Starbucks is better in Turkey

It's felt like ages since I got here (six months to be exact), but with 26 days or so, I'm finally nearing the end of my time in Turkey. And I have to say, one of my favorite places is turning out to be the local Starbucks, located in the neighborhood of Etiler. My University is located in a bit of an odd place, at the conflux of some lower rent neighborhoods and some extremely high rent ones. A short walk from dorm up Nisbetiye Caddesi towards Akmerkez, the only mall ever to be awarded both the "best mall in Europe" and "best mall in the world," is a nice stretch of upscale shopping that includes a TGI Friday's, a Ralph Lauren Home store, a McDonald's with table service, and best of all Starbucks. Every time I walk up it, I think I'm in Walnut Creek.

I can't say that I frequent Starbucks in the US. Sometimes when I'm in the mood for something sweet, I'll grab a frappucino, but that's about the extent of my interaction. Yet the lack of coffee outside of the instant variety (which is available everywhere for some befuddling reason), has left me quite appreciative of a decent cup, even though Starbucks is a tad expensive (5 lira for a cup). Yet what is more appealing about the local Starbucks than the possibility of decent coffee is the environment it provides. I've never been in a Starbucks that I'd call unwelcoming, but those in the US don't quite provide the community atmosphere you'd find at other coffeeshops and while I can attest that the Starbucks in the Columbia University area fill up during exam time, it's usually with the solitary individual typing away at his lap-top (more the mold for the American cafe experience anyway). The Etiler Starbucks is different: its two stories (including a patio out front) are always filled with bourgeois Turks, young and old, chatting away or reading the newspaper. And really that's not something I've seen in America. While Etiler certainly resembles an upscale strip-mall, the locals don't treat the Starbucks as such. It's still seen as the center of a community, where people go to spend their free time and not just a store you stop in to get your sugary-drink before driving away in your SUV (though a good amount of the customers probably arrive in SUVs here, befitting the social class of the clientele). It certainly looks like America, down to the red Christmas-y but not explicitly Christmas themed cups (a nice treat for this time of the year), but in the end is something distinctly different. I might be drinking a Caffe Americano, but I'm most definitely in Turkey.

35 hours in Bulgaria

I got back this morning from my quick trip to Bulgaria. The reason behind the trip, as I mentioned in the last post, was my visa. Because the program I did this summer and the exchange program I'm doing now are unconnected, I couldn't get a student visa for the entire period of time. That means I'm here on tourist visas, which last three months each and can be purchased at the borders. My first tourist visa was voided when I left the country in August to go to Vienna and Budapest. This weekend marked about ninety days since that trip, meaning it was time to leave the country to get a new one. While I could have left the country a bit earlier, during my break for example, I decided I'd rather spend the time travelling Turkey, being both a good use of my Turkish and because I wanted to see the rest of the country. For that reason I pushed the visa-run back until the end of the ninety days. The timing was a bit unfortunate, however. A week later would have been much more ideal. Some of my friends had student visas and couldn't leave the country until next week due, when they got residence permits (Turkish bureaucracy moves slow) or were too busy these weekend and were planning on going later to renew their visas. The result was I had to go alone.

I settled on Bulgaria because it was cheaper than the other option, Greece. Luckily a classmate from England had gone to Bulgaria the week before for exactly the same reason and offered a few pointers (along with some Bulgarian phrase books). Train was the best method and there was a night train once a day in both directions. Take the evening train, arrive in the morning, take the evening train back. He had gone to Bulgaria's second city, Plovdiv, and said he was bored out of his mind while he was there. No one spoke English and nor was there much to do, so he just waited around until the train came. Sofia, Bulgaria's largest city, offered far more, and being farther west, I would have less time there that I'd have to waste than at Plovdiv. So on Friday I headed to down to Sirkeci Train Station near the Golden Horn, once the eastern end of the Orient Express.

Boarding at 10 PM, I was one of only 4 passengers it seemed heading to Bulgaria. While this meant that I got a got a sleeper cabin to myself, it lent also a spooky air to the train, not helped by the fact that the train seemed to be a relic of the Soviet era (maybe just due to the Cyrillic) or that the light in my room was partially broken casting everything in an dark olive drab. The other travelers were a couple, one German, the other French, and another American exchange student at my university, whom I had never met, but was travelling for the exact same reason for me. The other passengers confirmed my suspicion that train travel had fallen out normal use and was generally reserved for youthful travelers, seeking an adventure, or train aficionados. While the train is generally quite comfortable and I passed the 14 hours far better than I would have on a bus, several things did detract from the trip. First, the track itself did not seem to be in good repair and several bumps even led me to think we'd jumped off course. Secondly, the Bulgarian/Turkish border crossings comes at the most inconvenient time of 2 or 3 am. Normally the border guards enter the train to stamp your visa and cast a cursory glance at your belongings (cigarette smuggling is a problem), leaving you quite comfortably sitting in the coach. Turkey likes to run things differently, however, and you must disembark to get your visa stamped at a rather dismal border station. Thus, if you're lucky enough to fall asleep, every stop until the border (and there seemed to be a quite a few) jars you to awake, making you think it is time to get off. And when the time finally does come and you get off, bleary eyed and feeling terrible, you get your passport stamped after a miserable wait and then crawl back into bed only to be bothered by another Turkish border guard who comes down the train to make sure everyone's gotten their passports stamped. The ordeal doesn't end there, though: 20 minutes later, in Bulgaria soil, customs comes by again to give you a entry stamp. Thankfully the train was late (they typically are) I had plenty of time in the morning to doze off to recover the missed sleep before arriving in Sofia at around 1:30.

Buying my ticket for the return trip, I headed out to explore the town, in the direction a cursory glance at a online map had indicated where all the stuff was. A fellow traveler (in Southwest Turkey, actually) had alerted me several weeks before that Sofia followed a standard pattern of revitalization for post-Communist cities: while the area around train tracks is bleak, farther in town is nice. This pattern proved to be true (and if you think about it applies to American cities as well). While the train station was an impressive albeit cheerless building, and nowhere near as frightening as the one I'd encountered in Romania, the town changed as I walked towards the center. Though many of the new apartment buildings and older row houses had a battered look to them, there was a distinct feeling of grand boulevards, despite the not so pretty urban infrastructure. New modern buildings could also been seen, peaking around corners. After about a kilometer or so, I reached another large parallel street and saw down it what I am told by Wikipedia is the old headquarters of the Communist party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Former_Party_House_Sofia_2.jpg). Murky past aside, it was a beautiful building and I decided to head towards it. This seemed to be the correct decision as as I found out that most of the sights laid in that direction. Immediately to the building's left was the Sheraton, a medieval church and a very nice shopping avenue. Getting a map from a Sheraton, I proceeded to go a self-tour of some the sights. I decided to set as my destination points churches, given my limited time and their lack of admission charges (ignoring donations). Highlights included the Church of St. George, a 4th Century Church which includes the runs of the ancient Roman city around it, and the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, a magnificent neo-Byzantine Cathedral, painted from floor to ceiling with frescoes (some of which, painted towards the more recent side, happen to be a bit tacky). The Cathedral also housed a museum of religious icons, which I very much liked. The area where I wandered too was quite nice, housing what I took to be some of the important buildings of the Bulgarian government, along with some other museums. It also seemed to be very much revived--I got a cup of coffee at a distinctly hip looking cafe--and rather affluent. Near the open space by the Cathedral, there was also an open-air market selling standard souvenir fare and in addition six or seven vendors selling icons, which appeared to be some of the more popular items for tourists to buy. Ranging in size from small to enormous, they were hand painted in Bulgaria, and were made mostly as copies, the vendors said, of more famous icons. They were truly exquisite and I decided to get several to bring back to the US. The vendors were also pretty impressive--the two whom I dealt with spoke good English and were quite capable salesmen (magnifying glass in hand to show me the fine craftsmanship). They also affixed little certificates to the back of the icons, with some of the information on the original and the vendor's contact info, so I guess they weren't fly by night operations. Capitalism seems to have a future in this country.

As it started to get dark, I headed back to the train station, picking up a sandwich on the way there--with everything in Cyrillic, the only restaurants I trusted were ones where I could point to the food. I got to the train station a little early and sat around. The other Bogazici student, who had went her separate way earlier, emerged and we chatted about how our days went. We narrowly avoided missing our train because of the confusing platform numbering system and found it more crowded than the way there. I shared my cabin with Nao, a nice Japanese guy who was travelling around Europe, with Istanbul as his next stop. He was getting a Masters in the Netherlands and gotten his undergraduate degree at Brigham Young University of all places, which he said he went to because they offered him as a foreign student cheaper tuition than any public school. He was well aware of the peculiar view of America he had seen in Utah, and was not a Mormon (apparently his friends at BYU had been other foreign students who had come for the same reason--cheap tuition--as him). Getting up for the border crossing was just as hellish as the night before (perhaps more so because of my lack of sleep the night before), but I got a new visa without a problem and was able to eventually return to sleep. We arrived back in Istanbul about 35 hours after we'd left. I gave Nao directions how to get to where the hostels were and returned home, very excited at the prospect of a shower.

All in all, it was quite the successful trip and I did enjoy what I saw of Bulgaria. I think I've had enough of trains though in post-Communist countries for a while (earlier this summer I traveled from Budapest to Istanbul with my parents). I'll try to post pictures of Bulgaria and also my trip to the Southeast soon.

updates!

I'm having a rather active November.

A few weeks ago, I went with my friends Galen and Sam to Southeastern Turkey for our week-long break during Kurban Bayramı ("Holiday of Sacrifice"). We flew into the city of Diyarbakır and traveled around the area via bus going to Urfa, Mardin and Hasankeyf. It was quite the journey. The region is very different from Istanbul, socially, geographically and historically. It was an amazing opportunity to see another side of Turkey and also experience something that was completely new to me.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and a few American friends of mine organized a dinner in one of their apartments.They labored to create a traditional meal and we had all the standards: turkey (surprisingly hard to come by, despite the name of this country), mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, cranberry jelly, and pumpkin and apple pie. The food was delicious and I think everyone had a great time. There were about 12 of us in total and we even got to share the holiday with some of our European (actually Dutch and Belgian) friends. It was all really very nice.

In a few hours I'm going to be getting on the train to Bulgaria. My visa is expiring so I have to leave the country and come back again to get a new one. I'm taking a night train there, will arrive in Sofia by noon, then will take a night train back tomorrow to Istanbul. Hopefully all will go well and I'll get to see a bit of Bulgaria too. Oh and Monday's my 20th birthday. We're going to a Chinese Restaurant to celebrate. That's all for now--I'll try to post pictures after I get back.

finally met someone from the East Bay here...

After class today I went with a friend to get student transit passes. We took our time on the way there, stopping first to get dürüm--Turkish wraps--and then have tea with the owner of a store, that primarily produced awards or medals for order, but also sold Turkish flag pins on the side, of which we bought a couple. Ah, Turkish hospitality. Upon arrival at the transit authority, we found the building crowded with people and learned shortly that, despite it being open for another hour and half, they were no longer giving out numbers for the line. Deciding that tea with the owner more than made up for the lack of a transit pass, we decided to take a winding route back to the metro, passing a beautiful English church, apparently built as a memorial to the Crimean War and promised to ourselves to come back to visit (the Chaplain was apparently out at the moment).

Outside the metro, I was handed a pamphlet explaining that the world was going to end on May 21 (in Turkish of course). Flipping to the back I realized that the pamphlet was being handed out by a certain Family Radio based in...wait for it...Oakland, CA. I decided to go back to the woman handing them out and inquire if she was from Oakland. As it turns out, she was from Alameda (a town next to Oakland, for my non-Bay Area readers). We chatted for a minute, but not really knowing what to say to someone who thought the world was going to end, cut the conversation short and headed towards the Metro. Way to go Bay Area, sending your crazies all over the world!

catch-up

I apologize for not having posted for over a month. After classes began, it seems I was absorbed back into a normal school routine and my mind drifted a bit from the blog. So now I'll let you know my daily life, so enthralling that I haven't written anything.

I'm taking five classes this semester: Introduction to European Integration (a political science class about the EU), Epistemology (a philosophy class), Phonology (a linguistics class), Advanced Turkish Reading for Foreigners and Advanced Turkish Grammar for Foreigners. The non-Turkish language classes are in English (as are most classes at the University). While it was odd at first being the only native English speaker in the classes--it almost felt like they were doing it just for me--I've adjusted to it. While 95% of the discussion is in English, sometimes a Turkish student, for better clarification, will ask a question in Turkish, and the class will drift into Turkish for a minute or so before the Turkish continues again in English. Thankfully, I know enough Turkish that I can usually understand what the question is about, though not typically the content of the question or the answer. Also professors will sometimes say commands ("everyone come forward") or jokes in Turkish.

The classes are definitely easier than the ones in the States, but this seems to be more due to language than anything else. The students here are definitely intelligent, though, as shown by the questions asked in class. It just isn't feasible, however, to assign 100 pages of reading to a class full of non-native English speakers, so the readings are lighter, and usually a lot gets repeated in class. While perhaps the students are learning less (or perhaps learning less information more thoroughly), this is moot in my view because the university serves a slightly different goal than those in the US: it exists (at least on the undergraduate level) to prepare Turkish students to pursue graduate studies in the English speaking world, which happens to have the best universities in the world. And at that, it does a good job, much better than if, for four years, the students were instructed in Turkish.

While the English-language classes haven't been so hard, the Turkish classes are a very different situation. The Turkish grammar class has maybe 40 students, when everyone shows up, by far the most of any language class I've ever taken. In addition to being large, the students come from vastly different backgrounds. Some are like myself, learning Turkish as a second language and are taking the class as part of a natural progression in their studies. Others come from Turkish families who have migrated elsewhere and speak fluent Turkish but can't read or write. Still others come from Turkic Republics in Central Asian, where the language is arguably the same, or where the language is extremely similar (think the difference between French and Spanish) and second language instruction in Turkish is extremely common. There are also reportedly one or two Turks in the class, born and raised in Turkey, for reasons that no one quite knows. Anyways, because of this variation in level, putting together a coherent curriculum seems to be a bit difficult. Thus, what we've learned so far has been a little bit jumpy--for example, from the correct use of punctuation to passive suffixes. Unfortunately, as of now, I don't if I've learned too much in the class, but I guess it's always good to have to listen to Turkish for three hours a week.

The situation in my reading class is again a bit different. While the class make-up is the same--students from Europe and Central Asia and few unexplained Turks--everyone is at a much higher level than me. While I have found the readings extremely interesting (always a 5 to 10 page short story), I have trouble keeping up with the fast paced discussion and especially the teacher's habit of beginning a new story in class by speed reading it aloud. I should have probably taken the Intermediate Reading Class (actually probably a little bit below my level), but by the time I realized that, it was already too late to switch around the classes. The class is registered in my scheduel as "non-credit," which hopefully means it won't matter how poorly I do, and the professor seemed understanding of my lower level, but I might end up dropping the class anyway. We'll see.

I've found a good group of exchange student friends, from both America (mostly from schools in the Northeast), and Europe (mostly Dutch for some reason). I'm still working on making Turkish friends, though, partially due to my own laziness, partially due to the fact that most of the Turkish students already have friends, and partially due to how much I enjoy spending time with the other exchange students that I've met. Excuses, excuses, I know.

I'll try to keep the blog updated a bit more than I have and will try to post pictures from my trip this past weekend to Edirne,

college life

Today was my first day of classes at Bogazici University. The university, considered Turkey's best, is located on the hills above the Bosphorous, near the ancient Rumeli Hisari fortress, built by Mehmet the Conquerer during his conquest of Constantinople, and is above one of the richest neighborhoods in Turkey, Bebek. While the University is public and the vast majority of students and professors are Turkish, the classes are all conducted in English (with only a few exceptions). I moved into the dorms about a week and a half ago and have spent the time getting to know the other exchange students and the campus. I've met students from all over the US and much of Europe (especially from the Netherlands for inexplicable reasons). I have yet to met very many Turks, because most have only moved in the last few days. Because very few of the exchange students speak Turkish or have been to Turkey before, I've been often acting as guide and translator. It's a little funny (and a little nice) because three months ago, newly arrived, I was in the exact opposite position.

I'm currently living in a dorm on campus--the Superdorm. It is set up in apartment style suites, with two, three, or four singles set up with a shared kitchen, common room and bathroom. While the facilities are nice, and it's always good to get your own room, there's a bit of an enforced sterility to it. Putting decorations up in the common areas is banned and the Superdorm seems like it was built to echo any sound. My room also faces an interior courtyard, so when I have the window open I can see into any of the other rooms on the interior courtyard. While this is convenient--if you want to talk to someone you can just yell at their window--it also limits the privacy significantly. Anyone could be looking into your room at any time, especially annoying because most of the room can be seen from the window. As of now, I have one suitemate, Ross. He's from Arizona and is studying history. There is one unoccupied room, which might end up being filled by a Turk. But with each passing day, that gets more unlikely.

I've heard that Superdorm is one of the nicest dorms in Turkey and one of the most progressive--the buildings are all co-ed. It is, however, very expensive and a bit draconian. No overnight guests, for example (despite the ample room on the couches in the common room). I've also heard horror stories about the manager of the dorm. After her heart was broken by an American lover, it is said, she eternally seeks to make the lives of Americans terrible. All of this has given Superdorm (humorous enough anyway), the name of Superprison. It makes you wonder what the worst dorms are like.

We'll see how this week of classes go. I've had two today and I'll post again after I've had them all.

the last of the vacation photos

Bulgarian countryside

train station in Romania

view of Budapest

St. Stephen's Basilica, Budapest

more photos

hydrofoil from Vienna to Budapest

me at the top of Galata Tower in Istanbul

marvelous fish stew in Istanbul

my parents at the Rumeli Fortress in Istanbul

Bosphorous cruise

pictures, pictures, pictures

Moved into the dorms at Bogazici on Wednesday, my home for the next four months. Right now it's only really exchange students (whom I've met a lot of!). The Turks will be coming closer to the start of classes. Tomorrow I register for classes.

I'm going to pictures five at a time, over the next day or so. Unfortunately they're out of order, but it's either that or I'll never get them up...

on the grounds of the Belvedere Palace in Vienna

Wienerschnitzel!

Grounds of the Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna

whirling dervish outside the Blue Mosque. part of the nightly Ramadan festivities there.

the beautiful airport in Slovenia.

dispatch from the hostel

While a little less personal than the last hostel, my current place of residence has still provided plenty of conversation with other travelers. Interestingly, this place seems to attract infinitely more Americans (actually by my calculations 1500%) and with all those Americans, who by the way are still dwarfed by the population of French basketball fans here, the conversation topic of "where are you from" usually occurs. And with that a couple of curious coincidences have come to the fore. A couple nights ago I was chatting with a women in her late twenties, who, after going to Berkeley for college, lived in Oakland for six years, before moving to New York City and attending Teacher's College at Columbia, meaning she's lived in both the cities that I've lived in and attended the same university. This morning, I discovered another one of these geographical coincidences, this time even more unlikely. Chatting with a guy from Seattle this morning, I discovered he grew up in a town near Augusta, Maine and then lived in Missoula, Montana before coming to Seattle. That means that he had lived very near to the places that my two maternal aunts do! I'll keep you posted on any exciting new developments in the coincidence front.

one family vacation later; or, a travelogue of countries you couldn't place on a map

As I write this entry, I'm in much the same position I was when I wrote my last blog entry in Istanbul--sitting in the lounge area of a hostel, typing on my computer. The last two and a half weeks have been, however, anything but uneventful. As you might remember, I was, as of August 24th, set to fly to Vienna, meet up with my and dad, stay a few days there with my cousin Jennifer, take the boat to Budapest, and after one night take the train back to Istanbul via Romania and Bulgaria. Well, we did all that and it was quite the adventure. Finally now, a day and a half after my father's departure, do I have the time (and a trusty enough internet connection) to go about blogging on the experiences.

I'll outline the trip now and I promise (which I do mean to keep) that in the next several days I'll have pictures posted. Leaving for Vienna at six in the morning on the 24th, I had to take a cab to the airport. While I had a pleasant conversation with the cab-driver, it couldn't quite make up for the inconvenience of, well, having to go on a 60 TL cab ride at three in the morning. My flight, on the Slovenian carrier Adria Air went smoothly, with a transfer in Ljubljana. As the Slovenian EU entrance passport stamp attests, I can say that I have officially been to Slovenia. The airport at Ljubljana, in the midst of mountains, was quite beautiful by the way. Arriving in Vienna by late morning, I waited several hours to meet my parents who were flying from Chicago by way of London. Taking a hired car to Jennifer's apartment in the 18th district of Vienna, we relaxed, going for a walk in the magnificent local park and meeting Jennifer when she returned from work. The next several days were filled with vpalaces (Schonbrunn, Hofburg), museums (the Belvedere, the Museum of Applied Arts) and fine dining (Wienerschnitzel, blood sausage). We had a great time. Vienna is truly a beautiful city, probably the most elegant I've ever seen--like Paris but with a Germanic efficiency--and many thanks to Jennifer and her husband Pauli for letting us stay with them.

The next leg of our journey was a boat trip down the Danube from Vienna to Budapest. The six hour boat journey (a good hour and half of which was spent in locks) took us alongside another country I never thought I'd be seeing, Slovakia. After arriving at our hotel, we immediately took to the streets to start strolling. With only one night in Budapest (and 33 hours on the train ahead of us) we decided it was best to spend most of the time walking. While none of us had much of a conception of what Budapest would be like, within the first half hour we were left awestruck by what we saw. None of us had ever seen anything like it--there'd be on any given block, first a completely restored Beaux-Arts nineteenth-century apartment building, then an extremely decayed, though still majestic building from the same period, followed by an Art-Deco building and then finally a building built in the latest modern fashion. Rounding out the picture were homeless people, graffiti and plenty of extremely chic shops. It was a feast for the eye. We enjoyed immensely our strolling and half-day tour and decided that the city was too intriguing not to return to. In addition to the strolling, we also had a single culinary imperative: try Hungarian goulash, a specialty in my family, passed down to my mom through the (Hungarian) Neuwelt side. While I had had goulash in other places (made respectively in Ukrainian and Austrian styles), these hadn't resembled too much the stew I loved so dearly. We were all quite pleasantly surprised to find out that the goulash in Hungary is quite clearly the same dish that my mom (and her mother beforehand and her mother beforehand) makes.

After saying a premature goodbye to Budapest, we boarded a Romanian train for a quite different branch of our trip. Perhaps setting the tone was a remark by a fellow passenger as we failed to find our sleeping compartment, "those Romanian trains will do that to you." While our inability was later revealed to be due to a mistake on our part, the comment was still applicable. Those Romanians trains don't quite leave you in your comfort zone. The train, while in not bad condition, did not seem to have changed much since the Communist era. Nor did the route, which passed through some of most of desolate looking gray, concrete apartment buildings I had ever seen. Neither did the service, which included a conductor who seemed to willfully not understand our request to lower one of the beds so we could sit in the sleeper compartment and who raised his voice with at least half the passengers on the sleeper train. Romanian trains aside, the route was quite interesting, going through a variety of climates--from cold and foggy mountain forests in Romania, to plains and farms throughout much of Romania and Bulgaria and finally back to mountains in Bulgaria. In additional to the natural scenery we had plenty of time to see some rather dreary post-Communist cities, safely behind the protection of the train window. Of note was our train transfer in Bucharest. Surrounded by oppressively drab concrete buildings that looked on the brink of collapse, the train platforms, old and with not a hint of decorative imagination, bore a distinct similarity to some sort of industrial trash heap. Venturing out to buy lunch, our worries were not allayed by the currency exchange procedure which included the presentation of our passports and the signing of some sort of contract, unfortunately in Romanian. Thankfully, the McDonalds was newly renovated, and while the service was not quite with a smile, the Big Mac was still just as delicious. I should also mention that while some of the urban spaces along the train trips looked a bit frightening, the small towns in the Bulgarian mountains looked positively picturesque, though returning there is a little bit farther down my to-do list than Budapest.

After 33 plus hours and two nights in a sleeper car we arrived in Istanbul, tired and cranky. Sleep or lack there-of aside, it was nice showing my parents around the city where I had spent 10 days and the country where I had spent two months and I'm sure there were glad to see what this place on nearly the other side of the world from California was like. As I have focused most of this blog on Turkey and am at the moment a little bit tired of writing, I don't really feel like going into the minutiae of the 8 days in Istanbul, the first half with my mom and dad and the second half with just my dad. Suffice to say, we probably completed a good half of the tour book. A few meals deserve note, however: first, a full iftar fast-breaking meal, supposedly in the Turkestan (i.e. Uighur) style, accompanied by a folksinger singing about the glories of the Turkic peoples; an amazing fish stew made with a fish, that we had selected from an array of fishes, brought to us directly from the the fish market around the corner; and finally, a lunch of melon, stuffed with ground lamb, beef, rice, raisins and nuts and then baked (a recipe dating to 1539), at a restaurant specializing in the traditional specialties of the Ottoman court.

After my dad left yesterday morning, I moved into a hostel, about a block from Galata Tower, because it was near our hotel. While not as personal as the last one, it should be a decent enough to sleep and use my computer (the wi-fi works pretty well here), though the current abundance of French basketball fans here, in town for the World Championship, is a little annoying, especially given the fact that a few are a little too old to be staying at what is traditionally called a youth hostel. With a couple friends left over at the staff of my last hostel, I'll be spending at least a little bit of time over there too (I was there yesterday and I'll probably head there after I finish this post). I move into my dorm at the University on the 15th, a day I happily await. After nearly a month a of free time and vacation in a foreign country (and 9 different beds in four weeks), I'm ready to start the semester.

ten days in Istanbul over; now time for Vienna

After a three-am taxi ride to the Ataturk International and a stopover in Ljubljana, Slovenia (surrounded by mountains, really one of the most beautiful airports I've ever seen), I am sitting at the airport in Vienna right now, waiting to meet my parents, who should be flying in from Chicago, by way of London, at some point in the next four hours. We will be staying here for several days with my second cousin Jennifer, before going first by boat to Budapest and then by train to Istanbul for some good ol' family vacationing.

My stay in the hostel was fun. A lot aimless wandering, a good deal of sitting around doing nothing and surprisingly little sleep (blame it on the 8 person room and pesky mosquitoes). I even made new friends, some of whom, travelling to far off corners of the world, I'll never see again and some of whom I might just run into when I get back to Istanbul. At some point I'll upload pictures from the last ten days. After two failed attempts, I await an internet connection sturdy enough to do so.

frightening signs from a globalized world

The entrance of American culture into Turkey is far from subtle. Case in point: as I write this Martha Stewart is playing on the TV at the hostel. Yesterday, however, I encountered something far more terrifying than recipes for how to make the perfect cookie. As I sat in a park on the Marmara coastline at the entrance to Bosphorous, making my way through a delightful interview with a 16 year-old Turkish girl who had written a soon to be published historical novel, I stumbled upon something peculiar. When asked as a final question who her favorite authors were, she gave a distinguished although standard list: Nitezsche, Balzac, Tolstoy, Wilde, Camus, Poe and a few Turks who I didn't know. Yet the last sentence gave me pause: "Also, I find myself very close to Ayn Rand's philosophy." It was a little unexpected and a little scary that she would mention the writer of such moving odes to America, but perhaps appropriate being that the question she was asked translates literally as "Are there any cult authors of yours?"

Istanbul!

As I write this I am sitting in my hostel room in Kadıköy, which is on the Asian side of Istanbul. This morning I said goodbye to my host brother and left Bursa via ferry, arriving in Istanbul at around 11:30. To be honest, I was very happy to leave Bursa. Two months of an intensive language program--the same people, the same class every day--was both stressful and tiring and frankly Bursa is not the most exciting place. I really did enjoy my experience and the people I met, but it'll be great to be able to do my own thing in a world-renowned city and practice a little real-world Turkish.

I'll be staying in the Hush Hostel for the next ten days. It's in what is claimed to be an old Ottoman mansion (surprisingly, it looks like an old Victorian style house in Oakland, especially because it needs a new coat of paint) and seems like it will be a comfortable place to stay. I've only met a couple of the staff members here--one Austrian, one Turkish--and none of the other guests, probably because I came in just as they were leaving to tour around. The common language here is English. After one of the staff members saw me watching TV in Turkish, she asked if I understood anything, and was I think a little surprised when I said yes. We ended up chatting for a few minutes in Turkish. Very few of the guests here know any Turkish she said.

Since arriving in the hostel, I've been mostly wandering aroundand ran a few errands. First on my list was a haircut, dearly needed in hot Turkish sun. Because haircut terminology isn't something you learn in school, the barber kept resorting to an English speaking fellow customer (actually a transplanted German, son in tow, who was "stranded here six years ago") to double check that he was doing exactly what I wanted. I ended up getting it cut very short (i.e. the longest length on a mechanical razor). Despite the linguistic difficulties, it was a good experience, and very cheap--13 TL for haircut and shampoo. I also went to buy a cell phone, because I had to return my CLS-issued one. Because I opted for the cheapest one, I ended up with the same exact model I had before (who would have thunk it?). I handled the entire thing in Turkish, and for some reason, the Turkcell guy was extremely impressed with my Turkish. Quite the confidence booster.

As I was out today I also got a few times what at first impression was a very interesting question: "do you know English?" While my first response in my head was "duh!" and both times I answered with not "yes," but "I'm an American," on further reflection it might be a good thing. First I don't immediately come off as an American and second it's further proof of English's stature as an international language, only confirmed by the example of the hostel. Next time I get asked the question I'll answer simply "yes," and try to see where people think I'm from. Hopefully someone will ask me where I learnt such great English.

Ramadan is here

Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish) started yesterday. While some of the people on the program with previous Turkey experience were eagerly anticipating its start--"it's a like a party every night and we don't have to fast because we're foreigners," I remember one girl saying maybe a month ago--I was a little bit anxious. It wasn't because I was scared of not being able to get lunch, rather it was because things were changing in this country I had just adjusted to, and in a way that I couldn't predict. But, as the last couple days have past, my Ramadan experience has been far less than overwhelming.

The lead up to Ramadan was long. For at least the past month, Ramadan related ads have been circulating. It began with billboards advertising the special foods traditionally eaten during Ramadan and restaurant or banquet halls that specially cater to serving an iftar, the evening feast that breaks the fast. As Ramadan approached, a wider variety of companies began to work in Ramadan to their advertisements, and everything from cellphone companies to Pepsi, began to take a Ramandan-time tinge. While my friend wryly pointed out that the Muslims made the wrong holiday for capitalism because unlike Christian holidays, which now tie so well into commercialism, Ramadan involves people not consuming for a significant portion of the day. I think, however, that the steady advance of the Turkish economy is proving his words wrong.

Though Ramadan fever is certainly in the air, my own personal expectations have been a bit different. I have been living for the past week and a half with just my host brother. My host parents went off three or four weeks ago to their summer home in Bodrum and my host sister disappeared a week and a half ago. I suspect she's in Istanbul, staying with the family's oldest son, but it'd be awkward now to ask where she is because she's been gone for so long. Anyhow, the day before Ramadan began my host brother told me that he was only planning on fasting sometimes and that the real meaning of Ramadan was not fasting but sitting down to a big meal with everyone in your family together. With no family in sight, Ramadan at my house has been a rather low key (read non-existent) affair.

While unfortunately, I haven't been able to have a iftar meal first-hand, it's just been just as interesting watching Turkey change during Ramadan. While I don't know exact numbers, my teacher reckoned that about 2/3rds of the people in Turkey fast during Ramadan. This seems hard to measure, because I have a feeling a lot of people say they fast but don't actually keep it through the day. Yet still with possibly two thirds of population not eating, the day-time face of Turkey could change significantly. My fears however were allayed when I walked out my door yesterday and saw the neighborhood simit (halfway in between a bagel and a pretzel) vendor selling to a customer as usual. Making my way to school, it appeared that maybe a third or a half of the restaurants were closed, a far cry from the cataclysmic predictions of some that only McDonalds would be open. Having feared the worst (i.e. savored the opportunity), we had all decided the day before to go to the food court at the abnormally plush mall 5 minutes away from my school for lunch. While most of the restaurants were open anyway, we sat down to a delicious lunch of KFC and Burger King (which is actually on the expensive side in Bursa). A curious item at the food court was a man and a pair of headscarfed women, who we assumed must have been fasting. The question echoed through our group: were they showing off their piety or just taking a respite from the hot sun in the air-conditioned food court?

The experiences of my classmates have been interesting too. While one or two are fasting along with their families, it seems like at most half the families are fasting, which conforms to the same secularist bias I've perceived throughout the program. One friend of mine had a particularly interesting experience regarding fasting in his family. While every member of his family said they'd be fasting for Ramadan, when he woke up at three in the morning to have the traditional pre-sunrise breakfast, he found only his mother awake, who informed him that she was the only one fasting. In regards to Ramadan, there definitely seems to be a bit of a disconnect between what people say and they do.

As I said before, my Ramadam experience hasn't been particularly marked, but I'm only two days in so far and we'll see how it changes as the month goes on. Inşallah, I'll get to an iftar.

In other news, tomorrow is the last day of classes in the summer program. We've been taking exams (meaningless actually because we don't get a grade from the program) for the last several days and tomorrow evening most of the students will be leaving Bursa tomorrow night to fly back to America. Because I'll be staying, my plan is a bit a different: I'm taking the ferryboat Saturday morning to Istanbul, where I'll be in staying for the next ten days by myself. Anyways, I'm off to pack.

last week or so

I've been quite busy as of late. Last weekend we had a group trip to Ayvalık and Pergamon, this Tuesday I took off to Istanbul to meet up with my friend Margaux who was passing through the city on a cruise with her family, and this Friday we had off from class, so of course I spent the day out with my friends.

beach near our hotel in Ayvalık

our hotel

Pergamon

Asklepion

Ferry ride to Istanbul

Margaux and I outside the Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia

out in Bursa with Evren, my Turkish buddy

in Turkey, they write odes to milk companies on the side of milk cartons. No, the Turkish does not translate to the English. And yes, it does make a little more sense than the English (but it's less poetic!)

two trips to Uludağ

This past weekend, I made two trips to Uludağ, the mountain next to Bursa. On Saturday I went with the program. Taking a bus up towards the top, we hiked for nearly six hours through the forest and alpine meadows. My host family had a guest come into town Sunday, so I went with them again to Uludağ, this time for a shorter period of time. While the drive was uncomfortable, 6 of us in a sub-compact car for which 4 would be unformtable, we had fun up top, taking the ski lift, to a different area of the mountain. The two trips combineed should be enough nature for at least couple weeks.

Here I am the first day, snacking on the greatest invention ever, Ketchup flavored chips.

değerlendirebilmeleridir

Language learning is a hard and slow process. I'm happy with my progress so far in learning Turkish, despite the moments when I feel like a fool after I fail to comprehend a simple sentence said to me three times. Yet it takes moments like one this morning to remind me my mistakes aren't always my fault. You see, one of the difficulties in learning Turkish is that the language likes to construct really, really long words. If you think about it, the words we use most often in English, really aren't that long. You can say a pretty complicated sentence with only a single multi-syllable wor (for example: "I was late to lunch because my car broke down by the old mill"). Unlike English, Turkish likes the combine all the information in a sentence down into a few words. A sentence that would take 10 words in English, takes 3 in Turkish. For example, toplantıya katılması gerekiyormuş means something like "I've heard that he had/has to go to the meeting". While we were struggling through a text in our book on workaholicism this morning (işkoliklik in Turkish if you're wondering), we came upon just the kind of word that could only occur in Turkish: değerlendirebilmeleridir. The word literally means something like "their being able to make something have a worth" or less literally "their able to evaluate", with a hard to translate suffix "dir", serving as the copula in the sentence tacked on at the end. There are, as I count, 24 letters and 10 syllables. As I said earlier, sometimes I realize that all my problems really aren't my fault.

learning new words every day!

Constant reference to a dictionary has been necessary so far on this trip. Accompanying me every day at school and on every trip has been a not quite pocket sized English-Turkish dictionary I bought here, called the Redhouse Elsözlüğü (literally "hand dictionary"). While the dictionary has served my purposes well and usually comes up with an adequate, if not great definition, stray glances have found some very interesting words on the Turkish side. Maybe someday I'll find out why the dictionary thought them so essential that they were to be included in what I assume to be an abridged dictionary. In the meantime I'll share a few with you.

yarga - one year old chicken

efe - swashbuckling village dandy

zatülcenp - pleurisy (according to Wikipedia, "an inflammation of the pleura, the lining of the pleural cavity surrounding the lungs.")

Trip to Çanakkale and Assos

Last weekend we went as a group on an overnight trip to Çanakkale and Assos, which are west from Bursa near the Aegean sea.

We met at the language school at 5:30 in the morning and travelled across the Turkish countryside for hours. The ride, passing farms and small towns, was quite scenic.




Our path often ran parallel to the Sea of Marmara.




After about 5 hours, we took a ferry boat across the sea, taking us back to the European side of Turkey. This was taken from the boat.



Our first stop was Gallipoli, the site of a protracted battle during WWI. We visited a small museum and then both Australian and Turkish cemeteries. The first of these was taken at a Turkish graveyard; the second is a statue of Ataturk at the site of one of his early victories during the battle.





We then went south to the entrance from the Aegean to the Dardanelles, where a giant monument and even more graves and memorials now stand. Here's sea traffic entering the straits.



We crossed back over to Asian side and visited the ruins of what they have decided is the historic Troy. Apparently, a number of cities were built on the same site, dating back thousands of years and archaeologists have uncovered traces from distinct Hittite, Greek and Roman phases. Unfortunately the site itself is pretty unimpressive, marred even further by an attempt to tie it in to the Troy of myth (including a giant wooden horse near the entrance). It doesn't get much more interesting than what you get in this picture, which has a sign with the name of the city during first Greek, then Hittite times in the foreground. I found the surrounding countryside much more beautiful and alluring.




We spent the night in the town of Çanakkale, and after a visit to a Naval Museum there, we continued on the next day to Assos, another city dating to ancient Greek times. The Aegean countryside was quite beautiful and those of you in California will be pleased to know that the climate and landscape sort of resembled the Golden State.



The city of Assos, the site of an academy run by Aristotle and also visted by St. Paul, is built on a hill that has spectacular views of both the surrounding country side and the Aegean. While much of the city is old, dating probably to Ottoman times, the Acropolis at the top is the oldest, featuring the site of an old temple and also the best views.





After Assos, we spent a few hours at an Aegean beach, dropped in at a museum devoted to olive oil and visited an ancient hilltop altar to Zeus (now almost all gone), which featured like most of the area amazing views. We then returned home after quite the exhausting weekend.

trip to a Turkish Bath

Today I went with a couple of friends from class to a Turkish Bath. Called in Turkish a "hamam", these are traditional parts of Turkish culture and old bath houses can be found dotting Turkish cities. Hamams are divided by sex; a couple of female students had gone a few weeks ago and had since raved about their experience, which seemed to consist of a lot of chatting in a sauna. The experience for us men was a bit different.

The hamam we went to was in a traditional building. It was 30 TL for what we were told at the door was "everything": "sauna, shower, massage". We first changed in private rooms in the entry room, a carpeted and wood paneled room, where the bath attendants sat watching an old Turkish movie. From there we were led into bath area, consisting of several marble rooms, which must have been several hundred years old. We started with about 7 minutes in the sauna, which, if the thermometer was correct, was 110 degrees celsius. The rest of the bath complex consisted of three or four showers and and a whole bunch of sink/basin things lining the wall with an uncertain purpose. Unsure of what to do next, we took showers and went back into the main room. The next step soon revealed itself when two bath attendants entered, dressed in Hamam garb--shirtless with a towel wrapped around the waist and legs--and carrying pillows and towels. Quickly we found out what the massage consisted of. Lying down on a raised area in the center of the room, the bath attendants first scraped the dead skin off our bodies with gloves, that had a sort of emery-board like palm. After another round of showers, they gave us a very vigorous massage and then soaped us down. The bath attendants poured water over us as we sat at the basins that lined the walls.

All in all it was quite the interesting experience. While I felt afterwards very clean and relaxed, hopefully I'll never have another shirtless Turkish man tell me to lie down on my back in a gruff voice.

US civic knowledge is lacking among citizens of the Republic of Turkey

last night, after showing my host family pictures of my road trip from California to New York, I got into a conversation about the number of stars on the US flag with my host family. As I told them, ever child in America learns that there are 50 stars on the flag for 50 states. My host father however insisted there were 48. I said this was impossible and then my host father went into the computer room to have my host sister (at the computer) count the number of stars. She came up with 47. Fearing that perhaps I and everyone else in the US had been lied to our entire lives, I preceded to pull up a list of the US states and a picture of the US flag on my computer and count them with my host brother. Don't worry, there are in fact 50 states and 50 stars.

July 4th

Sunday is our day off and while bereft of the company of any other Americans I was able to have a relaxing and enjoyable July 4th. Waking up at about 10:30, I found that the rest of the household was getting an even later start so I decided to go out for a walk. As Bursa is situated on the slope of Mount Uludag, the option to head uphill exists for almost anywhere I've been. The area farther up on Uludag also seem to be by my reckoning older (sometimes going back five centuries or more) and generally nicer. I hadn't really explored the area around the apartment much, so I decided to begin by heading in the more appealing direction.

The neighborhood is called Cekirge, I think. This appears to be a very nice spa at a thermal spring, built around an old Hamam (Turkish Bath).



The view from up there was quite nice.



In between the ubiquitous appartment buildings, there were also some old structures, probably dating to before the urbanization of the area.



After returning from my walk, I had a nice lunch with my host family and their neighbor. After lounging around the apartment for a bit, my host brother and I headed out to get Starbucks Frappucinos, which at 7 or 8 TL are more expensive than a meal in a restaurant here, and then to the Sukay Aquatic Park, the first closed-course cable wake-boarding park in Turkey, as I learned from the t-shirts all the staff members wore. I decided to forgo trying to wakeboard until a later date, as participating in extreme sports explicitly voids the State Department health insurance plan and it seemed like a good idea to wait until my Turkish was good enough that I could understand any emergency directions that staff might yell. I had a good time, however, watching my host brother and just lounging in the shade by the side of the course.

Here's my host brother.




And myself.




After a couple hours at the park, we returned to the apartment for dinner and, as is a rule in this household, the after-dinner Turkish Coffee.

like I said we're famous

local newspapers seem to like to carry articles about our group


"American students conquer their hearts"


"American students at Korupark"

unfortunately I'm not in the picture in the second one. I was upstairs waiting for the kid in the white shirt in the front. We had been walking back to the group when he ran off into a store. Another girl and I waited for him, but he went out another exit and got back in time for the picture.

apparently stories about our group have been carried on at least 8 newspaper.

in the mountains above Bursa...

every three or four students in the program are assigned a Turkish buddy: a college student who we're supposed to talk and hang out with. Today my buddy took us up to Tophane, the oldest part of Bursa, dating to the times of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman Empire. We had a good time, looking at the tombs of the earlier Ottoman emperors and afterwards sitting at a cafe with a beautiful view of all of Bursa. As we were descending back towards the more modern part of the city, however, we ran across this.

apparently we're famous

After classes today I went with a couple classmates to the cell phone store so they could put more minutes on their phones. After several slightly confused minutes of, we were ready to leave when the owner of the store came down the stairs, introduced himself to us and invited us to go up to his office to chat. With no reason not to, we followed him and up the stairs and talked to us for twenty minutes over Nescafe about his travels in the US, our experiences in Turkey, where to get the best kokorec in Bursa and the island of Malta (he had lived there for four years). About halfway into conservation it came out why he was so curious about the young Americans who had walked into his store: apparently there had an article in the local newspaper about us in the last week, explaining who we were, why were here and describing our trip last week to the mall, which by the way was one of the nicest I had ever scene.

Greetings from Bursa

I arrived in Bursa on Monday, moved in with my host family and started classes. The first couple day of classes have been a little slow, but they're starting to pick up. I really like the family: Ismail and Saadet, who are in their sixties, and their two children, who are in their twenties, Egemen and Ceyren. I'll write a more extensive post about my experiences soon.

second full day at Yeditepe

We've commenced the tourist portion of the orientation. Last night they took us to a restaurant in Taksim called Sultana's, which was certainly an interesting experience. Advertising itself as "1001 Nights Restaurant" (in English of course), the restaurant was styled to supposedly resemble a Sutlan's Harem and featured "traditional" music and dancers.Turks really didn't seem to hang around there, which the restaurant helpfully indicated by placing two flags at each table: the Turkish crossed with the national flag of the guests sitting there. I wasn't sure if this was to welcome the guests or indicate to the service what language they spoke. We seemed to be sitting next to younger members of the Saudi Royal family and a glance around the room indicated guests from Iran, Britain, Canada, Lebanon, India, Sweden and Egypt. The first act was a band, playing what I assumed to be traditional Turkish music, followed by a bellydancer, who looked like she moonlighted as a stripper, then some folk dancers. They had some more acts, composed mostly of the same people, but I stopped paying attention. I was feeling a little sick from the long, hot bus ride, so I didn't eat much of the food, but it was what I have learned is the traditional tourist meal in Turkey: a plate of meze, then kebap and pilav. It is still unclear why the Turkish coordinator of the program wanted to take us here. When asked she said that Turks will take their guests out to this kind of place, but someone else suggested a far more likely answer: she has family who either owns it or works there.

Today we had an arduous, but fun day of touring around the European side of Istanbul. First, we did a bus, then a boat tour up and down the Bosphorous, which was quite beautiful. The boat dropped us off in Eminonu, and we had lunch at another place that again catered solely to tourists (the drink menu was in French, Spanish, Italian and German) and I was able to eat the meal that I couldn't eat last night. From there, we went to the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and Topkapi palace (they all happen to be right next to each other). After spending two days in a bizarrely modern university, it was nice to see the historic parts of Istanbul.

Tomorrow, we're going to the American consulate for a briefing, then more touring and finally we travel to Bursa to meet our host families.

Istanbul!

We arrived in Istanbul yesterday, after many hours of travel: 7 hours from Dulles to Frankfurt and then 2 and a half to Istanbul. Lufthansa is by far a better airline than United. Or at least more fun. We are currently staying at Yeditepe University on the Asian side of Istanbul and will be leaving Monday for Bursa to join our host families. We've been doing orientation activities and will have a tour of the city tomorrow. The tour should be more fun than orientation stuff; we've had three days so far, and there hasn't been much new since the first. Tonight we're going to some sort of restaurant that has traditional dancing. One of the coordinators said these few days will be last time we'll be doing such touristy stuff.

Staying at the University is interesting, though a disconcerting way to enter in to Turkey. It seems to be at a far corner of the city and the campus is bordered on one side by tree covered hills (complete with a large picture of Ataturk, facing the campus) and on the other by neighborhoods. The campus itself is pretty nice. It's only ten years old and is apparently built, as I learned this morning, based on the Seljuk style. It's on the side of a hill and so a walk from one end of the other, requires several steep inclines. There's lots of nice greenery, but the buildings are a little odd. They have this sort of cold, impersonal monumental vibe, like something out of the Soviet Union. This may be due, however, to the fact that I haven't spent time anywhere else in Turkey and the coldness of the buildings is rather just my own unfamiliarity. I'm definitely looking forward to the home stay and am glad I'm not spending the summer here.

I was able to get off campus twice yesterday. Once to get food (my first time using Turkish in a real life situation!) and the second just to wander around. That was quite the experience. The streets are all very narrow, with three or four story appartments and lots of children running around. I had never seen anything remotely like it in my life. One of the people I was with said it resembled Portugal or Spain. We'll see our outing tonight goes.