1. On the first night I came to Trabzon, I decided to surprise Husniye by making dinner for her. I went to the market and got a fresh fish. (I think I got alabalik, which is a local fish found in some of the lakes around here). It's kind of like a grouper and is quite tasty. I prepared it by seasoning it with pepper, lemon, and butter. While this is a pretty normal and simple seasoning, it was more of a traditional American way to prepare the dish instead of a Turkish one. She hadn't had anything like it before and really liked it, which made me happy. We also had macaroni and cheese with it, which was also another first for Husniye. Now I send her boxes of it occasionally because you can't get it in Turkey.
2. Speaking of food. Husniye and her friend Bahar also taught me how to cook a couple of Turkish dishes. The first, karniyarik (I think that's how it is spelled), is an eggplant and meat dish with a tomato sauce. I tried to make it in the US afterwards once but it fell apart when I tried to pick it up and only mildly resembled the Turkish original. Oh well. It still tasted pretty good. I also learned how to make kisir, a traditional dish with bulgar and other kinds of vegetables. I have not attempted to make this one in the US yet. I didn't like kisir as much as I liked some other things in Turkey. Husniye also taught me how to make pilav (rice) the Turkish way. It involves mixing in a lot of butter and cooking the rice grains before they absorb the water. This method of cooking makes the rice more buttery and creamy tasting (quite yummy). I tried to make this one in the US but it wasn't quite as good as it was in Turkey. I am not sure if the differences in taste are because I did something wrong or because the ingredients here are just not the same.
3. Going for walks: In the evening, we would sometimes go for walks along the Black Sea. I would meet her after work and we would walk there. We also walked on the main street in Trabzon that had all of the shops (Uzun Sokak).
4. Drinking tea on Boztepe. There is a tea garden at the highest point in Trabzon that overlooks the Black Sea. We went there a couple of times and I loved it every time (I described it in a previous blog post and you can read about it there).
5. Movies and Bowling: We went bowling. The bowling alley was just like in the US, except more expensive. We also saw the Harry Potter move (number 5) in English with Turkish subtitles. Husniye didn't like it...and now I think Harry Potter has been ruined for her even though it was the worst of the 5 movies. We went to a local movie place that had English movies with turkish subtitles. I wanted to get Austin Powers for her to watch. Sadly, they did not have it...but I wish they had!
5a. We also tried to play tennis one night on some local tennis courts.
6. We went to the nicest restaurant in Trabzon for dinner one night. I took her out to dinner. Their specialty plate was a fish dish with cheese on top. It sounds weird, but it was absolutely delicious. It was a 3 course meal and it was fantastic. Best part of all is that the nicest restaurant cost only about 50 TL for two people.
7. Talking to Tiffany on skype randomly at 4am because we couldn't sleep.
8. Learning more Turkish (most of which I have now forgotten unfortunately).
Otherwise we just spent time together and enjoyed each other's company. It was nice to settle down after all of that traveling and it was a nice way to spend my last two weeks in Trabzon. On one of our weekends we went to Yusufeli, which was its own adventure (see next post). I hope to visit the Black Sea region again sometime soon. It was a beautiful place and I liked it a lot!
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