Turklish Adventure

Moving on, and on

2009-09-01T09:02:00.003+02:00

This blog came to an end when we moved to the UK - The British Job and Torquay Talkie and Porridge in Norwich ...

In Torquay we had our own website for our EnglishTorq homestay / language school.

But then we moved on to Norwich, and on again to Saudi Arabia - Howdi Saudi .

Now (September 09) we have returned to Australia to do some further training at Edith Cowan University - Not Riyadh.

Where next - don't know yet.

Our new WEBSITE

2007-11-08T10:35:00.000+02:00

So here we are in England, and we have a new website to advertise our new jobs.

It's called English Torq.

That's because we are living in TORQuay, in Devon, and you TALK English, and we are ENGLISH teachers.

Go on over and have a look.

Not here any more

2007-09-14T22:45:00.000+02:00

Hey, we're not here any more, we're there.

I mean, we are not there (in Turkey) any more we are here (in the UK).

Look at my new blog here.

The longest seven hours

2007-07-31T19:19:00.000+03:00

The 31st of July. Time for Peter's interview at the British Consulate in Taksim.

Travel to Taksim is best by dolmus (shared taxi), and usually this involves a few minutes of queuing as vehicles arrive, fill, and leave, until there is a space. We thought maybe it would be different early in the day, so we went down on Monday morning to have a look. This was different, at 7am there were ten or so dolmuses queuing, waiting for passengers. And there was hardly any traffic. Catching a dolmus early would mean a short trip, maybe half an hour, but catching one a few minutes later after the traffic started to build would mean a long trip, over an hour.

So this morning we were up bright and early and we went there soon after seven - too soon. We were in Taksim in half an hour ... and the interview wouldn't be till nine.

We wandered around the (fairly) quiet streets, walking slowly, enjoying the cool (though humid) air. By 8.45am we were tired of walking and we showed up at the consulate anyway.

The British Consulate is not a very obvious place - no signs at all, just a crest on the wall to give the clue. But there is heavy security (after a bombing a few years ago) and we have been there a few times now so we know where it is. We went to the guardroom window, and were quite surprised when they said I could not enter, only Peter. So I sat on the stone wall outside and waited. He was finished and back out before 9.00, even before his interview appointment time ... but the rest of our day didn't follow this pattern.

He had good news, and bad news. Yes, he was granted the visa, and would get it today, but he had to come back at 4pm to pick up his passport with the visa in it. (Good thing we didn't book our flights for today!)

What to do? An hour back to Bakirkoy, and then returning later - another hour in the dolmus - and then another hour in the dolmus home again. Or hang around Taksim for 7 hours?

We decided to hang around, after all it seemed fairly cool. We wandered slowly up to one of the three Starbucks in the main street, and sat in big comfy chairs in the third floor lounge for about two hours. That was pleasant, but slow moving - its not like we could grab an (English) newspaper to read or something.

Then we went out and wandered some more. We went for a ride down the hill on the little tram. Then we walked back up, and decided to look for a cinema showing English movies - most of the movies here are in English with Turkish sub-titles. We found a cinema, with several bad choices of movies, and chose to go in to watch one that had just started.

It was called "28 weeks later". If you ever get the chance to see it ... go to the dentist and have some teeth pulled instead, it will definitely be more worthwhile.

We counted off the minutes and hours we had managed to waste already, and decided to go give the Consulate a try - who knows, maybe they will be running early.

The man in the glassed-in air-conditioned guardroom repeated the four o'clock starting time. We noted there were already a few people sitting in a patch of shade on the ground under a tree near the Consulate, so we wandered off looking for a cool shady place to perch and wait for two more hours. The day had heated up considerably, but the Consulate is on a steep hill and there are places you can catch a cool breeze off the Golden Horn.

At 3.30 we were back, and waiting in the shade across the road from the Consulate. We watched as various people came and asked at the window and then joined the growing group crowded into the shade under the tiny tree. A few noticed us, and came across to join us.

By four o'clock there were more than 20 anxious people. The traffic had reached a crescendo, and the sun had developed quite a sting. Everyone started queing at the window, which made the guards nervous, so they erected a metal barrier over against the wall that was receiving full sun, and got everyone to queue behind that. Instructions were given in Turkish, which was a bit discouraging for English people wanting to get into the British Consulate.

One older balding man in the queue (not Peter!) was holding his hands on his head trying to protect himself from the sun. He became distressed, so the nice man in the guard room gave him a glass of water to pour over his head - well, maybe it was for him to drink, but his head was so hot it was all he could think of to do. I nipped into a little supermarket I noticed just down the road and grabbed some cold cans of iced tea for my man - who was glad to be wearing his codger hat!

At 4.30 it finally all happened. They took people through the gates five at a time, and a few minutes later Peter had his shiny new "Settlement Husband" visa.

We are going to England!!

Hot Summer Evenings

2007-07-29T09:38:00.000+03:00

They said Istanbul has 'miserable' winters. Well, it hardly rained, it didn't snow, we didn't see any fog, there was barely any wind, and it didn't really get cold.

But summer in Istanbul? Now that is miserable!

At the moment the middle east is in the grips of a heatwave - temperatures pushing the high forties day after day - and we are just on the edge of that. It's hot, and the place isn't geared for heat. Many places do not have air conditioning. And there is a water shortage and electricity shortage, so they turn off water or power to whole suburbs for up to a day at a time.

End of Time

Our contract ended precipitously somewhat sooner than we had originally intended, but we can't go anywhere until we get Peter's passport back from the British Consulate after our visa interview there on July 31st. We still had test writing to finish for Dilko, so that kept us inside and at the computer (by turns) for a while. We finished that, and then we packed our stuff, and weighed it, and re-packed ... and still there are days left.

Going for Walks

Walking is good - healthy, cheap.

Walking in Istanbul can be a wee bit hazardous. The sidewalks are narrow, and even the walking streets are unbelievably crowded. It's like always pushing through a fair-ground crowd. You can't just walk in a straight line, you are always dodging and weaving, watching out for bikes, motorbikes, and sometimes even cars or trucks that have chosen the pedestrian way. People do not specifically walk on the right, or the left, they come in from the side and they meander, and many of them seem fairly unaware of the presence of others - wearing a scarf or a burka would be a bit like wearing blinkers.

And you don't see many prams or pushers, these old Istanbul streets are incredibly rough with a variety of cobbles and brick paving, pot-holes, bumps and dips, drains, broken off metal pipes sticking inches out of the ground, rubbish in piles and scattered - there's definitely no room for power walking.

The Promenade

That's what the path along the sea-front was called in England, I remember. Great place for a walk. We went there quite a few times during the "winter" and were puzzled by the emptiness and desolation, the only other people were a few exercise enthusiasts.

But now it's the summer holidays. The kids are at home and everyone is hot and bored.

Its obviously the place to be. Someone even provides little tiny tables and stools under the trees.

Great place to snuggle with your girlfriend, or do a spot of fishing. People catch tiny hamsi - like sardines - we have seen one guy catch seven at one time.

There's even enough space for a kid to kick a football.

Then if you think you are really clever at kicking footballs, there is some kind of little competition here - I'm sorry, we haven't really worked out what the idea is.

Actually there are a few ways you can throw a few coins and have a go at something.

You can shoot a pellet to pop a balloon, or break a glass bottle into the sea. There is also a man with two or three cute white bunnies sitting on top of a wooden box, very tame. People come and play with them and stroke them, and then they buy a ticket to try and win one. What a racket!

And what a great opportunity for all the little people to set up stalls and make a bit of extra money.

You can feast on fairy floss,

or sweet corn - steamed and/or barbecued.

Then there are lots of varieties of seeds and nuts, and the ubiquitous simits (bread with a hole that is very popular here).

Some chaps are cooking fish or kofte (varieties of meatballs) on a portable barbecue, and selling it in bread with tomatoes and peppers.

You can buy various evil-looking things in jars,

or even just a cooled bottle of water.

These photos were taken about 6.30 pm while it was still bright and sunny. But we are often down there at 9pm - when it is just starting to get dark. By ten o'clock we have pushed our way back up the crowded streets to our soggy bed and humming fan, but we have no idea how long everyone else stays - maybe all night. Some of them are just lighting little fires and settling babies into prams at that time.

In less than a week we will be in England. Cool, wet, green England.

Turkish Girls

2007-07-23T07:24:00.000+03:00

This Sunday was the big General Election in Turkey. For weeks before we had put up with political rallies, vans driving around with blaring election speeches and rousing patriotic songs. There were fireworks at night, and huge "vote for me" advertising posters replaced the football team banners.

Everyone was wondering if the ruling AK party would get back in, because there had been some concern about this party being strongly pro-Islamist. The big deal in Turkey, for which we all love the man Atatürk, is that the government must remain secular, while the country is generally very religious. In practical terms, this means, for example, that women cannot wear religious headgear in government jobs.

Well, the AK party did get in. But they have promised to maintain the status quo, secular government. Otherwise the military have promised yet another military coup - they will just step in and take over like they did before.

So. What about the girls?

Turkish girls are beautiful. These are some of the ladies we have been privileged to teach English to.

Besides being beautiful, they are intelligent and strongly independent. In an English school like this we get a few - not many - of the covered girls.

But we see a lot of them around the streets, like this friendly group of high school students.

Of course there are also a few completely covered women in the black burkas, some showing only their eyes, some revealing their nose and even mouth. (I've never seen any completely covered with a veil as well like in some countries.)

What we've noticed about these young covered girls is that they are always slim and pretty, and they take great pride in choosing the colours and designs of their head scarves and full covering clothes.

As far as I can tell, the rules are that the hair must be fully covered as well as the neck, and the sleeves, and they must wear a coat or dress to cover the shape of their legs.

That doesn't mean they can' go all out to choose clothes that are fashionable and colour coordinated.

The thing that really bothers me is that this is all well and good in cold weather, but this was a particularly hot day.

The un-covered girl is comfortably dressed for the day, her covered friend is wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and t-shirt, and skirt and jeans, as well as her headscarf.

I couldn't do it. I don't even much like wearing a scarf in winter.

Most of these girls (covered and not) end up in arranged marriages - and are quite happy about it from what they tell us. And then the expectation is that they will stay at home, inside, doing housework and watching TV, covering appropriately when they go outside, or even stick their heads out over the balcony to hang the washing.

Eventually they all turn into sacks of onions - with inner beauty.

Frustration and the Golden Rule

2007-07-17T15:40:00.000+03:00

We have finished working with Dilko English here is Istanbul - a little earlier than we originally intended. The how and why is a story for another day.

So here is another little story that just gives a hint of what it's been like working here.

It's July now, and most of the teachers have already left or gone on holiday for the summer. Charlotte has gone back to England for a month. Dilko didn't pay her as she left what they owed for her previous month of work because "that's not how it's done" - payment is always on the 15th of the following month and she left at the end of the month. So she asked them to give her pay to her flatmate, Stephanie, on the 15th. That was ok, they said, they could do that.

However Stephanie was flying back to the States for a holiday in the early hours of the 16th ... so Charlotte gave us her bank details, and Stephanie would hand us the money and we would put it in the bank so she could access it in England.

Simple. What's so hard about that?

Well, first of all, the 15th this month happened on a Sunday. Never been a problem before - we work on Sundays, harder than any other day. We've been paid on a Sunday before. They knew well in advance that pay day was going to fall on a Sunday.

We turned up on Sunday for our pay, and were told "Yok", meaning 'there isn't any', and that we could not be paid until Monday. We graciously left (with a bit of a sigh...). Remarkably they managed to rustle up Stephanie's money, so she got paid before her early Monday morning flight. However Stephanie had no time to go to the bank - it's ok, we could bank hers at the same time as Charlotte's on Monday.

On Monday we turned up, smiling brightly, and accepted our pay for the work we had done in June ... however they told us that they couldn't pay us Charlotte's money because she had asked to have it paid to Stephanie (who was now on her way to the US and of course they had been unable to pay Charlotte's money to Stephanie before Stephanie left because it was Sunday ...)

Emails zoomed across the 'net as Charlotte sent new instructions, and we turned up again Tuesday morning, ready to get our hands on Charlotte's money. Oh, sorry! The lady who gives out the pay is not here, come back at 2pm.

Returning at 2pm. Oh, sorry! She is still at lunch. Come back later.

Returning at 3.40pm. Oh sorry! There is no money today. The owner of Dilko hasn't been to the bank yet. Try again tomorrow.

Somehow we thought that as we are now in Europe and no longer in China, we wouldn't have these problems. The second biggest language company in Istanbul with branches all over the city should be able to come up with teachers' wages on the promised date and not need to make up stupid stories. I would have thought.

Remember the Gold Rule? (The one in The Wizard of Id of course.)

The Stiff Upper Lip

2007-06-23T08:22:00.000+03:00

I've been practising keeping the stiff upper lip lately because ...

I'm British now, apparently.

Yesterday I went into the British Consulate here in Istanbul and picked up my brand spanking new British passport.

Actually, I always was British. I was born of British parents (who later became Australian) and I was born in a British colony. When I was 21 and married to an Australian, I chose to become Australian ... but underneath I was still a "Pommie" of course.

Now I'm one of those people with Dual Nationality.

The tricky part is going to be turning Peter into a Brit, because he really is an Aussie.

So ... it was our day off and we had just picked up my passport from the hallowed (and very secure) grounds of the British Consulate in Istanbul. The task of assessing visa applications has been outsourced to a Turkish travel agent over at Üsküdar on the Asian side of Istanbul.

Well, how hard can that be?

The Consulate is in Taksim, the steep hilly centre of Istanbul - part-way down the hill. The last time we went there we just wandered on down the hill, discovered the Galata Tower on the way, and eventually found ourselves at the Galata Bridge across the Golden Horn. Intending to repeat the experience, we set off through the narrow, winding, traffic-snarled streets ... we figured that as long as we just kept going down we would eventually end up on the bridge again.

We were quite hot and tired by the time we stepped out across the bridge ... and stared out over the water of the Golden Horn at the Galata Bridge, the one where we wanted to be. We had got ourselves totally lost and ended up on the wrong bridge. Down there, near the Galata Bridge, we could see ferries lined up - one of them would be going across to Üsküdar, so we just had a bit more hiking to do.

Really hot and tired, but now very relieved to be no longer lost, we stepped onto a cool, airy ferry. A waiter came and offered us a drink - the freshly-squeezed orange juice barely touched the sides and we were soon relaxing our way across the Bosphorus, enjoying some of the most beautiful sights of Istanbul.

Stepping off the ferry in Asia, we showed the waiter the address we had on a piece of paper. He pointed off to the right, and assured us a taxi would get us there for 5 lira. We climbed into a waiting taxi, and showed our paper to the driver ... who promptly took off to the left. The ride in the taxi was considerably longer than one would expect for 5 lira. We went to all sorts of interesting places, along a nauseating high-speed tight switch-back road, up and down some hills ... Well, we were quite relieved when he "only" charged us 11 lira for our little tour, and dropped us in a very out-of-the-way place that looked like a housing development.

After the customary security check, we joined a queue where they looked at our IDs and photographed us then pointed to the reception desk. The nice lady gave me a large, heavy plastic tile (at least six inches square) with the number 77. We sat among the waiting crowd for a moment, spoke briefly to a fellow-Aussie lady, and decided this wasn't good enough - we must surely need to fill in a form or something.

To the consternation of all the non-English-speaking staff (considering this is an outpost of the British Consulate) we reappeared at the reception desk. Runners were sent off and people called for and a mere 10-15 minutes later they found someone who could maybe answer our questions. Finally someone handed us a 10-page form and a black pen, and pointed to a desk where we could work.

During our wait by the reception desk we did notice a schedule of fees. My passport had 'only' cost us 300 lira, but apparently this visa was going to cost us 1400 lira! We surreptitiously reefed through our wallets, and although we had left home feeling "loaded" we came up a hundred lira short.

Nevertheless we ploughed on through the form. Endless stupid repetitive questions - designed to check up on 'visa marriages' but meaningless for an old married couple like us. We were taking so long that the queue went way past our "77" tile, they were well into the 80s, and the whole centre was waiting to close soon - they close at 2pm - so they finally found a staff member to sit down with us and work through the form.

At a quarter to two it was all done! Nothing left to do except pay. Knowing we were 'a little' short we asked if they could accept debit card, or was there an ATM nearby. No, and no.

Back out on the deserted hot streets with our sheaf of papers to return with next week, we had to work out how to get back down to the ferry. Not a taxi in sight, nothing but houses in three directions, and then a fenced, empty parking lot, and over there past those houses what could be a bus station. We squeezed through a gap in the fence into the parking lot, and from there gained access to the bus station. The buses here were all empty, but down the far end we could see a crowd of people.

"Feribot?" we asked, and were directed to the already-full but still loading dilapidated articulated bus. We waved our akbils, but apparently it was a free bus ... no wonder it was so full.

Where was the bus when we went in the taxi?? It only took a few minutes to get down the hill to the ferry - and no switch-back or scenic tour - arriving from the direction the ferry-man had originally indicated.

So, now we are back into the weekend - wall-to-wall classes for the next four days for both of us.

And then ... more fun. They have promised us that next time it should only take about ten minutes for us to pay the money ... and then return again a week later to pick up Peter's passport with the visa in it.

England here we come! You'd better be ready for us.

Büyük Ada - Big Island

2007-06-14T19:59:00.000+03:00

A trip to the Turkish Islands

We live on the coast of the Sea of Marmara, so it's just a ferry trip across to the nearby Turkish Islands - a popular destination among Istanbul-ites this time of year.

Everyone told us it's beautiful out in the island - but then we have had years of island life on a beautiful tropical island ... so we are not easily impressed.

We got up early-ish, hiked down to the sea-bus (14 minutes) and went across to Kadıköy, on the Asian side, ready to catch a ferry to the islands.

At Kadıköy there is this strange structure. In winter it was just an open frame, but now they have the balloon in place and apparently you can take a ride in that blue thing at the bottom. We have seen it rising straight up, and then they pull it back down again after a few minutes. Its obviously not a regular balloon - we saw a workman open a little round door in the bottom of it, and then he climbed up the side of it and did some work on the top.

We had quite a wait in the hot sun and in a pushy crowd before the island ferry showed up - already fully over-loaded with people who had boarded at the previous stop on the other side of the Bosphorus - at Kabataş, on our side but near the city centre.

As we struggled our way aboard, clambering over luggage and bikes and teenagers sitting on all the steps and leaning against walls, we were quite surprised to spot a couple of wooden seats near the window in the inside cabin.

It was early in the day and the sea was still misty, but the sun beat through the window where we were sitting and we were soon regretting our choice of seat (not that we actually had any choices really).

We stopped at the first small island, and several hundred (mostly teenagers) of the couple of thousand people on board disembarked. Much relieved, we gave up our hard-won wooden seats and moved around and found some soft seats available in the cooler open section of the ferry.

The ferry stopped at two more islands, and each time hundreds of people disembarked. Finally we reached the big one: Büyük Ada, "Big Island".

There would have been well in excess of 2000 people on the boat, so there were still several hundred waiting to get off at the big island.

But remarkably within a very few minutes they had all disappeared along the island streets.

These islands have almost no petrol-driven vehicles, only a few service vehicles belonging to the council. Everyone else travels on foot, by bicycle (there are lots available for hire), or by horse and cart.

We paid 40 YTL for a "big" tour, right around the whole island. There were dozens of horse-drawn buggies, and bikes. But we seemed to have snagged the slowest pair of ponies. In fact our little dappled pony kept trying to canter, while the brown one trotted. And we were endlessly overtaken by other carts carrying up to six people at a time.

The big island is very hilly and steep, and we saw quite a few cyclists grabbing a bit of help. Of course it was very difficult for our two little ponies coming back down the hill, the driver had to keep applying the brake and slowing them down.

At the top of the hill was a wooded area, and we saw lots of family groups and young people picnicking among the trees. It all looked very dry, though.

At the top of the hill a breeze was blowing, and there were great views.

We saw a lot of different houses - most of them large and stately, others more homely and belonging to the permanent islanders, not just rich holiday makers. Instead of a garage, many of them had a buggy parked and a horse or two grazing out the back.

Then we left the main village, and the road became quite narrow and rough. The back of the island was bushy and quite inhospitable really.

Finally we returned to the yard where the horses and buggies were gathered waiting for their next turn.

There were several dozen carts, with their drivers taking a nap, watering their horses, or having a meal and a chat while they waited for the next boat-load of eager tourists. The tourists, though, were almost all Turkish, we only heard one family of people speaking English.

So we wandered around the village a little, stopped and had some çay at a little outside cafe. People here also support Istanbul football teams - well, FenerBahçe, of course.

There were, of course, lots of cafes and ice cream shops. Turkish ice cream is a little different, sort of chewy.

So then it was time to join the madding crowd, and get back on the ferry to Istanbul.

We got to the dock a little early, wandered slowly past the people waiting on benches, and went to stare through the gate to see if the boat was coming. Turning, we were surprised to discover that our actions had unwittingly started something of a stampede - the whole crowd had leapt up and were crowded in behind us, and we were at the front of the pack!

We had no trouble finding a spot on the soft seats right next to the open door, and we had a delightful trip home.

These seagulls flew alongside the ferry, keeping pace with us. Then we noticed that people on the (open) top deck were throwing food to them, and they were trying to catch it in flight. Actually, not many of them were successful.

It was a lovely day out, though we don't have much of a hankering to return. There are hardly any beaches - mostly at the first island, and a few patches on the others - and the beaches have pebbles. I guess we have been spoilt by our Australian beaches.

If you are thinking of going out there ... unless you want the whole cultural experience of an hour or more on a steamy, over-loaded ferry to be part of your adventure, it's probably worth getting up to Kabataş to catch one of the high-speed ferries (35-45 minutes). They are enclosed (air-conditioned), so you won't get the wind in your hair ...

Well, whatever blows your hair back.

Bomb in Bakirkoy

2007-06-10T19:13:00.000+03:00

Our first bomb.

"I heard a loud bang."

If the TV men had turned and asked me about it, that's all I could say.

Usually I am teaching on a Sunday afternoon. But my class had their final exam yesterday, so no class today. So I was sitting at home, and I did think about going down to the shopping centre for a bit of exercise. But CSI was on TV and I was feeling lazy after four hours of teaching all morning.

And then, at 3.30, I heard the bang. I went out onto the balcony, expecting to see smoke ... or something. But no one even reacted. Everyone at Dilko was just sitting there chatting and drinking tea.

About an hour later we went for a walk down the street to see how things were. A small news item on the internet told us that a bomb went off right in the centre of Bakırköy.

Lots of police - on foot, on motorbikes, various uniforms, carrying big guns. Several ambulances. Lots of TV cameras, and lots of interested onlookers (like us). Crime scene tape blocking off a section of the walking street.

We couldn't see anything burnt or blackened, but it was difficult to see anything with the big crowd and the police watching everyone so carefully.

Here is what the news reported:

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - A bomb blast outside a store in Istanbul wounded 14 people on Sunday, Turkish police said, amid increased worries about Kurdish separatist violence.

The state Anatolian news agency said the blast appeared to have been caused by a percussion bomb, often used by Kurdish militants and other radical groups operating in Turkey.

Authorities have warned of possible PKK attacks on civilian and security targets in cities and towns, especially in the run-up to national elections on July 22.

"It is still not certain what kind of bomb it was," Istanbul police chief Celalettin Cerrah told reporters at the scene of the explosion.

Percussion bombs typically make a loud noise but rarely cause serious damage.

"The explosion was very powerful. We were really shaken," said Muttalip Erdogan, who sells doner kebabs.

The blast, which shattered the windows of many shops and offices, occurred in the Bakirkoy district of Turkey's largest city, near the airport, where Kurdish militants have carried out similar attacks in the past.

Tensions are running especially high amid increasing clashes between Turkish troops and guerrillas of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.

The clashes have fuelled talk of a possible major Turkish army incursion into northern Iraq to attack PKK bases there.

In May, eight people were killed when a suicide bomber struck a shopping mall in the capital Ankara. Authorities blamed that attack on the PKK, though the group denied involvement.

Last week, seven paramilitary policemen were killed when PKK rebels attacked their base in the eastern province of Tunceli.

On Saturday, three soldiers were killed when rebels remotely detonated a landmine near the Iraqi border.

Each incident has added to pressure on the government, which faces a strong nationalist challenge in the election, to get tougher with the PKK.

Ankara blames the PKK for the deaths of more than 30,000 people since it launched its armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey in 1984.

Forensic officers investigate the scene of an explosion in Istanbul June 10, 2007. The blast occurred in the Bakirkoy district of Turkey's largest city, the state Anatolian news agency said.

Picnic Time

2007-06-10T08:27:00.000+03:00

School outings and picnics ... counting children on and off buses, permission forms, kids injuring themselves on playground equipment, the whole thing ... I remember it well.

My weekday morning class, which I've had since elementary, are about to take their final intermediate exam, so we were having a picnic.

I share the class with Turcan, a Turkish-American guy, and we make a good team.

The class has progressed really well - their English is quite good, and they are responsible and reliable. So, our students organised transport and booked a restaurant and we went down to Florya.

Florya is by the Sea (of Marmara), and it was a beautiful day - cool and really pleasant.

We sat around several tables and shared some çay (Turkish tea).

Here is Turcan with our two young men in the class - Yiğit, and Cenk - as well as our lovely lady, Şadan.

And then there are these three delightful young ladies: Zübeyde, Seda, and Merve.

And two more gorgeous girls: Çiğdem and Naime.

And last, but not least, Gözde and her new boyfriend who came along for the day.

So, after our çay we all went for a little walk along the seafront. And we came upon an amusement park - usually open and teaming with kids on weekends. Today, quiet but not closed. So our two 'boys' had a bit of a race in the go-karts.

Cenk (yellow helmet) won ... but the general consensus was that he had a better vehicle and it didn't seem to be a totally fair race.

Yep, they are a really nice bunch of people. Spending time with and getting to know people like these is what makes ESL teaching worthwhile and fun.

Keen Supporters

2007-06-02T12:27:00.000+03:00

The Turks love their football.

We were coming home from the cinema the other night and there was a crowd of FenerBahce fans celebrating a(nother) win by congregating in the middle of the (one way) main street. The traffic was banked up for miles, we thought there must have been an accident or something as we jay-walked our way between the cars ... and when we got to the head of the line, all that was there was this bunch of excitable people standing in the street. The first car in line, a tiny red thing, was getting increasingly impatient, honking his horn and revving his engine so the air was full of a dreadful burning smell. Inch by inch he began to edge his way into the crowd. They surrounded him and rocked his car. But he kept on, and eventually broke through and roared his way angrily along the empty street in front of him.

Everywhere there are flags and banners.

We are often amazed at the size of them. But then yesterday we went to the Grand Bazaar and saw this one.

That's only part of it, it continues around the corner and the next.

The Turks are pretty fanatical about their national flag too. When there was talk recently about political problems the common red flags suddenly got a lot bigger and bolder. This is the one in our street.

Mind you, it is a nice flag. We hang one in our balcony where it faces out to Dilko (work).

The sun shines through and gives the room a nice glow too.

More fun with students

2007-06-02T07:32:00.000+03:00

Peter's class planned a day out together, a chance to show us the sights of their city.

On the day only three young men were able to come, but another joined us later in the day after finishing work.

We caught the bus to old Istanbul, where most of the museums are as well as the Grand Bazaar.

Aya Sofya, or Hagia Sophia, is a must-see that we hadn't seen yet.

From the outside it's a huge, imposing building. Inside it's cluttered with repair and renovation work.

Dimly lit, and hard to photograph. It started off as a Christian cathedral, and then was taken over as a Muslim mosque, before it ended up as a musem. So it is a strange mixture - Christian symbolism overhung with huge Arabic plaques.

The Pudding Shop

I liked the sound of it. The boys wanted to have lunch there. According the the decor it used to be the place for foreigners to meet, back in the 70s and 80s.

The notice board was an important feature in the old days. Apparently this was where you came to hitch a ride across the continent or buy or sell an old combi van. It was mildly interesting. The food was forgettable, and over-priced. (Not much actual pudding.)

The Underground Cistern

We had heard that this was a place worth seeing too.

Dim and eerie, very difficult to photograph. They had appropriate weird music playing as we made our way along the boardwalks over the shallow water. There was constant water dripping, and in places where this was too soaking they had suspended plastic sheets for protection. When we first walked out over the water we noticed tiny fish swimming around. As we got towards the back of the huge underground cistern we saw bigger and bigger fish. The ones near the back corners were monstrous - not just more than double pan-sized, but so fat it was amazing they could swim at all. (I'm sure the bus-load of Asian tourists that arrived were eyeing them hungrily.)

In the back corner are the two "Medusa Heads". There are all sorts of stories about how and why these got here. Of course we had to go and take a peek at them.

One is on its side facing the back wall - with a supporting pillar resting on it.

The other is upside down.

Mystery Tour

Then the boys decided we would go to another place by bus. We all followed the leader and hopped onto a bus. They were laughing and chatting and relating to the other passengers ... when all of asudden they realised we were on the wrong bus - they really didn't have a clue where we would end up. Various other passengers gave their opinions about what we should do ... we just decided it was an "adventure" as the bus ran on at break-neck speed up and down step hills, tossing passengers hither and thither as it twisted and turned through the sorts of narrow streets I would have thought were "no bus" zones. The other passengers didn't seem to mind, I guess they travel there every day - a couple of them were fast asleep, coming awake at the appropriate moment just before their stop.

Eventually we got off at a spot next to the Golden Horn (the waterway that is like an off-shoot to the Bosphorus). We were on the wrong side of the water, and a long way from the nearest bridge.

The boys went down to the waterside and negotiated for a ride with some fishermen, and for a mere lira they transported the six of us to the other side.

The boys thought it was a scream. We felt our adventure was really beginning to get interesting.

The boatman took it all very seriously.

Pierre Loti

Then we climbed aboard a cable car to get to the top of the hill and visit this popular spot.

The hillside is crammed full of tiered graves, but at the top there is a great cafe, and brilliant views.

It was a long day, and we all had a lot of fun.

Two of the boys went off while the rest of us relaxed in the cafe and borrowed a dad's car and drove us all back to Bakırköy, not wanting to risk another wrong bus adventure.

Fun with Students

2007-05-31T07:55:00.000+03:00

You could say that living in Turkey isn't all that different from Australia. Well, no, that's not really true.

We are still teaching - we were teaching in Australia. No, that's different too.

One of the really nice things about this job is the students that we teach.

That's Gözde and Merve, a couple of the girls in my morning weekday class. As you can see, they are very studious - I never have to say, "Sit down! Be quiet! Gözde don't steal Merve's book!" and things like that.

Most of our lessons are four hours long. The best bit is the ten minute breaks every hour. Then the students head downstairs to the courtyard for a smoke and a cup of çay (Turkish tea). We are free to have a coffee in our staff room, or join them.

This is Cenk and Yiğit, a couple of lively young chaps from my morning class enjoying their break time.

Now that the weather is getting hotter - and very humid - and very few of the classrooms are air-conditioned, we often take our classes outside under a tree or in the "Wendy House" in the courtyard.

My Sunday afternoon class were discussing a documentary Cengiz had seen about English people dunking their biscuits into their tea. He was curious to know if it tasted good.

So we sent to the school canteen for some tea and biscuits, and we had a little lesson in English Culture.

Now there's a class you don't get to teach in Australian primary school.

Erik - Turkish plum

2007-05-28T21:26:00.000+03:00

Back in Spring time we had a tree full of beautiful blossoms right outside our bedroom window ... and Ali told us he thought it might be a peach tree. We were looking forward to that!

Well, they're not peaches. Plums. Turkish plums. They look a bit like Greengage plums here, though, don't they?

Here, let me reach out and pick you a few.

Yeah, they are really tiny.

And tart? Oh, yes! You don't fill your mouth with these - and they do have a hard little stone inside just like normal plums.

But people love them. The students have removed all the plums off the lower branches, as high as they can reach. And you can buy them by the kilo in fruit shops. And some restaurants serve them as a treat at the end of the meal.

Charlotte's Turn

2007-05-28T21:16:00.000+03:00

Another Birthday. Another chocolate cake.

Yeah its a bit mean taking a photo of someone blowing out their candles - but it's always been traditional in our family, and Charlotte is almost our daughter.

Charlotte is a Beşiktaş fan - one of the local football teams (not actually the winning team). So we got her a 2 000 piece jigsaw puzzle with a picture of the stadium ... a few happy hours.

She's looking forward to going home to the UK soon, though.

Wow! Capadocia - Wow!

2007-05-22T08:06:00.000+03:00

Saturday was a public holiday. On Tuesday we discovered we could rearrange a coupla lessons and open a window of opportunity ... so on Wednesday afternoon we shot down to Capadocia (Kapadokya) for three days.

It was a documentary on Kapadokya that sparked my interest in Turkey years ago, before we started any of this ESL caper.

We stayed at Göreme House in Göreme village, in one of their cave suites.

On Thursday morning we got up and went on a full-day tour of the whole area, and we saw the underground city of Kaymakli and other landmarks.

On Thursday evening we went to see a performance by the Whirling Dervishes.

On Friday we hiked all over Göreme and walked through Love Valley.

And then on Saturday morning we got up early (4 am) and went hot air ballooning. That was the most incredible experience!

1. Göreme and Göreme House

Many people in Göreme live in cave homes, although we were told it is illegal to just live in a cave as such, you can only do so if you have a house attached. So many of the hotels offer cave rooms. We stayed in one of the two cave suites at Göreme House:

Sitting room - bedroom.
Bathroom with a spa - such a great help after climbing through tunnels, and up and down hills and valleys. Also here the view through our tiny bedroom window looking out the back of the "fairy chimney" rock structure that the hotel is built into.

(If the pictures are too small to see you can 'click' on them to see the larger version.)

Göreme House offers "all day breakfast", though we found this does not mean you can have "second breakfast" later in the day! Breakfast was a special moment in the day because they try to keep it very Turkish - unlike some hotels who try to pander to foreigners' normal diet.

The breakfast room is a bright pleasant place on the top floor of the hotel.

This was not a buffet-style breakfast, here is Ahmet about to prepare our breakfast plates.

On the first morning we were tickled pink to be served rich dark chocolate cake along with the cheese, butter, tomatoes and cucumber around the edge of our plate.

The space in the centre is for something cooked, like these rolled cheesy things we had the next day.

And this time there were little sausages instead of chocolate cake. Egg - cooked any way you choose - are served on a separate side plate, not on toast as we are used to.
And then, of course, there is the soft, fresh bread that comes with every meal.

And an array of things to put on it. They make the most amazing jams and conserves in Turkey, the word "chunky" does not come close to describing them.

There are a number of villages and towns in the Kapadokya region, but we felt that Göreme was particularly nice because it is not just a tourist centre but it is a regular country village with farmers and people going about their daily lives. We saw children heading off to school, a farmer ploughing his field with a horse-drawn plough, cows being led through the streets, and women toiling in the fields.

2. Tour of Kapadokya Region

On Thursday we joined a tour group of 18 people travelling around in a mini-bus. The whole day's tour, including lunch and entrance fees to several venues cost us only 50 lira - in stark contrast to the rest of our holiday!

We went to Kaymakli, the underground city where the Christians hid from their persecutors centuries ago. Apparently people would stay down there for up to three months at a time. I had difficulty staying calm down there for more than a few minutes. There were some wide open caverns - such as the chapel built (dug) in the shape of a cross at the seventh floor down - and the kitchen, and bedrooms with cosy little sleeping bays. But mostly it was tunnels barely shoulder-width and with a roof so low we had to bend double.

Going down a stairway for several floors in a tunnel barely wide enough to fit through and having to bend over was a real test of my self-control.

When we came to the stairway to the eighth floor down, our guide announce that the light-bulb down there was broken - but it would be okay because there was an air-shaft to the outside letting in some light ... as long as we could make it safely down the stairs. No problem, everyone pulled out their mobile phone and used the little glowing light.

Every time the tour bus stopped there were people trying to sell us souvenirs. I wanted to buy a hat anyway, and a new handbag because the catch was broken on mine. This little ( and I mean little!) man came along and was bargaining with me about the bag. He was very keen to have his photo taken with me, so I handed my camera to his friend ... who proceeded to try to take the photo with the camera facing the wrong way, towards his own face. Eventually I got him to turn it around and press the right button.

We travelled to a number of different sites, including these ancient cave homes in the hillside, and on the way our young guide entertained us with chat and information. He was telling us the story of King Midas (I can't actually remember why) - you know, the king who was able to turn everything to gold with his touch, but sadly not only could not eat but also managed to also turn his beloved daughter to gold. Our guide explained how in order to get rid of the curse, the gods required that Midas give up all his gold and his trousers. This was a new twist on the story, and had all of us listening with puzzled frowns ... why his trousers?

Do you know? Can you guess?

We climbed the hill and wandered through some of those cave homes, and the cave cathedral.

3. The Whirling Dervishes

Another couple who were on our tour and also staying in our hotel had made arrangements to see the Whirling Dervishes, and as we had never seen this wonder before we decided it was time to find out what they actually do ...

The large audience sat in the dark in silence and eager anticipation, until the dervishes arrived in their tall tall hats and long black coats.

Then there was a long a capella song (in Arabic, I presume) by one of them, followed by a long breathy flute solo.

And then the Arabesque music started in earnest, and they removed their black coats and they whirled. That's what they do. That's all they do. Not very fast, but as they twirl their full white skirts stick out and makes it look like they are going faster. Head tipped to the right, arms up with one palm turned up and one down, whirling anticlockwise.

That's it. Now you know. Now you don't need to go and see them - unless you really want to.

4. Hiking Through Love Valley
and the Open Air Museum

We climbed the hill behind Göreme, Peter wanted to get up to where someone had hung a huge Fenerbahçe flag (Fenerbahçe football team has just won the premiership here.)

On the other side of this hill is one of several "love valley"s - the name comes from the particular shape of the fairy chimneys in the valley.

From there we went a little out of the village to see the "Open Air Museum".

At the entrance to the museum there is a small market - of course - and a camel. We thought there would be lots of camel rides, camel treks to go on in Kapadokya region, but this was the only one we saw.

As we climbed further up the hill to the museum, the storm that had been following us all day - mumbling and grumbling with thunder and occasionally splattering us with a few drops - finally let rip.

So we didn't get to go into the museum - being an open air museum it's not a place to go in the rain. We did get a picture of it from the balloon the next day.

5. The Big Balloons

On Saturday we got up at 4 am, and were picked up by minibus at 4.55am. We had decided to take the longer, more expensive balloon trip - especially when we were given a special offer for being residents in Turkey.

Most of the balloons (there are seven companies operating in the district) take off from the same area. But our pilots, Lars and Kailie (who have been doing this in the area for 17 years), like to carefully choose a spot that will give them favourable winds so that they can take the ballons through interesting valleys.

The baskets and other equipment are taken to the site on special trailers, two minibuses carry the passengers for the two rides.

Kailie explains how to get into the basket (lying down), and a couple of simple safety precautions should we have a rough landing ( in wind).

They use huge petrol engine fans to fill the balloon with cold air first.

Then they turn on the burners and start filling the balloon with hot air. At this point some of us climbed into the basket, lying on our backs.

In no time at all the balloons were loaded - we were both in Lars' balloon - the ground crew gently let go of the ropes, and we lifted off. There was almost no sensation of movement.

At this time of the morning, the sky is full of balloons.

But Lars and Kailie take their balloons away from the main bunch and into Pigeon Valley and Love Valley.

Our two balloons played hide-and-seek in and out of the valleys - sometimes going so low that we brushed the trees and when we were barely above the ground we saw several rabbits and a couple of foxes which were surprised by our silent arrival.

After an hour we could see the other balloons returning to earth, but we lifted higher, up to 7000 feet.

I had expected to be quite cold up there - especially when I saw everyone else was rugged up with layers of jumpers and all I had was a thin cotton shirt and a denim jacket. But it was not in the least windy, because we moved gently with the wind - "we are the wind", explained Kailie. And the burner periodically warmed everyone in the basket, as well as lifting the balloon.

Finally we started looking for a suitable landing place - we didn't want to accidentally land on someone's crops. The crew on the ground had finished packing away the balloons from the shorter trips, and we could see them watching and following us. Lars was chatting with them on his mobile phone.

Our descent was slow and gentle. A rope was thrown over and the crew grabbed it and held on. To everyone's surprise, they managed to land Kailie's basket right on top of the trailer.

We landed gently on the grass and a couple of passengers climbed out, which gave us enough lift for the crew to move us over to the trailer.

Time for celebration - another successful trip. The crew grabbed handfuls of wildflowers and decorated the basket. They set up a little table and opened a couple of bottles of champagne.

Red juice and champagne makes a drink they call "Cloud 9". A crowd of local people, including some excitable kids, joined us as shared in the juice and cake.

Was it worth doing? Oh yes!

Oh, and why did Midas have to give up his trousers??
The young man was confused between "trousers" and "treasures". (Midas had to give up his gold and treasures.)

Water restrictions

2007-05-15T11:22:00.000+03:00

So the water finally came back on in the early hours of the morning. We had some spare 10 litre water bottles, so Peter quickly filled them as soon as we knew the water was running. It was not very clean water, but at least we could flush the toilet now.

We were both staring at these big bottles of dirty water ... and suddenly we remembered. When we first moved into this apartment there were a few bottles of slightly dirty water stored in our spare (squat) toilet room. We had kept them for a while, in case they were something important, but eventually emptied them and threw the bottles away.

And this was like deja vue.

As soon as the water was running clear again we filled our bottles with clean water, and stashed them in the spare toilet room.

That was Wednesday. On Saturday we woke up to ... no water again! Ah, but we were so glad we had saved some. They say it's going to be a long hot summer, and we have had an exceptionally dry winter.

Life Without Water

2007-05-08T20:44:00.000+03:00

I keep trying to be positive - in China the electricity and water would frequently go off for a day at a time - and we still have electricity here, so it can't be that bad.

I didn't have a class this morning, so I didn't hurry into the shower. When I turned the tap on about 9.30 there was only a trickle. At that time, had I known, I could have trickled some into a bucket.

Now, at the end of the day, and beginning to feel slightly tacky - it's been a fairly warm day - I decided to check the internet for news ... and I found this:

Water to be cut for 30 hours in Istanbul

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

ISTANBUL – TDN with wire dispatches

Certain sections of Istanbul will not receive water for 30 hours between Wednesday 8 a.m. until Thursday 2 p.m. due to the repair and renewal operation on the Ömerli-Çamlıca pipeline and the Dudullu Drinking Water Facility.According to a statement released by the Istanbul Water Works (İSKİ), water will be cut in Bakırköy (except Yeşilyurt and Yeşilköy), Zeytinburnu, Eminönü, Beyoğlu and Beşiktaş municipalities, coastal areas of Fatih and Sarıyer municipalities on the European side and Kadıköy, Üsküdar, Kavacık, Sarıgazi, military barracks around Çekmeköy, parts of Samandıra, Kozyatağı, Küçükbakkalköy, Ataşehir, Çekmeköy, İmes Industrial Zone, Yukarı Dudullu, parts of Ümraniye, Yukarı Çamlıca, Ferhatpaşa, Kayışdağı and its environs and the İçerenköy region of the Anatolian side of the city.

That's us, Bakırköy.

Now, today is/was Tuesday and we have been without water since this morning. And yet this news report is dated Wednesday (tomorrow).

So ... when will we have water again??? Have they started the work early so they can finish early? Or is the report just wrong/

Or is there really going to be no water until Thursday afternoon?

Can you imagine local governments in other countries doing this?
And how annoying is it that everyone must have known this was going to happen (eg our Turkish bosses, Dilko) but it didn't occur to them to tell us about it.

There are several hairdressers right next to our building. A couple of weeks ago one of them installed a huge tank of water in an outside courtyard, and today there was a very noisy pump periodically taking water from it - so they knew.

Just Beykoz

2007-05-05T21:16:00.000+03:00

There's a good little tour you can do up the Bosphorus from the Golden Horn ... all the way to the Black Sea.

Well, almost.

For a mere twelve and a half lira, it's an hour and a half cruise up the Bosphorus, a few hours to wander around at Beykoz, and then then trip back.

Lovely little fishing village, Beykoz.

But then two or three times a day (in the busy season) the tour boat disgorges several hundred tourists, and the local restaurateurs swing into action competing to draw customers into their establishments.

And then everyone heads on up the hill to see the castle and catch a glimpse of the Black Sea.

This is a naughty picture. As we climbed we looked back towards the Bosphorus and Peter took a picture, but straight away a little man behind a fence started blowing a whistle.

Obediently we turned away and headed up the hill. Peter lined up a shot of the castle we were approaching ... and again "peeep!" the little man was still watching from a distance.

Well, it was a long, hot climb. We stayed on the road all the way - didn't notice the steep steps leading up through the restaurant, but I think we chose the better part.

And there it was - the Black Sea! Not very black, but definitely sea. And all the ships heading out into it.

We had a look around the castle fort at the top of the hill. It was old and crumbly, but a nice place to relax and great views.

There was a little doorway in the wall that looked interesting and inviting, maybe a good exit ...

Or not. Another forbidden area, of course.

So we headed back down the hill to the boat. This time we saw the path through the restaurant, down the steps, and I was really glad we hadn't come up that way. The steps were obviously built by a very tall man, or just someone in a hurry who thought if you make the steps big enough you don't have to use so many.

Back on the boat, we did another naughty thing.

The window of the boat wasn't madly clean. And from here you can't see the signs nor hear the Whistle Man ... but I know he would have been up there blowing ... The patch of road right in the middle was where we were trying to take photos.

It was a relaxing day out. Beats teaching, and a lot of other humdrum things we could have been doing.

The Flood of 07

2007-04-29T19:22:00.000+03:00

I did notice that the little piece of wire holding the washing machine hose in the bath had come loose, and I had the thought that I should do something about it - soon. But I got distracted, and forgot all about it.

We were watching one of my favourite CSI programmes, and it had just got to the good part, but Peter suddenly had to go to the bathroom.

When I heard him yell, I suddenly remembered about the hose.

There is about a 1cm lip at the bathroom door, so naturally the whole bathroom was under water to that level. There is no floor drain in the bathroom.

Escaping from the bathroom, the water had first headed into the second toilet, the old-fashioned 'squat' toilet in the next room. Because of the smell that emanates from this fixture, we had taken the trouble of blocking it up with the top of a large plastic water bottle fitted into it like a plug ... and we had been using the little room as a store.

Having filled that room too, the water headed gleefully towards the lower end of the apartment. We had suspected that we were living in a leaning tower, and now we could see it for sure. I could almost hear it giggling as it slid down the hallway - a small tributary took off into the kitchen and straight under the fridge. As it chuckled it's way past the spare bedroom, another streamlet rushed in there to the far wall and under the spare mattress and chipboard bookshelf.

And then it caught sight of the main bedroom and - with me rushing up behind with all our spare towels - made it's way as fast as it bubbly stream would allow it towards the far wall, the lowest end of the apartment.

It won't happen again. The washing machine hose is securely strapped.

World Cup Final

2007-04-28T20:02:00.000+03:00

Saturdays are hard work ... but at the end of the day we get to sit around and watch the cricket on TV. (On our big TV).

Peter and Tony are in Oz heaven, of course.

Stephanie is getting stuck into the salsa and chips, and she's learning all about cricket. She has learnt to signal fours and sixes.

Tony and Shannon went out and bought pizza. Now we're all set for an evening of cricket.

Back to Bazaaro

2007-04-26T15:07:00.000+02:00

The Grand Bazaar is THE place to go to when you are in Istanbul - all of the guide books will tell you that.

And it's not like any other market or bazaar you may have been to, ever. Nothing like the markets in China - outdoors, with rows of little stalls.

Most of it is indoors, and it's like a maze. It's dazzling, and confusing, and a little overwhelming the first time.

And even the second time.

Next to the main part of the (indoors) bazaar, there is an (outside) street with clothes stalls.

This is where we met "Sock Man" - he has a plastic display sheet with several pairs of socks in pockets ... he really wanted us to buy his socks, and so he kept jumping in front of us with his annoying little display. I never quite worked out whether there was only one sock man or umpteen - and if there was only one did he have a fixation with us in particular. (did every visitor to the bazaar have their own annoying little sock man, or was he just really fast on his feet?)

But inside there is an amazing variety of brilliant things for tourists to buy. The sellers all speak some English, and will accept your hard-earned cash in pretty well any currency you care to offer.

Although when I visited the WC I had to pay half a (New Turkish) lira, and I saw one lady trying in vain to pay her way in with an English pound note.

We bought a small piece of jewellery for me, and the seller agreed to a small "discount" on the basis that we live in Istanbul and may return to his stall another day. We remarked that there was no way we would be able to find it again. And he told us confidently that it was easy as he is situated opposite the one and only restaurant in the bazaar.

THE NEXT DAY WE CAME BACK AGAIN

He was wrong, there are several restaurants. And we were lost in the maze. We went round and round and back and forth - and gradually some parts began to look a little bit familiar. The same salesmen kept jumping out at us with the same lines: "There you are!You are the customer I have been looking for all week!" and the like.

We went down a side alley and found ourselves outside in one of the little courtyards that are embedded in the maze.

We sat down for a cup of çay (Turkish tea in a tulip-shaped glass) and persuaded the restaurateur to find us a map of the maze. After that it was easy. Well, a little easier.

I had been thinking about putting up some curtains in our bedroom, and noticing the material section of the bazaar on the map, we headed down there.

Some of these shoplets are deceptive. Once you enter that cave of fabric you discover more rooms and more shelves behind. We went into one of them, and were taken with a lot of typically Turkish rich velvet materials, all of them sparkly, and quite cheap.

We chose this one. Very velvet and very sparkly. We now hoave sparkly curtains in our bedroom.

And sparkle everywhere. It just trickles off the curtains onto everything - especially when I was sewing them!

The ubiquitous cats

Istanbul is full of cats - but we haven't seen a single rat. The courtyard behind our apartment is full of them - yowling and arguing over the territory.

These bazaar cats seem quite happy to share.

Oh to be in Prague, now that Spring is here ...

2007-04-19T21:15:00.000+02:00

I didn't even know where Prague was - I only just found out that it's in the Czech Republic. I have seen jobs on offer there, but dismissed them lightly because for some reason I always imagined it to be a grey place full of grim-faced over-worked people.

I was a bit wrong about that.

So, if anyone offers you the chance to visit Prague, grab it with both hands, and go there!

Cousin get-together

When I was a teenager in Devon, England, my three cousins would come and spend the summer with my family.

And then my family moved to Australia.

My cousin Max went to Spain, and then to Ireland.

I last saw Max 37 years ago. So this month he was taking his son and some other young boys to Prague for a basketball tournament, so we decided to meet up there.

Getting there, and staying somewhere

2007-04-19T20:50:00.000+02:00

Max and the boys were booked into a cheapish hotel, some distance out of the city but with easy access to their sporting venue. As the main thing I wanted to see in Prague was Max, we asked him to get us booked into the same hotel.

Early morning hassles

We had to get up early in the morning. We found a taxi driver asleep in his taxi in the main street of Bakırköy, and arrived at the airport in good time. There were hardly any check-in desks operating, and our flight was one of those combination ones: Czech Airlines and Turkish airlines together. We couldn't see a Czech counter, but there was a Turkish "Common Check-in" ... with a queue a mile long. We joined the line, and shuffled our way up and then back and then up again in the lane. It took about 20 minutes to get to the counter.

The girl looked at our papers: "Are you going to Prague?" she asked. We nodded and smiled eagerly. "You're at the wrong counter, you need the Czech counter ..." she told us.

So we set off again. We tried asking one official-looking uniformed chap, but he backed away in fear when we said "Czech Airlines?" telling us he didn't speak English. By the time we found the right counter it was almost at the end of check-in time, and there was no queue at all. We zipped through, and then through the passport check to the departure gate. When we went on a domestic flight to Izmir, we had to go through three security checks, but here there was only the one.

We are used to answering endless questions and filling in declaration forms going to and from Australia. But here it was so much easier.

Flying over Czech Republic in the early morning, it was a beautiful sight. I hadn't realised it's so small. Only about 2 million people altogether, about a million in Prague itself. And the houses we looked down on mostly painted in pretty pastels with red pointy roofs with little windows in them ...

This has never happened to us before. Because we were so late checking in, our bags were the first two to appear on the baggage carousel! So, grabbed our bags and walked on out into the Prague sunshine.

Looking for the yellow desk

Max couldn't meet us, he had a basketball match to go to, but we had a piece of paper with the name of the hotel - Ceskamoravska - and some instructions to either catch a bus and a train from the airport, or to ask about a shuttle bus at a yellow shuttle bus desk ...

Couldn't find any yellow desk. (We found out later there are two or three terminals, and we just weren't at the same one that Max arrived in.) There were a couple of white shuttle buses hanging around, and when we mentioned the name of our hotel they agreed to a price and we climbed aboard. Simple enough, ay?

Finding the hotel.

Ceskamoravska is the name of a station on the Metro, so the bus driver knew where he was heading, and set off confidently across town. And we also had a number by way of an address to describe exactly where in that district the hotel was. But when we got there, it was not nearly so simple.

When we got to the right area he started driving around and around, unable to find the hotel. "Oh, look! There's an 'Auto Kelly's'", Peter said. Suddenly I remembered Max had said something about that in an email - "It's right behind Auto Kelly's". But even sitting there staring at Auto Kelly's, we couldn't see the hotel, and the driver was getting quite distressed.

I went through the email print-out again: "Hotel Ceskamoravska - Inturprag".

Then I noticed a pink building - just there behind the orange business centre - with "Hotel Inturprag" written on it.

No wonder we couldn't find it. It changed its name. Nowhere was the old name mentioned.

Still can't see it? Okay, let's come around a little further.

Easter in Prague

2007-04-19T20:48:00.000+02:00

In Turkey, Easter in only celebrated by the (Christian) Armenian community - our colleague Alvin had taken Sunday off to celebrate with her family. But in Czech Republic, Easter is everywhere. We hadn't really thought about the fact that we were travelling on Easter Monday, which is a public holiday.

After we booked into the hotel, while we were waiting for Max to return from his match, we decided to come out and explore the Ceskamoravska area. There was a bus station, and a Metro station, just a few metres down the road from the hotel, so we headed across to that.

After the hustle and bustle of Istanbul, this was a bit of a shock! It was like a ghost town. Where were all the people.

Nope, none of them this way either.

Maybe there were celebrations going on somewhere else. Or maybe everyone else was having a sleep-in.

We were by now quite hungry, and there was one tiny kiosk open. Some pictures of fairly delicious-looking foods were displayed above the window, and so we both selected what looked like an almost-Australian-style hamburger with mustard, sauce and a heap of onions. But as the little lady in the booth leaned heavily on the mustard and sauce nozzles to spleurch! a dollop into each bun, and then heaped on the ... sauerkraut! I opened the bun in my hand and stared at the reddish patty wondering just what animal. It didn't bear thinking about, we were hungry and nothing else seemed to be open.

Willow Whips

A few people appeared in the bus station. Some of them - young and old - were carrying a plaited stick with coloured streamers on the end. They didn't seem to do anything with them, but Peter remembered reading about Willow Whips in a magazine on the plane. They have some connection with Easter, and there was a warning about watching out for young boys with Willow Whips playfully whacking people. (I have also since seen a news picture on the internet about women being whipped and doused with water as part of this Easter tradition.)

I saw these two young boys with their short whips. They were quite pleased to have their photo taken and to practise their two words of English.

Later when we went into the city centre and climbed the clock tower, we were looking down on the people milling about in the town square. We noticed an older guy walking around with a whip, apparently whacking people at random - mostly women. They were completely taken by surprise, and turned to face him - he then raised his whip again, and they walked away. Except for one woman, who struck out with her feet ... but didn't make contact.

In the town square(s) there were special market stalls, and there were decorations everywhere like the 'eggs' you can see in this tree.

There were also some giant eggs made of willow twigs, like this one.

And of course restaurants had special Easter table decorations.

How about that Czech food?

2007-04-19T20:31:00.000+02:00

Our first taste of food in Prague was a bit sad. But it was all uphill after that.

The hotel provided breakfast, a simple buffet of cereals, breads, cold meat, cheeses, salad, creamy yoghurt, tea and coffee.

At the metro station there was the little kiosk and a couple of small restaurants.

Well, the words look tasty.

But just down the road a little way there is a restaurant called Cerreto. We went there every chance we got, because we wanted to taste all of their dishes. Italian food, served by a delightful young waitress with a stunning personality and good English.

Peter tried the scallopini, washed down with a big beer, Czech style.

I had a lasagne that was too big to finish, and the next time we went Peter had a pancetta pizza, and I had my favourite spaghetti bol - the best I've ever had.

Then we discovered the gnocchi part of the menu.

Our favourites were the smoked salmon with spinach gnocchi, and the gorgonzola and chicken with potato gnocchi and walnuts ... mmm mmm!

Czech out the Language

2007-04-19T20:25:00.000+02:00

We didn't know any words in Czech, and our Turkish phrases were suddenly useless. There seem to be a lot of long words, and not nearly enough vowels.

However, we heard a lot of English around us -in the tourist areas there was probably more English than any other in the babble. And in every shop there seemed to be at least one person who could speak some English.

Some of the words we saw on signs were quite amusing to us, like this road sign.

There seemed to be a fondness for words ending in 'y', such as "banany" - can you guess what that is?

There were a lot of pictures to help, and I think that a plastic bag is a "sacky", and a shop is something like "obchody".

Saying 'thank you' sounds something like "dickwee".

And then, of course, some signs were actually in English. Apparently we had to stop before heading through this fence.

There was an ice skating arena next to the bus station.

Big place, looking very new, but totally deserted at this time.

Obviously sometimes the place is packed, and there are security issues. There was a huge sign to inform us in detail what we could not take into the arena.

To be more specific (in English):

What to see in Prague

2007-04-19T20:15:00.000+02:00

Our hotel was well out of the city centre. There really wasn't anything to see around there.

But, thanks to the wonders of the Metro system, it took us 20 minutes to get from our hotel to the city centre.

To travel on the Metro you need a pass. You can buy one of these little slips of paper in many places, including at the hotel reception desk, and they are valid for various periods of time - the cheapest ones, I think, give you an hour and a half. You validate the ticket (put a time stamp on it) in a yellow machine as you enter the metro station or as you climb aboard a tram or bus.

You can also get a pass for a number of days - we had one for our whole five days, which made travelling around the city brilliantly easy. Theoretically there are inspectors on all the transport and you can expect to see one about once a week (with reasonable penalties for being caught without a valid pass) but we never saw one.

Entering the metro station was an exciting experience for us country bumpkins. As you walk past the validation machines the ground slopes downwards and then your feet are sliding onto the fastest, longest, steepest escalator you could imagine. (It reminded me of something I saw in a TV series we see here in Istanbul called "Surface"where there is a railway heading down into the centre of the earth ... ) The other weird thing about it is when you look at the other passengers on the escalator, it looks for all the world like they are all leaning right over - those going down are leaning back and those going up are leaning forward. You had to be there ...

There are three metro lines, 'A' (red), 'B'(yellow), and 'C' (green). We travelled into town on the yellow line from Ceskamoravska to Mustek, where the yellow and green cross. Mustek station is huge - all underground, with shops and everything - and there are walking tunnels connecting the two lines and the numerous exits up to the bright streets. No matter how many times we practised, we never seemed to emerge at the same place twice.

Wenceslas Square

All of the exits come out somewhere near Wenceslas Square. From there it's easy to get to all the city sights. Nothing is very far away, but there is so much to see that I just about walked my little legs off in our five days there.

I don't know what it's normally like, but at this time the square is full of bright little Easter stalls. Quite a few of them displayed this interesting Roly-Poly sign.

The first time we went there is was right on hungry time, and Max took us straight to one of these. They were wrapping some kind of light dough around a cylinder, sprinkling it with cinnamon and other spices, and then cooking it over a kind of fire.

Then they would peel it off and hand it to you in a piece of tissue. Delicious!

Most of the stalls were selling various Prague souvenirs and Eastery items. But there was also a blacksmith at work in the centre of things. This brawny beast was allowing young skinny chaps to have a bit of a go with his anvil and hammer.

The Old Town Square

From Wenceslas Square it's not far down the narrow cobbled streets to the Old Town Square - and we just had to follow the crowds of tourists to know which way to go.

All those people that we didn't see at Ceskamoravska - this is where we were. I'm not sure if there are always lots of tourists here, or if this is an Easter phenomenon. There were individuals, and families, and tour groups with their leader holding a (closed) umbrella above their heads. Along the road are endless shops full of souvenirs, gifts, jewellery, crystal and some restaurants.

In the town square everyone stops and stares up at the Astrological Clock. Ahhh!

Someone has told people that something happens every hour on the hour - it must be in all the guide books, because huge crowds gather, cameras ready. There's a little skeleton to the right of the clock - he rings his little bell - and the two windows above the clock open and some characters go past inside the windows ... they don't even come out like the clock in Perth!

Then everyone sighs and walks away.

Climb Every Tower

We soon found that all the towers are there to be climbed, if you can just find the door and pay the fee. We went up the clock tower - chose to climb rather than take the lift - and the views were magnificent.

We took dozens of photos, of course. This one is looking back to the little street we walked down from Wenceslas Square.

Every direction ... how do I choose which view to include?

The Bridge

2007-04-19T20:10:00.000+02:00

From the Town Square the crowds surge through a series of narrow winding streets to the Bridge. Again, on the way there are souvenir shops and al fresco restaurants.

We stopped at one for a coffee and a taste of apple strudel. Nice little spot. A little expensive compared to our favourite restaurant near the hotel. But the food?

Yeah, pretty good, ay? and a little dob of ice cream served on that funny bent spoon.

Then you come to a narrow busy road to cross just before the bridge. The crowd bunches up to wait for the lights to change. One of the little red 'Don't Walk' men looked like Jesus on the cross, and another was a cripple with one leg and crutches. One tourist got so excited trying to lean out and photograph the little men he nearly got himself run over.

At the beginning of the bridge - another tower to climb. We chose not to.

On the Bridge

The bridge is the place to be.

Buskers, one-man-band, jazz band - all sorts.

And then there are all the little mobile stalls with original photographs, paintings and drawings - many will do a caricature or portrait for you while you wait, or from a photo.

And all along the sides of the bridge, the ubiquitous statues - free art to stare at.

The Cathedral

2007-04-19T19:44:00.000+02:00

There are a lot of great buildings to see in and around Prague, and the Cathedral is a must. We set off early, caught the metro into the city, walked through the square and across the bridge, and then caught a tram up the hill. We weren't the only ones. The tram was fairly crowded, and there were crowds already waiting to get into the cathedral. In fact there was a very discouraging queue several hundred long ...

We wandered around outside, looking at the statues and admiring the gargoyles, wondering if it was really worth queuing to get inside.

Finally we went and asked in the tourist office about ticket prices, and were told that of course, being a church, this was free. We watched the queue for a while, and noticed that each time it did move it made excellent progress. So we joined the end, and were quite surprised how soon we were allowed in - there was a man at the church door letting in groups of maybe twenty or so about every ten minutes. Once inside we found the place was huge and not at all crowded.

I haven't seen a lot of cathedrals, really, so I'm definitely not an expert. But this one is magnificent. Even if you are not a stained-glass enthusiast, you have to be impressed by the numerous windows in this church.

There are statues and a massive organ, a great deal of beautiful artwork.

But we wanted to climb the tower. It took us a while to find the staircase, but as soon as we did we started up. After a few steps there was a sign:

Warning: 287 steps

Ah, well. How bad can it be? I set off up the stairs with Peter, Max and friend Richard behind me. The staircase was small and winding in a clockwise direction. Whenever we met people coming the other way we pressed ourselves against the wall, and they had to step down the tiny side of the steps.

I could hear one of the guys had started counting - I was determined not to. Just concentrate on steady step - step - step ... and breathe ...

It was a long way. When we must be nearly there I heard Richard call "That's a quarter of the way!" Ahhh! By the time Richard announced "Half way" the claustrophobia was closing in on me. Just concentrating on the steps, and the way out is up!

We got there. And it was worth it. We have hundreds of beautiful photos. Here's a couple of small ones.

One More Tower

2007-04-19T07:59:00.000+02:00

On our last day we checked out of the hotel - but arranged for them to look after our bags and give us a ride to the airport in the afternoon - and set off into the city one last time. We still hadn't been on the Funicular railway (that had to be fun!) and there was a mini-eiffel-like tower at the top of the hill.

After the metro and the walk through the city we got thoroughly lost in the back streets trying to remember where to catch a tram ... but eventually we stumbled across it. We managed to get off again at the right stop, and wandered around a bit until we found the train.

It wasn't very exciting - not like the old funicular railway in the Blue Mountains (Australia) that dives straight down over the cliff ... But it was a whole lot better than walking up the hill.

We were pleased to discover that our travel pass was effective here too. It was the only time anyone actually looked at our pass.

At the top of the hill was a pleasant park. And it was a beautiful Spring day. People were lying around on the grass, playing with kids, walking dogs. We began to wish we had brought a picnic lunch.

We found the tower without too much difficulty.

We were glad that it had a it of a kiosk at the bottom, so we had our lunch, and enjoyed the view from the hill. There was a lift to travel up, for a price, or stairs ... but suddenly we decided we had had enough. So we didn't go up the tower. There was a WC in the basement (we had to pay for that) and then we wandered briefly around the sad little museum that was also down there.

Going Home to Istanbul

Our flight was not until 8.45p, but the hotel man was concerned that we shouldn't be in traffic around 5pm. So we went and had our last meal at our favourite restaurant in Ceskamoravska. and then got back to the hotel for our ride to the airport at 4pm.

Even though it wasn't yet peak hour the traffic was slow and it took a good hour to get to the airport. We had to cross the river, but the bridge our driver had planned to use was closed for repairs, and that slowed us down - and everyone else who obviously wanted to use the bridge. What surprised me about all of this (after our recent experiences in China, especially, as well as Istanbul) was how patiently the traffic (well, the drivers) waited. And the man's mobile phone kept ringing, but he did not seem in the least tempted to answer it - in fact after a few minutes he did reach out to touch it, and turned it off. (I've seen drivers in China managing two phones and sounding their horn and eating and smoking while driving ...)

At the airport we had all the time in the world. And we managed to find the right check-in counter first-up. The young lady asked us whether we would be buying visas when we arrived in Istanbul, and we showed her our residents visas. She frowned and phoned someone, apparently quite puzzled that two people with Australian passports should also be Turkish residents. Finally she nodded and smiled and handed us our papers and we were on our way. A very brief security check let us into the departure area where we sat around and waited for our flight.

We arrived back in Istanbul a few minutes after midnight, showed our passports at the counter, grabbed our bags, and walked out. There were taxis waiting, and we had no trouble telling them where we live. By 1am we were back in our own bed in our apartment in Bakırköy.

Break

2007-04-09T03:21:00.000+02:00

Working too hard. Need break.

Flying to Prague today. Meeting cousin Max who I haven't seen for 37 years ...

Back in 5 days.

2007-04-02T15:34:00.000+02:00

Hair do

2007-03-30T16:35:00.000+02:00

It's all very well having 'adventures' in a foreign land, but most of us are not so keen when it comes to someone messing with our hair. An Australian friend of ours in China went in for a haircut and came out with an embarrassing mullet - which ended up with her having to have her hair cut really short. I had my own haircut hassles in China, as you can read here.

All of the Turkish women I've seen - those who don't have their heads covered - have beautiful hair, they are obviously very particular about what happens to their hair, so that should give me a great deal of confidence about getting my hair done.

The one slightly odd thing here in Turkey is that all services are pretty much men's domain. For instance, there are no waitresses - only waiters - and the hairdressers are all men. There is a large hairdresser's opposite one of the classrooms where I teach, and I have spent many bored moments watching 2 or 3 men gathered around each female customer playing with her hair endlessly ... I guess I could get used to that.

All the same, I found myself very nervous about going to a hairdresser here. I pulled out my phrase book and mastered the words for cut and perm, and I can tell the difference between a men's hairdresser (erkek kuaför) and a women's one. And there are certainly lots to choose from - yeah, maybe that's the real problem, choosing ...

So, finally, yesterday I asked our Turkish colleague, the delightful Alvin, to take me to a hairdresser's and help me make an appointment, check on the price, and make sure it was clear what I wanted. We went into a little shop that's almost the closest hairdresser to our apartment - there is another one a mere ten metres away, but this one is about thirty metres away (the closest of two that are right next door to each other.)

We went in and Alvin started talking to a thin, slightly sickly-looking guy. I caught my breath - someone nearby was badly in need of a shower, the odour was overpowering despite all the other smells in a salon. Alvin talked with him, and arrangements were made. He wanted to know if I wanted a cheap Turkish perm (about 70 lira) or a more expensive longer-lasting European perm. I opted for the European one, but staggered a bit when I was told it would be 150 lira - that's even more expensive than in Australia! He immediately knocked it down to 100 lira, supposedly on the promise of cash payment. So it was agreed, and I nervously set myself to return at about 11am.

When I walked in there this morning at eleven, Mr Stinky was nowhere in sight, nor anyone else who had been in the shop yesterday when arrangements were made. I hesitated - there was a young lady looking at me quizzically ... was this my Chinese experience revisited? A moment later a young man came running in the door, and I thought I recognised him from yesterday. He motioned to a chair, so I sat - but I wasn't at all sure that he knew why I was there.

[Now maybe I should explain: I have had half a dozen perms before (in Oz), so I had certain expectations. They always wash your hair thoroughly first, to make sure there are no chemicals there which might interfere with the perm chemicals. Then they do the cut. Then the rollers are put in, and the perm stuff trickled over. A timer is set and left ticking while the stuff works, and you get a coffee and a magazine to look at. When the timer rings they run over and check your curls, and then you go to the sink for a rinse and some perm stopper liquid. Then there is some thorough rinsing and finally some styling and maybe a blow-dry ... ]

An older guy showed up and started putting my hair up in clips. He had a small plastic container of perm rods - not the quantity they usually use in Oz. I was a little worried, so I phoned Alvin and asked her to talk with the man and check that he knew what I wanted. All was apparently in order. So it was time to just relax and let him get on with it his way.

He didn't wash my hair, nor cut it. He just started putting in the rods, and drizzling the perm liquid on as he went. As time passed he got more and more enthusiastic with the liquid - maybe he was afraid he wouldn't be able to use up the whole bottle. He would grab a hank of hair, drizzle some stuff on, and then mix it around with his hands before winding it onto the rod. With my long thick hair it took him a whole hour to get the rods in.

Suddenly Mr Stinky turned up - wearing a fresh, clean shirt and with no bad smell. He came over and checked on the progress of my treatment, and seemed very pleased. But I still sat there for a whole hour before they decided I was done. By this time, in the absence of any magazines to read or anything else to do, I had pulled my little phrasebook out of my pocket and was deeply engrossed in trying to learn a few phrases. I just about leapt out of my skin when Mr no-longer-Stinky suddenly said "Come here, please." I have no idea how long he and the other guys had been working out together what to say to me in English. He looked suitably pleased when I jumped up and went across to the sink.

As they were rinsing and undoing the rods, the main guy kept smiling and looking really pleased. He did that thing they do here to indicate something is really tasty or beautiful - putting all the fingertips together and then shaking the hand up and down.

Finally it was time for the hair cut. I had wanted to have six months worth of growth removed, but I could only persuade them to take off less than an inch despite all my finger-waving. Women are supposed to wear their hair long anyway, and he was right in that the perm had shortened it up a bit.

Of course its all stiff now with the styling gel they put in it. I'll wait and see how it is when I get up tomorrow.

World Cup Cricket

2007-03-30T15:21:00.000+02:00

We (especially Peter) have been enjoying watching the World Cup Cricket - on our (new) big TV and with the coverage provided by Fox Sports on Digiturk - Digiturk is worth it if just for the cricket!

The other night there was a very exciting match between the Top-Dog Aussies and fairly worthy rivals South Africa.

But at the same time, on another channel, there was a football (well, soccer) match between Turkey and arch-rivals Greece. Knowing that this would be a hot conversation topic in the classrooms in the weeks to come, we wanted to keep up with that one too.

Gotta love the inventor of the remote control ... !

Every time we switched across to the football match, they seemed to be going crazy over another goal - it was a brilliant match: Turkey smashed Greece 4-0 ... remarkably lively for a game of soccer! Our students - and everyone here - are delighted of course.

But what about the cricket - what do our students think about the cricket?

Do they even play cricket in Turkey?

Until the other day we would have said 'no' - they don't even seem to know what it is.

Then we saw THIS!

Maybe they are just waiting for their wickets to grow ...

Fixer Upper

2007-03-26T15:36:00.000+02:00

I have no idea how old our apartment block is, or any of the buildings around here. They look pretty old to me, but then we did see buildings in China that looked old and derelict from the moment the builders completed their work, so who can tell?

I am not sure that our apartment block is sound. I'm fairly sure that we are leaning just slightly. Whenever Peter uses his weights and then puts them down, they straightaway roll to one side of the room. None of the doors can be closed properly, and when we pull the bedroom door almost closed and then let it go, it swings back and forth about five times of its own accord - I'm guessing it just doesn't hang straight.

We often found that there was a bad smell, especially in wet weather, and we suspected that it had something to do with the trapdoor and duct in the bathroom. Since we installed an extractor fan and the weather has been dry for ages we haven't had trouble with that.

But now it's Spring. Time to fix things. We came home one day to find the workmen in our foyer.

They had ripped out the electrical metre boxes and were apparently planning to install new ones, part of Spring necessities.

Unfortunately, these renovations required that the power be turned off, and yet at the same time they needed electricity to complete their work.

So while the apartment residents went without power for a few hours, young Waldo there held the bare wires together to run his mate's power tools.

We suspected that the bad smells may have something to do with (what Charlotte calls) "the Down" in the apartment block. Its always been too dark and cluttered with junked for us to peek down there or venture down to explore. But now, they fixed the electrics in the building there was a light shining down there.

Now we can see ( and we still haven't been down there!) that there are at least two below ground floors ... oooh dungeon! And dank! Bleh!

So the renovators and workmen got to work down there. They have been dragging out mouldy wooden doors - which they they smashed into small pieces and carried away in rubbish bags - and huge broken up fibreglass tanky things (wonder what was in those?) ... and broken up brick walls. I hope they weren't supporting walls.

Then there was a long day when the whole building stank of creosote, or some such. We guessed they were doing some kind of waterproofing, sealing. And then they poured in gallons of sand. Lots and lots, and apparently some cement in there somewhere. They have made a new floor down there, several feet thick, flat and smooth and odour-blocking.

Bells and Whistles

We had a doorbell that made an annoying twittering-birds sound. So when someone was downstairs and they wanted to get into the building for whatever reason, they would press our bell more often than not. Apparently our bell button was at just the right height for anyone and everyone to press - including people visiting the accountancy business on our floor. There was no intercom, we were just expected to drag ourselves to our door every time and press the downstairs door button. So we disconnected our bell - we figured our real friends could phone us.

But now, with the renovations, we have a new doorbell!

It took them three days of work, power off, door kept open while people came and went and smoked in and out of the apartment ...

And we have an intercom on the inside, so if you want us to open the security door you'll have to tell us who you are.

In English please.

Turkish Birthday Celebrations

2007-03-24T21:24:00.000+02:00

We are a very mixed bunch from many different backgrounds, but we have become good friends. So when the lovely Alvin had a birthday, we were all together in the Teachers' Office to celebrate with her.

Alvin was sure that everyone liked chocolate, so she ordered a cake that was chocolate, with chocolate cream, and chocolate icing, and chocolate chips inside too.

A few sparklers and a candle or two, along with plastic cups full of coke, and we were in full celebration mode.

All the chaps were there.

There was (Jordanian) Ali, our guide and protector.

Tony, the new boy from Oz.

Michael the Brit.

There's my Peter.

And Steven, our müdür - director of education - from America.

And young Charlotte from Brighton (England).

And here are our other young ladies: Shannon, and Stephanie too.

Star Studded Cast.

Spicy Cockroach

2007-03-23T17:22:00.000+02:00

Nearly lunchtime, so I was on the prowl for something to eat. I opened the fridge door.
Hmmm. A tub of margarine, half a tub of yoghurt .... that was all, if you ignore the almost empty mayonnaise jar in the door.

Peter was standing at the kitchen bench, killing ants one by one. These are our first Turkish ants and there aren't very many of them - not like when you get ants in the kitchen in Australia!

So, as usual, we put on our coats and shoes and headed down the street for something to eat. Looking for something different, something we haven't tried yet.

At each restaurant door a man was calling "Buyurun! Buyurun!" trying to draw us in. So we wandered slowly past keeping just out of their reach. Many restaurants have one or two meaty kebabs turning in the window near the door, and an attendant slicing off slivers with a huge knife. The one near the railway station has vegetables embedded with the meat and a strong aroma of curry which is almost impossible to resist.

In another window there is a man who seems to be cooking mince - like dry-frying fine mince on a large shiny hot-plate, constantly mixing it with two metal spatulas. Just inside the door there is a hot pan full of mussels in their shells. We have often seen roadside sellers with pans full of mussels and lemon wedges - it seems like a very doubtful indulgence, a good way to get food poisoning. But when we thought about that it seems very unlikely, Turkish people are very fussy about cleanliness and health. So then someone has told us that these things are not just mussels, but cooked and seasoned mussels mixed with rice and returned to their shells for presentation. So here's something we haven't tried yet.

It was obviously time to try the mussels, and maybe that squishy mince stuff too. We wandered in - the restaurant is very narrow, just a table on each side and an aisle in the middle, but very long. Down the back there are tables with soft comfy bench chairs. We asked the 'buyurun' (welcome) man about the squishy stuff - "Bu ne?" (what's this?) and he told us "cockroach".

Well, that's what it sounded like. Of course, if we were still in China it really would be cockroaches, probably on a stick. But this was actually kokoreç.

So we tried some of the mussels - they were really delicious, stuffed back into the shell with seasoned cooked rice, and drizzled with fresh lemon juice.

And then we also had some of the cockroach stuff. It was really spicy. I had to drink some ayran - salty yoghurt drink - to stop my mouth burning too much. It was served with fresh bread - like everything - and there was a bowl of pickled peppers on the table to add to it ... but I had enough spice.

And then, today, I decided to look it up on the internet. As it says in Wikipedia:
"Kokoreç is a Turkish dish made of seasoned, skewered lamb intestines."

Oh. OK.

"Please Remove"

2007-03-11T08:32:00.000+02:00

They say "Life's pretty straight without Twisties".

Life can be pretty straight without TV too.

I grew up without TV, but it was no big deal - I didn't miss it because I had never had it, and besides we had heaps of cardboard boxes, some scissors and sticky-tape to keep us occupied.

Peter and I got our first little black and white TV in the '70s, soon after we were married. I was off work with a streaming head-cold at the time, and after a few days of staring at the walls of our tiny flat until I was ready to climb them, we decided it was time to become TV owners.

We spent most of the '80s on Mer in the Torres Strait -no electricity, no running water, no newspapers/magazines, minimal radio reception, and of course no TV. In the evenings we surrounded ourselves with hurricane lanterns to read books, but mostly we went to bed early. When our four babies were a little older, videos were invented and we gathered around our solar-powered 12volt TV to watch "The Man from Snowy River" on our 5 inch screen.

Returning to mainland Australia, we gleefully purchased a (larger!) colour TV, and the gaps in our children's cultural education caused by years of island isolation were quickly filled.

In China for the last two years, TV viewing took on a whole new meaning. We could only stomach so much of the one English channel CCTV9 with its propaganda-ised programs, and we bought (and watched) several hundred DVDs.

Here in Turkey we found DigiTurk satellite TV is quite reasonably priced, and so we have access to a good number of English channels with movies, documentaries, news, and sports.

But the TV itself is horrible. Its the sound. If you turn it up loud enough to hear, the music (and especially adverts) is burry and rattles the whole place.

Impulsively Peter dropped into the local supermarket (its hardly what you'd call a department store) and bought a really big TV. It was only 289YTL - about $269 AU. No problem.

But then - how do you get something like that home? He had to ring Ali to get someone interpreting, and was told that Migros don't have a delivery service, but a couple of young employees would help him out. Peter stood there for a moment wondering what form of transport they would produce - a van? a car? a big-wheeled trolley?

Oh, no! A shopping trolley?

So these two young guys hoisted the huge box onto the top of a shopping trolley, and set off ... up the escalator with the whole contraption tipping perilously, then out the wrong door (despite Peter's protestations) around the back of the shopping centre, considerably lengthening the trip home.

On a good day its about a ten-minute walk down the narrow streets from the supermarket to our apartment block.
But this was late Saturday afternoon, pretty much peak hour.
Besides being always crowded, and very narrow (barely a car's width, with metal rails or cement mushrooms to protect the sidewalk) the streets are laid with ancient bricks or cobbles.
So it was "fun" trundling through the crowd, "Pardon! Pardon!" (like the French "parrrrdon", not English), with the two young chaps following faithfully and the big box rattling itself to pieces.

When I came home from teaching he had it all set up. Only one thing left to do.

Well, someone has to remove that sticker!

I have NO idea what the sticker is there for. It seems to serve no purpose whatsoever. We have seen several of these big TVs on sale in the supermarkets, and they always have the "Please Remove" sticker.

I suppose it would be more worrying if it said "Please do NOT remove" because then it would be really hard to decide what to do about it.

Oh but it is nice to watch my favourite shows without the TV blurring all the sounds.

So then Peter had to have Ali around to show off the new TV. A few moments later they rushed out to buy a DVD player.

Each.

And some plug in speakers.

So now I am sitting here watching some of my favourite musical movies while Peter plays with the speakers trying to get them just right.

Now maybe we can drown out the noise from the people upstairs.

Being on Elastic

2007-03-08T14:08:00.000+02:00

Now that we have found our way to Zeytinburnu on the train right by our apartment, we seem to keep going back there.

Peter has been trying (in vain) to find a decent gym to go to. In Australia we were both gym members, and in China he belonged to the very impressive (and very popular) "Sky Gym" that looked like a giant glass ball above the street. Here the only gyms we have found are not only incredibly expensive, but also spooky little underground places with no one at all using the sparse equipment at the time when we happened to visit.

So he went back to just going for walks. The other morning he got a little over-ambitious and was striding along (while I was teaching) ... and found himself at Zeytinburnu. He was so far from home that he had to catch the train back again.

So today we had no classes, and when it came to lunch time we couldn't decide where to eat. SO we got on the train and went to Zeytinburnu again.

We wandered up the wide open mall, but couldn't decide on a restaurant or bufe to stop at.

Finally we impulsively stepped into a 'pide' shop - pide is a bit like pizza, Turkish style.

I didn't have my camera, this photo (obviously taken at night) is on the little wet-wipes pack restaurants give you when you dine there.

Once inside we ordered some soup and some pide. There were only a couple of tables, but like most places there was obviously a bigger room upstairs. However when we indicated that we would like to go upstairs, the waiter shook his head and indicated a table near the door.

The food was nice enough, and as we sat there we started to look around a bit.

In the first few minutes a couple of men walked past us repeatedly from a small (non-refrigerated) van outside carrying (one by one) about six whole (but headless) sheep's carcasses past us and up the stairs. I guess health regulations and practices are a little different here! At first I thought they were pigs ... silly me - we soon realised we were in a very Muslim restaurant.

The waiter went upstairs several times carrying a tray loaded with about twenty tulip-shaped cups of çay (tea), and a steady stream of Muslim clerics in their little hats and long coats came into the restaurant one by one, each one greeted the restaurateur in his big baggy Turkish-style pants, and went on upstairs. I guess we wouldn't have fitted in up there.

The walls inside the restaurant were covered with brightly-coloured tiles, some with large Arabic words. And in the middle of the restaurant was the enormous oven where they were cooking the pide.

We were a bit disappointed with the price of our meal - I guess they decided its fair to charge extra to foreigners, because locals certainly wouldn't be paying the prices we paid. But with our limited Turkish-speaking skills we just paid and left.

Yeah, we might still go back to Zeytnburnu sometime, but not to that restaurant.

Mosquiality

2007-03-04T20:41:00.000+02:00

I was walking down one of the narrow streets of Bakırköy when I noticed this:

Well, I don't know.
Rocket ship?
Some kind of missile?
A heating unit?
Art - a sculpture?

I was surprised that no one else had stopped to look. A gypsy lady took advantage of my inactivity to try to sell me some "Evil Eye" trinkets. As I fumbled for my camera I told her several times (in Turkish) that I didn't understand and only spoke English, and she finally wandered off in disgust muttering to herself.

That was when I started thinking about "mosquiality", or maybe it should be "mosqueness".

Do you know what a mosque looks like? There are a few mosques in Australia - you can mostly notice them by their dome shape.
We saw quite a few in China, too. Again, they all had domes.

There are lots of mosques with domes in Turkey. Lots.

And I mean LOTS.

Some of them are really impressive, huge structures. Some are shiny, some old and a bit crumbly. This one in Selcuk (near Ephesus where we went on holiday) is really ancient.

Our ears told us that there is a mosque very close to where we live - we hear the "Call to Prayer" loud and clear five times a day. But its not obvious where the mosque is.

In the narrow street next to ours I looked up one day and saw the Minaret - when you are bustling along a narrow, crowded street you don't always get a chance to look up.

I don't remember noticing minarets before, nor hearing the call to prayer before we came to Turkey.

Most people - like, for instance our students - seem to pay no attention to the Call to Prayer, but we have heard (Jordanian) Ali singing along to it - which was when we realised it is actually in Arabic, not Turkish.

So not all mosques are big, and neither do they all have domes.

BUT they ALL have minarets.

When I realised that I noticed this one when I was on the train.

Can you see the little minaret stuck up on top, like a tiny rocket ready to be launched ... ?

So what about the little "rocket" in the Bakırköy street?

This has to be the smallest mosque I have ever seen.

I know it is a mosque because it says "Camii",
which means mosque.

And it is right next to the "mini pasaj",
so I guess everything is small around here.

Day Off

2007-03-03T09:02:00.000+02:00

Another week, another (one) day off - what to do? Its not enough time to go anywhere, and mental exhaustion makes it hard to be creative about filling the day with fun (part of the brain is just asking for bed...)

So we got on the train again, because that doesn't require much thought, and Charlotte came with us to have a look at Olivium shopping centre. We didn't bother with accidentally getting off at the wrong station this time.

All the big shopping centres have some fun activity in the middle. (Galeria has an ice-skating rink, Carousel has a merry-go-round / carousel.) This one has a climbing wall.

Charlotte and I thought about it - but not for very long.

And then we wandered around the shops and looked at all the pretty things to buy.

But in the end we didn't buy anything except a couple of bits and pieces from a stationery store - gotta love stationery, don't you?

We had lunch - kumpir, stuffed baked potatoes, but not nearly as good as the ones at Ortakoy.
Walking back to the station we saw this simit-man, and just for once we had time to get out the camera (and he even slowed his pace a little to pose for us). We see a lot of people in the streets carrying bread in huge packs on their heads, or carrying trays of food as part of a take-away food service ('paket servis'), or dangling one of those lovely little trays full of tulip-shaped glass cups of çay (tea) - but its really hard to have a camera ready.

By mid-afternoon we were back at the apartment, all tuckered out, watching TV and playing scrabble.
A new teacher arrived today, from Australia, so we gathered at a local outdoors restaurant. He was dressed Oz-style in cropped cotton pants. Its "winter" here, so we haven't seen any bare legs for a while, but he wasn't feeling cold. The temperature today was up around 18 degrees, but when the sun goes down it can drop fast. Maybe it was just the jet-lag affecting him.

This particular restaurant offers nargile - like the hookah in Alice in Wonderland. You can choose which flavour of smoke you suck through the water pipe. Some of the teachers chose apple-flavour, and I have to admit it was a lot more pleasant than the usual stench of tobacco smoke.

Looking for Olivium

2007-03-01T16:27:00.000+02:00

When we were on the train the other day we noticed an interesting looking building, and we decided we would come back later and check it out.

There it is, the big round glass building with "Olivium" on top.
I found out on the internet that Olivium is an "outlet centre", shopping mall, and has some cinemas. And it also said that this building was in Zeytinburnu.

So today, with no classes, we got on the train ... and when we got to Zeytinburnu, only two stops down, we got off again. We hadn't been able to see the shopping centre from the train, but we nevertheless headed off where we thought it would be.

Interesting area, Zeytinburnu. Nice wide mall (walking street, as they call it in China) - not as crowded or as narrow as our Bakırköy main street. We had a lovely walk around, enjoyed the sights and the shops. Then we decided we had hopped off too early, and so we got back on the train.

We are confident that we can usually blend in fairly well in this community. But not today, we seemed to be wearing "tourist / foreigner" badges. As we got onto the train we were immediately surrounded by a group of three or four very excitable teenage girls who squealed and giggled as they practised their minimal English and tried to squeeze some Turkish out of us. People on buses are generally very quiet - mobile phones are not supposed to be used and people speak in hushed tones. On trains people are a bit more talkative and speak a little louder to be heard over the rattling and rolling ... but these girls were at a pitch that was obviously embarrassing most people in the carriage, especially us. We weren't sure if it was just hormones or if they were on something, but we were very relieved (and they were disappointed) when we got off at the next stop, Kalzıçeşme (no wonder I had forgotten the name.)

And there was "Olivium", just a ten minute walk from the station. As we walked into the centre and through the usual security check the policewoman said "Welcome," (instead of the usual "Hoş geldiniz") and the man in the stationery store we browsed around asked us which country we came from. Still not blending in.

We wandered around and enjoyed a yummy Turkish lunch. Then we headed back to the station, trying to blend in and be normal.

No chance. There was a band of small boys bouncing around on the platform - yeah, why weren't they in school, ay? They were playing chicken with the train - sitting on the edge of the platform with their legs hanging over and daring the train to come - and testing the exit turnstiles - how far can you push the turnstile before it forces you to go through and you can't get back? Then they caught sight of us foreigners - more fun!

Fortunately there is not too long to wait between trains. Unfortunately the boys were, of course, waiting for the same train as us. It was one of those really old trains and you have to yank the doors open, and several doors just wouldn't give more than a crack, despite a number of passengers and would-be passengers applying themselves to the task. Being smaller than us the boys managed to get through one of those cracks, we headed further down the train and with relief squeezed ourselves into a different carriage.

Back home to our little apartment. That's our place with the Turkish flag, and our bedroom on the left behind the beautiful (peach?) tree.

Inter-Continental Travel

2007-02-28T21:25:00.000+02:00

We live in Europe (which is a long was away from Australia).

Today we went to Asia.

(British) Michael was giving a talk about the new TOEFL courses which will be starting soon, so Michael, Charlotte, Peter and I caught the sea bus across to the Kadıköy (in Asia) branch of our company.

This big 'cat' is one of those brilliant sea buses that runs between Europe and Asia. They are fast and quiet and smooth - just a slight roll when you get out into the sea of Marmara - and they are made in Western Australia.

When we left Europe it was almost sunny, but when we got to Asia twenty minutes later it was cloudy and gloomy. And Charlotte noticed that it smelt like fish. We wondered if all of Asia smelt like that.

There were lots of seagulls, and lots of ferries. That big building is the one donated by Germany and now used as a railway station. The ferries run back and forth there - very fast - from Kadıköy.

So we went and had our little meeting. The company wants us to teach the new TOEFL. But they don't want to buy any books for us to use. We have one, between all of us. This is one of the little hassles of marketing versus education in other countries.

Charlotte came back with us to Bakırköy, in Europe. And tonight Stephanie, Charlotte, Peter and I are all going to sit around, eat microwave popcorn, drink sahlep, and watch "Law and Order - Criminal Minds" (start of a new season) on TV together.

"Sahlep" - ? Thick, creamy, sweet, spicy, Turkish drink made from orchid roots. MmmmMmm.

Rockin' Rollin' Ridin'

2007-02-24T09:23:00.000+02:00

We live right next to the railway line. There is one building in between us and the line, and as it goes past here the line is not underground but down below the level of roads and buildings so there is not much noise. All the same it has taken us five months to actually get on one of these trains.

The carriages are very basic. Hard plastic seats, and plenty of standing space. The doors mostly close automatically, but some of them take quite a yank to get them open.

On Thursday we went west towards (and past) the airport, and discovered the little beach at Florya. Yesterday was our day off so we decided to head in the other direction, east - into the main part of the city. We went to the end of the line, but on the way we noticed one or two interesting things to get off and investigate next time.

At Sirkeci, the end of the line just before the Golden Horn, we found a litle Tourist Information office. On the window was this map of the various train systems on the European side of Istanbul.

What a good map! We dropped in to ask for a copy of it. The little man behind the desk was pleased to see us. He spoke some English, and was sitting there with his study books learning about Past Simple Passive Verbs - we gave him a brief free lesson. But he told us his office was very poor, and he could not give us a copy of the map.

"You have a digital camera ... ?" he asked. And so we collected a copy on our camera instead.

As you can see with a glance at the map, public transport in Istanbul gives a lot of options. This map shows just the trains. There are also buses - big and small usually running the same routes - and dolmus (shared taxi), and taxis.

Sand-between-the-toes

2007-02-22T19:13:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I had a class to teach, but Peter was at a loose end, and Charlotte was going stir-crazy. So the two of them hopped on the train that runs right by our apartment - just to see where it would go. They went to the end of the line, and back, but on the way they saw a beach out of the window, so they got off and felt the sand-between-their-toes ... (Charlotte is from Brighton where the beach has pebbles.)

So today I didn't have a class, and Peter and I hopped the train and went 13 minutes down the track to be on the beach by the sea.

It was only a little bit of beach, and we weren't at all sure if it wasn't a private beach. In Australia there are no private beaches, access to the water is protected by law - but maybe here its different. We had to go through a big black gate - which was open. It appeared that the beach belonged to a hotel. And walking further along the beach was made impossible by these fences.

We thought we might go look at the pier. So we went along the road further and tried to get back onto the beach further along. But the police with guns were guarding the gate, so we guessed it was some sort of military area - there are a lot of those.

A bit further away from the beach, on the other side of the rail line, we found the Havuzlu Çay Bahçesi - Pool Tea Garden. There were two large pools with fountains - this time of year no water though. The weather was delightful and we sat outside for our lunch.

The waiter came and laid a sheet of paper over the heavy Turkish-style tablecloth - later when we finished he came and cleaned up by wrapping the paper around our dishes and everything and carried them away in one neat bundle.

As we sat and relaxed, there was something familiar in the air. I gradually realised that I could hear parrots - a familiar sound in Australia. We found that one of the trees had a man-made hollow branch, with a nest-full of small green parrots.

Actually the place was full of birds - the ubiquitous doves, sparrows (you have to realise that for us West Aussies even these are exotic), the green parrots, some jackdaws, and even the odd finch. I was always an avid birdwatcher as a kid, caught it off my dad ...

We don't see a lot of birds in Istanbul ... too many cats!

Getting Engaged in Turkey

2007-02-20T15:01:00.000+02:00

Jordanian Ali is engaged to a Turkish girl, Dilek. He got engaged soon after we arrived here, and they had an engagement party at Ali's apartment which I didn't go to because I wasn't feeling well that night. (Everything here seems to happen at night, I like to be in bed by midnight but apparently everyone else stays up all night - that's why shops etc open at 10am, but that's another story.)

I don't know whether they didn't do it right, or if its normal to have two parties - one for each of the engaged couple's families - but on Saturday they were having another party, this time at Dilek's parents' home. Dilek has a big family, but of course Ali's family is in Jordan so we (Stephanie and Peter and I) were standing in for them.

It was Saturday night, so the twenty minute trip took an hour or so, trying to extricate ourselves from the local traffic. When we got there we found the apartment was packed with dozens of happy family members of all ages. There were one or two who we recognised from previous encounters, and several spoke quite good English, so we were able to be sociable and enjoy ourselves.

The food was incredible. All salads, all served cold, a huge table-ful. We have salads in Australia, but nothing like this. The Turks are the Kings of Salad! Not a single plain "green salad" (with lettuce, tomato, carrot and cucumber...) in sight. All sorts of other tasty vegetables, grains, and meats chopped and mixed with various tasty extras like yoghurt and sauces of various kinds. If you are a fan of a good potato salad (and isn't that the one that usually goes first at a barbecue?) then you would love all of these. And then there are the little things wrapped in vine leaves, and ... well, I guess I could spend a long time talking about Turkish salads!

When everyone had eaten and a host of ladies were tidying up and washing up it was time for the rings. (Again, they had done this at the first party, but it had to be done again.) There were two rings tied together with a red ribbon, presented on a special little tray. Ali and Dilek slipped the rings onto their fingers and the appropriate family member cut the ribbon. For the rest of the evening they continued to wear their rings with the ribbons trailing.

Then it was time for lots of Turkish kissing. I love the way everyone here hugs and kisses (both cheeks, of course). Ali and Dilek went around and greeted everyone, and photos had to be taken with each family group. Some people had pure gold coins attached to little red ribbons, and they pinned these onto the happy couple.

While this was going on the cake was brought out. Now, what would you expect to be inside a cake like that?

Ali and Dilek cut the cake, and a small piece was put onto a plate, and they fed each other - to a lot of cheering and clapping. Then the cake was cut up and everyone had a piece. It was a moist, light chocolate cake with cream.

Then Ali came and told Peter he wanted him to open the champagne.

Dutifully Peter struggled with the cork - while most people cowered and waited for the 'pop'.

It just seemed to be stuck hard, so various other people tried. In the end it was pulled out without a sound - it was a still white wine, not champagne at all. Ali and Dilek linked arms and drank some wine, and everyone was pleased.

They walked around with their ribbons on their hands and a pair of scissors and snipped off tiny pieces of ribbon which various people then swallowed. Stephanie said that at the first party she had been given some ribbon to eat. Apparently its a bit like catching the bouquet - you are going to be the next one to get engaged.

We were told that later (after midnight) everyone would be moving to another venue where there was more space and there would be dancing. But we had been teaching all day, and the next day was Sunday when we have to teach all day too. So we caught a taxi and came home.

It was a lovely time - its always good to be part of family fun. And it was a curious mixture of traditions - some that are definitely Turkish and some that seem to have floated in from outside.

Climbing the (glass) wall

2007-02-20T10:54:00.000+02:00

There are lots of famous walls around the world - the Great Wall of China, Hadrian's Wall, the Berlin Wall ... And now:

The Glass Wall

Obviously this one doesn't have the strength of those other walls, so it must be symbolic.

We have been very puzzled about its meaning and purpose. It all started ...

When we first arrived at this school, there was a partial glass wall separating off the small section of the teachers' room where the Teachers' Assistant had her desk. This was her little place - she held the keys to the various cupboards, and occasionally did photocopying, and guarded the paper ... one or two packets at the most. She still found time to do her makeup, sit on the radiator, and chat online with friends. She was a pretty girl, but her youthfulness, inexperience, and limited English made it difficult for her to actually assist us, the teachers. She did however learn a few words and would check with us occasionally, "Am I beautiful?" Finally, for a variety of reasons, she resigned her job and we were left to manage without her.

Left to our own devices we entered the area behind the partial glass wall and found that the cupboards with the keys really held nothing of interest or value. We got permission from administration downstairs, and removed the glass wall - adding some extra space and a sense of freedom to our teachers' room. Morale went up, there were more laughs and less grumbles.

Then one of our Turkish teachers was made teachers' assistant, along with her teaching tasks. She's a wonderful young lady - beautiful as well as intelligent and talented, a good teacher and good English speaker, and a good friend to all of us foreign teachers. Now things could begin to run efficiently.

We all work six days a week, with one day - Friday - off. We all turned up one Saturday morning to discover:

Yep. The Glass Wall. Only this time it extends all the way to the wall - we can no longer walk around the end of it, we have to go out of one door and back into the other.

Or we could climb over maybe.

It had an instant effect. Morale dropped, everyone was grumbling and muttering again.

We tried asking downstairs about why they had gone to all the trouble of building a wall that no one wants and has no useful purpose ... but they assured us that we would soon understand and be very happy about it. Its been a couple of weeks and we are still not happy, just quietly resigned. So what does this thing represent?

Its the old battle between marketing and education - is this a school where learning is paramount, or a business that makes money hand over fist? This is marketing wanting a bit more say in the education department.

Sprung

2007-02-13T12:04:00.000+02:00

February - the coldest time of year in Istanbul, they say. Right now its about 16 degrees on our balcony. The trees are fairly confused about the weather.

They are all budded up and ready to spring into life. A few of the buds have got over-excited and popped out already.

Once of the trees has been trying to get into our bedroom, poking its twigs hard up against the window. So I cut a few, and put them in a jar inside.

Its still trying to be winter outside, but its already spring in our apartment.

Birthday in Turkey

2007-02-13T11:08:00.000+02:00

Even people who live and work in Turkey have birthdays. Life goes on.

So we can't keep with the usual time-honoured family traditions - a family get-together, and a photo taken while (looking daft and) blowing out the mandatory candles on the mandatory cake.

We thought about having a party or 'do' of some sort here in our apartment - we have plenty of space and everything. But almost everyone we know smokes heavily. To be polite they would go out onto our balcony... So I had this vision of a large crowd of people on our tiny balcony, and maybe a collapsed balcony.

A month ago, on the day when the company threatened to pay us late and we decided not to work until things were right, we all went to a little cake cafe in town, called Edo's. It was a good time together. So we decided to do that again.

We bought one of their cheesecakes - it turned out to be more of a jelly-cake - and the shop people decorated it with sparklers and a couple of those tiny umbrellas they put in drinks. And almost the whole crew came - here's Stephanie, Shannon, Charlotte, Michael, Steven, and us. Good times.

Gotta play that game

2007-02-08T22:18:00.000+02:00

The lovely weather continues. And the classes are getting less. And Stephanie has a friend staying with her for a few days. So - even though its not our day off - we went out for the day.

A dolmus (shared taxi) to Taksim, and then a bus to Ortakoy. That's the spot by the Bosphorus where Charlotte and I went when we couldn't go to the palace because of the journalist's funeral. And of course we had to have Kumpir - those huge baked baked potatoes with all sorts of tasty things piled onto them.

In Ortakoy the streets are even tinier than here in Bakirkoy, just little brick-paved lane-ways, and there are lots of little touristy shops. We mulled over jewellery displays, and tried on hats and scarves ...

And then we saw an Internet Cafe and play house that advertised "Air Hockey"! Its a standing joke here at our office that we, the teachers, want an air hockey table - in the teachers' office, or somewhere. So we couldn't resist. Down the stairs we went.

Peter is very competitive. So is Charlotte. So it was a pretty spirited match.

Gotta get ourselves one of those tables. Anyone know where we can buy one? It would fit in our spare room ...

The case of the reappearing rubbish

2007-02-05T07:10:00.000+02:00

Gotta love "Wheelie-bins"! I can remember our excitement (in Western Australia) when we got rid of our old metal bin because the local council had provided us with a shiny new wheelie bin. (We were devastated shortly after when the local hoons took it in a drive-by heist, and ran it alongside their speeding car, so far and so fast that its little wheels fell off.)

In China, living in a sizable apartment complex, we were a little startled to find that a swing-top kitchen tidy bin was the receptacle provided for hundreds of apartment dwellers to deposit their household trash. (Especially as the plumbing was such that you could not flush even the tiniest amount of paper - no getting away with that at all, any mistakes and it would return to haunt you until you fished it back out or got to work with the plunger ... So there was a fair bit of rubbish from everyone's apartment every day.)

However, it hardly ever happened that there was a bag already in the little bin when we added ours. The rubbish bags barely hit the bottom of the bin before one of the little tidy-up people would shuffle up and sort through it. Everything was recycled. Different people collected different parts - some went for plastic, some for paper, some for tiny things like pop-sticks and twist-ties. The favourite was, of course, plastic bottles. In fact if we were walking the street with a half-drunk bottle of water, soft-drink or ice tea, we would soon find at least one person stalking us, waiting for us to drink up and discard the valuable bottle. The bottles could be sold for 0.1 yuan, and ten of those would buy a decent feed on the street.

So, I'm sure I hear you asking ... How is it done here in this fair city of Istanbul? "Just leave it at the edge of the street", is what we were told. And sure enough, you see piles of rubbish bags heaped in the gutters by the narrow brick street every day. Ghastly? Well, it is a bit. But there is one rule, you only put out rubbish at night.

As soon as the sun starts to go down, the rubbish starts appearing - not in bins, just untidy heaps of plastic shopping bags and the like. And shortly after that the scurrying starts, the little people with carts come by and pick it all up. They don't just come past once, if we miss the first rush we can still put out our stuff and it will magically disappear.

We have a big bin in our kitchen, with a big, tough garbage bag in it, so we only need to put out our rubbish every week or so. But years of marriage and bin disasters have taught us that you don't put food scraps in a bin that is going to sit there for a week ... especially when the food is fish! So every day we take the scraps from our daily fish, and wrap it tightly in a plastic bag, and then usually I deposit it on the edge of the street as I head out to my evening classes.

A couple of times we made a mistake, and took the bag down too early, and so we hung it in a nearby tree and returned later to move it to the street. There are no rats in Istanbul, as far as I can tell - but there are millions of cats ... so you can imagine their excitement at finding a bag of fish-scraps dangling in a tree! Only once did they succeed in shredding the bag and spreading yummy, smelly stuff all over themselves and the path. (I could tell which cat it was, he was licking himself for hours!)

We learnt! We didn't do that again.

The two young ladies, our colleagues upstairs, not being in a marriage relationship, are still learning about bin etiquette and bin strategies. They still hold to the fond belief that when you put something in the bin it is "Gone Forever"! Some chicken scraps thus disposed of came back to haunt them, until Stephanie in desperation (and I'm not sure, but I'm guessing she was in her pajamas) grabbed the bags, took them downstairs, and deposited them right outside the front door on the ground.

"Here kitty, kitty ..." We returned from a shopping outing to find a maelstrom of cats, some devouring, some washing themselves, and some just spreading the joy. It was way too late in the day to do anything about the mess, I figured one of the little clean-up people with rubber gloves and a broom would fix things.

The next morning as we opened our apartment door to go to work, there was a neat pile of rubbish bags waiting for us, pressing up against our door. Someone had, in fact, cleaned up the mess, and decided we were to blame!

We mentioned this to the girls upstairs. They have learnt too now.

Running Away

2007-01-29T16:13:00.000+02:00

We're a weird mob - us ESL teachers. We are none of us boring. We all have different reasons for doing what we do, we all have stories to tell.

We are of different nationalities, from different backgrounds, and have different beliefs ... and yet we work together, and some of us even live together. We get on together, one way or another.

So when young Sarah joined our particular crew at the beginning of this month, we were mostly a little startled. "She's too normal," was a comment I heard repeatedly.

The whole teaching situation here was new to Sarah, and she asked lots of questions, and everyone pitched in and answered as best they could, and everybody seemed happy enough.

On Sunday morning we wondered why Sarah wasn't teaching her class - its our busiest time and no one can help or cover for anyone else. Her flatmate said when she had left home that morning Sarah hadn't been there, but she had been there the night before.

And that was the end of Sarah. When they checked her room they found her stuff was gone. And on a computer they found where she had booked some tickets.

Yeah, we get some ESLers who "do a runner" from time to time.

Into the Palace

2007-01-26T18:25:00.000+02:00

Friday - our (one) day off, and this Friday is of course Australia Day.

We decided to try again to go and see Dolmabahce ("filled garden") Palace, the place where the great Ataturk breathed his last.

Charlotte thought maybe the place was "filled" with flowers ... but actually it's name comes from being built on reclaimed land, right by the Bosphorous.

The gardens were beautiful, with some flowers, and a few statues of lions playing with their babies and fighting off crocodiles.

At the gate we joined a crowd standing around photograhing the guard. Well, you must admit it is rather tempting to count the number of times he blinks.

While he appears to be standing "at ease", he is in fact battle ready. When you go around the back of him you find he is far from relaxed.

The Tour
I hate guided tours. I want to stop and look at things that interest me, and hurry past the rest ... and even chat to those I am with about what amuses me.

At the Dolmabahce palace :

You must join a tour group - they have English and Turkish at least.
You have to pay for the right to use a camera - you pay 6 lira for a ticket (10 lira for video) which you tie to your camera with a little red ribbon. And then you are not allowed to use a flash - which is a problem in a lot of the rooms which are not well lit.
You have to wear these cute little plastic slippers over your shoes. Ah, well, I love watching CSI!

The tour group was big, and we seemed to always be at the back of the group. We were told we had to walk on the red carpets as the floors were handmade wooden parquetry and not glued in.

The rooms were full of exquisite furniture and magnificent chandeliers. There was a huge number of salons - sitting rooms - and variety of styles.

We spent an hour looking at these rooms, trailing around after the tour group. The guide was reasonably interesting to listen to, what we heard of her, but it was hard to imagine what life would have been like for those living here in those times.

We finished looking around the main palace, then we went into a little cafe for a cuppa before going on the tour through the harem quarters. This time there were beds and rooms with children's furniture, and the bed where the founder of Turkey died.

This was part of the ceiling of the grand meeting hall.

Stephanie was already tired after the main palace, and set off home by herself. Charlotte, Peter and I battled on, but by the time we finished and walked to the bus stop we were totally weary.

A lovely day out. I guess our family in Oz are watching fireworks and celebrating Australia Day.

A slight miscalculation

2007-01-24T07:29:00.000+02:00

I heard on the news that the funeral for Dink - the journalist who was shot the other day - would be on Tuesday, and I made a mental note to stay at home on Tuesday.

However said piece of information must be very small, because it slid right through the sieve of my mind. So when Charlotte appeared at my door on Monday evening asking me to come with her (and Jordanian Ali and New Girl Sarah) to see Dolmabahce Palace, I agreed. Peter couldn't come - he was teaching a class.

So in the morning I was up and dressed and ready, and Charlotte was here in the flat waiting for Ali and Sarah. At the moment when he should have been ringing the doorbell, Ali rang, and said he couldn't come because he had no money.

That wasn't useful. Not coming because of Dink's funeral would have been a better statement. Charlotte and I decided to go anyway. That was a slight miscalculation ...

The queue at the Taksim Dolmus stop (shared taxi) was longer than usual - especially seeing as it wasn't peak hour. But finally we got a ride. Charlotte takes this route every Saturday to teach some classes at Besiktas, one of the other centres for our company. But a few minutes later, as we were sitting in one of those impossible Istanbul traffic jams she commented, "I have absolutely no idea where we are! I've never been here before ..."

Nothing to do but sit tight - the Dolmus was obliged to eventually arrive at Taksim Square. So our shared taxi fare of 1.6 New Turkish Lira bought us an extensive tour of the backstreets of Taksim. I love the tiny streets of Istanbul, but we went to places I would have thought a motor vehicle shouldn't - couldn't - go. Up steep hills, and around tight corners, between ancient dwellings - in Australia the whole place would have been a museum - and in those tight streets our dolmus was squeezing past other vehicles, trucks, buses ...

All the big wide streets were closed. All of the traffic was in the lanes and steep places. And in among the patient drivers were motorbikes, police everywhere.

At thıs point Peter phoned me to ask where I was because one of the teacher's at our school - who lives in Taksim - had been unable to get to work.

The square

The square, usually bustling with people and cars, was eerily empty. But all around the edges there were hundreds of police. Charlotte and I felt quite out of places and a little nervous - I remembered our government website's warning about staying away from places like this. We felt very brave dragging out our cameras to sneak a couple of shots. In this pic you can just see one of the walls of police with their riot shields. There were lots of guns in sight, and a couple of tanks and armoured personnel carriers. We decided to wander nonchalently past rather than point our cameras at those.

We decided to soldier on ... sorry, bad metaphore. We headed out of the square and climbed aboard another dolmuş to go to the palace. Withşn minutes we were once again in gridlocked traffic. We saw the palace - from the dolmuş - with lines of police guardıng the entrance - and we stayed on the dolmuş.

So we had a wander around Beşıktaş, and then we went on to Ortaköy - a beautıful spot by the Bosphorus.

We sat down in this lovely waterside restaurant, and had kumpır - a dish that this area is famous for.

Its a very large baked potato, with all sorts of additional fillings. First they stir some cheese into the cooked potato flesh, and then you choose what else you want - bit like choosing your fillings at Subway.

Maybe on Friday we'll have another go at visiting the palace.

A hint of trouble

2007-01-20T14:46:00.000+02:00

When we first thought of coming to Turkey, friends responded with questions about how "safe" it would be.

Well, apart from the occasional whisper of an earthquake, it seems as safe as anywhere nowadays.

Along with Sara, a new teacher from America, we accompanied Jordanian Ali yesterday to a part of town where there are a number of music shops, looking for a particular keyboard for his brother. We travelled there by dolmus (shared taxi) and then hoofed it from shop to shop. This part of town is particularly pedestrian-unfriendly with little or no sidewalk and we had to clamber over guard-rails and scurry across traffic lanes between speeding heavy vehicles.

We finally checked with the last shop and were assured that the keyboards we were looking for were sold out. Leg-weary and footsore, and not a little hungry, we were looking for a restaurant. Ali recently found a restaurant in the area where they cook the style of (Jordanian) food he had grown up with - and in fact the proprietors are quite familiar with members of his family back home. So we agreed to go there, and all climbed into a taxi to relieve our tired limbs, expecting a very short ride.

However we soon found ourselves in one of those traffic jams that happen in Istanbul's narrow streets. After a long period of time sitting in the one spot Ali commented that there must be a problem - "an explosion or something", the main streets have been closed. So we got out of the taxi and walked.

We sat in the tiny restaurant enjoying felafel, and 'fool', and humus, while Ali regaled us with tales of back home.

Coming back out of the restaurant, we heard a lot of shouting. It was reminiscent of political rallies (and political training in the schools) we had seen in China. It was a demonstration, a crowd of people were shouting something together as they marched. There were police everywhere as we headed back to the dolmus stop to catch a dolmus home again.

It wasn't until this morning that we heard about a famous reporter who had been shot, and this was what all the fuss was about.

Nothing for us to worry about.

Great Food

2007-01-19T12:59:00.000+02:00

I don't know why Turkish food isn't world famous. Why aren't there Turkish restaurants in all the capital cities of other countries? I never saw any in Perth.

Mornings are long and gruelling (I mean, hard work) with classes going from 9.30 am through to 1.30 pm. By then we are tired and very hungry.
Some days we head out of the office and turn left to the little restaurant right next door for soup (corba) and the special thin Turkish pizza called lahmacun.
Other days we turn right to the restaurant called "Yedi Bolge". The name means 'seven regions', and the restaurant serves food from the seven regions of Turkey.

Everything in this restaurant is just delicious. As we come in the door we walk past the food display, and point to what we want - various choices of 'yemek' (cooked food) and cold salads and deserts too. Then we seat ourselves at one of the little tables with their richly-coloured Turkish table-cloths and soft benches or tiny stools to sit on. Sometimes we sit downstairs, but sometimes we go up the tiny creaky wooden staircase to the mezzanine floor - but the ceiling is barely head-height for most people - or the top floor where we can stare out onto the street and the people bustling past. A few minutes later a waiter will bring our chosen food and drinks and find out if there is anything else we require.

There is always a basket of bread with every meal. We often choose a portion of something like this - a chunky meat casserole with a cheesy topping, or a "kofte" (meatball) base with vegetables and cheesy top, and a plate of rice and/or a selection of delicious salads.

And the foamy drink? Most places we go if I order "ayran" (salty yoghurt drink) it comes in a sealed plastic cup. But at Yedi Bolge there is an ayran fountain (you can see it in the first picture) and it comes out really frothy, and sometimes with an added hint of mint.

Its all delicious.

The Game

2007-01-16T08:59:00.000+02:00

In the old days you would join "The Foreign legion" - if you were running away from a relationship (or the law) or just wanted a more interesting life.

Nowadays we play the ESL game, we go and teach English overseas. And we meet so many interesting people, some of them colleagues, some students, and some employers of ESL teachers.

While the teachers have a variety of reasons for joining the game - only one of which would be the need for money - employers join the game to make money.

With our experience of three schools in two countries as well as having talked to many other ESLers, we have found that payday comes once a month, on a particular day of the month. But - just like playing "Snakes and Ladders" there are a lot of traps to avoid!

Pay Day Game

Its always hard to know when is the best time to head down to the pay office on Pay Day. Sometimes we can end up spending most of the day waiting for the cash to arrive on the premises ... its all part of "the game" of course.

Yesterday was Pay Day, but we all had to attend a staff meeting in the afternoon. On a "Snakes and Ladders" board this would have been a "ladder" - but we didn't see that yet. At the end of the meeting we were quietly discussing whether to go down to the Pay Office together, or one at a time, when we received the news that there was "not enough money" today, we would only receive 30%, and the rest in three days' time. Hmmm - that would be a "snake"!

We decided we would definitely be attending the Pay Office together, united we stand. We told our slightly startled-looking manager (through an interpreter) that we would all return to work as soon as we were paid in full - that was us climbing our "ladder".

The rhetoric that followed was largely lost in the translation - he's sorry, he has been a teacher too, he knows we come to work on time and have the right to be paid on time, if we knew him better we would give in at this point, and (the clincher, as always) he would help us if he could but its out of his hands ... He hoped we would at least accept the 30% and take the evening lessons because it would be difficult for him to contact all our students in time.

We (all) smiled sweetly and professionally, and - clinging to the top of our "ladder" - reiterated that we would return to work as soon as the money was paid.

Then we went out and had coffee together - something we had not managed to do before. We started taking bets on how soon the money would appear. Would we be having a full 2-day "holiday"? Or would they suddenly remember which drawer they had hidden it in ... We were all quite keen to get paid rather than be off work. Some of us had borrowed money from each other to get to this point, one lucky colleague had even scrabbled around under her bed and found a few coins to buy breakfast.

Oh look, there it is!

Well, it took an hour - even less time than we expected! There was our pay, all neatly divided up into pay envelopes. After our coffee together we picked up our pay, grabbed our books, and got back into class.

This is the game we are part of.

Gaining Weights

2007-01-15T20:41:00.000+02:00

We have been looking for a gym in Istanbul. Peter really enjoyed going to the gym in Wuxi, China - he was probably one of their most regular clients. But the only one we have found (a fellow teacher, a Turkish lady, goes there) is small and very expensive compared to what we are used to. It costs a lot of money and then you are only allowed to go a couple of days a week. To go more often you must spend even more money.

Peter had decided he might have to buy his own weights. But - we couldn't find a sports shop locally, only shops that sell sports shoes.

So the other day he headed out the door to buy our daily fish ...

And came home with a set of weights.

They were just lying beside the road outside the shoe shop. Peter popped inside the shop to ask the question - " ....er... ?" a noise, raised eyebrows and a gesture towards the weights. They said 100, he said 50, and the deal was closed at 80 - still much cheaper than the gym.

Of course they have taken up residence in our "spare room" which is in fact the "sewing room" not (as Peter is suggesting) the "weights room"!

Don't you hate winter?

2007-01-13T17:08:00.000+02:00

Before we went to China, Peter had never seen snow. He (and our daughter Beatrice) soon discovered that snow is pretty to look at, but after the first few minutes it can be really unpleasant and even painful.

We had hoped that winter in Istanbul wouldn't be so bad. All people had told us was that "Winter in Istanbul is just miserable weather".

So we have been waiting to find out just what "miserable" means. We've been waiting beautiful day after boringly beautiful day!

No wind, no rain (other than an occasional shower), no snow ... beautiful clear skies. A couple of nights ago it was foggy - that was different!

Middle of January, here are people sitting around at the railway station waiting for a train. Miserable weather? I suppose there are still a few weeks left for it to rain or snow or whatever.

What were we doing sitting around watching people sitting around at the railway station?

Well, at our favourite railway-side 'bufe' - little cafe/kiosk place with outside tables. For a couple of lira - less than a couple of dollars - you can get a delicious, fresh chicken doner, with all the fresh veges you could wish, and a cup of ayran (salty yoghurt drink, my favourite).

Yeah. Don't you just hate winter!

True Lies

2007-01-05T13:00:00.000+02:00

Our students in China mostly wanted to learn English so that they could get out of China, to go and study overseas and maybe even make a life for themselves overseas.

But not the Turks. They seem to love their country and have no desire to leave, they just want to learn English so that they can get better jobs or do better at their present jobs here.

One of the places that we have heard the best standard of English here in İstanbul is the Grand Bazaar. After all, that is where all of the tourists go, and that is where the tourist dollars flow.

What really intrigued us was the way the sellers in the Grand Bazaar tried to win our custom.

"Ah there you are! You are the customer I have been waiting for all day!"

"I have been waiting for you for a whole month ..."

"Welcome! Come in! I am here to sell you things you don't need..."

Well, at least they were honest about that.

Table Talk

2007-01-04T07:55:00.000+02:00

Our living room table is awash with cables and devices - and that's with the scanner being put away in the cupboard. I did have my sewing machine on there too but, well ...

So then I took the kitchen table out of the kitchen and set it up in the spare room - now my 'sewing room' - and although the table is small, and round, I found that I had more room for my sewing than when I used the main table in the living room.

However, every time we come home with shopping Peter stands and pines for our kitchen table to put the shopping onto (not that he has ever sat there to eat ...)

So we have been on the lookout for another table. Over the last few days we have been looking into second-hand furniture shops - which has been difficult because they have all been closed over Bayram (the religious holiday).

Yesterday we were walking around the quiet streets, and quite suddenly they became the crowded streets. It was 5pm and Bayram had suddenly ended and the crowds were eagerly pouring into the shopping centres.

In our little street we saw a man pushing a cart with a little folding table in it - "Oh, look! There's our table!" I told Peter. We wandered slowly towards our apartment, and noticed that the second-hand shop just down the street was open at last. Cart Man stopped there too, and tried to sell his table to the proprietor, as we stood by and watched. Shop Man wasn't interested, so we rocked up and asked if the table was for sale, and how much he wanted.

He said 15. We suggested 10. (Yeah, I know, should have said 5 at the most.) Cart Man's face lit up, it was his lucky day.

And ours. We had what we wanted, and we were only a few metres from home.

The pigeon did it

2007-01-03T11:50:00.000+02:00

We are still on holiday - today is the last day of Bayram (religious holiday), and its raining and blowing outside - finally. The weather so far this "winter" has been cool and clear, quite pleasant.

So after getting up early to listen to the Ashes cricket on the computer, Peter went back to bed. I got up and fed the damp doves on the kitchen windowsill, and then put some bread in the toaster for myself and went back into the living room to use the computer.

Suddenly there was a loud "bang" from the kitchen. Peter popped out of the bedroom all bleary-eyed, wanting to know what had happened. I looked into the kitchen - there was a large wet grey pigeon with a slightly startled look (but don't they always) on the windowsill along with the doves. I figured maybe as it landed on the wet sill its little feet had slid and it banged into the window.

Then I noticed that my toast was 'up' ... but it wasn't even toasted as such. I pushed it back down into the toaster, and of course it wouldn't stay.

So the 'bang' was the toaster ... but whose fault was it? It had to be the pigeon, there was no one else there. Except, of course, the doves, but they are only small.

Peter has always been curious about how things work.

Well, it doesn't work now.

I guess we have voided the warranty too.

Mutlu Yillar - Happy Years

2007-01-01T11:34:00.000+02:00

I have just finished washing out everything we wore to last night's party - I sometimes think we are the only people in Istanbul who do not smoke.

Despite all that, we had a delightful time at the New Year's party at Jordanian Ali's place.

The balcony acted as a bar fridge - after all it was colder than the fridge which was full of food such as delicious mixed salads as only the Turks know how to make. At the end of the party the balcony was still full of drinks because everyone was relaxed and having such a good time they hardly needed much to drink. During the party however the air in the room became so thick with smoke that the window had to be kept open for long periods to allow the fresh - but freezing - air to fill the room again.

So how do the Turks go about seeing in the New Year?

Well, these particular Turks (and one Jordanian) shared a deicious meal of chicken cooked in foil, and rice, and sumptuous salads. And then they talked and sang along to some Turkish music, occasionally indulging in a little dancing (belly-dance style, but not dressed that way). There was a balloon floating around to occasionally bat away, and there were funny hats and tinsel wigs to try on, and lots of photos to take with mobile phones.

All in all I am not sure that it was greatly different from how friends anywhere in the world might celebrate New Year together.

After the countdown there were Turkish-style kisses (both cheeks) all round and lots of hugging. And then Burcu and Ömer - the delightful young couple who were at Ali and Dilek's place at Altinova when we went down there last Bayram - gave everyone gifts.

Ali was talking about going onto another party - a friend who has a discotheque right in his apartment - but I had already turned into a pumpkin, so we headed home. The narrow streets were dimly lit, and crowded with families heading home after their parties - mums and dads and kids and young adults all chattering and laughing as they strode along.

Easy when you know the language

2006-12-31T14:04:00.000+02:00

We expected that the hotel would provide shampoo, toothpaste, soap - don't they all do that nowadays? - so we didn't pack any. As a result we were wandering around Selcuk on our first afternoon there looking for a supermarket so we could buy what we needed. The man in the Tourist Information office told us where there was a Tansaş store - a big supermarket that seems common in country towns.

But try as we might we couldn't find it. We thought we had found the right building, but it seemed to be just restaurants. We wandered off through the streets and found an electrical store - we wanted to buy an electrical power board anyway, so we dropped in. The proprietor didn't speak any English, but we managed the transaction with our few stuttering phrases in Turkish.

Then I scrambled together a few more words and asked him where the Tansas store was. He took us to the window and pointed down the road.

As we left the store Peter was chuckling about the fact the man had told us how easy it would be to find - "elementary" in fact. He was saying something about "Elementary, my dear Watson ..."

Of course, he had forgotten that "elli" means "fifty", it was about fifty metres to the supermarket ...

Saint Jean's final resting place

2006-12-29T12:06:00.000+02:00

When we went on the bus to Tire (Tee-Ray) I mentioned to Peter that I had severe doubts about the wisdom of the trip - it was longer than we expected and it was beginnng to feel like the rest of my life - but he assured me that no only would we have a good time, but that he would remind me of this many times in the future.

And so it was when we thought about visiting the ruins of St John's Basilica, just up the hill from the hotel, he just said, "Remember Tire"!

And so we went, past the Aqueduct and up the hill. We wanted to see the castle, but we were told it has been closed for five years, and so we paid our 5 lira went into St Jean's / John's.

We were surprised at how big the site was, but according to the drawings it had been quite grand in its day. Just like the Ephesus ruins, it was interesting walking around trying to imagine what it was like to be there.

There are arches and pillars and walls and floors, a huge variety. Among the ruins I found a little friend:

It isn't only Istanbul which is overrun with cats! This kitten was very affectionate, rubbing up against my legs and purring loudly - the Istanbul cats are generally more aloof while constantly on the alert in the hope of an extra feed.

It followed me around for a while, apparently convinced that I would eventually feed it - of maybe it just loved me. I went into the area of what is obviously a baptistry. One of the local farmers found me there, assured me it was in fact a Turkish bath, and tried to sell me some "ancient coins".

The kitten decided to check it out, and even though it was iced over managed to find a tiny corner to lap a drink.

From the top of the hill we had a comanding view of the Isa Bey Mosque, and the Temple of Artemis, but we couldn't quite see the Ephesus ruins.

On the other side of the hill we could look out right over the town of Selcuk. Yes, Peter was right, it was worth visiting.

Temple to a Milky Goddess

2006-12-29T08:05:00.000+02:00

Considering how well preserved the ruins at Ephesus are, we were a little surprised when we had difficulty even finding the Temple of Artemis - reputed to have once been one of the seven wonders of the world.

There were some statues of Artemis in the Ephesus Museum, but we were not allowed to photograph them. However in the hotel we found a picture on the wall.

In the museum we did manage to snap a little picture of the model of what the temple used to look like.

All those pillars? There is only one left standing - and even that one looks like someone has recently plonked it there piece by piece.

A large part of the temple area is under water even in these dry winter months.

Someone has added some fountains to make this into a pleasant picnic spot for the tourists when the weather is fine. A local farmer lets his ducks swim there - although they seemed a little confused when they found it had frozen over.

Old Coins

In these lean winter months especially some of the local farmers resort to the old favourite - selling ancient coins to the tourists. We have heard that a home-made coin can be made "ancient" by allowing it to pass through the guts of a sheep - but we don't know if that's true.

Nevertheless we were beset at every point by friendly locals offering us a grubby handful of coins for 20 lira, or 10? maybe 5?

32 Years of Wedded Bliss

2006-12-29T07:38:00.000+02:00

Its our 32nd Wedding Anniversary. Here we are at the ruins of the Temple of Artemis.

Peter had mentioned in an email to the hotel that this was our special day, and they surprised us with a tiny bottle of bubbly just before dinner.

Village Visit

2006-12-28T20:22:00.000+02:00

Everyone says you should go out and see Sirince when you stay at Selcuk, though they can't really say why, other than they make really nice fruit wines out there - but the wines are on sale in Selcuk anyway.

We had plenty of time, so we went and climbed on the bus to Sirince.

It was one o'clock in the afternoon, and the bus driver seemed preoccupied with a couple of plastic bags and lunch boxes on the seat beside him. A few minutes down the road, still in Selcuk, he stopped in the middle of a quiet street to hand as a boy came out from a small cafe and handed him a wrapped meal and collected some empty dishes.

We continued up into the nearby hills, the road was steep and we crawled around several hairpin bends as the bus ground its way higher among orchards, vineyards and fields of olive trees ... and still the driver was fiddling with something on the seat beside him. It was making me quite nervous, I desperately wanted him to watch the road, no matter how many times he had been up here.

We rounded yet another corner and the bus got even slower as a man trotted out onto the road, received his lunch through the bus window without the bus stopping, and ran back to his farm vehicle.

Charming little village, Sirince, very quaint. A bit sad this time of year with everyone sitting around desperately waiting for some tourists to come through.

But they are obviously not totally reliant on tourism. There were farmers on their tractors and people going about their regular business. They probably think tourists are very strange the way we go around taking photos of all the ordinary things.

And did those feet in ancient times ...

2006-12-28T18:17:00.000+02:00

The reason why all of the tourists come to visit this area is to see the ruins at Ephesus, to walk the exact same streets where people like the Apostle Paul, and John the disciple of Jesus walked in their day.

It was a brilliantly clear but freezing cold day when we went out to the ruins of Ephesus, about 3 kilometres out of Selcuk. Rather than employ one of the many eager guides, we rented an audio guide - a little gizmo that speaks the appropriate information when you press the right buttons and shuts up when you want it to.

So I walked the streets of Ephesus, listening to my audio guide, and trying to imagine what it was like to live in this place thousands of years ago.

This is a small amphitheatre near the higher end of Ephesus, built to seat a few thousand people. But the theatre we were keen to see was the one at the lower end of town the huge one, where "The Ephesian Riot" mentioned in the New Testament took place.

We sat there in this huge theatre that seated over 100 000, and imagined all those people shouting and shouting "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians" ... Later we had a look at what remains of the temple of Artemis, and in the museum we saw statues of their goddess Artemis - what a strange one she was!

There were a great many very impressive bits and pieces to look at and wander around. One of the most specatacular sights is this facade of the building that was the library.

We walked through Hadrian's Gate, and were surprised to realise the connection with Hadrian's Wall in the north of England.

We came to a very large section under cover, still being worked on but open to the public for an extra fee of 10 lira. We decided to give it a go.

Inside we found a remarkable display of a number of ancient hillside residences.

We walked through the display on carefully constructed steel and glass walkways that enabled us to have a look at everything without causing damage to anything. Of course being there in the 'low' season was probably much more pleasant than it would be when this place is swarming with astonished tourists.

These ancient homes were remarkable firstly because they have been so well preserved over the centuries. And secondly because of the opulent lifestyle of the people who must have lived in these huge homes.

We came to the Agora, and had a think about agora phobia ... here there were puddles of water that were frozen over, there was a keen wind blowing and the sprinkling of tourists were huddling in corners and pulling their jacket hoods over their eyes and ears despite their guides prattling on.

Finally we came to the end of the village road, and there were all the tourist stalls waiting for us ...

And finally there was the one little room we were all looking for - although we had to pay to use it.

"Only 50 cent is enough to feel the magic atmosphere."

We had caught a taxi from the hotel to the top end of Ephesus, and it cost us 10 lira. Now there was a taxi at the gate, and we asked what his price was - he wanted 20 lira, so we walked away, and someone else climbed in. We hung around for a few minutes, and soon saw the same taxi return, followed by a second one. We thought we would try our luck with the second one, but Mr Nasty in the first taxi drove his car at us, trying to block our way and stop us from getting in. Still, we are the ones with the money and we made our choice, only paying 10 lira for our ride. The taxi driver, Tunc, was such a nice chap, with good English skills, that we booked him to return us to the airport on Friday when we returned to Istanbul.
(If you are going to Selcuk and want a reliable taxi driver, leave a comment and we'll give you his number ...)

A tiring day

2006-12-27T09:56:00.000+02:00

There was a notice on the hotel notice board about Tuesday market day at Tire. We mentioned to the man at the hotel that we were thinking of going, and although he spoke good English he gave us a puzzled look.

So we wandered into town and found the bus station and looked for a bus going there. A man approached us to ask where we wanted to go, and we got the same blank look when we said "Tire". Then suddenly it twigged with us. Duh. "We want to go to the market at Tee-ray!" we finally said and light dawned and he pointed to a waiting mini-bus.

The road from Izmir to Selcuk is wide and straight, the journey only takes an hour or so, so we thought that the 40 km to Tire would take maybe half an hour ... but of course the road wound its way through the country towns and villages. I was beginning to wonder if we had made a good choice in getting onto that bus.

When we finally arrived in Tire and saw the market spreading through most of the streets in the centre of town, I was ready to enjoy myself.

The country women nearly all wear the big baggy colourful trousers, with jumpers and cardigans tucked in and headscarfs securely tied. Even the men ride their tractors with a headscarf tied around their heads (in a manly style).

Encouraged by the presence of so many large women, I felt hopeful of finding a coat that would fit me.

My creepy coat

I found a black coat which seemed to be just what I needed. It was made of a furry material - looking like suede on the outside and furry on the inside - and went down to my knees, and it fit me, just what I wanted. The man wanted 85 lira for it, but I persuaded him to take 65 lira - slipped the coat on and wore it around the market. (You can see me in the picture.)

I soon discovered my new coat has its own little foible. The inside fur is laid upwards, and so my shirt under the coat kept riding up but wouldn't readily slide down again. Very soon my shirt was all wadded up under my arms, even the sleeves pulled themselves up to my armpits.

We spent a couple of happy hours wandering around the Tee-ray market, then dropped into the nearby mosque to use their facilities, and headed back to Selcuk on the mini-bus.

Sights of Selcuk

2006-12-26T04:30:00.000+02:00

As soon as we had settled in at our hotel, we went out to explore the town of Selcuk - I think it has a population of about 25 000 if I remember rightly, just a small town.

Corba lunch

Just down the street a little we found a little family restaurant where we could get some corba (soup) - our favourite lunch.

Ducks?

A little further along we saw some of the ancient Aqueduct constructions.

These seemed quite remarkable to us, but to the local people they would be no more than a mild annoyance.

There seemed to be no explanation for this part of the structure. In the centre of the town where there is a continuation of the aqueduct they have built the town square around it.

The Old Mosque

A little further down we came across the Isa Bey mosque - another ancient building - but we are disinclined to wander through endless mosques, no matter how old they are.

Even this time of year there was a tourist bus bringing sightseers here. And so, of course, all the little tourist stores were nearby to catch the trade. I decided to drop in, and I actually bought a couple of pretty scarfs - and at a better price than our colleagues had done in Istanbul.

Bath Time?

Apparently this fascinating-looking structure is an ancient Turkish bath, or Hamam. The guide map said its always open, but it didn't seem to be. We live in Hamam Sokak (Street) in Istanbul, but still neither of us have ever seen a Hamam, or Turkish bath. So we have no idea how this thing would have worked. We saw (from the outside) a similar up-to-date working (well, smoke coming from chimney) building like this in the town centre ... But, I dunno?

Dinner

So then it was time for dinner in the hotel. Our table was next to this fish-pond with fountain, but they only had the fountain working once while we were there.

Getting away for Christmas

2006-12-25T14:19:00.000+02:00

We hadn't really given much thought to the fact that it was Christmas Day - it hardly seems relevant here - other than a longing (like every day) to be with our kids and grandkids.

We were up bright and early, and downstairs on the cold street waiting for Ali's taxi-driver friend to pick us up and take us to the airport for the flight to Izmir. After half-an-hour we got tired of that, and wandered down to the main street of Bakirkoy where we found a taxi without any problem.

Keeping everyone safe

In Turkey there are security checks everywhere - you can't get into a shopping centre without one - so you would expect it to be the same at the airport. Except that here they must tune the machine to pick up the tiniest piece of metal or whatever. We joined the queue of people entering the airport, and like everyone were asked to remove our coats - and still the buzzer went off and we had to be checked with the wand.

After we had checked in we found we had to go through yet another security check, and this one seemed even tighter. No one "passed", everyone had to walk through at least twice and take off coats, belts, shoes etc ... as well as open and switch on laptops.

With all our coats back on and carry-on baggage repacked, we relaxed in the lounge to the background music of beeps and bells as other would-be passengers came through security.

Hotel Kalehan

We had arranged for a car to pick us up from Izmir airport, but after a long cold wait and no sign of anyone we tried unsuccessfully to call the hotel, and finally we caught a taxi for less than the hotel was charging us.

The hotel is only "three star"' - like most hotels in Selcuk - but charming enough. The foyer and lounge area are full of all sorts of interesting old stuff, like these old keys and locks.

We had a room on the third floor - they had promised us a "big bed", but when we got there it was really only two single beds pushed together. There was a tour group in the hotel, but when they left the following morning we complained about our room and were moved to a room with a proper big bed.

Corridor of death

2006-12-22T11:48:00.000+02:00

Well, not really ... but it felt a bit like it.

"Don't worry," said Shannon (who had been there before and knew what it was like), looking at our tired faces. "Your souls will eventually come back. You will feel better ..."
She was right. We went to our favourite restaurant and filled our cold, tired bellies with delicious food ... and already memories of four soul-destroying hours in the visa office are fading.

How it all starts

The day started early - well 8.30am, except of course Ali slept in and so the first part of the waitıng was simply waiting for Ali ...

The first requirement for a residence permit here is evidence of a certain amount of American dollars in a bank account. So we had to take a heap of money to the money exchange and get it changed. And then take the American dollars to the bank and open an account. Then we took our new bank books back to our office and photocopied them to prove the money was there.
That was relatively easy and painless - it was early in the day and the bank wasn't clogged with people yet.

Oh, and then we remembered that we needed passport photos, so we dropped into a little photo-shop, and had them in our hot little hands in no time at all.

Getting there

The visa office is right across town, so we caught a little bus to the railway station, and then we rode the metro for 10 stops ... it was good to see the sights from the train.

Umbrella Office

The next stage was a complete surprise to us.

On this windy, rainy day we had to visit this little "office" on the sidewalk.

There was a little man sitting there using a typwriter. Yes, a typewriter ... I didn't think you could even buy those nowadays ... with carbon paper. You hand him your passport and for 15 lira he will type your name into an application form and a "petition" for residency.

Ali was with us to help translate the two questions we had to answer: "What is your mother's name?" "What is your father's name?" The only problem was these names were totally foreign to him and he made a few mistakes typing them with his two fingers. That was okay, he had a mate there with a bottle of white-out to fix the mistakes. White-out Man managed to drop Peter's passport on the muddy ground, and then transferred mud to Peter's form, but he managed to wipe it off with his fingers ...

Into the Big Building

At this point Ali left us. He pointed down the road to a building entrance guarded by police with machine guns. The instructions were simple:

Go through there, hand your passport over the counter and then get it back.
Go across a courtyard and into that other big building - its easy, you can't go wrong.
Go up to the second floor.
Get a number, and wait until your number comes up.
Just do what they tell you.

Well, it sounded simple enough - although the last one sounded a little daunting as it would likely all be in Turkish.

So in we went. Through the security check - we're used to that, it happens everywhere, but for some reason the police officer wanted to have a rummage through my handbag ... maybe she was jealous of my grubby little Chinese handbag. We handed over our passports and got them back. And so we went out into the courtyard.

There were several doors on the other side, none of them that obvious. We stood in the rain and muttered about Ali and his directions. Then we saw some people heading into the left-hand door with a big 'A' above it, and decided to follow them.

Inside we saw a lift, and thought we could go in and press '2' to get to the second floor - after all "second floor" means different things in different countries, depending on whether we were already on the "ground" floor or the "first" floor. So we crammed ourselves into the lift. From where I was stuck, it looked like there were about 20 people in there - until I recognised one of the "other" people as me, and realised it was a tiny lift with a big mirror. I couldn't see which floor we were on, but after a few minutes and several stops we got out again. We offered our papers at a reception desk, and were directed to the stairs - we had to go down a floor.

Getting a number

We pushed our way along a crowded corridor, turned left, left again, left again .... and of course we were back to where we started, but no number. I noticed a sign with the word "numarasi" (it sounds something like 'number') and an arrow, so we set off again. Then there was another sign, in English - Wow! - "Follow the arrow to get a number". Around we went again - still no number machine. So we decided to go back the other way, maybe we missed something, maybe we could find someone to ask. Finally I noticed a police officer sitting on a stool in the dark corner and the end of the first corridor where the arrows were. She looked bored and tired - but maybe she could tell us which way to go. We attracted her attention with some difficulty, and then notcied that in front of her there was a machine, covered up. By way of explanation, I handed her my paperwork, she glanced through it, uncovered the machine and punched out a number for me and then one for Peter.

Waiting at the window

We stood in the hallway with all the other bored-looking people, leaning on the wall opposite the window where our help was supposed to come. We had numbers 25 and 26, and the window numbers were 18 and 19, so we figured there wouldn't be too long a wait. But there was no one serving at the window, the officers were all sitting at their desks looking very relaxed. I wondered if we should go and lean on the window even though our numbers weren't up there.

Suddenly a big man came bustling up to the window. He had about ten people in tow, and they all had papers like ours. He had a sheaf of numbers which he dealt out to them and started pushing them ahead of him to the window. The officers at the desks beyond jumped to and got to work.

I felt a bit annoyed - this felt like the next few hours of my life waiting for this group - so I sidled forward into the middle of his group and glared at him. He looked questionningly at me, and I showed him my number. He told me in English that his group had the numbers 19 and 20 - what all of them? - and he showed me his number - 27.

And then all of the numbers at the windows were suddenly switched off ... so I stepped back and waited. When the group were finally through I stepped forward (before the officers all went back to chat on Messenger at their desks) and waved my number. The man asked for my papers and looked through them.

The card index room

He said something in Turkish, and sighed when I replied "English?" He thought for a moment then said "Card index room" pointing down the corridor and handing me back my papers. People around had presumably heard and understood because people pointed for us and we entered a door that said (in English!) "Staff only. No unauthorised personnel".

There was a long blue counter, and behind it four police officers. The rest of the room was like a cartoon of an incredibly disorganised records room with ancient filing cabinets and drawers open, missing and broken and everything in apparent total disarray.

The first officer shook her head, handed our papers back to us and sent us to the other end of the counter. After the officer at the other end had played with our papers he sent us back to the first one, so she could play with them too.
And so then we went back at the window in the long hallway.

Nearly there

The man recognised us and accepted us back at his little window. He did a lot of playing with our papers - gluing on our pasport photos, stapling, stamping, entering into the computer, and handed us a sheaf of papers each. Then with a sigh he summoned up his English and told us:

Downstairs and pay, then back up here to table 2 (pointing to a window further along) and then table 1.

Time to pay

We went down the stairs, and we were a little startled to find that one floor down was the entrance from the courtyard - where had we been to in the lift?
There was no sign, but there were three booths - one had a photocopier, the second an ATM, and the third one had two men inside. We chose the third one and proffered our pile of papers. They gabbled something, and I smiled "English??"

So they wrote 346.90 on a piece of paper, and we paid.

Oddly enough, they rounded the amount up to 347 lira. At the end of the day, where do all those .10's go to, I wonder?

Back upstairs to "table 2" with our receipts in our hot little hands, vaguely wondering why Ali told us we would need 420lira when it was only 347lira.

As we approached the second window we saw firstly that there was a sign saying we would need to pay (another) 70 lira, and secondly that there was no one at the window - in fact the whole corridor was suddenly almost totally empty ...

Lunch break

We are glad not to be in China where they have three-hour lunch breaks.

I stood at the window waving my papers and looking wistful. The nice officer came across from where he was reading his newspaper and explained something in Turkish. I forced my tired face into one more smile and asked "English?" He sighed, and thought about it. "One o'clock".

So. It was 12.30 now, we only had another half an hour to wait.
And we had learnt our lesson about leaning on walls. Instead of moving away, we clung to the counter by the opening at "table 2" for the full 30 minutes. By the time the officer put down his paper and wandered across there was a large crowd gathered and pressing in behind us.

One more "table"

We paid our money and he shuffled our papers again, then pointed to the next window, "table one". There was a tight crowd of people behind us, and people waiting at the next counter which was still unattended. Rather than push out through the crowd and back in, we slid along the counter to be second in 'line'(!) at the next one. The lady ahead of me looked at my papers and hers, and decided she was at the wrong table, and we swapped places.

The officer finally arrived at the window, we handed over our papers and receipts, and he gave us a tiny scrap of paper.

This is what its all about. Later we have to return and swap this paper for our actual resident's permit.

Final Stages

Oh, and we need to go to the bank and take out all the American money and change it back into Turkish money. At that point someone (not us) stands to gain a fair bit of money - this would apparently be the reason why they insist on everyone having American dollars in their account.

Big and Bizarre

2006-12-16T05:30:00.000+02:00

After more than two months living in İstanbul, we finally got around to see that one thing which tourists usually go to see first -

The Grand Bazaar

I had no idea that the bazaar was mostly inside this amazing building - somehow I had expected it to be a series of little stalls outside like any other market. This place is huge, a maze of hallways and tunnels, some wide like this one and some just narrow little alleys.

We went with Stephanie (in green) and Shannon (in red), two of our colleagues, and two very different young American ladies. Stephanie is about to return home to the states for a holiday, and wanted to purchase gifts for family and friends. Shannon mostly wanted to look around, possibly buy a carpet, and practise her Turkish language with everyone she could.

I had no intention of buying anything, and I am not usually tempted much by the stuff I see in markets - especially tourist stuff. But this lot fair took my breath away - there was so much really beautiful stuff. Each shoplet was stuffed to the rafters with a mind-boggling variety of delightfully Turkish stuff ... and not a "made in China" sticker in sight!

This lot really did tempt me. There were so many displays of these charming ceramic bowls and plates in so many different sizes and styles. Each one apparently hand painted, bright and attractive, impossible to decide which one(s) ...

Maybe one day I'll go back and get some. When you live in İstanbul you can do that.

Shannon wanted jewellery, and we spent a long time looking at amber rings and necklaces. Once again, even I was tempted. There was an overwhelming variety of stones and pieces to suit every taste.

Today is Friday, our day off - and an important day at the mosques. As noon approached we saw more and more shop keepers closing up and preparing to go to prayer. Here and there in the tunnels of the bazaar there were taps and fountains, and men were busily washing their hands, faces and feet. Then we came across a particularly busy passageway, which was made even more congested as men came and placed their small carpets in the middle and got down to prayer.

We headed out into the brisk air of the outside part of the bazaar.

Here the goods for sale were more along the lines of jeans and t-shorts, shoes, hats ...

It was lunch time, so we settled at a little cafe in the sunshine. Lentil soup, Turkish style - not that gluey stuff I made when I tried to produce some in Oz years ago - is amazing.

Stephanie likes to add some red pepper flakes to hers. I just like to squezee in some lemon and dip my bread in.

The waiter boy brought our soup and çay on one of those little hanging trays we see everywhere. Even in the streets of Bakırköy we see people delivering these trays with çay to shopkeepers and their valuable customers up and down the street.

Most days at work this is what we have for lunch - haven't tired of it yet - red lentil soup, with a wedge of lemon, and a basket of the freshest possible bread. I like a glass of ayran (salty yoghurt drink) with mine, çay is nice too.

Is this Moses?

We came out of the bazaar through the gate near the mosque, and there was - apparently - Moses selling books and stuff.

Time to catch a bus back to little old Bakırköy - we are glad to call it home.

My New Blog

2006-12-13T16:53:00.000+02:00

I have a perfectly good blog over at www.talkingturkey.blogsource.com . But since the new Internet Explorer came out I can only access my blog through Mozilla Firefox. That's fine for me, but not all of my readers necessarily want to download another browser.
So I decided to try a second blog ... so here goes.

Istanbul Wildlife

2006-12-12T22:11:00.000+02:00

Its a concrete jungle. In China the cities were huge, but the streets were wide, generally well planted with garden beds, and parks were plentiful - although you generally had to pay to enter. Here the streets are narrow, barely the width of a car, with occasional trees-in-planters struggling for survival.
There are no rats here.
Because there are millions of cats.

Its hard to say which cats are owned and loved and which are strays. They are all well-fed. In our street there are several pet shops, which all put out food and water for the cats. Lots of other people seem to do so too. Side-walk restaurants have cats slinking around begging customers for a bite to eat - and people feed them. I have never seen anyone being unkind or unfriendly to a cat, but then rarely will anyone stroke one either.

Then there are the birds. Pigeons of course, like you expect to see in a city. In Taksim someone tried to sell us a packet of food to feed the pigeons there. You mostly see the pigeons in the city squares, as you would expect.
There are seagulls, too. In Perth we have a lot of seagulls, being an seaside city. They can be mildly annoying, and are considered unhealthy to have around because they feed at the rubbish dump. Istanbul is a seaside place too, and so there are seagulls - the big kind. Compared to our little Perth birds they are huge and scary. I recently saw one devouring a dead pigeon, and it was much bigger than the pigeon. [I say this for our kids, who were used to seeing little doves in our back garden and were greatly startled when one day a pigeon arrived.]

Here we sit like birds on the windowsill

When I was a kid we used to sing "Here we sit like birds in the wilderness ...waiting to be fed" Never really understood that. No wilderness here, just windowsills ...
There are doves here too. They have learnt that people can provide food, and so they apparently watch the apartment windows for any sign of movement. As soon as they see someone, they alight on the windowsill and pace up and down peering in with first one eye then the other ...This brought back happy memories of home and the doves' nests on our patio, and so Peter decided to make it easier for them - and us - and built them a special little bird feeder shelf on our kitchen windowsill.

The birds seem to like this arrangement, and often sit on the shelf waiting for us to feed them - unless they see someone else open a window somewhere and then they flutter off to investigate.
One day there was a dead cat on the ground underneath our bird shelf, with a scattering of damp crumbs on its fur. We're guessing it thought the shelf was a cat-feeding platform with birds supplied.
Some days the doves tell us they are tired of breadcrumbs. After all, that's what everyone gives them. What they really like is cornflake crumbs. They climb right up on the ledge against the glass and peer in onto the kitchen bench to see what we have.

Big and Shiny

2006-12-09T09:46:00.000+02:00

I expected to find Istanbul full of big, shiny shopping centres and department stores. Obviously here, little old Bakirkoy, is not the place for them. Although there is a shopping centre here, among the tiny upstairs-downstairs stores.
Carousel
Just ten minutes' walk away from our flat is the Carousel shopping centre. That makes us feel right at home, because one of the bigger shopping centres in Perth is called 'Carousel'. But this Carousel shopping centre actually has a carousel, right in the middle of it, where children can ride. Its not a very big centre, about five floors centring around the merry-go-round, and a medium-sized supermarket - 'Migros' - on the lower floor.
Sisli
So Charlotte and Stephanie were telling us about the big shopping centre at Sisli and we thought we should go and see it - 'biggest in Europe' and all that.We caught the bus and went over there - it wasn't too hard to find.
Well, its definitely shiny. And confusing to find our way around. But it really wasn't that big. Maybe these Europeans haven't seen any Australian shopping centres.

Galleria
We also have a Galleria shopping centre here in Bakirkoy - again, there is a Galleria in Perth. This shopping centre is a further five minutes walk from Carousel, and right by the sea. Apparently this Galleria was the first big shopping centre in Istanbul.So we walked down there today. This one doesn't have a carousel in its centre, it has an ice-skating rink.
Oh, and notice the Christmas tree? This surprises us too.

Time for lunch
One of the nicest Turkish meals is "Iskender". On the bottom of the plate there is a slice of bread that soaks up some of the delicious sauce. Then there is a layer of meat, which has been shaved off the twirling kebab pole. The sauce is red, tomatoey, and mildly spicy, and on one side there is always plain yoghurt. Usually at least one whole green pepper is laid across the plate. And, of course, a basket of bread comes with it.
We sat in the food court next to the ice rink and enjoyed iskender and ayran - salty yoghurt drink. It only cost 6.50YTL a plate.
Yeah, a nice quiet Friday (day off), relaxing.

A new "sweet" for Peter

2006-12-07T06:35:00.000+02:00

No matter how many times we tell them, our Turkish friends all pronounce "suit" as "sweet". I think that is how they are taught when they learn English in school.
So after we had had my new trousers fitted - checked the length etc - and enjoyed our cup of Turkish tea and a bit of a chat with Zeynel, we were looking like leaving. But Zeynel was looking anxious ... he really wanted to hang out with us a bit longer. Something to relieve the boredom of seven-days-a-week in that tiny below ground shop.
Peter wondered if he could have a new suit made, but was told that this shop no longer provided that service. However, he knew where Peter could get a good deal. Maybe we could go there now ...
So he said goodbye to his dad - who looked a little wistful - and we headed off up into the big noisy world of Istanbul streets. A few metres further on we were back downstairs again, visiting a suit shop - a friend of Zeynel's of course - in the long underground arcade that runs the full length of the main Bakırköy street. Here there were dozens of suit shops, in most cases they each specialised in a particular brand.
We went into the tailor's friend's shop, and Peter was measured for a suit and chose one off the rack in a colour and fabric he liked. While he was trying on the trousers Zeynel was looking around, and caught sight of a gold tie that he fancied ... he spun around to the rack of suits and found a suit that would go with it, and by the time Peter was out of the changeroom he had bought a new suit to go with the tie.
Peter decided he liked the new suit, so it was negotiating time. We had seen suits in other shops for around 60 YTL, but man was asking more than 130 YTL - well, it was excellent material etc ... While the tailor was choosing his new tie, the suit man had been selecting a suitable shirt and tie for Peter's suit. And then Zeynel had selected one or two other ties that he thought might be better for Peter. So we quietly gave him a nudge, and said that we wanted a shirt and tie included in the price, and it was agreed. Knowing the extent of Peter's tie collection, I suggested quietly that a second tie would sweeten the deal ... and so the deal was done.
We then had to wait half an hour for the trouser lengths - both Peter's and Zeynel's - to be fixed, so we walked with our Turkish friend up the length of the arcade and back. When we returned the work was done, but it was time to sit down and drink tea.
Finally we had the suit and stood in the arcade with the young tailor. He turned to go back to his shop, but we were walking in the opposite direction - he seemed very sad about that.
Here is Peter in his new suit on the steps near the front door of our apartments.

The Little Tailor that Could

2006-12-03T06:43:00.000+02:00

Stephanie was having some trousers and skirts made because her box of winter clothes hadn't arrived yet, so I went along with her and had a pair of trousers made too. I've worn them every day for the last few weeks ... and they are a good fit, so I decided to go for another pair or two.
If you buy your own material, it costs 25YTL to have a pair of trousers made. So I went back to my favourite underground shopping arcade.

I was wandering slowly past the different store fronts, gently pinching various materials to see if they would be prickly to wear - I'm very fussy about how clothes feel, and can't bear anything prickly or too synthetic - when a man came running from the other end of the arcade and hurriedly stood in the doorway of the shop I was approaching. He made encouraging Turkish noises and hand motions, and so I went in to check out his fabrics.
I indicated to him that I was making trousers, and he measured my height and assured me that a metre of my chosen material would be ample - as it was very wide material. I chose to believe him against my better judgement, because the material I had chosen was fairly expensive and I didn't want a whole lot left over.
I then went down the Bakırköy main street towards the sea, to another underground arcade.

Just inside on the right are some stairs heading down. There are a lot of small shoe shops down there, and shoes displayed dustily all down the stairs themselves as well. At the bottom I turned right, past a couple of other little stores, and came to the "Ramses Collection" shop of Muzaffer Güneri and his son Zeynel.
Why go to this particular little shop? Well, Zeynel speaks English, and that makes the whole process so much easier.

Zeynel looked at my material, and - as I was afraid - shook his head doubtfully. He agreed that it was very nice material, but there would not be enough of it.

Father and son examined my material together, and agreed that there would not be enough. They discussed our little problem, and finally it was agreed that the father would go with me back to the fabric arcade and replace the material - he figured if he was there to talk to the man who sold me the fabric he would actually allow an exchange.

So we did. The man in the arcade looked a little unhappy but under the tailor's persuasion he gave me the bigger piece of material and took back the small piece for very little extra.

Four days later I was back down in the arcade picking up my new trousers. As always there was chat and hospitality - we sat on tiny stools and conversed, and 'çay' (Turkish tea) was ordered and shared.