The Reason I haven’t been writing any entries and An Update

     Every few days I have a notion of concocting a blog entry out of something, only to be at a loss for inspiration and put it off. This cycle at some point turned to a curiosity about why I don’t seem to have anything to report anymore. Still not certain about the reason, I think it might be that I am no longer in ‘travel mode’ but ‘living mode.’ My life in Istanbul is really unbelievably idyllic, in part because I really am just living here, instead being in the constant state of discovery and surprise that I was previously. Public transportation has become routine, I know what I like to eat and where I get it, I know what’s what and where it is, and how to go about what I would like to be doing.  

     My past weekend here I think exactly parallels what it would have been had I been enjoying a summer at home with minimal obligations. On Friday after class I went with a Greek friend to a hamam, the preparations for and recovery from which comprise an entire afternoon. I went home and napped, then headed out for a night dancing with my Peruvian friend and her classmates from another Turkish school. Of course, exactly the same as at home, I had to be a little hoodwinked into the situation.  I had been told there was a rembetika band they’d like to see and we’d get some drinks.  But many many hours later we were still dancing with the old Greek men and young hip Turks and I was thrilled to be there. I spent Saturday with the same Greek friend, her Turkish boyfriend, and their friends from college. We rented a boat and cruised the Bosporus, eating watermelon and going for swims. On Sunday I finally relaxed, grabbing breakfast with my American roommate, mozying over to the Greek Patriarchate to catch the end of mass, doing internet errands in a café, watching cartoons with my Turkish roommates.

     This weekend, I think, is pretty much what it would have been were I at home, but Turkish.  Thus, no real revelations or mishaps to report. Even going to the hamam was a comfortable familiar experience this time.

Probably my blog will resume soon though, as my summer enters its next/last phase. My two months in Istanbul end this weekend when a friend from home, Kerry, will come. We will travel together via Lesvos to mainland Greece, from where we will fly to Paris. In Paris, Kerry will go on to England, while I’ll meet a friend from middle school, Kami, with whom I will spend two weeks making an as-of-yet unplanned circuit of/jaunt through France. We will begin and end in Paris, and probably hit at least Geneva (not France, I know, but close), and Strasbourg.

     Then, finally confirmed, I will be headed to the southern Swedish peninsula of Blekinge, where I will live and work on a farm, of sorts. The organization WWOOF sets up exchanges for volunteers to come to organic farms and work in exchange for housing and food. My host, David, is a beekeeper, and I will be learning a bit about his trade, living in the renovated boathouse, and picking wild berries and mushrooms with his primary school-aged children. I’ll stay there for two weeks or so before taking the short train to Copenhagen, where I will explore for a couple days until my flight home. (Home! Home.)

     I wasn’t actually interested in going home at all, until very recently (I left home some 4 and a half months ago). Three weeks ago I realized I was halfway through my stay in Turkey and panicked a bit, not at all nearing ready to leave. The result of that was that I developed a firm intention to come back to Turkey, as soon as just after graduation. With that comfort in place, I stopped panicking, and began looking to the rest of my summer. Including going home. Perhaps now that I have a date, and a plane ticket, I’ve begun to allow myself to look forward to it. It’s all in flux, though. Once I’m on the move again in a few days, home might regain its place as a distant, non-urgent eventuality.  

Notes on being American

     Being an American abroad isn’t really what I thought it would be. In the US, I think I was set up to expect something along the lines of either fawning admiration or enraged hatred. The United States has the most exported of cultures, and can provoke anything but indifference.

     As a result of this expectation, I’ve been both conscious of how I comport myself and wary of revealing my American-ness. On the one hand, I would prefer not to be immediately associated with speaking volume, ignorance, obesity, white sneakers, and America’s policies toward the Middle East for the past ten years. On the other hand, when my nationality is apparent, I’m excited to make a more positive impression – polite, linguistically and culturally aware, interested in getting to know a country beyond its most visible attractions.

It seems, though, that I rarely encounter anyone whose impression of America/ns need extreme mending. My response ‘Amerikalıyım’ prompts a generic ‘ohh’ given to travelers from most other countries. The ones that provoke a more interesting response are usually exceptionally distant and/or uncommon origins for tourists: Peru or South Africa, for example. Americans, Koreans, and western Europeans make up a significant portion of tourists here, and Germans and Russians seem to commonly move here as spouses. These groups, as a result, prompt little interest.

     More often than having to uphold my national identity, I successfully avoid classification. Most generally, when someone will hazard a guess as to my home country, I am perceived as German. Sometimes Dutch, Danish, even Russian, rarely have I been guessed American. On one hand, I wonder if they realize how pleased I am not to be thought American. On the other hand, I recognize that the combination of my ambiguous clothing, shoes, and haircut shout anything but. My nondescript clothing, inimitably practical footwear, and self-styled mop hair I suppose probably are more at home in central Europe than the US (though, undoubtedly, never never mistaken for Turkish. If my light hair isn’t enough, my shoes and backpack leave no doubt. Turkish women on average don’t value pragmatism immensely).

     My passable knowledge of Turkish pleasantries, as well, is a bit un-American. Much to my delight, both courses I’ve taken here have been populated completely by non-Americans. Both months we’ve had at least a couple Koreans, Germans, Greeks, and Russians, as well as other Eastern Europeans, a couple South Americans, and a mix from the rest of the Middle East and Western Europe. The other young people walking the streets practicing Turkish with simitçiler are either relatively local, or married to a local. That leaves some Americans, but relatively few.

     In the end, being American leaves me right where I’d like to be – neither rejected nor effusively welcomed, with no more expectations than any other. I never have to defend myself, and never receive preference (except maybe in visa offices, and such). Overall being American, at least for me, is very akin to not being American. Which, for someone trying to travel in countries on their own terms, is pretty good.

Intercity Bus Travel

     To a pretty significant portion of the Turkish population, long-distance buses are a familiar part of life. Dozens and dozens of companies run buses from and to most cities of a certain size in a dizzying array of combinations and schedules. As a result, any given person who doesn’t have a car can get just about anywhere in the country in about the same time a car would take, without paying exorbitant prices for gas (average price converts to $10.52/gallon).

     I’ve spent my weekday afternoons in Istanbul, and weekends in (relatively) nearby cities and places. Consequently, I’ve frequented Turkey’s private buses more in the past few weeks than many have in months and months. Conveniently, I really enjoy buses, and long bus rides (a necessity in such a big country, where even seemingly close cities can be nine hours away).  In Turkey, though, bus rides are a bit different from what I expected. I guess I have never ridden long-distance American buses, but I think they’re a bit different here.

     First thing at departure time, the bus aide checks to make sure the correct seats are unoccupied. The bus aide (I’m not sure what to call him), is invariably a just post-adolescent boy wearing a garish uniform of some sort (orange pinstripe shirt, orange pin-on bowtie, outrageously pleated pants). His demeanor is impressively eager to please, and pleasant even after long hours of riding. If a seat is unoccupied that shouldn’t be, the bus may wait four or five extra minutes to see if the tardy person shows up.

     Next the aide checks the destination of each passenger – when arriving back to Istanbul, bus companies provide shuttles to specific neighborhoods (a godsend when the alternative is to find my own way from the bus station an hour from home in the middle of the night). That settled, the aide passes down the aisle to distribute water. Sometimes it’s in covered disposable cups (I think I’ve seen apple juice in cafeterias packaged as such in the US), sometimes he pours from a large bottle into Dixie cups. Water distribution happens once every couple hours, or anytime at request.

     A little while later he will often distribute some kind of snack. Typically, it’s a packaged cake of some sort. More excitingly, once I was given a cheese and tomato sandwich, once an ice cream cup, and once something that may have been dried chickpeas? I keep trying out new bus companies to see what I might receive next. Usually, especially for longer rides, a few times through the trip the aide will set up a special cart from which he distributes tea, instant coffee, juice, or soda. On one of my first bus rides, I was surprised from behind by an aide pouring lemon-scented kolonya (cologne) from what resembled a salad-dressing bottle into my hands.

     The other exciting feature of bus rides are the rest stops, once every three hours or so. I suppose Turkish rest stops aren’t much different from American ones, but being Turkish, they hold a certain excitement. Rest stops offer bathrooms (usually with a small fee), a mescit (prayer area), and a wide variety of food. Sometimes it’s an all-out cafeteria, with full hot meals offered, sometimes it’s the more basic fare of tost, pastries, and burgers. I usually get tost, a pressed grilled cheese sandwich. Food is typically extremely cheap. Stops are twenty minutes or so – though I never quite figure it out because the announcements are made in garbled short-hand. I have also learned to wear pants or a skirt when possible – even when headed to a rugged, touristy location like Cappadocia, 3 am rest stops are still made in rural areas where a majority of the people I brush past will be visibility surprised, offended, or uncomfortable about my shorts.

     I’ve learned that overnight buses are the way to go. Not only do you save paying for accommodation, and you don’t waste daylight hours on a bus, but you are guaranteed a spectacular sunrise off in some isolated region of Turkey. How great! Somehow twelve hours shrinks to nothing.

Family Reunion

     As it turns out, elderly gentlemen are internationally the most wonderful people a person can meet. I had to pleasure of making the acquaintance of one such gentleman at a Bulgarian family reunion of sorts that took place in the apartment where I’m living a couple nights ago. I usually live with Ayla and and her mother, originally from Bulgaria. This week two old friends from Bulgaria are visiting, a mother and grown daughter. One day I come back for the evening to find a neatly dressed white-haired man in his seventies napping in a most dignified way on the couch. Ayla’s mother, Shusha, excitedly greets me and explains that the man is Ayla’s grandfather, it’s his seventy-fifth birthday, he just got off the bus from Sofia, and she is making köfte (my food vocabulary is disproportionately strong, a fact which Shusha has noticed and takes full advantage of).

     The apartment, cozy with three inhabitants, reaches the point of extreme festivity with six. The table is set in the living room overflowing with köfte (meatballs), bread, salad, assorted beverages, and the omnipresent sunflower seeds. We toast his birthday and commence conversation characteristic of those too long apart. Everyone else in the room knows Bulgarian, while three know Turkish and two know English. Conversation and stories are in Bulgarian, punctuated with realizations that I don’t understand a word, which result in random asides to me in English or Turkish.

     My favorites are from the grandfather who once he realized I am learning Turkish, began speaking to me in such. He mostly comments on how sweet I am ‘ne tatlı!’, also comparing me to Heidi (you know, from Germany). I am delighted by his extended story involving the languages he learned in school (Turkish and Russian, but never English), how pleased he is that his grand-daughter has learned even more, and also that I am learning Turkish. He also, kind of incongruously, jokes that he is surprised I am white, because my president is a black man (that needed translation into English). Halfway through dinner he says, ‘when you get married, you must invite me to attend!’ He asks after my family, and how many siblings I have. I promise to him twice that I will say hello from him to my parents.

     The evening is a real treat, being the only such family gathering I’ve attended in many months. I was surprised first to realize how included I felt, despite not following a word of conversation. Second I realized that the real surprise is not how included in the conversation I felt, but in the family. Not only did I not speak the language, but I had just met most these people who have know each other for decades. All the same, I experienced the same warmth as if I had been another cousin.

     The idea with a homestay is to practice the target language in a natural environment. I do get that practice, but the non-linguistic benefits of a family as well.

Hamam - Turkish Bath

     I am cleaner and softer today than I have been since close to birth. One of Turkey’s iconic experiences, the hamam (Turkish bath) I think occupies a particularly exotic and mysterious place in the American/Western consciousness. In many ways, Americans idealize privacy along with freedom, upward mobility, and the automobile. Fences are abound, one keeps polite interactions with one’s neighbors, and topics of a personal nature are taboo with all but the closest friends or family.

     In Turkey, these standards are not a consideration. Neighbors spill into one another’s yards, a whole host of topics are more acceptable for discussion (I’ve particularly noticed the public way in which my Turkish teacher discusses each student’s shortcomings on various assignemtns), and the notion of personal space is generally nonexistent. It’s in this culture that taking a long, luxurious bath in public is not only acceptable but embraced.

     I went to a hamam on the Asian side of Istanbul (I am still tingly every time I take the 15-minute ferry across the Bosphorus to a different continent) with two friends, one of whom had been to this hamam many times. We brought towels, shampoo, and a change of underwear.

     We arrived to a nondescript building with a sign indicating the men’s entrance at the front. At the back was the women’s entrance, which led directly into a two-storied room occupied by a couple mostly-naked women milling around, and one professionally dressed woman poised to greet us. Anna, with her slightly superior command of practical Turkish took the lead and arranged a room, sandals, and scrubbing mitts for three. We went upstairs to one of the small, windowed rooms lining the wall where we undressed to bathing suit bottoms or underwear, grabbed our soap, towels, and sandals, and locked our things in the room.

     Magda and I follow Anna back downstairs, imitating her confident stride. We walk through a door to the next room back, where we leave our towels and use the toilet. The door to the third area releases a hot, humid cloud, through which we see a marble, octagonal room. In the middle is a marble table-bench, large enough to fit four or so women laying down. Above is a lightly decorated dome, letting in some light. Around the middle are eight or so little alcoves, each containing three drain-less marble sinks with two taps. We are pointed to one such alcove, where Anna explains we fix the temperature of our water with the faucets, and then douse ourselves with it. We splash a bit, slowly taking in the sight of old, almost-naked women chatting while washing their hair, and one younger woman now sprawled on the middle stone being scrubbed by a no-nonsense middle-aged woman. The combination of the ease and familiarity of this experience for them and the utter foreignness for us is surreal and immensely enjoyable. We follow suit and wash our hair, play with the temperatures, pour bowl after bowl of water on ourselves (there is a sort of moat set into the floor around past each alcove, draining off to somewhere else). Slowly we relax and conversation turns to other, mundane matters unrelated to our bathing experience so far. Soon Anna leads us to the last door, which opens to a pleasant little sauna. Perhaps it was the wood, or cleanliness of the hamam, but the sauna was the sweetest-smelling one I’ve been in. We tried to relax for a couple minutes, speculating about how long the sand-clock ran and trying to convert the thermometer to Fahreinheit for my benefit (Anna and Magda are from Greece and Cyprus). Soon enough we rush back out, to pour cold water over our heads for a couple minutes until a woman with a mitt beckons Magda. Soon after, a second woman beckons me, then another Anna. Mine impatiently gestures for me to lie on my stomach, as I fumble to show her the scrapes on my leg (fell down at Cappadocia) and pleadingly request that she be careful around. She understands, and more patiently places me on the edge of the bench.

     With my head resting on my arms, too late I think to brace myself. The travel guides I had me anticipating a rigorous scrub and pummeling. She pre-empted my anxiety, though, and for the better. It wasn’t bad at all, in terms either of aggression or personal invasion. As she scrubbed every (every) inch, moving onto my front then arms and neck, the process felt completely natural and a little indulgent. Having been warned, I wasn’t quite as shocked by the pills of dead skin her mitt removed in startling quantities. I vaguely wondered if she takes notice and thinks poorly of foreigners for obviously having never bathed properly in their lives.

She lightly slaps my arm with the mitt to indicate she has finished, and instructs me in Turkish to rinse before my massage. Excitedly I tread back to my alcove to rinse the pills of skin off myself, continuing to suppress bewilderment at their quantity.

    The massage as well doesn’t live up to the intensity of which I had been warned. She lathered me up with my shampoo and a (okay- I have no idea what these are actually called. In my family they are referred to as buff-puffs. A sort of meshy ball? For soap). Then she runs over me with her hands massaging my neck for a moment, my arms, back. At my feet I use all my power to suppress a tickle-reaction, to which I know she will react with a nudge back into place. Another swat with the buff-puff directs me back to my alcove where I collapse into a sudsy heap until slowly I rinse myself and sit up.

     Magda and I laugh at how red we are from the heat and scrubbing, and fall again back into slow conversation and liberal sluicing of variable-temperature water. Cleaned through, and rinsed thoroughly, we begin to feel faint from the heat and slowly stand and collect our things. In the middle room we rinse one more time under a cool shower, and dry a bit with our towels. The first room this time feels positively chilly, in the most refreshing way possible. We tread a snail’s pace back upstairs, drying as we go. Soon we are dressed, brushed, packed, and paying the first woman we met. We go outside and stop for a smoke break (for which my careful tolerance is slowing turning to enjoyment. I participate by demurely sipping water). We float up and down the hills back to the port, enjoying the cool air in our damp hair and raw skin, feeling how soft and smooth forearms, neck, elbows have become.

     So pleased, I push off the realization that once I’m back in the States I will never have access to the sort of experience. Utterly relaxed it seems unproblematic, and Anna and I simply promise to try out other hamams weekly until I leave Turkey.