My Fish Adventure

Approximately two weeks ago, I decided to go on a little adventure to find fish to cook at home. I figured Istanbul would be a great place to go hunt for fresh fish as it is right on the meeting point of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. I figured...there has to be good seafood here!

So I embark upon my mission at about 3:45pm thinking that it won't take that long to find what I am looking for. I get the bus to Sariyer, a section of Istanbul to the north of Rümelhisarüstü. The bus travels through Levent and Maslak and finally arrives in Sariyer. I didn't actually realize how far away Sariyer was. It is on the northern part of the Bosphorus where the Bosphorus begins to widen as it meets the Black Sea. The section is located about two-thirds of the way up the straight. Consequently, the trip actually took me about an hour to get there. The weather was also not good, as it was raining (just like it seems to do every day here in Istanbul).

I finally get off the bus to realize that I had taken the bus a little too far and had to walk about 10-15 minutes to get back to the harbor. The harbor itself was really pretty (even in the gray of the rain). Because Sariyer is located on the northern part of Istanbul, it is a lot less developed allowing one to see what the landscape of this area would actually look like naturally. It is much greener and reminded me of one of those old European forests that one reads about in the medieval times in Europe.

I finally get to the harbor and walk around a bit to find this fish market that Umut told me about. I finally find two lone fish stands. The prices weren't actually that good and there wasn't a huge variety. I decided that Sariyer did not quite have what I was looking for. An hour bus ride and I came up empty-handed. Oh well. It's okay because it gets me out of the house and I find I am much more productive in completing my readings for class when I am on the bus. Perhaps its because I am away from the computer and no one speaks English...so there is no one to distract me. So the trip was at least productive in other ways.

I had invested so much time in this trip that I was determined to get my seafood! I decided to take the bus from Sariyer to Beşkitaş, where I knew of another fish market from my roommate. That bus ride took me about an hour and a half (Beşkitaş is to the south of my neighborhood). When I finally arrive, I find the fish market after a little bit of walking. There were 4-5 sellers with a huge complement of seafood. I was in the right place.

I spent quite a bit of time walking around and comparing prices before I decided on which fish dealer to buy from. I was amazed at the large selection of fish I could choose! They had everything from mackeral to sea bass to salmon to octopus to calamarie. There was even a lobster! Unfortunately, I didn't recognize many of the fish they were selling because they were foreign and the names were only in Turkish. I took out a notepad wrote down all of the Turkish names with the intention of looking them up in the dictionary later. I decided to play it safe and go with what I recognized. I bought 1 kilogram of solmon (salmon) and 1 kilogram of levrek (seabass). This came to 30 Lira (18 for the salmon and 12 for the seabass). I didn't realize that this would sustain me for a week and a half (I always forget that a kilo is almost twice a pound).

On the way back to the bus from my fishing adventure, I hear a Turkish couple behind me speaking English. My ears instantly perk up. They are discussing something about the computer game Age of Empires. At one point, I laughed at what they said and then we got into a brief conversation about where I was from why I was in Turkey--a very light conversation. At the end, the guy gave me his email address and told me to email him. I am a little unsure about it because it seems crazy to me for someone to give out their email to a complete stranger they meet on the street. I still have the address, but I haven't emailed him yet. Maybe I should. I then got on the bus and returned home with my fish. That night I had salmon seasoned with pepper, lemon, and minced garlic. I also steamed some broccoli and sauteed some mushrooms with it. It was quite delicious! Mission complete!

A Night on the Boğaziçi (Bosphorus)!

So I am going to post a couple more "catch up posts" highlighting major fun things that I have done before I come to the current situation.

I want to recount a lovely evening out on March 5th. It was Kristiana's last night and Umut decided to show us one of his special places along the Bosphorus. We got into a taxi and took a short ride down the hill to the straight. The place required a reservation the day before, so I knew it had to be good!

We went inside and I was instantly impressed! It was a restaurant associated with Istanbul University and usually reserved for professors and affiliates of the school. I am not sure how Umut was able to get in, but I was happy nonetheless. We walked over to our table, which was covered in a white tablecloth and contained candles. Livia, Umut, Kristiana and myself sat down to a gorgeous view overlooking both the Bosphorus and the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge (the 2nd of the two bridges in Istanbul). The restaurant jutted out into the Bosphorus (Boğaziçi) strait.

We took drink orders and I decided it was time to try a new type of Turkish cuisine -Yeni Raki. For those of you who do not know, raki is the Turkish national drink. It's very similar to the Greek drink ouzo. The drink is clear until you mix it with water (as is traditionally done) to make a milky drink. The drink itself also tastes very similar to ouzo--a strong licorice taste. I decided that I did not like it very much, but still finished my drink throughout dinner.

We then had a salad shared by everyone. The salad was pretty similar to a salad you might find in the US. It had all sorts of greenery and whatnot. I can't say that I paid too close attention to the salad as I am not a big salad fan. I took some lettuce and then passed it on.

Dinner itself was really fantastic. I ordered an assortment of different types of meat with french fries on the side (French fries are a little bit higher class here and are even served in really nice restaurants). The meat consisted of two types of beef, two types of lamb, and chicken. It was just a small sampling of each, but was enough to fill me up. It was also served with some broccoli. Yum!

Following dinner, we decided that we wanted to have some dessert. Umut discussed with the waiter our dessert options and the restaurant provided us five types of dessert on the house! We had a type of fig, a type of pumpkin, and three other different types of dessert which escape me. I liked the pumpkin stuff the best (which is a cooked pumpkin in some kind of sweet sauce). I hope to learn how to prepare it before I come back to the states (our neighbor in our apartment sometimes prepares it and gives us a plate of her extra desserts).

The most surprising part of dinner was when we got the bill. For four people, including alcohol, salad, dinner, and dessert, the cost was only 99 Lira (or about 60 dollars)! What an incredible deal! Of course as in any city, you have to know where to look to find these kinds of places...but I was amazed by the location, quality of food, and overall bang for the buck if you will.

Following dinner, we walked a few feet down the road to a hookah bar to relax after a fulfilling meal. At the hookah place, which also overlooks the sea, we all shared a hookah. Umut and I played tavla (backgammon), which is the Turkish national game. As a young child, I used to play backgammon with some relatives. Umut and a few others have been surprised that I had heard of and played the game before. I thought I would do okay with my level of experience, but I have clearly underestimated how much Turkish people play this game! They play in sets of five and the first to win five games, wins. After Umut handily beat me my first week here, I have made it my personal mission to beat him before my time is finished here in Turkey. Unfortunately, the results of this evenings tavla game did not turn out in my favor (you can bet when I finally do beat him that the event will receive its own special post!). It started off well, I won the first three games! I was so happy...and then I lost the next five in a row to lose. Sigh...

The rest of the evening was spent conversing about different things, sitting by the Bosphorus, and enjoying hookah and çay. Overall a very classy and enjoyable evening.

Some Favorite Pictures so far!

The Digital Camera (Fotoğraf Makinesi) Adventure

I feel this story is so crazy that it deserves a post all on its own.

As you read in my previous post, my digital camera broke and I needed to get a new one. My roommate told me of this place called Media Markt. Their main advertisement is that if you find an electronic price for cheaper, they will match it and pay the difference. So I thought to myself...ok...the Walmart of electronics in Turkey. Sounds like the perfect place for me to find a digital camera. We log onto the website and of course it is all in Turkish. My roommate and I see an address in the bottom and we write it down. He knows sort of where it is but not quite. He tells me which Metrobus stop to get off of and then I'm off.

I started this trip at about 2:15pm. I get off at the bus stop and am not sure where to go. After not getting a response from someone who didn't speak English, I found a guy who could use hand signals and Turkish words I recognized to tell me where to go. It turns out that I got off two stops later than where I should have, so I get back on the bus and go back those two stops. At this point its about 3:15pm and I am clear on the other side of Istanbul.

I find a helpful person and he tells me that I need to go to the dolmuş stop and take a dolmuş to Güneşli (which means sunny in Turkish by the way). I get on the dolmuş and the traffic is absolutely horrendous! It takes me almost an hour to get where I needed to go (which was not that far). On the dolmuş the driver was listening to the radio and was looking for songs he liked. He settled on "Hollaback girl," which I thought was incredbly entertaining! So we finally get to where I need to go and its about a five minute walk (the driver shows me in which direction I should walk). When I get to the building, I ask where the Media Markt is and the receptionist tells me to go to the fourth floor. I ride the elevator up and enter the suite. Fully expecting a store, I see two receptionists. They ask to help me and I tell them I am looking for a camera. By this time its about 4:30 and I found out that my two-hour journey has lead me to their corporate office!

So at this point I had invested so much time, that I was determined to get a camera! I ask them how to get to the nearest store and they tell me the only way is by taxi and that it would cost me 30-35 lira. I don't think so... So I ask them for the location of the closest store to Rumelhisarüstü (my neighborhood) and they tell me the closest one is on the Asian side (the other side of the Bosphorus)! Keep in mind at this point, I had been traveling AWAY from the Bosphorus this entire time!

So the receptionist starts explaining to me how to get there and its too confusing/overwhelming for me. She then tells me that she is going in that direction in 30 minutes and offers for me to go with her. I gladly accept. Then, a co-worker of hers is leaving sooner and offers to take me with her. I get on the company shuttle and it is decided that the driver will take me directly to the store. How wonderful! On the ride over, I find out that this company provides transportation for their employees and gives them a daily stipend for lunch. I thought that was pretty neat.

The drive took over two hours because we left at around 5:30pm. The traffic was terrible. It was stop and go on the interstate. I will never complain about Atlanta traffic again! (Okay...so that's probably a lie...but it's definitely worse here). I finally got to the mall and got a camera. At this point, I was famished and craving American food, so I ate Sbarro (which was cheaper than the Sbarro in the mall back home). Yum!

Then, digital camera in hand, I traveled back to the apartment and got home at about 10:30pm (approx. 8 hours later). Wow!

My first month

I started classes on February 16th and really like them. I am taking some really interesting things:

Contemporary Political Economy of Turkey
Introduction to Turkish Politics
International Law
EU Relations with Russia and CIS Countries
Turkish for Foreigners

The culture of the classes is pretty interesting. I have come to the conclusion that all of my professors (except Int'l Law) operate on Turkish time. Dr. Yilmaz, my Turkish Politics professor, is the best example. Every class he averages between 15 and 20 minutes late. Then he lectures over! It's ridiculous. In Political Econ sometimes the students and professors will have exchanges in Turkish, which I find quite entertianing. Turkish is a much more animated language than English. They always use their hands and body language to show things.

The culture here is also quite different. For example, when two men who are good friends greet each other, they touch their cheeks to each side. When a Turkish guy who I had made friends with did it to me for the first time, it really caught me off guard. Also, my roommate's friend Altuğ was really nice to me when I hung out with them. However, when we came back home, I was tired and retired to my room and let Umut and Altuğ hang out together. I discovered from Umut the next day that he was insulted that I did not sit with him in my home. Apparently, it is customary to do that and considered an insult if you don't. I felt horrible! I didn't make the same mistake again though.

So far, I have only been to a few touristy places. Blue Mosque, Taksim Square, Ayasofia, Kuzu Kulesi, Galata Tower, Eminonü, etc. I have some wonderful pictures from them on facebook! I have eaten dinner at my Altuğ's parents house twice. Let me tell you...that was a very cool experience! His mom couldn't speak any English and his dad only knew a few words! It was so cool because I had an authentic, homemade Turkish meal! The meal consisted of salad, mackeral, bread, and a special type of soup. Also, the Turks are very hospitable. It puts "southern hospitality" to shame. When I had breakfast with them for the second time, the mother cracked hard boiled egg open for me and in both instances she took my plate and served me. The Turkish (like the Greeks in the Odyssey) have a strong belief in the sanctity of guests and bringing guests into the home. On both occasions, I sat at the head of the table and was always served first. Then we played batak, which is a Turkish card game that sort of resembles spades except it is slightly different. Backgammon is also a big deal here. I have smoked the water pipe a couple of times and have gotten to hang out with my roommate's friends (all Turkish). So far I would say it's been a great experience.

One thing that is interesting is that I really do have to be careful about the whole Jewish thing here. I know its a cliche thing back home, but I found out first hand that it's not something to be taken lightly. At Altuğ's house (my roommate's friend), he was telling me that they try not to drink coke too much because they don't want to support the "Jewish factories" that produce it due to the war in Gaza. The next day at the bus stop, I was relating this story to another person I had met on the abroad trip. When we got on the bus, a guy at the stop got our attention and in broken English said, "Keep quiet about the kosher stuff. It's dangerous to talk about that around here." Needless to say, we spent the next 20 minutes in silence. The university itself is a pretty liberal place. It is the only university where girls are permitted to wear the headscarf in all of Turkey. Also, its the only university with a Gay-Lesbian club. That gives you an idea of how conservative things are around here!

On the first day of classes it snowed here! We got about half an inch on the ground. It was so pretty. It's been so cold here! The day time highs have only been in the upper 30's or low 40's. It rains almost every day. I literally feel like I am in Seattle. I am told that the weather will get better next month though. Apparently spring here is absolutely magnificent. We shall see!

The apartment situation has worked out really well. My room is incredibly small, but that's about the only problem. Both of my roommates are really nice. One is an English teacher and the other is an entering masters student in Biomedical Engineering. They are great for me to practice my Turkish! :) The kitchen is pretty rustic, but we have a small oven (it looks more like a big toaster oven), a gas stove, and a fridge. No microwave though! Can you believe it? There is a washer, but no dryer. We use a drying rack to dry our clothes. It is basically a metal device that hangs up our clothes inside in order for them to air dry. Weird, huh?

It has been hard to do a lot of cooking here because every time I go to the grocery store, it is in Turkish! I have gotten better though. A few weeks ago I basically made up my own dish, which consisted of pasta, lamb, tomato sauce, and cheese. It was quite good! Since then, I have found a fish market and have prepared solmon (salmon) and levrek (sea bass). My roommate taught me how to make lamb meatballs, a traditional Turkish dish. One down, hopefully a lot more to go! I hope to learn how to make borek next. (I don't think that's the right spelling but oh well). Borek is basically a bread filled with cheese and meat. Speaking of which, Turks love bread! There is a bakery in my neighborhood and I get fresh bread every time I need it. The bread is literally made the same day I am buying it! How awesome!

I would say I know a few good places here but haven't gone restaurant hunting that much. Pretty much every place I have been has been great! Turks are known for their food. There are a couple of special places my roommate has shown me, but I will see more in the spring. Everyone goes out more and does more stuff in springtime because the weather is so much better then.

I have also discovered in my experience here that I am incredibly unlucky. So obviously my travel troubles were an issue. In addition, my digitial camera broke (causing me to buy a new one...that adventure deserves its own seperate entry), my light has not worked in my room twice (i have had to replace both the fixture and the switch), one of the ram drives on the motherboard of my computer stopped working (i now only have 512MB instead of a GB), and when I finally got my luggage from Air France a month later, my electric toothrbush was missing AND they don't want to pay me until I return to the US. FML.

The call to prayer just finished a few minutes ago. I still love listening to it. :)

The Beginning

I have told myself since I got here that I would make a blog. I have procrastinated for a month and a half (big surprise I know), but here it is. Now I can use this to procrastinate on other things now that work for my classes is starting to pick up.

So even though most of you know many of the particulars, I should start from the beginning and work my way through my Turkish experience until now.

The trip over here definitely got off to, shall we say, a rough start. I want to recount my trip over here because it sounds like something you would see out of a movie. Everything I could think of went wrong!

For those of you that don't know, I am a moron. Apparently, passports are required when travelling abroad and when you don't have one with you, they don't like for you to check into your flights. Despite the fact that the flight was delayed, the JAX-PHL flight would not allow me to check in because I did so within 30 mins of the originally schedule departure time. Luckily I had a very nice lady re-route me through Washington DC (DCA for those of you airport nerds who are interested) and then on to PHL. Unfortunately, snow in Philly caused problems. Luckily, I was bumped to an earlier flight that was delayed and ended up making it to Philadelphia at about 3:45pm.

Upon arriving in Philadelphia, I learned that my British Airways flight had been cancelled due to snow in London. Excellent! So I went to the British Airways attendant and they were apparently training a new girl who didn't know what she was doing. The trainer didn't seem to have much of a clue either. After 15 painstaking minutes, of which I was told nothing, I was finally put on an Air France flight to Paris, which was supposed to leave 5 minutes after my original British Airways flight. I got a connecting flight to Turkey that also corresponded nicely to the BA flight.

We boarded the plane on time. After boarding the plane, because it had been sitting outside in the snow, it needed to be deiced. Now why they couldn't have deiced the plane BEFORE we were boarded I will never know. At any rate, there were only two de-icers going. We waited in a line (on the airpline I might add) for 2 hours before we finally took off. (We took off at 9pm instead of the scheduled 6:50pm). As a result, we were 2 hours late to Paris. My layover in Paris was only supposed to be 2 hours. So you guessed it! I missed my flight to Istanbul because of the delay and paid the ticket counter another visit (4th one of the day by this point). I was put on a 12:50pm flight to IST and given a food voucher for my troubles. That was nice of them. So I went to the gate and we boarded and ended up not leaving until about 1:10pm. I finally arrived in Istanbul at 5:05pm after all that trouble! I feel so lucky to have made it here today. But wait! As if that wasn't enough, with all of the flight changes, my luggage did not show up. So I have only the clothes on my back. I have already missed the convenience of a cell phone (I also couldn't call my new roommate for exact directions so the taxi cab driver spent about 30 or so mins asking people in various areas for directions). He charged me 30 Lira on the ride from Taksim to the apartment (about 18 dollars) but he had been so nice and helpful that i gave an extra 10. So after all of that I am here...dead tired. On a happy note, my roommate was VERY nice and accommodating. The apartment is a little rough, but not bad at all for only 350 Lira a month. No microwave, but we have an oven and a stove and wireless internet. I am on the 4th floor and consequently have a WONDERFUL view of the city. He had even cooked dinner and gave me some.