In this damp air is a Saturday morning

I woke late to the sound of falling rain.  It's cold in Istanbul, not a harassing cold, but that nostalgic cold that reminds us of the good parts about winter.  It was perfect weather to sit inside and drink coffee.
Last night was a rock concert put on by students from the school, I showed up at the 'Numb' rock bard around six PM to be greeted by many familiar faces urging me to play some music, right then, on stage.  I was trembling, but I managed to mangle a few rock songs on an acoustic guitar with the support of a bassist and drummer.  Then, to my great relief, the students took the stage!  I was expecting much the usual Turkish rock songs I hear at live recitals, but this band was playing Guns and Roses and Metallica songs!  The singer had phonetically memorized the songs and had watched enough live performances on video to know some of Axle's knee bends and thrusts and other poses.  It was fantastic watching these kids rock, and they had put lots of practice into this event, it seemed a shame they were only playing for thirty people.  But that just made me more nostalgic over the olden days of helping the "Beat Officers" with their shows back in Sacramento.  Those venues no one seemed to care about, and those long pauses between acts setting up where the cigarette smoke and sweat overrides everything in the room.
The hours the group played at were not ideal hours for the Taksim nightlife, they played until about 9pm, but it was perfect for me and my habit of rising early.
The afternoon is just spreading out and traffic sounds make a steady din outside my open window, the damp air brings in rich earthy smells along with the smell of soaked dogs and cats who shelter behind the apartment building.  I just hope my sheets can dry on the line in this air.

Vibrant Walk Home

Here are two pictures from yesterday's walk home, the flowers were blooming here for the first time this year.

Morning Hikes Are the Best

When I'm out walking in the morning for the most part I am sharing the sidewalks with three kinds of people, children waiting for the minibuses to take them to school, young professionals who don't have cars, and these really great old Istanbul men. These guys are great, they usually wear three piece suits that match in a peculiar, grandfatherly way, and they all have bushy mustaches. They stroll the sidewalks in the morning, greeting eachother, buying newspapers and bread, or simply walking along quietly, clicking prayer beads between their fingers or jabbing a thumb at a cellphone. They are one of those first indicators that say to me every morning, "You're in another part of the world! This isn't America!"

Of course I know I'm not in America when I wake up, but those little reminders, like the call to prayer before I hop in the shower every morning, really make this experience exciting. If people, streets, buildings, and trees are all you see composing a place, you've been in the same place too long.

Everyone go read these dispatches from Azerbaijan and Afghanistan written by Ben Barrows, an old friend of one of the uKnow ladies who I had the pleasure of meeting when he came to Istanbul for vacation.

Four Cats

Four cats hanging out on the porch. The cats here always regard me cooly, as if expecting me to make a show of what I can do for them before they consent to letting my onto their "turf."

After the Weekend

Here's the music site Apo showed to me: http://muzik.turksitesi.com/index.html On the pull-down menu, under "Yerli," is all the Kurdish music, give it a try.

We are having some good nostalgia weather. After a few hot weeks it has suddenly become cool and cloudy in the mornings, never warming up completely. This is due to a wind shift, a North wind is hitting us instead of the friendly Southern one. So you can wear a sweater and reminisce about how great winter was, now comfortably in the past. We'll be back to a blazing summer soon.

Another Kilt Saturday

Today was another fun kilt excursion, the amount of attention an article of clothing can draw is ridiculous, passing a school, a pack of girls leaning from third story windows cheered me and snapped pictures with their phone cameras. Most people just point and talk excitedly to anyone close at hand, makes me feel like a star. The fellows at Funky Cafe got a big kick out of my attire when I dropped by today to bask in air conditioning and free meals. Here are some pictures from my walk around the neighborhood as we go full tilt into summer.


This is widely believed to be the loudest mosque in Istanbul.



Tonight was a big one for Istanbul, Fenerbaçe versus Galatasaray playing in the Fenerbaçe stadium on the Anatolia side. It wasn't even close, 4 to nothing. (unless there was more scoring in the last minute, I left to beat the crowd heading out) And the boys in blue and yellow pull ahead in the division and Galatasaray fans get to find a rock to hide under. The first twenty minutes of the match saw two goals for Fenerbaçhe and the rest of the first half was defensive play, a third goal at the beginning of the second half and things were pretty well sealed. The last ten minutes were spent kicking the ball around while the crowd chanted, then when Galatasaray got too aggressive at one point, they whipped around and got goal four.

It's hard to cheer for either team when there doesn't seem to be any contest. I just hope next time they play there is at least the semblance of competition. Watching that match I think I'm back to having no team to cheer. "What about Fenerbaçe?" Well, rooting for them is like rooting for the Yankees in baseball or Red Wings in Hockey, but if things continue like this...

Just Go With The Flow, Slow Days Mark Summer

With another set of finals finished Monday this week has been mind-achingly slow, yet as the hours drag the days evaporate in the growing summer heat.  I suppose this doesn't make much sense since I spend most my days two stories underground, but it sounded good.  More poignantly, this week has been dominated by a lack of activity.  There has been no follow up to the bombing earlier this week, not even a claim of responsibility.
Apo has found a website with radio featuring Turkish and Kurdish music.  He played a wedding dance song for me, really fast and wild music.  We'll see what excitement the weekend brings.  There are no plans right now, but in Istanbul that changes very quickly.

Oh Won't You Take Me to, Funky Town!

Google Earth Locations for this Misadventure 

Last night Cumhur took me out to Taksim with a friend of his.  I thought I had my fill of crazy drivers in taxies, but last night was another experience all together.  We went from steep climbs on one way streets to four lane sprawls with busses angrily cutting off taxies and men pulling hand carts of trash much larger than themselves.  We were driving up one of the main lanes leading to Taksim Square when a friend who came along with us asked me, "Do you know this street?"  Yes, I did, it leads to Taksim Square, the AKM was right ahead.  He just laughed, "No no, this is where all the transvestites in Istanbul are.  You be careful here."

The plan for the evening was to hear some Spanish guitar at the Rio Brave restaurant and bar.  The place is all wood paneled with a real Godfather / mafioso feeling.  And in every free corner and space on the walls a piece of American pop culture could be found.  Most of it seemed to be from mid seventies and back, large pictures of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, and older things like vintage adds for coca-cola and colt pistols.  We sat next to that famous photograph of Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley shaking hands.

Taksim is under reconstruction after the first go at it, apparently the governing body did not like how the first renovation turned out, so the heavy equipment is back in action!  The road we drove up to parking garage was all broken apart and everywhere crews were creeping along the broken paths, laying mortar and bricks, or raking asphalt.  At least the main pedestrian street in Taksim is finished.  The first time I went there it was a mud-slick.

Weekend is Over

What a weekend, Sunday I went out with Ozan to try to find spices for cooking some traditional Iraqi treats.  I found the recipe Is Something Burning?!  Thanks River!  The impossible item was dates and perhaps this is the wrong time of year to try to find them in Istanbul.  I substituted dried figs and it turned out great.  I recommend the recipe for anyone looking for some goodies that aren't just lumps of sugar.

It's hot!  This is really something, summer is on the doorstep.  People outdoors at cafes seek out the shaded spots and the plazas and streets are teeming with color.  Yesterday was also a match day for Galatasaray, people were out in jerseys, some walked along beating drums and singing and everywhere street vendors are selling apparel in team colors.

There was also another explosion in Istanbul, thankfully no one was killed.  It occured in Bakırköy, a district along the Sea of Marmara about half way between the old city wall and the airport.  The Story on BBC

Sultanahmet in a Kilt

(Apologies for some larger pictures today, I hope this isn't causing loading problems for anyone. If it is, let me know! Today's locations can also be found using Google Earth, Follow the Misadventures like never before!)

It was a day to shine, the visitors had seen the big mosques and palaces Friday, but today was the visit to the archeology museum, my favorites spot in all of Sultanahmet. (1, 2, 3) Today was going to be different, every time I have wanted to go to Sultanahmet I have simply walked to the corner, called a taxi and paid between 8 and 10 lira to go to the front of Tokapi palace. Today I was taking an incredibly round-about way, scouted out on Google Earth, to completely avoid any tourist predators. Today I was also wearing a kilt.

First I walked through the seaside Beshiktash market, things have changed in the spring, and many stores have moved a bit out onto the sidewalks, even though it was still midmorning when I passed through the market, the sun was coming on strong and it promised to be a warm day. Several streets wind through the market, branching and turning in a very organic way. I wonder why cars even try driving through, the traffic crawls bumper to bumper, down narrow, one way brick streets. Everyone on foot moves faster than the cars.

A rusting foot bridge draped with "Welcome to Istanbul" banners crosses over the busy street running along the Bosphorus, as I crossed over the top I caught the first hint of salt in the air. To me the sea here is not very salty, in places like California, or even Cyprus I could smell the ocean salts very strongly, maybe it is the pollution in Istanbul that keeps it from my notice. Across the footbridge and down past the Naval Museum is the Beshiktash ferry terminal. Ferries in Istanbul are always packed, so many people use them to commute because they are quicker and more reliable than buses, when getting from the Europe side to the Anatolia side is concerned.


This is the ferry I rode to Kadıköy, only two levels, unlike the second one from Kadıköy to Eminönü. But all ferries have refreshment bars where tea and toast can be ordered as well as soft drinks and chocolate candy.


Looking up and down the Bosphorus you will always see freighters like this one, it's a non-stop display of global commerce, reading the boats you see names written in Cyrillic, Chinese, even Arabic and Persian!

After the second ferry I was in Eminönü, crowded port and anyone who even remotely looked like a tourist was already being sucked up the streets into the sprawl of tourist shops that lie around the gems of Istanbul. This is where I crossed my fingers and hoped I wasn't just walking into more, down the busy road that runs next to the water things were looking good. The only other folks I saw seemed to be the gentle folk out enjoying a stroll next to the ocean on a Saturday afternoon.


As I neared the entrance to the palace grounds I crossed the street, now on the land side instead of seaside, and right over the wall I could see I was next to the train yard for the system of trams the run around the Southern blob of Istanbul West. Spring is in full tilt and beautiful vibrant greens were all over the place, shoots of grass coming up through the gravel and moss on all the rocks. What Istanbul's public transportation lacks in boggling complexity and flat screen televisions it more than makes up for with pleasant serenity and a deep sense of civility.


Then it was across the bridge into the palace gardens, I did what I had thought impossible! I was inside the Palace grounds and no one had tried to sell me a plastic bowl or called me "brother" all morning! And it was spring, the gardens were in full bloom. At that hour the pace of visitors had yet not picked up and for the most part I was getting waves and hoots from workers engaged in maintenance on sprinkler systems and washing down the inner walls. (Kilt, remember) The gardens are filled with all colors of flowers, tulips and others I don't know the name of, traffic noise seems not to penetrate the gardens and as I walked along, all I heard were the songs of birds in the overhead branches.




The ladies had arrived and we turned our sites on the museum. The Istanbul Archeology Museum is actually two museums behind one gate, the smaller one is of truly ancient artifacts, including Sumerian tablets and statues of Egyptian gods. It has reliefs from the gates of Babylon and a pair of tweezers over 2500 years old. Though it is smaller than the classical museum, I find this museum more thought provoking. It contains artifacts that are on the dawn of remembered civilization, where people were first being driven to write their thoughts and pass this on to future generations.


The courtyard between the two museums is just stunning, it's filled with statues and sarcophaguses and pillars, like these pieces weren't good enough for the museum so they are left around outside to wet your appetite for what lies behind the doors. The larger museum was apparently designed by a German Architect and it screams, "Brandenburg Gate." Father down the courtyard is a mosque with the façade done in beautiful blue and white tiles. I have a great love of showing things to people and talking at length about them. Having pieces of history, beautiful and perfect, preserved in carved marble gives a sense of majesty and mystique to the ancient world. For instance, seeing what kind of world Alexander the Great conquered gives his life a whole new meaning. It simply can not be compared to conquests of today in impact, both for conquered and conquerer.


This statue of Cornelia Antonia is the most beautiful piece of sculpted marble I have ever seen. The sculptor uses the natural lines in the marble to give the impression of fabric folds underneath her shawl. It really looks as though she was sculpted nude and then dressed in layers. I will skip blasting you with more photos of the museum pieces as they wouldn't have changed much from those in previous posts. (1, 2, 3)

Tonight many conversations over Turkish dinner tables probably began with, "You'll never guess what I saw some guy wearing today." Inside the museum and everywhere I went people reacted enthusiastically to the kilt, with lots of pointing and, "Scott! Scott!". The fun had a few memorable highlights; inside the museum in one of the lower levels that displayed artifacts from surrounding regions, we found ourselves sharing the hall with two young girls who had apparently been separated from the large school-group that had been rampaging through the halls. The girls burst into fits of giggling seeing my kilt and began to film me discreetly as they could with their digital cameras. As we left the museum a group of Italians came up and asked if it was true that nothing is worn under a kilt. The Italian man was so excited and his family thought it was just hysterical that I was wearing a kilt in an Istanbul museum. And then outside the museum some students boldly asked me to pose for some photos!

We dropped by a nearby cafe called the Green Corner for lunch, prices were reasonable and we were right next to Hagia Sophia, little can beat that, kuzu shish and ayran for me! The ladies and I parted ways with the visitors and returned the way I came. Afternoon sun on the top deck, we were happy kids. This was just how Saturdays should go.

Last Night's Dinner

Taksim is the place all the tourists in Istanbul go to see after Sultanahmet.  It's also the place where the better part if Istanbul's night life can be found.  From the Taksim square, which is a huge roundabout merged with a bus stop, one can either go to a variety of towering hotels, the AKM (Ataturk Cultural Center), or down the packed main commercial street.  The crowds are serious here, most of the time you're caught in a quickly moving throng and the busy times you're packed in like sardines.
The street reconstruction has finished, at least for the time being, and with the warmer weather has come street performers.  When a band begins a well known song everyone who knows it joins in signing.  While we ate dinner, the table next to us was being serenaded and the patrons were all singing along, meals nearly forgotten as they sang tune after tune.
The place where we ate is this famous collection of restaurants that are in all tourist picture of Istanbul.  It's a covered concourse made to appear to be a narrow alleyway between elegant old buildings.  The chandeliers are filled with flowers and as you walk in waiters try to seat you, promising you the very best prices you'll find anywhere.  Perhaps I do not have the most discriminating palate, and I stand by the phrase, "Hunger is the best spice." But the actual quality of food seemed the same as any home-style Turkish restaurant.  And considering the location and fun atmosphere, the prices were not nearly as inflated as what could be attempted.  It may change as tourist season picks up, but we were also the only noticeably (at least to me) foreign diners in the concourse.
I appreciate any restaurants with a strong local presence, and that's probably the best way to judge the food quality to price ratio in Istanbul.  So if a place is charging twenty lira a plate and you don't see a single Turkish word on the menu...  you might do well to try next door.

The ladies have been entertaining guests non-stop it seems, but this new group is the first I've interacted with for a few months.  Having people looking around with wide eyes reminds me that I am really someplace different.  When I first came to Istanbul things seemed so alien even crossing the street was an experience.  When I arrived my first stop after the airport was a restaurant in Taksim, I still remember the feeling of total senory overload, looking around at how everything was different, my brain struggling to get oriented within the environment.  Now I'm caught wondering at people's reactions a moment while I say to myself, "But that's the way things are..."
This Saturday we will visit the archeology museum in Sultanahmet.  I'm looking forward to the changes spring will bring.

Out In Taksim, Kitten on the Sidewalk

I had an amazing moment today, before dinner I popped into a now well known rug and china merchant to pick up a gift for visiting family. The owner wasn't there at first so I sat and chattered with two of the workers, a Turkish man and a Tunisian woman in a mix of French Turkish and English, it was this wild multilingual mash. It was so much fun, and very exhilarating to speak French again.

On my way home I found somehting... Now what am I supposed to do with this little one?


She's outside my window now, after a walk home and a saucer of milk we pretended it was going to last forever. Listening to her cry puts a damper on the evening, but the nights are warm enough to sleep exposed and I moved her from the street to the heart of a cat loving neighborhood. But still those tiny cries...

More about dinner in Taksim tomorrow, it's past my bedtime.

Monday Afternoon, Kicking it in Funky Cafe

Good afternoon from the country where if you call someone a "peach" you might get hit. Every morning small bread treats called poğça (Poe-cha) are brought from a local bakery. These are either plain (sade) or filled with little bits of olives, or spicy potato, olives, or cheese. The owner of the bakery sometimes makes the deliveries. I always enjoy seeing him, not only does he speak English perfectly but as a result of living in Brooklyn for 10 years or so, he speaks in rapid fire with a very heavy accent. It's like having back a bit of off-the-textbook America; after months of being at a school of people wondering what America must be like I've begun to forget.
The weather has cleared up just in time for me to spend a week indoors, but with the weekend's rain and more showers predicted we are in for a lush summer. Today the students are holding a Play Station 2 tournament in the cafe. I'm sure video games are popular among youth everywhere there is electricity.

April Showers Bring Poor Drivers

The good weather took a holiday today and the streets are full of rushing water. Walking up the hill this morning I brought hat, gloves, and a jacket, but half way to the top I found myself wishing for a scarf. When it rains or snow or the weather behaves in any unpredictable fashion the common sense of Istanbul's drivers takes a plunge into the abyss. Drivers will take roundabouts backwards to try to save time and all sorts of egregious driving errors become commonplace.
Walking up this morning I saw someone attempt to pass another car climbing the hill, obviously fed up with the other car's slow progress. But approaching the top of the hill the second car found itself face to face with three on-comers. What does a frustrated Istanbul driver do at this point? He pulls farther to the left and tries to drive around the three cars and still pass the first. Wow, I'm just glad there wasn't a collision. Not all are as lucky as me though, listening to an ambulance's sirens screech over honking traffic, motionless for five minutes, makes me hope whoever is in charge of traffic planning will consider widening roads to add emergency lanes.
Other than the chaotic conditions and din of honking the Saturday is perfectly normal, and even growing warmer as the afternoon deepens. Funky Cafe is vigilantly staffed by Gokçe and Apo and the flower lady greets all passersby warmly, her bouquets protected from the elements by sheets of cellophane. Tomorrow the sun is supposed to make a strong showing and the great throngs of humanity should be milling down the sidewalks again.

Wrapping Up The First Week Of April

Here we are, it's Friday and the first work week of April is coming to a close. Jackets came off this week and the summer styles are beginning to show. The ladies of uKnow are waiting anxiously to take leads from the locals as to restrictions on spring fashion. Because my day is spent in air conditioning and I walk around the city only in the early morning and evening I'm still wearing sweaters. Though in another week or two I'm sure they will be stifling.

Because it's a Friday the school seems half-empty, more students skipping or leaving as soon as they can justify it to their parents. The school year in Turkey is constructed differently than in America. Different holidays are observed by the majority of the population but also, while the school year in America starts out with a long block of continuous instruction then breaks into smaller periods interspersed with breaks before finally letting out for summer, the Turkish school year does just the opposite. The breaks all come at the beginning of the year and after winter break (which comes in January instead of December) instruction is continuous until school breaks in June.

Good Weather, Counterfeit Coins

Spring is in full tilt, the sky is bright blue and now there are blossoming trees like this one everywhere.


The Turkish Lira, like most currency has it's admirers who wish to flatter in the sincerest form. Counterfeit ten lira bills are the most common, the bill is obviously fake upon close examination but since tens are usually not scrutinized very closely, many are circulated. There are larger bills produced in counterfeit, though these are caught more quickly because of the intense scrutiny with which they are met.
But counterfeiting has a more humorous side, somewhere someone is producing counterfeit one Lira and 50 Kurush coins! Coins!! They aren't worth all that much really, the workers at the ferry and other places that deal with lots of small change spot them instantly and toss them back to you. One Lira can buy you a local newspaper or a couple bottles of water, nothing you're going to get change for say, covering the cost of minting coins. Maybe someone is just doing it for laughs.

Reactions and Analysis

I finally ran into a friend of mine I have been meaning to ask about the protests and rioting. Ozan is an international relations student in Ankara and happily shared his thoughts on the tension with the Kurds in Turkey.
First he reminded me that this was not a new thing, the Kurdish Workers Party (PARTİYA KARKERA KURDİSTAN or PKK) has been active sine 1984 and more than 30,000 people have died as a result of this conflict.

Turkey's constitution has special rights for minority ethnic groups that the Kurds wish to have applied to them along with a federal state of Kurdistan in Southeast Turkey. Turkey refuses the first because it does not count Kurds as a minority, they are the majority in Southeast Turkey. Those opposed to applying the special rights claim the Kurds are seeking to pick and chose through the constitution to abuse the laws.

The second is refused because the Republic of Turkey wishes to remain unified rather than divide by ethnic groupings. They feel dividing populations ethnically and erecting walls runs contrary to democracy, though many see the prolonged struggle as a sign that democracy is failing in Turkey. There is also the strong possibility that if attacks like the ones seen from separatist groups continue Turkey will respond militarily, the normal police would not be able to investigate and make arrests in an autonomous Kurdish state.

The renewed conflict and recent rioting has caused more pressure on Turkey over joining the European Union and it seems the Prime Minister may be up for granting extra rights to allow Turkey to enter the Union as a whole entity.
BBC Story Here

More Violence In Istanbul

The Story on BBC

Three dead and police are out in force. But nothing else seems different, at least in my district of the city. Most people don't seem to know about the rioting, or aren't readily expressing their opinions with me. I'll ask around and get people's reactions.

Update:
Cumhur tells me there was also rioting in Okmeydanı, a district adjacent to Mecidiyeköy and Şişli.

I still haven't gotten anyone's opinion on the situation. Even though I'm at a school that teaches English, my Turkish really should be better after 4 and a half months in country. I will keep asking people what they think, one of the workers at the cafe is Kurdish I believe, he might have a few insights if I can break the communication barrier.

Waking Up To The Nescafe

The light has a different quality, more yellow it seems. As I walked up the hill this morning I admired the concrete skeletons rising over Şişli, they didn't appear so mottled and decayed in the April sun. In a few months I'm sure they will be glazed with windows and filled with people in suits. Even if work moves at a halting pace or seems neglected for months at a time, Istanbul still has a very strong feeling of building. Everywhere new apartment buildings are under construction and you can't help but imagine the junk men who haul away hand carts full of pipes, bricks, and discarded appliances are building something out of them.
April brings some other changes as well, the super boots worn by Turkish women are all but gone, one of the students who always wore stiletto heeled boots seems a full three inches shorter, I didn't recognize her until she was right in my face and rapidly greeting me. Apo tells me he's very tired today, he had been up all night talking on the phone with his new girlfriend! Hooray Apo, let's just hope you don't start neglecting your English lessons. I'm now joking around with Apo and Gokçe in our gibbering blend of Turkish and English.

Pomegranate Sunday

Down the main street from me there is a whole bock that seems to have been turned into a covered markets. Canvas is suspended from steel cables overhead and the narrow streets are closed (at least in a de facto sense) to automobile traffic. Simit vendors and others with carts of merchandise pull up at the fringe of the crowd, adding a new layer to the scene. Everything seemed centered around a more permanent market that I had mistook in colder months to be a half-built parking structure. People admired antiques under strings of electrical lights, vendors there dealt in more substantial purchases it seemed, furniture and the like, while outside it seemed all the street vendors in Istanbul had converged and clustered in the one spot. Scarves and shirts, screwdrivers and sunglasses, it was a visual feast.
Street merchants are a funny thing in Istanbul, I am not really sure how legit they are. Some merchants are selling shoes out of a car trunk, books and jewelry from a suitcase, or just walking along with a dozen belts over one arm calling out, "Italian leather, five lira!"
Along with the Sunday cleaning and lying around I usually cook and try a few new things from the store. Along with my chick peas and rice I had a variety of drinks to sample. A week ago large, glass bottles of Pomegranate juice for very cheep began showing up at the market. I also bought one along with what appeared to be a can of pomegranate soda. The soda was a very strange experience, when I cracked it open it bubbled greyishly at me, like a can of Milwaukee's Best. I took a sip, Pomegranate alright! So I sipped and sopped and then I stopped, there was another flavor, malted barley I was sure of it. So I checked the ingredients and sure enough, malt something-or-other. But the can didn't seem to list an alcohol content and my Turkish is too limited to tell if there was only malt flavoring (for god knows what reason) or if I was drinking girl beer. Either way, the real pomegranate juice wins the taste test and the other will have to accept it's place on the shelf.
Staying home is always punctuated by the screaming neighborhood children kicking a ball around behind the apartment building. It's flat and level concrete, however it's also horribly narrow and many kicks send the ball bouncing off the bars over my window. It's not very nice of me, but sometimes I wish they would go play in the street...

Saturday Update

By the time I was walking off the Beshiktash campus to find a Taxi the sun was shining in a bright blue sky. There is a busy divided street that runs in front of the ferries. It's prized space for storefronts I'm sure because mobs of people always clump there waiting for busses or just going about their business in the large Beshiktash market. This makes it a horrible place to catch a taxi; at least five other people had the same idea as me and I ended up walking towards home keeping an eye out for one. But the walk was wonderful, Beshiktash has really turned into a fun place to be, a bit of salt in the air and bright sun.

I eventually caught a taxi and returned to Mecidiyeköy, dropped by the Funky Cafe to say hi, and walked home. The day was so perfect I sat outside and played guitar where I began to take more notice of the foliage. I can already tell Istanbul is going to become very humid in the summer, it's so lush and has many plants that I have only seen in the United States midwest. Ones that look like miniature bamboo shoots that stick to your pant legs and other funny burrs of all shapes.

Because I don't speak Turkish well enough, news by word of mouth rarely reaches me and I hadn't checked the RSS feeds in a bit so I just found out about yesterday's big event.

It's strange having a car bomb explode in a city where I am living. I'm not really sure what to feel, I guess that means I'm shocked. For anyone worried, it exploded about as far away from me as it could and still be in Istanbul. I live in the very North bit of Istanbul, Kocamustafapasha is very far South.

I hear a lot of racist remarks against Kurds and I'm sure this event won't help anyone breath easier. Just today someone was telling me he could tell just by someone's face if they were a criminal, "if they looked Kurdish." Similar to how people who do not come from the large cities are thought of as idiot peasants. I do not know very much about the history of Kurds in Turkey, so I'm going to avoid any conjectures and go research this for myself.

My sympathies go out to all hurt in this conflict and to their families, Kurds and Turks.

Watching The Freighters Pass By

I've been watching the scene of the Bosporus underneath blanketing overcast skies. People stroll along the quays and large vessels of all sizes ply the waters. Behind the Beshiktash campus of Bacheshehir University are a few cherry trees blooming next to the docks and passenger boats that had moored for the winter now ferry about throngs out to enjoy the weather. It's Saturday and more people have free time, I'm spending mine sitting in the Akademi Cafe, and many groups of friends and couples are out enjoying lunches next to the water, or walking past swinging shopping bags.


And here is my istikan, my chai cup. Tea is made differently in Turkey than America, and I don't just mean using lose leaf as opposed to bags. Tea is made in large electrically heated pots filled with water containing a smaller chamber for tea leaves held in a cylindrical filter. This keeps the tea near boiling and makes for a very dark, concentrated tea. On the front of the tea cooker are two taps, water and tea concentrate. You mix to your liking, some people ask for their tea to be açik, or light, and others specify they want theirs to be siyah, black. I prefer mine a bit on the light side with two sugar cubes

As we approach noon (remember noon actually comes at 1 pm during daylight savings time) the sky is growing lighter and the clouds are drawing back. With a bit of luck we'll be sunbathing in an hour or two.

Bright April Days, The Cats Love Their Play

This is it, April. Istanbul seems like a different place than when I arrived in the last days of November. The mood of the entire city has changed and the whole lifestyle has shifted to embracing the outdoors. It seemed dingy in the winter, but now that patios are swept and washed with restaurants serving more people outdoors than in, the city has a buzz and bustle entirely new to me.
To kick things off right here are a couple cat photos from my afternoon walk.





And here is an interesting one; it's an istikan, or glass tea cup. They are bulb shaped with the top flaring out, the bottom is flattened for them to sit in the saucers that always accompany them. This istikan is now a strange environment for many small forms of life.



April also brings a new look to the blog, enjoy!