Right, here’s the second installment— once again, explanations along the way.

We have a bathtub! It’s the smallest bathtub in the universe, but it works, and I soaked for about an hour. Heaven.

As I was getting ready for my nap I heard some soft mewing coming from outside— turns out there was a mama kitty out there with her babies! Sorry for the blurry photo, I had to use the extreme zoom because I didn’t want to get too close and scare them.

This is my Spanish next-door neighbour— she came out on the balcony to feed the cats.

In the evening after Emirhan returned we went out in search of snacks and pretty things. We found both. This is that same park sculpture from earlier today, and it’s even cooler at night.

We walked all the way down to the water, where you can see one of the bridges linking Europe to Asia. Apparently they just installed those lights about a month ago. They change colours periodically. It’s gorgeous.

Then we walked along the waterfront to the Galata Bridge, which crosses the Golden Horn. That’s Galata Tower in the background, and the lights below the bridge are restaurants and shops.

The New Mosque at night.

Then we were tired and decided to take the tram back to the hotel. Emirhan waited for the tram on one of these cool book-benches, while I wandered around like a tourist, taking photos.

Oh, we picked up some more midye dolması on the way home. As you can see, they’re just mussels stuffed with rice. We got a whole bag full for 5 million, and they were amazing as usual.

So now I’m going to turn in early tonight, because tomorrow’s another big day. Have a great evening, see you guys tomorrow.

Well, we made it, and it’s already been an adventure. Here’s the first batch of photos— I’ll explain as I go along.

Our flight was at 5:00 this morning with check-in starting at 3:00, so rather than inconvenience the friend who offered us a ride to the airport, we had him drop us off at the domestic terminal at midnight, and we just hung out at the airport for several hours. I was intrigued and moderately amused by the implied sitting positions of the people in the Waiting Lounge graphic, but I can see now that much of my amusement must have been due to sleep deprivation.

I’m not sure if the airport employees don’t have other homes or what, but they seem to sleep at the airport.

When we arrived in Istanbul, we pretty much headed straight for the hotel, hoping against hope that our room might be ready at seven in the morning. But no. While Emirhan negotiated our check-in time (which ended up being noon, as usual), I hung out with Bibo, the hotel dog. As you can see, Bibo’s not exactly what you’d call excitable. But he’s ancient, so give him a break. And he’s lovely and affectionate… or rather, he doesn’t care either way if you want to pet him, he’ll just let you. By the way, that’s Emirhan in the background standing next to our red suitcase.

So after the failed attempt at check-in, we had several hours to kill, and neither of us had slept a wink all night. Emirhan’s from Istanbul, and he suggested we go up the road to the park at Gülhane to relax. It was an excellent suggestion. I’d walked past this park many times during my other visits to Istanbul, but I’d never gone in. It’s gorgeous. I particularly loved the water features and the sculptures.

There’s a lovely fountain on the other side of the pond.

And of course the day can’t be complete without a bit of light Turklish— this one, too, seemed funnier at the time.

This is actually quite cool— the plaque reads, “This stone pillar is all that remains of a Byzantine triumphal arch from which road distances to all corners of the [Ottoman] empire were once measured… Date: 4th century A.D.” Emirhan in his sleep-deprived state tried briefly to explain something to me, but in my own sleep-deprived state I couldn’t make much of his explanation, except that it was something about Greenwich. So clearly that would make this a very important pillar indeed.

Then we decided to have an early lunch… Emirhan knows I’m a huge fan of seafood, so he took me to his favourite local fish fast-food place. We had fried shrimp sandwiches and midye dolması, which are the rice-stuffed mussels Turkey is famous for. It was shockingly inexpensive (10YTL for enough shellfish to feed two people is unheard of in Antalya), and it was so tasty that I made Emirhan promise we’ll eat there again.

The reason we came to Istanbul is because Emirhan is taking an exam up here for his IATA certification, and unfortunately he had to leave to go to the first part of the exam (second part is tomorrow) before we were able to check into the hotel. So after he left, I settled into the hotel lounge, and voilà, what do you know? The hotel has WiFi. Score. Then I noticed that there was a potato on the bookshelf next to where I was sitting.

Anyway, I’m feeling pretty shattered now, and I can’t wait for them to give me the room key so I can get upstairs and see if we have a bathtub. I haven’t seen a proper Western-style bathtub in three years, and if we have one I’m going to have the longest bath in the history of the world, and you can forget about any more Istanbul updates. No, joking. But I am going to stay in that bath until I get completely wrinkley. And then I’m going to have a long nap. See you guys later.

Okay folks, Emirhan and I are off to Istanbul tonight (or rather the wee hours of tomorrow morning). We’ll be back maybe Friday or Saturday. I’m not sure exactly how this will affect my blogging over the next few days (a lot depends on whether I can snag a free WiFi connection somewhere), but what I do know for sure is that there will be no bazaar post tomorrow (sorry, but I can’t go to the bazaar if I’m not here!), and that I’m going to take a truckload of photos in Istanbul to make up for whatever blogging I can’t do while I’m there. So either way, you guys will get to see some cool new stuff, but it might have to wait until Saturday. We’ll see. Anyway, have a great rest of the week, and hopefully I’ll be back in a few hours with reports of amazing free WiFi. Wish me luck.

Yoko Ono currently has a nine-installation interactive exhibition in Istanbul’s Sabancı University Kasa Gallery. I love interactive installations and have always been curious about Ono’s visual and multimedia work (I don’t particularly care either way about the drama and controversy of her life as John Lennon’s wife— I’m happy to separate an artist’s work from the media’s perception of her worth as a person). As it turns out Emirhan and I will be in Istanbul briefly this week, but as it’s only for a day and we have other things we need to take care of, I don’t think I’ll be able to find the time to sneak away to the Kasa Gallery. If you’re in Istanbul, though, and have either seen these installations or are planning to, drop me a line. I’d love to hear what your reactions are (and if you have photos, even better). Link

As usual, I was up at dawn this morning, and I took a short walk, not forgetting the importance of having the camera with me at all times. There were just a couple of things I saw that I thought exemplified the atmosphere… and I got decent photos of both.

According to my magical Turkish reading skills, this says something along the lines of “road expropriation border.” I don’t even understand what that means in English. According to my dictionary, the word istimlak (”expropriation”) is primarily a law term, so that might explain why I don’t get the overall meaning. On the other hand, it’s also very possible that there’s a simpler translation from the Turkish and I’ve just done it wrong and/or made things more difficult than they actually are (I do that a lot). In any case, the lonely, rusting sign amongst the long grass at the end of a country road said a lot about how I was feeling this morning, even without considering the words on the sign.

You wouldn’t believe how often I run across stray roses just growing in the middle of nowhere. This fine specimen looked fantastic standing all by itself in the middle of a field, and it smelled heavenly. I don’t know if Turks scatter rose seeds haphazardly or if they just grow wild or what, but I come across random roses quite frequently. It has a particular poignancy for me, because my father used to have a rose garden, one which he took over from my grandmother, so roses (especially strongly scented ones) hold a lot of bittersweet childhood nostalgia for me. Again, this fit in perfectly with the mood of my morning.

I hope your morning was amazing.

I mentioned a couple of days ago about my annoyance with fad diets… it still amazes me that even in this age of information, reasonably intelligent adults will go on fad diet after fad diet, lose weight and then immediately gain it all back again plus an extra twenty pounds, and still latch onto whatever the next fad diet is as if this one is going to be the one. As my doctor once told me, “if any diet worked, there would only be that one diet, and it would be called The Diet, and everyone in the world would be on it and there wouldn’t be any fat people.” Well said. I’m constantly baffled at the awful things people will do to their organs and systems (ketosis, anyone? my stepmother got ill from that) because they think a fad diet will solve all their problems.

The above picture is me, believe it or not, back in December 2003, just before I moved to Turkey. I was 240 pounds (109 kilograms) in that photo. I came to Turkey in May of 2004, and by the one-year anniversary of the above photo (i.e. in December 2004), I was down to 160 pounds (you can see a current photo of me on the about page).

So how did I do it? Well, I promise you I wouldn’t have kept the weight off this long if I’d lost it on a fad diet. No, it was moving to Turkey that did it, the entire lifestyle change. Especially when I first moved here, I had some friends who ran a restaurant up the road from me, and I ate there all the time because I don’t cook. I didn’t know how to ask for things in Turkish (still don’t to a great extent), and so I just had to eat whatever they brought me, which was the same thing they were all eating— lean meat or fish, rice, and salad. I didn’t know how to ask for sauce or mayonnaise. I didn’t know how to ask for seconds. So I didn’t have any of those things. I also didn’t have my car (I sold it when I moved to Turkey), so I walked everywhere. Everywhere.

I also didn’t have my scale, so at first I didn’t notice what was happening, but eventually it became clear that my big-girl clothes were falling off of me. So I bought some smaller stuff. And then two months later I had to buy smaller clothes again. And again. And now, three years later, I can’t remember what it was like to drive everywhere, to drive to a restaurant and order a giant meal with gravy all over everything. I still walk most everywhere, and I still eat the standard lean-and-healthy Turkish fare.

When I tell people how fat I used to be, at first they’re surprised, but then they say, “oh yes, of course you were fat, you’re American.” But that is their mistaken stereotype— I was never fat when I lived in the United States. I didn’t get fat until I moved to England in 1998. Gravy and creamy sauces are very popular in England, as are fried potatoes (or some other kind of potato) with every restaurant meal. I’m a fan of all of those things, and if you offer them to me, I’m going to eat them (or at least, I would have at that time). Another unfair stereotype is that English food is bland and tasteless— I can assure you that’s not the case. England has some of the most amazing restaurants in the world. I should know, I ate at most of them. It took me six years to gain all that weight, and not a pound of it was gained on U.S. soil.

So I guess what I’m saying is that although it may seem like an extreme solution to sell your car and move to a Mediterranean country where you don’t speak the language in order to train yourself to change your lifestyle and eating habits, it is one way to do it, and though for me it was an accidental side effect, I’m so thankful to Turkey and Turkish cuisine for helping me pull myself together and realise what a toll Western overeating and laziness had taken on my body. I do still enjoy my treats, but I walk them off, and I now understand the importance of moderation and balance in my meals. For me, this is a change for life.

The Turkish Daily News ran a small item this morning stating that Turkey now has 230 beaches with “Blue Flag certification— an international standard of cleanliness, tidiness and good maintenance.”

Well, I decided it was my duty to prove that Turkish beaches are some of the best in the world, so I took a bus down to Lara Beach this afternoon and got some photo evidence.

Lara Beach is one of two major beach areas in Antalya (the other being Konyaaltı), and consists of miles and miles of pristine sand. There doesn’t tend to be any litter problems at all in this area, and as you can see, the beach itself is gorgeous.

I walked out to the end of the pier and noticed that one of the hotels has put an inflatable climbing mountain out in the water. I would love to tackle that. Should have brought my bikini.

This is the view of the beach from the pier. That amazing hotel in the background is the World of Wonders Kremlin Palace, one of Lara Beach’s many five-star all-inclusive resorts.

But if sand and sun are not your things, you can relax near the beach in one of these shaded hammocks instead, in the grassy park.

I’m not sure what these purple flowers are, but they are everywhere at the moment… is this what’s making my eyes itchy?

I had a great time taking these photos today, blending in with the tourists and feeling much more comfortable about the whole thing. Hope you enjoyed seeing these.

If anyone in Chicago is reading this and has some free time this week, I implore you to go down to the Chicago Turkish Festival and give us a report. I just learned about it this morning, but I’ve been digging through the web site and it looks marvelous. Here’s what’s on offer this year:

Turkish Cuisine, Turkish beer, and Turkish Coffee
Authentic Turkish Music
Folk Dances
Whirling Dervishes
Traditional Fashion Show
Ottoman Military Band
Fine Arts & Crafts
Books & Souvenirs
Travel Information
Kids’ Activities
Panoramic views of Istanbul and Chicago side by side
Istanbul Photo Exhibit
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Exhibit
Film Screenings
and more…

Sounds great to me (the Turkish cuisine alone would be enough to get me to go). The festival starts tomorrow (30th May) and runs through until the 2nd June. It’s in its fifth year this year, so this is not just some fly-by-night operation. If you’re in the Chicago area and/or are planning on attending this, please leave a note in the comments and perhaps we can make a deal for you to share your experiences with everyone here. Link

I was reading Lily Monk’s blog today, and yesterday she wrote an interesting article about a subject I was just exploring the other day in my guest post in Jake’s blog: the struggles of learning to speak a new language versus the separate but related skills of writing, listening, and reading. Lily is English but is teaching herself to speak Japanese in preparation for a medical internship she’ll be undertaking in Nagasaki later this year. She, like me, is an introvert who usually finds learning to read easier than learning to speak (she has quite accomplished reading skills in both Spanish and Turkish), but with Japanese she’s finding the challenge to be the other way around.

I grew up in an area that was mostly hispanic, and I used to roll my eyes at people who said, “I can understand Spanish, I just can’t speak it.” Sure, I thought. Certainly this is what people say when they’re embarrassed to admit they don’t know anything about Spanish. But now I get it, because I’m in exactly the same position with Turkish. I can read and understand conversations, but struggle to write or speak. However, I wonder how different that would be if Turkish were still written with an Arabic script and if I’d had that hurdle to overcome as well? Would my reading skills have progressed so well?

Coincidentally I, too, have learned some Japanese as a hobby, but unlike Lily I’ve found that my Japanese has progressed in much the same way as my Turkish— I can recognise the meanings of about 1000 kanji, and I know all my kana and some simple grammar, which means I can read some basic stuff on Japanese web sites… but have no clue what any of this stuff sounds like when it’s spoken, or how one would pronounce it in Japanese. I just know that the grid-looking one with the two lines means car, the pointy one means person, and so forth. So Lily’s post has given me some more stuff to think about, not only in terms of how English speakers learn other writing systems, but also about how I can convert what I know about my learning style into an effective tool for learning to speak instead of just reading all the time. Link to Lily Goes To Japan / Link to my interview on A Foreign Perspective

Here are a couple of things I saw when I was out and about today— one of them interested me, and maybe the other will interest you. We’ll see.

I suspect I’d really like this if I could understand Turkish well enough. Just the photo makes me want to go. I love stand up, especially the work of Cem Yılmaz, but it took me a long time to get my ears tuned into the cadence of his voice, and I’m not sure if I went to see an unfamiliar guy live that I’d be able to keep up right away. In any case, does anyone know anything about Engin Günaydın? Seen him live before? I was wondering if maybe he’d been in anything I’d seen on television, but he doesn’t look familiar. I do think he’s probably funny, though.

Here’s something I thought many of you might not have seen before— it’s a kuruyemiş shop. All they sell are dried pulses, nuts, and seeds. You can either buy each item separately by weight, or you can get a mixed bag. I love nuts and pulses, and you would think this would make for a wholesome snack, but of course my two favourites are the least healthy ones— the roasted corn kernels (which are very greasy and I suspect are actually deep-fried), and these other things I don’t know the name of which are like….er… imagine those spheroid cheetos, but with peanuts inside of them. Yeah, kind of like that. Again, I think think they might be fried. Oh well, they’re tasty anyway.

I still can’t believe this weather— overcast and cool. It’s nearly June, for god’s sake! But believe me, I’m not complaining. We had some truly disgustingly hot weather last summer, and I’m not keen on a repeat.

I noticed today that I was having a different hesitation as regards picture-taking… When you’re a foreigner living in a tourist town, you spend a lot of effort in telling and showing people that you’re not a tourist. In my case, I’ve spent three years in this pursuit. But then you instantly unravel all your hard work the second a camera comes out of your pocket. Still though, I noticed when I took the photo of the kuruyemiş shop, the owner just smiled and waved and let me get on with it. Then he said something in German and I smiled and went on my way (Turks are very talented at guessing nationality, and though I don’t speak much German myself, ethnically speaking the kuruyemiş guy guessed exactly right— my parents are German). So maybe I should play the tourist thing up instead of down. It seemed to work for me today.