my alarm was my laptop blasting M83's "Unrecorded" using a crappy little widget I found. Bada boom.

I realized today that Istanbul must be a nightmare for hipsters who travel here, because everyone between the ages of 18-30 wears tight jeans and ironic t-shirts. But the ironic part is, they aren't wearing them ironically. They are wearing them because ironic t-shirts here are actually high fashion, and are often sold for ridiculously high prices at the nicest stores. Everywhere you go, you see an old Batman logo, or a Daytona 500 1972 shirt, or some sort of pun. And as for the thrift store crowd, everybody else here still wears their work shirts and driving caps, so the shelves are probably empty. And just last night, I saw a girl in a headscarf wearing thick-rimmed glasses. Terrible haircuts are the norm, and hookah is everywhere, along with small, locally owned coffee places. And the city is far too hilly and dangerous for bicycle messengers, so they use scooters. Perhaps worst of all for the hipster, gentrification here is progressing at a snail's pace. Poor people still live in poor neighborhoods, and nobody here is looking to change that.

I guess I'll leave it at that for the day. But before I go, I want to share some video I took at the Istanbul PRIDE Protest last Sunday with you. It is before the police gave them permission to march, and I share this bit with you because it was the most fascinating. They all stopped shouting (it was very loud) as soon as the call to prayer started, which I thought was very interesting. It seems here like the struggle is less between organized religion and the LGBTQ community, and more between the LGBTQ and state institutions, eg: there was no counter-protest, as far as I know. Also, the woman in the bottom right corner at the end is hot.

Daddy's Gonna Punch You in the Mouth!

2009-06-29T14:59:00.000-07:00

Rocking out to the new Tortoise album (thanks, Dennis!) after finishing up my homework.

First, I need to correct something: the super duper religious neighborhood was not Fener as much as it was Çarşamba. Çarşamba means "Wednesday" in Turkish. I'm not sure why they chose that name. Maybe Wednesday nights they all take off their robes to streak and disco bowling. Okay, well at least that is settled.

Today was a serious business day. Got to class and helped Michael sort out the fax situation regarding his lost bank card. Don't worry, a Turk didn't find it and use it to buy $1000 worth of Facebook gifts for blonde American girls. We had to go to the language lab again today. Last time, if you remember/care/don't want to have to research to understand, we watched the first half of a shitty video about ebru, the art of paper marbling! Today they left us hanging, and said that we would watch the thrilling conclusion later this week. Why, I am not sure. I really hope he doesn't shit at his desk. In its place, we were "treated" with a long segment from a Turkish "sitcom." The show is ostensibly about a married couple that is staying together for the sake of their shitty little rat children. One of them is a Macaulay Caulkin wannabe, and the other is just a bitchy pre-teen. Neither deserved the emotionally distant, verbally abusive parents they have.

As I was saying, the show has a somewhat serious pretense. But guess what? It's fucking dumb as hell. This clip introduced us to feng shui, or the art of removing furniture and replacing it with pillows, and then talking about it for ten minutes to an upset husband. And boy, was dad upset. The kids seemed to have it all figured out. They warned their mom. Hell, even the mom's parents knew to get out of there when he got back. Think about it too long, and it depresses you. This show is designed to be relatable. That means that most Turkish children know better than to do anything as rash as changing the interior design of an apartment without dad's permission, because, as the piece of shit son said, "Daddy's gonna punch you in the mouth when he sees this!" Fortunately, it didn't come to that. He shouted, paced back and forth, and repeated himself for about five minutes. I am pretty sure he threatened to kill his wife a couple of times. The audience was laughing most of the time. Also, you know how back in the day, like when Benny Hill was considered cutting edge, there would be the occasional "boom" of the tympani, like if someone fell down? Well in Turkish sitcoms, they still use it, in this case to convey surprise! It's the sound the kids on TV hear from their bedrooms before daddy slaps mom for talking to her friend about eastern philosophy.

I usually tell people before they watch a Turkish comedy that Turkish comedies are generally not funny, and that the national sense of humor is very different from ours (like comparing "Reba" to "Arrested Development"). I stand by that characterization. Essentialist, yes, but accurate. I bet this sitcom's audience would LOVE the George Lopez Show.

After lunch I headed to conversation hour at the fanciest of the cafeterias on campus, and managed to schwangle some free food from the girls in my group when they couldn't finish their meals. This plan is effective and cheap, and will be repeated. We were working on comparatives, and using animals as references. I argued that the chimpanzee was fiercest among all the animals presented, and then had to explain why. I gave up trying to describe the face and genital mauling horrors of a chimp attack on a human, and instead went with "they eat their own kind, and bang on trees while they hunt." Then someone suggested that mankind is the fiercest animal. Afterwards, we all fell silent as the stray cats meowed in agreement, and the besunspectacled man smoked a cigar calmly two tables over, staring straight ahead at nothing, perhaps pondering the very same question himself in a cloud of thick smoke.

We had to watch a film today called "Üç Maymun," or "Three Monkeys." It featured vehicular manslaughter, painfully long shots of the same apartment, marital infidelity, murder, spousal sexual abuse, suicidal thoughts, a ghost, lots of rain, and the exploitation of the homeless. Oh, and it didn't feature a musical score. My concern is that Turkish movies are too upbeat for it to join the European Union.

Speaking of the European Union, I have started noticing new street signs all over the city, allegedly due to EU regulations. Streets that haven't had signs in probably centuries are finally getting them. Tourists rejoice! I was pleased to find out that the street that I have been calling Murder Hill is actually just called "Bebek Mountain."

(More) Random thoughts (than usual):

I realized today how great it is to live in America because you can wear nice things without them ending up smelling like diesel exhaust and cigarette smoke after walking outside for five minutes. At least in DC.

We were joking today about how awesome it would be if Turkish women were as aggressive as Turkish men in coming on to foreigners. Then we watched that movie, and realized that there are too many crazies here for that to be a good idea. It seems like every guy I know who spent any time here during the normal school year ended up with a female Turkish stalker.

"Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian" is one of the best children's movies I've ever seen. It is a blast and a half. Hilarious. I want to marry Amelia Earheart.

We had sour cherry wine with our pasta dinner tonight in the girls' apartment. We went all out. It was a feast. Delicious stuff: spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce, beans, eggplant, fresh bread, and fresh goat cheese.

I still REALLY want to see Transformers 2. Someone was saying it looked terrible and sexist, and our friend Hannah came back with this gem:

"Even though they have male voices, Autobots are gender neutral. They are robots."

Short, Sweet, and Very Gay

2009-06-28T14:33:00.000-07:00

Today was a fast day. It threatened to rain in my neighborhood all afternoon, but never did. Pussy.

I woke up at 10:00 to the sound of my apartment mate (Mitbewöhner is a much better word) talking loudly on Skype. This continued for two hours, as I fell in and out of sleep. I finally left my room at 2:00pm and grabbed a bite to eat from the Simit Sarayı just down the road. On the way I saw a car drive by really fast with two toddlers standing up in the back seat. What kind of shitty parent lets their toddlers ride unsecured in fucking Istanbul? I don't even feel safe in a taxi when I have a seatbelt on. Jesus. I guess it is the same type of parent, all too common here, who takes their newborn to the park in a stroller and sits next to it and smokes a pack and a half of cigarettes. There isn't a parenting manual, I know. But seriously, when your cigarette packs here clearly state that smoking kills, and that secondhand smoke is dangerous to children, you'd think someone with enough wits to know how to drive would know how NOT TO BLOW SMOKE TOWARD THEIR FUCKING BABY.

Anyway, I am sorry. It just bugs me.

Immediately after scarfing down my late lunch, I met up with people who were going to the Istanbul PRIDE "Parade." I put it in quotes because that is how it was described to us by the girl organizing it. I don't think she knew, nor did any of us, that it would actually be a gay rights protest. I had my misgivings about getting so close to it, given the Turkish police's penchant for violently breaking up protests (see any May Day protest for details), and I assume (probably correctly) that homosexuals are among the least protected groups in the city/country. So I was nervous about being a couple dozen feet away from the line of riot policemen (and women!) and their massive water cannon truck. So after clapping along with their cheers and taking some pictures and video, a few of our group went with me to the Saray Muhallebecisi, the dessert place I love, and we sat at the window on the second level to watch...and share 5 different types of dessert, included tavuk göğsü, the pudding mixed with ultra-finely shredded chicken breast (its namesake).

Eventually, the parade came past. It grew in size to probably around 700 people. Not exactly the Love Parade, but again, these people here are actively pursuing rights that sexual minorities have already in countries that host such huge events. There was, of course, the obligatory 6'5", 250 lb. pink wig-wearing transvestite leading the procession. But there was also a guy playing the darbuka, adding a bit of Turkish flair to the whole event. A huge rainbow flag was unfurled and took up much of the width of Istiklal Caddesi (the big shopping/bar street where the parade took place), and everyone had placards that said "We are gays, we are lesbians, we are transvestites, we are transexuals, we are bisexuals," on one side, and "We're here, get used to it," on the other.

The whole scene was pretty tense and surreal. I will never forget the moment that the protestors all fell silent during the call to prayer. They resumed chanting immediately after it finished. The riot police opted to allow the "parade" to proceed down the street, after having apparently had every intention of blocking them. So behind the parade came the ranks of riot cops and their massive water cannon truck. The parade surrounded the historical tram, which had stopped to let them pass. I have to say, the crowd reactions were a lot more positive than I had expected, but that might have just been due to the day I spent in the city's ultraconservative neighborhood yesterday. Regardless of what they thought, everyone was taking pictures. The vibe was overwhelmingly positive, but that didn't make me less nervous. Whenever you have a crowd that big and young, poorly trained riot cops with nothing better to do, the last place I want to be is between them and the protest. Especially in Turkey, where I believe just last week or so, those cops beat a kid into a coma for telling them to slow down in their car. I was scanning the crowd most of the time, looking for plainclothes cops and instigators, and looking at the balconies above for anything suspicious, remembering that the 1977 May Day massacre happened after a panic ensued from shots fired onto the crowd from above by right-wing militants involved in NATO's Gladio operation. Anyway, I feel like being paranoid in such a case is better than not being careful at all, and thinking you're at an American parade. We moved away after the parade stopped in the open space further down the road, and the police began to move toward them. From what I saw and heard later, nothing bad happened. It was a pretty successful protest, I'd say. They got access to the biggest pedestrian thoroughfare in the city, and managed to almost block it entirely. And they did so non-violently, and with lots of smiling and music. Bingo bango bongo.

I feel a bit bad for admitting this, but one of the female riot cops was actually really hot. Also, one of the people in my program has swine flu. He isn't at my university, though. But still. SWINE FLU. And my Mitbewöhner is now having a Skype fight with his girlfriend back in Orange County. Yeah. The OC. They are really cussing up a storm at each other. I can hear it through my wall. Highlight so far: "No, fuck you. You have to stay and talk to me. You bitched me out for not being there on time last time. No. Fuck you."

Goodnight!

Part III of the Turkey Catchup: The Reckoning

2009-06-28T03:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an incredibly long, incredibly exhausting, but incredible day. It was our day trip to see the less traveled neighborhoods, mosques, and monuments of the Old City. Our group, which had about 20 people at its peak, was led by Yavuz, the same guy who led our Edirne trip the last time I was here. He is a PhD student in architecture, and knows everything there is to know about everything built in Istanbul. It is staggering, the amount of detail he was able to go into.

We took a university-owned bus to the Süleymaniye Camii (mosque), passing the bridal district along the way. Store after store full of headscarf and tesettür-friendly wedding dresses, some of them so ornate they put Queen Amidala to shame. Boom. Star Wars reference. Deal with it. At the mosque, which was closed off to non-Muslims because it is being renovated inside, and only one corner is open for praying, we were treated to a 45 minute lecture on its significance under the hot, hot sun. The tomb of Süleyman was also closed, but we were again treated to a long discussion of its significance for having an ambulatory around the outside. Apparently, the entire complex was designed to sort of be a new Temple of Solomon. Süleyman is the Islamified version of the name. The dimensions of the complex almost exactly coincide with the Old Testament's listed dimensions for the Temple, and even the columns inside were build of material taken from temples of Alexander and of the Queen of Sheba, trying to link Süleyman physically with the line of ancient rulers in the same sort of pantheon as Solomon.

Pretty neat.

We got to visit the inside of a madrassa on the grounds of Süleymaniye, too, which was probably a pretty rare opportunity, since they wouldn't let us take pictures. Inside, there were hundreds of angry teenagers armed to the teeth and bearded to their knees. Just kidding, there was actually a really cool display of ancient Arabic texts, many of which featured really old maps of the "world" as it was known at the time. Shiho, the Japanese woman in our group, noted with a hint of sadness that Japan did not appear on any of them. The largest item was a beautifully framed illuminated text, for lack of a better word (I forget the Arabic one). I jokingly suggested to on of the Ottoman History guys in our group that it was a description of a portrait, as depicting the human form was generally frowned upon in early Islamic art. He said "actually, it is a description of the Prophet, with the names of the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs placed around him." Bam. I can now tell the future, and read Arabic. The head of the madrassa was a friendly older man who carried around a pointer that made me nervous, but fortunately, he was not one for wild gesticulation.

We checked out the mosque's old soup kitchen complex, which is now a restaurant, and while we were there, Murat, the PhD student, pointed out this Greek kid in the group that nobody knew. I had noticed him too; he was lanky, had a bit of acne, a baseball hat, and the strangest body language I'd seen in a long time. Murat suggested that he had a bit of a "Prince" thing going on, and then did a phenomenal impression of Prince, saying "Come here, bitch!" So that made me start laughing, and every time that kid did something for the rest of the day, Murat would look at me and I would start laughing again. The kid had the habit of leaning on, or should I say, molesting things that people wanted to take pictures of, so he will invariably appear in dozens of photos on the web at some point, and I will be sure to point him out to you then.

After a much-needed lunch break, during which "Dimples" sat with us at our table and chatted, we checked out one of the nicer monuments I have seen, design-wise, but certainly one of the lamest in terms of what it commemorates. It was called the "Flying Martyrs Memorial," and it basically commemorated three Ottoman airmen who crashed in 1913 on their way back from Cairo. Not in combat, not saving lives, just on their way back from a flight to Cairo designed to demonstrate the power of the Ottoman military. Lame.

We also saw a column that was older than the Hagia Sophia, and it now is just sitting in the middle of a traffic roundabout. It used to be inside of a private home, but a fire destroyed the entire neighborhood (the houses were all made of wood), and so the column was left standing. It was called the Maiden Tower because it has two angles carved into the base. It is located right near a place called "Kiler Köfte," so come for the köfte, stay for the column. After that, we went to the national library, which was a small but cool space renovated recently and still used by researchers. The centerpiece of the collection, which was not open to the public, was the first example of written Turkic language. If I were to make an Ocean's Eleven type film in Turkey, that would be the item we would steal. No doubt. It would probably be a really short movie, though, because the place was not heavily guarded, unless you could four overweight, tea-sipping guards with shirts that don't fit as security, in which case, it was quite heavily guarded. Solution: the Don Cheadle puts sleeping pills into their teapot. That's the game, folks. For good measure, though, we would drill underneath it and explode an EMP device. And play poker.

We continued to walk deeper into the neighborhood of Fatih, which is notoriously conservative, and then entered Fener, which is apparently even more conservative. I was shocked by what I saw, because it was unlike anything in Istanbul I'd ever seen. In Fener, every woman we saw was wearing at least a tesettür, and almost a third of the women were completely covered, wearing a çarşaf, which covers the entire body but the eyes and nose, usually, but sometimes also is worn under the chin. All the men had stereotypically "Islamist" facial hair, meaning not only long, full beards (far longer than my own), but also the super long sideburns-to-under-the-chin beards. Their dress was also very, very different from the rest of the city I had seen. There were many wearing turbans and robes. Nobody was smiling. Most of the people on the street, in shops and cafes, were men. The women were never sitting and relaxing. I think the non-smiling might have been, in part, due to our presence there, since we are strangers in their neighborhood.

In Fatih, we walked under old Roman aqueducts, and I saw two guys wearing kitchen gloves throwing sheep skins, fur still on them, into the back of a truck. It smelled horrible. Another job I am thankful not to have. Turns out, that was a butcher shop district. Shops full of sheep heads and carcasses. While there, we went to the Caricature Museum, which is housed in an old madrassa, and featured late Ottoman and early Turkish political cartoons, some of which were the originals of those I had seen in articles before for class.

Yavuz took off really quickly toward Fener, I think irresponsibly so, because our group had a hard time keeping up with him, and as we got deeper and deeper into the already intimidating neighborhood (see above), the streets became increasingly narrow, winding, and hilly. It would have been all too easy to get lost, if those of us who could keep up with him hadn't sort of stretch ourselves out and kept a line of sight open to him and the rest of the group. He wanted us to make it to the Fethiye Museum before it closed. We got there late, and he spent 10 minutes bargaining with the guards to open it back up for 15 minutes. We had to pay to get in, but it was totally worth it. Inside the tiny old Byzantine church were some of the most beautiful and ornate mosaics I have ever seen. The main dome featured Jesus surrounded by the 12 Apostles, the side arches featured the Archbishops, scenes of Jesus' baptism, and the main space over the alter had Jesus blessing those below. It was all done in gold, and looked incredible. They had been there since the 1200s, and were remarkably preserved. It was the type of place that I would have never, ever found on my own.

Afterwards, we made our way down the winding, narrow streets, past ancient and abandoned houses, and some still occupied by the neighborhood's poorer residents. There were groups of kids playing in the streets and stopping to stare at us. One little boy said "Hello, money money!" His dad emerged and quickly hushed him. We checked out a few more old Greek mansions that were now in disrepair and full of apartments before heading down a really shady flight of stairs past some shanties with satellite dishes on them, before ultimately taking public transit back to our dorms. It was a really, really valuable trip. I saw things and people I would have never seen on my own, or even known existed. I feel like I have a much better picture of the city now, who lives here, how they live, and what where they live used to be. Talk about an old city. Those kids were playing ball on streets that had been there for maybe a thousand years. The places we walked around were where the old Ottoman bureaucrats once lived, and where the city's once bustling 160,000-strong Greek population lived (out of 1,000,000), and now represents just 1,600 of the city's 12,000,000+ inhabitants. There is so much to see and do here, and we have only just scratched the surface.

Part II of the Turkey Catchup.

2009-06-28T02:25:00.000-07:00

Sorry for that relatively weak post last night. I was relatively weak with exhaustion. Now, where was I?

When we finally got back from our "konuşma saat gezisi," which instead of the scheduled two hours ended up lasting six, most of us from the group went to get dinner. I ran back to the dorm first to check email and make some Skype calls, and got back with them about half an hour later. They said they were going to "Urfa," so I assumed it was the Urfa place I had been to before. I got there, didn't see them, and instead of looking across the fucking street, I walked back up the small hill and then continued further away from campus for a few minutes. After doing the whole "well, clearly this isn't right" stop, and the "I'm cool, just checking my watch, which is telling me I am late for something and need to go back" 180-degree turn, I went back to the Urfa place and noticed that right across the street there was another Urfa place, and this one was serving my friends as I got there. Bravo!

We met our TA's roommate, who ate with us, and wow, is she cute. Prettiest eyes I've ever seen. She speaks fluent English, like everyone else in our program, but only speaks Turkish to us because they want us to actually learn. Her parents gave her a name which means "dimples" or "coquettish glance," both of which are incredibly accurate. How do they do it? We all had a discussion of what responsibilities come with an artist releasing projects to the general public after I said that Fatih Akin's movies did not do much to strengthen the white German public's positive views on Turks. The other TA in our group of course managed to tear my argument apart, and I totally agreed with her, but the best I could come up with in Turkish was my initial, weak argument. Yet another incentive to learn the language better! The best part was that "Dimples" sort of made a face and said "I hate talking about this." I guess she plays the role I do back home when things take a post-structuralist turn: the "this is fucking stupid" guy.

After dinner, a few of us from my program decided to smuggle some beers into campus and sit at the cool kids' hangout, called the Petek, or honeycomb. It's a group of benches arranged in hexagons overlooking the Bosphorus on the road to campus proper. Gorgeous, and usually packed with Turkish students drinking or making out. Sometimes they do BOTH. The biggest problem I have with the Petek, and it isn't so much a problem as it is a "someday something will go horribly wrong" type feeling, is that it is also a hangout for the street dogs, which as I have said before, are lion-sized. The group that hangs there has a clear leader, a dog so big a 10 year old could ride him like a horse, and they all walk around sniffing bags and people, looking for food. Then, when a delivery guy or anyone else goes by on a scooter, the all bolt out of the bushes and chase them. It is terrifying. The worst is when the garbage truck drove by, because that thing is like an ice cream truck for them. Even the leader, who usually laid there like the Godfather, took off, and was trying to maul the poor guys clinging to the back of the truck. Add that one to the list of jobs I am incredibly thankful I don't have.

We smoked some hookah one the rooftop of Bu Cafe just before it closed, which meant we weren't able to stay long. Lame. As we headed back to the dorm, Hakan was in his little office, and I went in to say hi. We ended up staying there and chatting for about 15 minutes. He would ask us about American politics in his machine gun Turkish, then as us what we thought of Turkey, then ask us if we knew so-and-so, and then just as we were getting confused and talking about something funny, he clapped his hands, slammed them on his desk, ran them through his receding hair, and said "Michael Jackson died." He then asked what his dance was called, and we said "Moonwalk," so then he naturally went on Youtube and showed us videos of people doing the Moonwalk. Afterwards, he said he has heard that Michael Jackson is going to be buried as a Muslim. I had never heard this, but apparently there are rumors everywhere that he converted recently. Anyone know? I had no answer for Hakan. It sounds exactly like something I would expect to see in a Turkish newspaper, though. Hakan is hilarious. Every time I pass by with American girls, he hollers "Kevin!" and comes out and immediately says, in English, "Hellohowareyou," followed by "Vat is your name?" Then he pats his chest and says "I am Hakan," and puts his hand on my shoulder and says "Kevin." That Friday night, as we said goodbye, he did the whole cheek-to-cheek deal with me. I say this again: either he will be my kid's godfather one day, or he will be wearing my skin as a coat. Either way, the process will be hilarious.

Part I of the Turkey Catchup.

2009-06-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, sorry it took so long to post this...I will catch up in three parts, because after today, I am exhausted and am having a hard time keeping my eyes open.

Yesterday was a very long day. It started with a set of the cutest goddamn kittens I have ever seen wandering the halls of our class building. So small that we picked them up and delivered them to the other side of the hallway to prevent them from being stepped on by passersby. Heart-melting, like the Ark of the Covenant. After class and lunch, my class, along with the other advanced class, set out for a trip, or gezi, with our TA to the İş Bank Museum in Eminönü, the area by all the touristy shit. She works at İş Bank, and so was able to get us access. Photos were not allowed, but I will say that the museum was surprisingly cool. It was fully of photos, videos, and texts dating back to the early years of the Turkish Republic, and even before. A lot of texts were in Ottoman, and so we relied on our PhD friends to translate. There was one video exhibit that featured video interviews with REALLY old Turks about their memories of the bank when it first opened. One man was born in 1883 and interviewed in 1984. Do the math. He was 101 years old. The video had Turkish subtitles because his speech was so slurred, and the subtitles were almost unintelligible for me because he used so many Ottoman (read: Arabic and Farsi) words. It is crazy to think that he lived under the Ottoman Empire for 40 years before Turkey was founded. After that, we descended into what I liked to call "The Future."

For those among you who worry what the future will look like, it is a long white hallway onto whose walls is rapidly projected a stream of white numbers on a blue background. You walk this hallway for about 40 feet, and there, at its end, lies once more the past. "The Future" is apparently a real crowd pleaser. When we left the museum, we walked to the Galata Bridge (now in its fourth incarnation, after fires destroyed previous versions), and the group sat down for a beer at a restaurant looking out over the water. The bridge, for those who don't know, is two-storied, and the upper story has the street and an army of fishermen casting over the side to catch the tiny, relatively useless fish of the Bosphorus. Their lines are hanging down in front of you like a giant harp, and I always find myself wanting to grab one and tie it to a chair, and give them something to get excited about. Or just pull their rod down and scream "SHARK! SHARK!" Of course, they all probably secretly wish to be eaten by a fish so big.

Our TA actually haggled for us to get a lower beer price, and it worked. It was an incredible maneuver: the Walkaway. Name your price, if they don't meet it, you Walkaway. Bam. They follow and agree. We hung out there for a while and practiced our Turkish, talking, reading Turkish comics, and people watching. Eventually, we walked across the bridge and hopped in the Tünel, the world's second oldest and quite possibly the world's shortest subway. It takes us from the Karaköy neighborhood up the steep hill to the far end of Istiklal Caddesi, the main drag in the city. When we got off, there was a need for a restroom among many in the group, and so we found the nearby public toilet.

I have used public toilets here before. They usually cost 50 kuruş to pee, and 1 or 2 lira to "büyük yapmak," or "drop a deuce." This place, being at the end of one of the world's busiest streets, gets away with charging 1 lira for peeing. I paid it to a man who was sitting at a table inside the bathroom, and who formed the barrier between the outside and the mens' room. The smell in this place was enough to make even the most seasoned camper and outhouse user stop in their tracks. It's not hard to imagine why: thousands of people use it every day. Thousands upon thousands. I washed my hands twice and then used hand sanitizer, then dipped them in boiling water, scraped off the outermost layer of skin with an awl and hammer, then set my clothing on fire. This, I suppose, is why we stopped in a store so I could buy a new shirt featuring a B-Boy with a boombox on his shoulder. While on our way there, a man stopped me in the middle of the street and said he knew me in Turkish. Turns out, he just got his PhD from Georgetown in linguistics, and we had met a while back but didn't remember each others' names. Now we do. He lives around here. Small fucking world.

This concludes PART I. I need to sleep. Fucking exhausted. More to follow FULL STOP.

Bless This Mess

2009-06-26T16:41:00.001-07:00

Please excuse the lack of posting today. It has been busy. Tomorrow will be a MEGA POST. It will feature THE İŞ BANK MÜZESİ, THE GALATA BRIDGE, THE TÜNEL, LOSING MICHAEL, POLICE EATING DINNER, BALKAN MUSIC, AND PAY TOILETS.

Bless your hearts for waiting. I will upload a picture of a kitten here tomorrow.

Where are Gondor's Armies?

2009-06-25T13:10:00.000-07:00

This afternoon we went to the US Consulate in a northern section of the city, far removed from the hustle and bustle (but still full of hustle and bustle). The building was built in 2004, I believe, after the 2003 terrorist bombings of the British Consulate, two synagogues, and the HSBC building downtown, near the American Consulate's location in Beyoğlu. It is worth noting that the Brits decided to stay put, while the American government opted to construct what is, essentially, a fortress on a hill north of town. It has all the charm of a prison, and the warmth of a mausoleum. And it looks a lot like Minas Tirith mated with an Israeli settlement.

I was surprised to see that most of the staff was actually Turkish, and would have expected to find Marines doing most of the security work. We met with a PR representative and an economic officer from the political section. He had his shit together, and had a pretty well-informed take on the situation. Turkey's unemployment rate, officially, is around 17%, and is likely much higher. Half of the population is under 25 years old, if I'm not mistaken. This is a young country with a rough road ahead, unless the GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS eases. But even then, competition for university spots in Turkey remains insanely fierce, and those who don't get in are left wondering what they should do. He seemed to believe that Turkey was using the US military to form business links in Iraq, one of Turkey's greatest trading partners before the war, so that when the troops leave, Turkey will remain as the economic hegemon. Clever girl.

Before their presentation, they asked us all our names and what we studied, and hilariously, "what you know about Turkey." So one of the Ottoman history PhD students told them that his interest was in "prostitution in the late Ottoman period." I almost peed a little bit, I was trying so hard not to laugh. When other reps from State were talking, the grimaces on the Ottomanists' faces were hilarious. Our group was there for the whole thing, but the Yildiz Teknik Üniversitesi group got there late. The reason? Their bus was pulled over by the police because the driver was "talking on his cell phone" and did not pay attention to the fact that they were behind him, escorting some rich people, and wanted to pass. I didn't realize that there was such a thing as a traffic stop here, considering the fact that the "security briefing" they gave us at the consulate listed traffic as the greatest threat to our safety here. Actually the whole thing was hilarious, and I will share the best tidbits with you here.

1) "Drivers are aggressive and frequently ignore basic traffic regulations by driving through red lights and stop signs, or turning left from the far right lane. Pedestrians do not have the right of way, and extreme caution should be exercised when crossing streets."

2) "Avoid speaking with strangers on the street. Conversations can be a prelude to a criminal act."

3) "Do not accept food or drink from the [taxi] driver and practice good security by automatically recording the license or number of any taxi you enter."

Clearly, the Turks are out to get you. I have never heard of a taxi driver offering anyone something to eat or drink. What does the second point say about us? What does it imply for our interpersonal interactions with Turks, generally? That we only talk to them because we suspect they won't immediately pull a knife on us? Nonsense. Talk to strangers, if you are able! They love it when you speak Turkish! Anyway, as we were walking through the consulate toward the exit, there was a group of four Marines practicing their color guard march in the courtyard, and one of them came running over to us and invited us to their weekly Friday night open bar pizza parties. And by "invited us," I mean "invited the American girls." It was hilarious. I mean, I completely understand where the Marines are coming from, and actually am looking forward to partying with them on the Fourth of July, but the manner in which he invited us was so hilariously forward, and understandably so: he had just gotten off a tour in Kuwait. "He just got here from Kuwait," our guide said, "so he's got a sweet stereo." What the hell does that mean?

BTW: I just Obama-nated a fly right out of the air.

After we left the consulate, our bus drove us straight to campus so we could attend the welcome reception for everyone in the Turkish Language and Culture Program. There was an open bar, but nobody really got drunk. The view was incredible, and I will post pictures soon. I spent a good deal of time chatting with the Turkish waiters and bartenders about what I study, the weather in DC, how it was built on a swamp, and why I like America but hated the consulate building and its location. They all seemed sympathetic to the idea that America could be a nice place, especially when I likened it to Turkey. Then, after I asked for a vodka and Coke, the bartender said I would have to tell him how to make it.

Me: First, you add vodka...[he pours in a bit of vodka]...yes, exactly. Now add Coke...[he adds the Coke]...Yes. This is everything. Thank you.

Him: You don't use a lemon, or anything?

Me: Why? This is how we drink in graduate school. Cheaply.

Him: Interesting.

The waiters were constantly bringing us tasty Turkish finger foods, like sigara böreğiı, köfte, and deep fried cucumber. It was all fantastically delicious, and certainly warranted the horde of cats that descended upon us. I asked one of the waiters "will there be a war between them?" His reply:

"The war has already begun."

He gestured toward a "foreign" cat that was being menaced by the locals, and within seconds there was a tussle. One TA here described campus as "Cat Heaven," but I'm pretty sure it's like a cat refugee camp. They are entirely dependent upon the campus for sustenance, and are constantly at risk of being attacked by outside cats if they leave, and are not given any access to health care or education.

I forgot to mention earlier that an attractive woman handed me a free condom today just outside of campus. I thought it was a coupon at first, so I smiled and said "Thank you." Also misleading was the name on it: FIESTA! I was going to make a joke about how I had no use for a condom since I don't have a girlfriend, but caught myself right before doing so when I realized I was about to confuse the words for girlfriend,kız arkadaşı, and sister, kız kardeşi. So the interaction would have gone something like this:

Me: "When would I use this condom? I don't have a sister."

Woman: "..."

Me: "Oh no."

Fiesta!

We Have a Watermelon Date

2009-06-25T04:34:00.000-07:00

Last night, Michael and I ran into two girls from the beginner class and took them with us to get some bootleg (kaçak) DVDs. The selection was, as always, pretty impressive and disappointing at the same time. They are obsessed with movies about American serial killers at that shop. Ten copies of "Ed Gain." Lots of Japanese horror movies, and one that must have been American, called "Midnight Meat Train." I assume that is a horror movie, but whatever genre, it doesn't sound like something I would watch. We got "Up," "Eastern Promises," "Night at the Museum 2," and "Brick," which is an incredibly good film noir piece set in a high school. We watched "Up" and did our homework. That movie is just as good the second time, and in 2D shot with a camcorder.

I was pretty upset about a variety of things last night. Those who know me know what is going on, so I won't go into it here. Suffice it to say, I couldn't fall asleep until around 5:00am. When I finally woke up, it was 9:10, and classes start at 9:00. If I hadn't been so stressed out, it would have been hilarious. I tried hopping into my jeans and buttoning them, but my left arm was totally asleep, so it was just flapping at my side while the other hand one side of the button on them. I had to swing my arm into position to hold them up. I had to take a cab to class, but it only cost me 3TL, or $2. Not bad, all things considered. I also didn't have to run the 1 mile to the building, and show up winded and covered in sweat. I apologized profusely and blamed jet lag, which I am sure played a part.

Today was the first trip to the language lab, or laboratuvar. This is, of course, not to be confused with lavatory, or lavotuvar. Because that would be RIDICULOUS. We watched a ten minute video about ebru, the Turkic and East Asian art of paper marbling. Since the man in the video must have had a disease that made him sound like he was talking with a wet sock in his mouth, I assume the process involves suspending ink in oils or other surfactants like a detergent (if they had them back then) on the surface of some water, and then using a brush or something to move them around and mix them on the surface, and then apply a paper to it. Bam. Marbled paper. The guy was blathering on about other stuff, and pulled out a roll of toilet paper from his desk, as if to say "be prepared to shit at your desk." So pack accordingly before you go to ebru camp. The gripping conclusion will be viewed next week, when we get to see him either marble some paper, or actually shit at his desk. Here's hoping it's the former.

In conversation class, our first one so far, we learned the word for snorkel after I showed the class my photo of the harpoon fisher/Thunderball. You want to know what it is? Şnorkel. Shnorkel. Uninspired. I guess the Language Institute couldn't Turkify that business back in the 20s, and just gave up. Interesting side note: the scuba diving shop district (yeah, that's right) of the city is right near Dolmabahçe Palace in the Tophane/Kabataş.

Our conversation instructor actually has a background in psychology and psychological counseling, and is getting a PhD now in...I want to say linguistics. She was talking about "ilk izlenimler," or first impressions. Our first impressions are made in less than a hundredth of a second, and studies have found that people shown a photo of a face for that long will write the same things about the image regardless of how long they have to view it. Wild. That got me thinking about what people would write under mine.

1. Steals televisions and unsecured bikes.

2. Plays a rare instrument badly.

3. Owns a kiln.

We hit up the cheapest cafeteria on campus, which is dark, dank, and 2.25TL, but serves eggplant all the time. They ran out of watermelon, but the manager/doorman said that tomorrow, even if it is the last piece, he will save it for us. He of course said this to one of the girls in the group, but I like to think we all have a watermelon date with him.

Jet Lag, You Monster!

2009-06-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

My jet lag hit me like a bus today. I was sitting in my grammar class feeling sick, thinking I had picked up some god-awful intestinal or brain parasite from my soup or lahmacun, or maybe from all the street walkers I have been fooling around with. But as it turns out, I was just tired! I actually dozed off in my reading class for a second. That has only happened twice before in my life: once in German in high school, and once in Political and Social Thought in college. I blame the parents, and the schools.

Classes were fine, the teachers are all really friendly. Psh, how typical. I have Sümrü Hanım again! She didn't really recognize me, though. But I will also have Mine Hanım later in the summer, and she definitely will. She's a natural redhead, too. We have built-in radar, and if you look closely, you'll notice that when two of us stand by each other, the temperature in the room drops slightly. Trust me. My only regret is that my classroom is on the other side of the building, meaning my view is of the second Boğaziçi Bridge to the north, and the Bosphorus up that way. If that is my only complaint, you can imagine how things are going. Son of a bitch! My view is fucking beautiful, but not as beautiful as it COULD be!

I hustled home after class to nap for two hours, during which I had the most incredible dream I have had in months. Some film crew was filming in my dream house, and taking up all the space with their supplies and fat crew members. So I went on the warpath, disrupted their filming and screaming expletives at the actors. Then, later, Samuel L. Jackson arrived with a production assistant carrying a bunch of alligators. He told me that he'd kill me if I told anyone about the movie he was filming, ostensibly "Alligators on a Boat." Then I woke up. I am sure I could have retold it better, but you likely don't even give a shit in the first place, so I won't waste even more of your time than I already do.

I did some pleasure reading last night. Non-fiction. Salt, by Mark Kurlansky. FACT: the phrase "red herring" comes from the practice common among New England's colonial hunters of placing salted red herring at various points along their path in order to throw wolves off their scent. I drop mad science on you like it's my job. Conversation hour today was fun. My TA is very nice, and also very pretty! Unfortunately, as always, she has what is sure to be a super handsome boyfriend with a Peugeot and a Fauxhawk. I just got back, actually. She showed me afterwards where I could buy a cheap alarm clock, and you know what I did? I bought one. I bought one for 8TL, and the girl who worked there even put a battery in it for me, FREE OF CHARGE. Talk about service! My only hope is that it wasn't made in China...of lead and arsenic. I guess I'll find out tomorrow when the alarm goes off, and a cloud of chlorine gas shoots into my face. Ha! I hope there's a snooze button!

I might use Nick's TRX thingy and work out a bit and shower before going to dinner somewhere, or maybe I will just nap. I am in no way worried about gaining any weight here, for three reasons:

1) The food is much healthier, and I drink about 2 liters of water a day;

2) I walk about 4 miles per day, or 80km. I do this at the speed of sound.

3) Hakan the Otopark Attendant constantly refers to my weight loss, and has so much charisma that if I do gain weight, he could tell it to leave me alone and it would. Then it would probably go hassle some American women.

But anyway, it's time to do some homework and listen to some Orhan Gencebay.

Istanbul Taxi Drivers Don't Get Lost

2009-06-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

Today was fun. We took our placement test today and then had our interviews. In between, we took a campus tour. It felt good being back in the class building, with its worn marble steps and heavy reliance on the sun for lighting. The program group was bigger than I had thought, and has a whole cast of characters, some of which I am sure will prove to be hilarious. The cats were out in force on campus today, and a tiny street kitten sidled up to me and sat on my lap. I want to get some food for them and keep it in my bag, so that I can make them follow me, and eventually train them to attack aggressive salesmen. The view on the way into campus remains incredible (the Bosphorus didn't get filled in while I was gone!), and it takes the edge off the uphill battle to get back to my dorm. Lunch today was with a group of people I had just met, which was fun. I am sticking to lahmacun and mercimek çorbası (lentil soup) for lunch, I think. It fills me up just long enough to get to dinner, and is relatively light and healthy, especially with the parsley and tomatoes and lemon. Riveting stuff, I know.

This afternoon we made the journey to the ARIT office in Arnavütköy, which is where we walked along the water the other night. We took two cabs because we were running short on time, and I showed one cabbie the address and even told him in clear, concise Turkish that it was after the Tevfikiye Mosque and before the Children's park. I got into the second cab (there were 6 of us) and told the driver to follow the first guy. The first guy got it completely wrong, and we ended up almost two miles past it. I kept telling my guy that something was wrong and that I was sure we missed it, and he ignored me. So then I finally said that we absolutely missed it, and that he needed to call the other driver. We got dropped off and paid twice what we should have had to pay. It was frustrating. My friend in the other cab told her driver that she was worried they had missed it, and flat out asked if he was lost. His reply: "Cab drivers from Istanbul cannot get lost." He is right. They don't get lost, they just give you the run around. It was totally his fault, too. Turns out, he was thinking of a mosque with a similar name and misheard me, even though I spoke and showed him the name. Boom. Roasted.

We had a brief orientation at ARIT and were informed we would have to go to the consulate for yet another orientation later this week. Hurray. But the highlight of the day came shortly afterward, when we went to Bodrum Mantı & Cafe. Mantı is essentially Turkish lasagna, small dough slices wrapped around filling and steamed, usually, but this place served them fried, too. I got a mix of spinach-filled and cheese-filled fried mantı, and while eating tried to identify the famous Turks whose pictures were on the wall. Each featured them sitting awkwardly at a table in the restaurant, looking surprised to see a camera. Many of the women and men looked like they had serious sunglass-tans, to the point where the must have been trying to get one. The more I learn about this place, the less I understand. Meanwhile, I am still coping with my v-neck burn. Aloe vera here costs 28TL per bottle, so that falls under the "no fucking way" category. Grin and bear it.

Just got back from a nearby hookah bar called Balkon that was really cheap, largely because the staff liked the girls I was with. They kept giving us free stuff: melon, tea, discounted hookah. We played backgammon and dama, which is apparently Turkish checkers, and fought off some monstrous insects. Does anyone know what an earwig actually does? One of the girls had cooked up a hilariously deadpan lie about them, and how they eat your brain, but can only burrow in a straight line, and the only cause for concern is if their eggs hatch in the middle.

I'd be curious to know just how loud I have to shout "what the shit" the next time I see one on me. As I headed back toward my dorm, the otopark attendant, Hakan, came out to chat for a minute. We were talking about where I had been, and then out of nowhere he said "Bush used to be president. Now Obama. Most young Americans, I mean, college aged kids, they are now Democrats, and like Obama." I told him that was probably true, and that we should talk more about that Friday, when he works again. He said okay, so I think I will try and see what he thinks of Obama, as a Turkish nationalist. My guess is he doesn't know yet, but from what I have heard, most preferred Hillary Clinton or McCain to him. Hakan is hilarious. He gave me an "Arnold Schwarzeneggar and Carl Weathers' reunion in Predator-style" high five tonight, and only stopped chatting when he noticed the group of girls waiting for me. MORE AS IT DEVELOPS!

Tomorrow we get our test results (again, hopefully not embarrassing) and begin classes in earnest. Still no alarm clock. Tomorrow I will wake up by the good graces of my friends here gently rapping at my chamber door.

This post was admittedly subpar. I am not feeling particularly inspired right now for some reason. Maybe it's the hookah, maybe it's the fact that I'm miffed by a first impression I made tonight, or rather, that was made on me, by a girl here. Just awful. But I will only expand on that if it becomes an issue later. I'll give her a second chance not to fuck it up. TTYL OMFG!

Update

2009-06-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

Tonight consisted of a meeting, seeing all the other folks in the program together for the first time, and then getting free shit at dinner for bringing in 14 customers to a kebap place. Post that, there was some negotiating with a man selling what were clearly stolen goods out of the back of his van about acquiring a mattress pad. He said he could have one for me by tomorrow at 4:00pm. My concern is that he completely misunderstood me, and that he will actually try and sell me a human skull for 15TL. Should I go see him again? Maybe. Maybe I want a human skull. After the talks concluded, a bunch of us headed home before going to "Bu Cafe," the glorious gem of a hangout that I only discovered on my last day in Istanbul 3 years ago, but plan on spending plenty of time at this go-around. Passing by the gate to our dorm, though, the otopark attendend, Hakan, stopped us to chat with me and the girls I was with (guess which he was more interested in). Two of them are of Turkish extraction, and a hilarious conversation ensued in which he flatly stated that Turkey is the best country on earth, and moreover that one Turk is worth five Americans. When I challenged this, he smiled and said that despite this, we could still be friends. Dave, is this the guy who was into the Bozkurtlar?

At Bu Cafe, we played tavla, talked about Bosnia, learned Dama (Turkish checkers), listened to Emin tell jokes about men from Montenegro, and smoked the best mint hookah I've ever tasted. Also, some people got some hazelnut flavored vodka, which I tasted and found to be surprisingly good. Good luck finding that anywhere. So weird. Anyway, tomorrow morning is the placement test and the interviews, so I am going to call it an early night. Tomorrow, news of the test, perhaps a trip to the store for shirts, and maybe, just maybe, a festively Bedazzled human skull.

New! Stuffed Crust Pizza!

2009-06-22T07:43:00.000-07:00

In case you needed further proof that Turkey is going places in the world, from the bus back today I saw a house-sized billboard advertising Pizza Hut's NEW Stuffed Crust Pizza. Cheese is literally stuffed into the crust! HAVE YOU HEARD OF THIS BEING DONE BEFORE???

Today was fun, if not too taxing (so far). We all got less than 6 hours of sleep due to bad mattresses, jet lag, and an obnoxiously long 4:30am call to prayer. Seriously, it lasted about 20 minutes because the muezzins don't all synchronize their watches. There ought to be a law! Anywho, breakfast was four crackers and some raspberry jelly. The Turks call them ahududu. Try saying that, it's fun. We all got new roommates today as more foreigners arrive to the program. Michael and I haven't met ours yet, but there was more water in the fridge when we got back than when we left, so unless we have a stalker with a key, there's a new dude here. Some of the girls got a Japanese (they say) roommate who doesn't really speak English. We set out to get everyone some Akbils (the awesome equivalent to the SmarTrip), but everywhere we looked today they were SOLD OUT. We suspect a city-wide conspiracy, or at the very least a ship carrying them sank somewhere in the Black Sea. Months from now, millions will wash up along the shores of the city, to the delight of children and parents alike.

Bus led to tram, which meant air conditioning, and that took us to Sultanahmet, the über-touristy spot that has the coolest stuff ever: The Blue Mosque, the Aya Sofya (closed today), and the Basilica Cistern. We got pictures of the first two, and will be back to go inside, but the goal today was the Cistern, which is honestly alongside the Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia) as my favorite spot in the city. It used to be the underground reservoir for the city when it was Constantinople, and was built by the Romans. It is huge, and used to hold a lot more water (see James Bond paddle across it in "From Russia, With Love") but is now empty enough to allow people to walk along elevated paths. The acoustics are incredible, the lighting perfect, and the columns beautiful. There is usually some nice flute music playing over some speakers, which really completes the vibe for me. I don't think pictures really do it justice, since they often turn out poorly due to the lighting, so I took some video. Although, I must say, my new camera is kickass, and has a max ISO setting of 3200. Bam. Instant daylight. Here is a bit from my slow walkthrough:

NOTE: Sorry, apparently this site decreases the video quality, so it actually is really dark. I will try to upload a better version to Flickr.

There are two columns that have huge sculptures of Medusas at their base, each turned to a side or upside down to prevent her spell from turning onlookers to stone. The explanatory plaques, which are always hilarious, consistently referred to the "rumour of Medusa" rather than the "legend." Hilarious. This from a language that has an entire verb tense designed for gossip. The irony of having ancient statues of a woman who turns the men who ogle her to stone sitting in the middle of this city is lost on most Turks, I gather. Lunch found us in a place called "Coffee Me," but I had them "Akdeniz Pizza Menü" me with an iced tea for 8.50TL. I should point out that the Y has been dropped from YTL, and now we just say Türk Lirası. Apologies for the inconsistency, I was clearly out of the loop. Two African Americans college-aged kids from Oakland, a guy and his cute girlfriend, sat next to us, and we chatted briefly about their trip. They loved Amsterdam, hated Frankfurt, and love Istanbul. That was honestly the first time I had met a black American tourist here, and it was refreshing to know that this place isn't just the refuge of dusty white Ottoman historians and sock/sandle-wearing Germans.

We checked out the Hippodrome and chatted with a simit seller there about his trade and hometown. He asked me if my parents were also Turkish after talking to the Turkish girl in our group. Ha! Mark that well, folks. Gringo here can be a Turk, too. He asked me what I wanted to gain by studying Turkish, and I suspect he was skeptical, since he had just finished talking about how bad Europe was for Turkey. So I just simply said I wanted the two countries and cultures to get closer. That seemed to surprise him, and we left it at that. I am probably going to sport a V-neck sunburn this week, albeit a subdued, or "shallow" one. Maybe I'll start wearing a huge Kyrgyz akkalpak. One of the huge felt hats that look like a sunhat. If I find one...

TODAY I MUST BUY AN ALARM CLOCK, and if I can, a mattress pad (döşek yastığı), and some more t-shirts. There is still time. We have a meeting in an hour, and then tomorrow morning is our placement test. Hopefully I don't embarrass myself.

Zayıfladın!

2009-06-21T16:14:00.000-07:00

I just noticed that my Google is in Turkish. Neato. Anyway, today was a pretty fun, relaxing jaunt through the neighborhood. We all woke up at 1:00pm, or at least that is when we all officially were out of bed. I, on the other hand, was woken up THREE goddamned times by one of the dorm managers who first asked me what program I was with; second, wanted to move someone else into the apartment with us, which I cleverly avoided; and finally, wanted to know why my roommate and I had taken rooms that did not coincide with our assigned keys (answer: because they were bigger and there was no one else moving in with us). They also scolded me for storing my empty suitcases in an empty room, and the guy's scrawny henchman actually commanded me to "pick it up." The goal is to win over the support of the see-through shirt-with-wife-beater-underneath-wearing official and his ilk through kindness and curiosity. People love talking about themselves (see above), and I have found that Turks, to generalize, enjoy it as much as Americans do, but especially when you ask. Bingo bango bongo.

Anyway, after we all had our fill of sitting around and thinking about going to the grocery store, we actually went to the grocery store. Got the essentials: 8 gallons of water, some crackers, olives, glasses, and a watermelon. The watermelon remains whole because we couldn't find a store open today that would sell us a knife serious enough to do some damage to it. Tomorrow we'll have much better luck, as all the knifesmiths will be well-rested and eager to show off their wares. Before shopping, though a cool thing happened. We were grabbing lunch at one of the kebab places right outside the university gates, and I saw my old TA from 2006, Kadir, crossing the street. Naturally, I stood up and hollered his name, drawing attention to the fact that I am an idiot, and what's more, an idiot with a full beard and fiery red hair. I try not to embarrass my family, I really do. Kadir saw me, smiled, and came over to chat. He'll actually be teaching grammar this summer to the intermediate kids. It was really cool to see him, and was the second instance of someone recognizing me, or knowing people I know.

The third came a couple hours later, as we headed back out from the dorm to descend the infamous Bebek hill to the Bebek neighborhood below us. Bebek means "baby," and I am honestly not sure how your neighborhood gets that name unless it is particularly fertile. I saw a few kids, but tons of stray dogs. Big ones. My guess is there has been a horrifying adjustment to the food chain down there. Anyway, as we left the dorm, the security guard at the gate was letting a car pass through, and signaled for us to watch out as the gate swing back down. We passed by, and he called after me, in Turkish, "This is your second year here, right?" He said he remembered me from last summer, and I said "No, it was 2006," and he said "Aha! You're right! You've gotten thinner!" (Alternate translation of the word: "You have developed an illness!") I love Turkey! He remembered me so well that he knew I was a bit huskier last time. Incredible. Then I found out he remembered Ben and Dave (Davut!), especially, very well. Dave, did you and this guy kill somebody together and dispose of the body in the Otopark?

Bebek was fun. Waffle sellers (the pimped out, candied up kind) everywhere, corn carts with headlights, and of course the insufferable drunken fishermen along the waterfront. We walked probably three or four miles, roundtrip, and the weather was beautiful the entire time. So beautiful, in fact, that some crazies came out. Not to be outdone by the fishermen using simple rods and bait, one man donned, I shit you not, a full wetsuit, goggles, and a snorkel, and was ARMED WITH A HARPOON GUN standing in waist-high water. When we arrived, he was reloading it and poking his head underwater to spot a fish or maybe an escaped prisoner to shoot. Not wanted to find out the hard way whether he knew how to use the thing or not, we moved along. He looked straight out of Thunderball. Wait for the photograph.

Dinner consisted, for me, of a cheese sandwich for the second night in a row. Granted, tonight's featured a different style of bread and a different style of cheese, and was on a rooftop overlooking the Bosphorus and surrounded by disco and techno clubs, but I think tomorrow I might go out on a limb and order something recognizably meaty. Someone else ordered kumpir, which is a baked potato stuffed with so much that it honestly looks like you're eating the contents of a potato's stomach. Delicious image. On the way to dinner, we saw (and immediately pledged to one day imitate) a 70 year-old man on rollerblades. He was fabulous. He looked like the stereotypical old Turkish man, but on rollerblades: short, stocky, with a mustache flapping in the wind and a woolen vest over a white shirt. He must have gained his inspiration from the new "Fitness Parks" that have sprung up along the waterfront, which feature fitness equipment designed for bodyweight exercises to be used by the neighborhood, outdoors, for free. We availed ourselves of the facility for a bit, although some of the devices made no sense, like one which featured two dials with handles for you to turn really fast. I guess it could be useful if you're training to flip your taxi, but hey, I'm not a scientist. There were a couple of women in hijabs grooving on the pseudo-ellipticals while their kids played on the jungle gym. One in our group pointed out that these machines are incredibly dangerous for kids, especially the leg press device, which could easily function as a convenient skull-fracturer to help you get to those delicious brains. But hey, it's good to see public spaces improved, and I love brains. Win-win.

We walked back up the murder hill, and managed to not get hit by the intrepid taxi drivers and pizza delivery guys gunning it up the hill as hard and fast as their 2-cylinder buggies could carry them. Tea was sipped, künefe (picture a huge Frosted Mini Wheat drowned in honey) was devoured, and plans made for a pre-1:00pm wake-up time were made. And so now, I must leave you to try and upload the first batch of admittedly mediocre photos to my Flickr account.

Goodnight, Moon!

İstanbul'a Hoş Geldiniz!

2009-06-20T18:19:00.000-07:00

It is 4:20am in İstanbul, and I'm not tired. After 37 hours of constant motion, though, I am ready to try and sleep. We bussed it from our hotel in DC to Dulles, which almost feels like going out of town in itself, and hopped on our seven hour Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. Those who know me well know that I studied German for eight years but have never been to Germany, so imagine my excitement to be stuck in a plane FULL of Germans for a trip across the Atlantic to GERMANY. The reality of the situation was that we were in "economy class," which is apparently German for "No in-flight entertainment." Well, apart from the complimentary beer and wine and schnapps. They skipped my row on the schnapps, probably because we availed ourselves of every opportunity to refill our glasses. Apart from the turbulence, the most exciting part of the flight was the "relaxation channel" on the in-flight radio, which featured a German man explaining the causes of jet lag and methods of correcting it set to the music of what must have been Brian Eno's much less talented younger brother.

It is worth noting, right now, that the call to prayer has commenced. It's 4:30am. Unlike New York, this city never sleeps because they let old men on minarets scream into megaphones all hours of the night.

Upon arrival in Frankfurt we took one of their "trains" from our terminal to the next, and even asked for information in German. Talk about exciting. Seriously, pretty cool to be able to use both your foreign languages in a single day, in their respective countries. It was reassuring to find out my German is still good enough to interact with flight attendants, ornery passengers, and an elderly Kurdish man! He sat next to me on the Frankfurt-İstanbul leg of the trip, and was telling the flight attendant "Mach du zwei Kaffee!" [Approx: "You make two coffees!"] Polite German would be something to the tune of "Dürfen wir bitte zwei Kaffee haben?" ["May we please have two coffees?"] The guy was a German citizen whose passport was so old it was in black and white, but his German was worse than mine was sophomore year of high school. I know I'm usually the first to jump to the defense of migrant populations, but this guy clearly had the financial means to learn it and the time, too.

Clearing the Turkish visa line is a snap if you have a passport and $20. They barely look at you twice. No application, no questionnaire, not even a bribe. I guess we can't all be post-Soviet. We were met by a woman from our program and took a chartered shuttle bus through the city to our dorm. The ride was incredible. This place has changed a lot in three years. New construction continues despite the economy. It looks as though all the dolmuşlar have been upgraded or painted, and there is a really cool new metrobus system in the middle of the highway that reserves two fenced off lanes exclusively for the triple-length Mercedes Benz buses to zoom along the highway. Something tells me a trip on one is in my future. But lots feels new about the city, like it got an upgrade, or like its economic growth finally caught up with it. A 3 hour nap is all the sleep I have had since 7:00am Friday, but it was well worth it, because we set out for food at my favorite dürüm place near campus, and then for Taksim Square with a friend of a friend, both of whom apparently know Ben and Dave. Big plus. Taksim was Taksim: absurd, mind-blowing, and clad in tight jeans and aggressive V-neck shirts. I got a lot of stares this time, if not for my hair than for my beard. It may actually get to the point where it comes off. We'll see.

I saw not one, but three fights tonight. I have to say, they were really crappy. They weren't just shouting matches, either. The guys were really pissed at each other and seemed to want to hurt each other, but they failed miserably. Two guys were trying to kick one another, and it was pretty hilarious. I had a hard time taking them serious as they struggled to get their legs up anywhere close to their waists in their tight jeans. They were spouting off about skull fucking each other and all sorts of great stuff you would never expect from a 5'6", 120 pound man with a faux-hawk and a hot pink shirt. Anyway, nothing came of them. Hopefully my luck continues and I don't end up witnessing a real fight, or worse, getting trapped somewhere by one. But again, hot pink shirts and 120 pounds.

We started our night at an outdoor (of course) bar off İstiklal Caddesi, sipping on some Efes beer, which tasted better than I recalled. There was a guy standing at a podium across from us selling tequila shots for 4 YTL (New Turkish Lira), or about $2.60. I got a picture with him, but declined the tequila, thanks to an experience I had with my Mexican roommate last time I was here, in which we consumed an entire bottle between the two of us, and he proceeded to slap my chest and say "Pendejo." After Kadir left us, we got some ice cream and then went dancing at a rooftop club, where I chatted with a guy about his upcoming work exchange trip to New York. He was sincerely concerned about H1N1, and I told him to stay away from the Bronx and wash his hands. I didn't want to tell him that he was probably more at risk living here, because hey, it'd be tactless. I am feeling good about this group of people already, given that it is our first night and we were out until 4:00am. There are a bunch of awesome concerts coming up that I will try and get to, including Orbital, Boban Markovic Orkester, Depeche Mode (AGAIN!), and the İstanbul Jazz Festival. Tomorrow I want to try and find some hangers and get a big bottle of water, some notebooks, pens, and all that jazz. I will try and fire up the Flickr account, too. Stay tuned!