Saturday morning, time for a road trip. For me it was something of a research trip for a project I am working on, and for my roommate/chauffer, it was simply a chance to "get outta Dodge." Armed with granola bars, spare memory cards and our sense of adventure, we hopped in the car and took off. And not a moment too soon. The jackhammer guys had already begun their lovely work outside our window again early this morning. Between their shake-the-house racket and the ever-present campaign-mobiles that have for weeks been circling the neighbourhood like musical "vote-for-me-vultures," it is hard to concentrate on anything these days. That and the Prime Minister is coming for a rally tomorrow so the whole city is in a bit of an excited frenzy. All that said, it was a good day to skip town.
The iPod adaptor thingy was in rare form today - we had everyone from Louis Armstrong to our favourite Turkish pop guys along for the ride. Only trouble was, the thing would only seem to stay connected to the cigarette lighter when I propped it up with my knee. Made for an interesting ride. :)
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Our intended target was Akseki, a town way up in the mountains that is home to the snowdrop - a hearty little flower that pushes its way up through the snow each year to signify the coming of spring. Being in no hurry, however, we made several stops along the way. Road trips in Turkey are great cuz you get to hit up all the little roadside stands and buy homegrown stuff for much cheaper than you find it in the city. Thus, by the end of the day, we had accumulated two bags of oranges, a jar of honey (with the honeycomb still in it), some unidentifiable (and rather smelly) dried fruit that the honey lady insisted would help circulation, some famous Trabzon bread and several bottles of olive oil. (We also passed several lawn decoration shops on the side of the highway. I now know where you can get life-sized statues of zebras, Roman soldiers and Shrek if you are ever in the market.)
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We also happened upon an interesting little plaza with statues of the founders of all the great rulers of the empires of Central Asia from the Khans to the Ottomans. I now know what Atilla the Hun looks like up close! :) The translations beneath each statue were highly amusing - it seems as though many of the empires fell as a result of "Chinese tricks and brother fights." Curious.
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Akseki proved to be just as charming as I'd hoped. We started off with some pide (flatbread with ground meat and spices) at a little hole-in-the-wall joint with a great view of the snowy mountains. The first thing I noticed about the restaurant's decor was that on the wall there were 8 or 9 of the little calendars that you tear off each day - here they always show the times of the call to prayer for each part of the country, based on sunrise and sunset. Anyways, they all seemed to be stuck on the 13th - of what month, I couldn't see. Intrigued, we asked the waiter if something important had happened on the 13th. He laughed and sheepishly told us that that was when he'd gotten lazy and stopped flipping them. Again, curious.
After lunch we set out to explore the town. It is set on a hillside with winding paths meandering through rows of these really unique stone houses. It seemed the style was to have lots of pieces of wood poking out from amidst the stones in the walls. Not sure as to the purpose of this, but I am sure there is one. Once you got off the main road, the whole place was eerily quiet. We learned later that this is because many people only live up there in the summer, and they work down on the coast the rest of the year. (I'm more convinced that it's because no one wants to climb up and down those hills!) Still, there were a few cozy homes with smoke curling out of their chimneys, and that comforting wintry woodstove smell.
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Thankfully, as I was roaming around dreamily, letting my camera drink in the cuteness of the stone houses, my partner in crime had her eyes pealed for the object of our quest: the snowdrops. And lo and behold, we found some. Granted, the snow had already melted and they were now set in patches of grass amid discarded trash, but they were still worth every bit of the two hour trip. Snowdrops symbolize hope - the assurance that winter's bleakness won't last forever, that's spring's beauty is on its way. Welcoming that sense of hope for my own life, I picked several of the tiny white flowers to save for later. Then, at the urging of some sweet ladies that we met, ten dirty fingernails and a whole lot of broken sticks later, I dug up one of the bulbs to take home and plant in our garden. (Rather, my roommate will plant it - the only thing I know how to do with flowers is kill them.) :)
On the way home, I was starting to hit that "afternoon fuzzy brain time" and I knew it could only be cured by a good cup of coffee. My roommate, being of the compassionate nature and very aware of the seriousness of my need for caffeine, humoured me and pulled off at the town of Manavgat. We drove around for a bit, looking for a female friendly cafe (most are more like "man houses" where men sit around playing cards while their wives are at home with their seven kids) and finally found one. And when I stepped out of the car, a glorious thing happened.
For you to appreciate it, I have to give you a little background info first. Last fall, my two roommates and I started a little competition. Each of the 81 provinces in Turkey have a different number on their license plate (i.e. Antalya is 07, Istanbul is 34) and the object of the game is to find (as in personally see) all 81 of the plates. Living in a city where people come from all over the country on vacation, we have all found most of the plates, but the last ten or so (mainly poor provinces in the east) have been pretty hard to come by. Roommate #1 was leaving in December to go home and get married, so we set a cutoff date before she left and awarded her the prize (a Mexican dinner which the other two paid for), since she was the closest to winning. However, Roommate #2 and I are still vying for second place, and the competition is fierce. But today was my lucky day. There is one particular plate number - 30, Hakkari, a province on the Iraqi border - that I thought would be the very hardest to find, so my eyes are always scanning for it. One day last fall, as Roommate #2 and I were driving, she saw a 30 a split second before me and I was so bummed. But today, who was parked beside us at the Manavgat cafe but some guy a long long way from his Hakkari home. Woohoo! I still have seven more plates left to find, but that 30 was a goofy little treasure for me. And thus that cup of Turkish coffee did more than just perk me up. It inadvertently brought me that much closer to the sweet taste of victory. :)
Out here in the village, we are pretty used to water cuts. (I swear during the fall there were maybe five days we actually had water the entire day.) You kinda just have to plan ahead, store up buckets for showers, learn to live with piles of dishes on the counter, flush only when necessary, and have the washing machine loaded and ready to go for the minute the water comes back on, cuz who knows when it will be off again.
But these days, it seems like if the water's not off, the power is. Especially on rainy days. I don't know if it's the wires getting wet or what, but when it rains, it is pretty much a given that you'll be losing electricity at some point soon. Tonight was no exception. My first reaction to thunder is to smile, cuz I LOVE thunderstorms, and then to get out the candles.
Power outages, to me, are just part of the "charm" of living here (that is, when I am not in the middle of working on the website!) and are catalysts for adventure. Here are a few of my favourite "Blackout Boredom Busters."
1. Eat up all the ice cream in the freezer...to save it from melting, of course.
2. Watch an episode of 24 on the laptop and pray the battery doesn't die before Jack does.....Oh, wait. Jack never dies.
3. Roast weenies over a candle. (Did this one tonight....woulda been better if the hot dogs here were yummier, but it still made me happy!)
4. Put a flashlight in your mouth and puff out your cheeks and look in the mirror. Cracks me up every time.
5. Go around to all the neighbours and make scary noises outside their windows. (I have yet to try this, but it sounds highly amusing!)
6. Text your friend in America to have her Facebook your friend in Scotland who you were supposed to have a Skype date with to tell her your power is out and you'll have to postpone. (This happened to me tonight, too! Gotta love technology.)
7. Lie on the roof and look at the stars. (Not in the winter, of course.)
8. Be thankful you have a gas stove and make some sahlep (hot cinnamony milk drink) in a pot.
9. Hope that no cats sneak in the front door when you open it to see if anyone else has power. I speak from experience.
10. Read Leviticus by candlelight. (Did this one last week.....even infectious diseases and treatments for mildew are more romantic when there are candles involved!)
"The Headscarf," while to many merely an expression of faith through modesty, has become in Turkey a political symbol that polarizes the country along Islamic and western lines. Are we Muslim or are we European? Can we be both? This NPR article explores Turkey's "Identity Crisis." Check it out.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100874408
(The link thingy doesn't seem to be working, so you'll have to copy and paste - sorry!)
When I am old and have lived through many a decade, I will say things like, “In my day.....” (Fill in the blank – “....we walked to school in five feet of snow uphill both ways with Kleenex boxes for shoes,” or something to that effect.) And when I am old, my grandkids will be saying, “Wow, Grandma, when you were young, it took you a whole day to get from Canada to Turkey on a plane?!?! That’s so long! Now we can just beam ourselves there.”
A week ago I made that trip, and it struck me that while 22 hours was enough time to get my body halfway around the world, it took the rest of me a little longer to catch up. Planes just fly faster than my heart knows how to switch gears. Monday morning I was sitting in Starbucks playing Speed Scrabble with my mom, in complete denial that in a few hours I’d be gone again for who knows how long. Tuesday morning found me on a layover in London meeting up with a couple of long lost friends, checking out Queen Elizabeth’s place in Windsor and stopping in at The Crooked House for a spot of tea and a scone. And Tuesday night, a taxi whisked me across the Bosporus from the Istanbul’s European side airport to my old Asian side neighbourhood where I had dinner with my Turkish family. So many different worlds in so little time!
As always, it was SO good to be back with my family, whom I adore, and who adore me right back. And every visit to Istanbul only serves to deepen the love affair I have with that glorious city. Even though many of my friends have moved away and many of the places I love have changed, there is still something so comforting about the familiar little normalcies there. Like the ritual of getting into a dolmus (shared taxi) and passing money back and forth between other passengers and the driver, telling him what stop they are getting off at, and feeling like a local cuz I know all the stops by heart. Or the faithful presence of the alarm clock guy on his usual corner in Kadikoy, surrounded by all that annoying beeping. Apparently all his clocks still work. :)
Three days, several buses and ferries, many cups of Turkish tea and happy visits with old friends later, I was on the road again, this time on a 12 hour bus ride home to Antalya. I was grateful for the long chunk of time alone, largely uninterrupted except for potty breaks and cups of coffee brought by the helpful little steward and his trolley. (You gotta love the buses here.) As opposed to my whirlwind trip back from Canada (on-plane-off-plane-rinse-and-repeat-get-luggage-show-passport-guzzle-coffee-foreign-currency-which-time-zone-am-I-in-anyway?) the bus gave me time to think, to switch gears, to really be “all here” in Turkey, and to prepare myself for going home.
And you know what? To my delight, I found that this really does feel like home now. When I first moved here a year and a bit ago, I was so fiercely loyal to my beloved Istanbul that I had a hard time really feeling like Antalya was home. But this time, as I reconnect with people and places and familiar things, I am discovering that, lo and behold, I’ve gotten attached. This is good news! I’ve had a fun couple of days roaming the dirt roads of our village and retracing favourite paths through the old city. My mom asked me today if I’ve suffered any culture shock since coming back, and I could honestly say no. Everything just feels normal and right. (Besides the fact that I am down a roommate/best friend, but that’s another story.)
All the old familiar things look fresh and new and pretty to me – water cuts and long waits for buses have their charm. (Ask me in a week and I probably won’t feel the same, of course!) The best, though, is the “welcome homes” from everyone who acts as if I have been gone a year instead of two months. All my wonderful co-workers, the neighbours, my language helper, my photo guy, my Starbucks girl, my favourite restaurant lady, the stray dog that has taken up residence on our porch. It feels good to be a part of a community, to be a piece in a big interconnected puzzle. Or should I say a thread in a colourful Turkish carpet? In any case, it is good to be home.
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We had some deliciously foggy days while I was home - 19, to be exact. (That HAD to be some kind of record!) The world was shrouded in mystery, and I felt like I was living in a Sherlock Holmes novel. I spent a few really fun afternoons shooting down on the dyke, and Dad did so much in my heart in the process. Even when we can't see five feet in front of us, even when the things we normally count on for our points of reference are invisible, He is there, solid as ever. And so we walk forward, trusting in His good heart.
The more you work at becoming an “insider” in another culture, the more you tend to feel like a foreigner when returning to your own. I’ve felt it this time around in the little things – not knowing which setting to use on the dryer or getting confused by the buttons on the microwave. A few days after coming home, I was in Starbucks and way overpaid the barista when I gave her three Toonies ($2 coins) for a three-dollar drink. A Toonie looks just like the Turkish one Lira coin, and in my head it made sense! I had to apologize for being Canadian but not being used to my own money. :) It is so incredibly wonderful to be back, and yet sometimes I am very aware that the ways of the world I grew up in and will always come back to are no longer my first instinct.
It was healing to my soul to run into a Turkish family in Sears a few weeks ago. I spied their headscarves and decided to stalk them for a few aisles, just to see what language they were speaking. And just as I’d hoped, it was Turkish! I was so excited to talk to them, I nearly cried. They were so surprised and honoured that this Canadian girl could speak their language – I think it made both them and me feel just a little more at home in what is, to varying degrees, a foreign country to all of us.
On New Year’s Eve, I stopped in at the Chinese take-out place by our house to grab our last dinner of 2008. They were really busy, so I sat down to wait for my order to come up. The owner asked if I’d like a cup of tea while I waited, and I gladly accepted. This little gesture brought a rush of unexpected warmth to my heart. Without even knowing it, she had made everything right in my world. When she brought the steaming cup, I told her how in Turkey, all business and waiting and living is done over a cup of tea, and that one of the things I miss when I am away is being offered it by shopkeepers. She sat down and started to ask me all about life “over there” and to tell me about growing up as a third generation Chinese Canadian who always felt a little out of place with other Asians because she never learned Mandarin. She, too, knows what it’s like to feel confused about who you are and where you’re supposed to be from. When my food was ready, I thanked for the tea and went on my way. And as I walked out the door, I couldn’t help but smile. Maybe home really isn’t that far away after all.
A commonly occurring theme in this season’s CTV Christmas profgramming seems to be that of the big city business man (heiress, tax man) who, by reason of a snowstorm or a corporate assignment, inevitably finds himself in some small town dive of a diner, bewildered when he discovers they don’t serve espresso, just regular coffee. (With free refills, of course. Except in that one show when the diner was going under and all the locals were up in arms when a second cup was no longer on the house.) Seriously, I have witnessed this occurrence on my screen at least three times since coming home. And every time, I would laugh at the Big City Man and his uppity preferences.
And then it happened to me. Oddly enough, it was not the Big City Girl finding herself lost in the country, but the girl fresh off the plane from “backwards Turkey” arriving in her world-class hometown, just hours north of Seattle, the Coffee Capital of America. Mom had a doctor’s appointment downtown, and having left in plenty of time for snow delays, we found ourselves at the hospital complex with time to spare, so I thought I’d get myself a latte at the lobby coffee shop while we waited. Despite the cafe’s trendy looking exterior, I was surprised when, upon ordering, I received the same answer as my television counterparts – “Sorry, we don’t serve lattes, just regular coffee. But we can put steamed milk on top if you like.”
Hmm. Perhaps the coffee gods decided to have a little fun at my expense and teach me not to mock Big City People and their fussy tastes. Apparently I am one of them.
Excerpt from a delightful book on coffee that I came upon in my aunt's kitchen. Further proof (as if any was needed) that coffee is a gift straight from God......
The Muslims were convinced that the drink was a gift from Allah and were almost fanatical in their enthusiasm, as the following eulogy – or tirade – shows. Translated from the Arabic and printed, curiously, in the Transylvanian Journal of Medicine in the early part of the 19th century, the original is said to be the work of Sheik Abdal-Kader Anasari Djezeri Haubuli, son of Mohammed.
“O COFFEE! Thou dispellest the cares of the great: thou bringest back those who wander from the paths of knowledge. Coffee is the beverage of the people of God, and the cordial of His servants who thirst for wisdom....Every care vanishes when the cup bearer present thee the delicious chalice. It will circulate fleetly through thy veins, and will not rankle there: if thou doubtest this, contemplate the youth and beauty of those who drink it....Coffee is the drink of God’s people; in it is health....Whoever has seen the blissful chalice, will scorn the wine cup. Glorious drink! Thy colour is the seal of purity, and reason proclaims it genuine. Drink with confidence, and regard not the prattle of fools, who condemn without foundation....”
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