We already had just about every sort of recreational sport type thing here anyway, but now it appears that hot air balloon rides are coming to Antalya. A company from Kapadokya is expanding their operation to the Serik district of Antalya, where a one-hour ride will cost 250 euros per person.

I have to say, I’m pleasantly surprised about the price. Okay, sure, it’s not cheap cheap, but most tourist recreation stuff here is so outrageously expensive that this looks reasonable by comparison. Operators get away with marking up so much because although the prices are expensive for Turkey, they’re not so out of line for visitors from most European countries, and in any case people are willing to spend the kind of money when they’re on vacation that perhaps they wouldn’t dish out at other times.

I’m not sure I’m willing to pay 250 euros for an hour’s ride over Serik, and I don’t know what the actual costs of running a hot air balloon are, but that price certainly sounds more reasonable than others I’ve heard. We have some friends who are heavily involved with a company who run helicopter rides over the coastline, and for a similar one-hour tour we were quoted a per-person friend price well into four digits (euros), which nearly made my jaw hit the floor. If that’s the friend price, I’d hate to hear what the tourist price is. Maybe I will pay 250 euros for the balloon ride after all. It sounds relaxing, at least. Link

[photo of hot air balloon over Kapadokya courtesy of Bora's Grand Tours]

The above photo is one that will instantly conjure up countless memories for every Turk that sees it, but for the rest of you foreigners: it’s an evening of çay and tavla on the balcony, in the spring night air. Tavla is played on what appears to be a backgammon board (every Turkish household has one of these), but from what I understand the rules and scoring are slightly different from how backgammon is played elsewhere (I can’t say, because I was only introduced to the game after I came to Turkey). And Turkish tea, well… it’s good enough to keep you sitting there all night. This is such an instantly recognisable way for Turkish people to spend an evening, I thought I snap a photo and share. That’s Emrah on the left, and my beloved Emirhan on the right.

Ever since I moved to Antalya this has been one of my favourite cocktails— amaretto and milk. It’s simple, but it’s very tasty, and a lot of people here drink these, especially in the summer.

I have a friend on twitter whose screen name (but not real name) is Natasha; I turned her on to this drink and she liked it so much that I decided to call it a Blonde Natasha, after her. Of course, in this part of the world, the word “Natasha” has a double meaning (other than just a girl’s name), but I assure everyone it’s just a coincidence and that if her screen name had been Jennifer I would’ve called the drink a Blonde Jennifer.

As for the double meaning, well, have a guess in the comments if you think you know what it is, what else the word “Natasha” is sometimes used for in this area. I’ll give you a hint: it’s very very politically incorrect. But don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just reporting.

Turkish Daily News informs me that British home decor chain Habitat is coming to Turkey. This adds to some worries I had last week about Turkey slowly turning into England. Koç Taş is nearly B&Q, Marks & Spencer arrived a couple of years ago, Kipa is becoming Tesco, TelSim has already become Vodafone, and now this. And of course the United States gets Boots and WHSmiths, the two British exports that are actually somewhat attractive to me.

I guess I have to accept the fact that eventually every big company will be everywhere in the world. So where’s my Krispy Kreme? Where’s my Yo!Sushi? I wish we’d get some flowers instead of all the weeds, if you see what I mean. But I’m not holding my breath. I think if they opened a Yo!Sushi here I’d run down the street screaming with joy. If they opened a Krispy Kreme I’d be in jail before lunchtime. Link

Well, I finally took the new camera out for a test spin, and I have to say, I’m strangely intimidated. Even as gadget-prone as I am, oddly I’m the last person on earth to have a digital camera, and I’m a little overwhelmed by the easy point-and-clickness of digital. You can take a million photos if you want and throw most of them away, but in my 20th century head that would be a waste of film, so I still find myself waiting and waiting for the perfect shot. I’m sure I’ll get over it soon. In any case, I got on a bus today and took a few photos, just things I thought you might not be familiar with if you don’t live here.

Turkey, where you can have your car in any colour you want as long as it’s white.

Now this is creative— it used to be an ice cream truck, now it’s used to tow a boat.

You can buy your vegetables at the supermarket, but people rarely do because the vegetables at the corner stall are nicer-tasting and fresher and much less expensive. And the guy generally tips the scales in your favour.

Next door to the fruit and veg man: the fish guy. Again, you’ll find no fresher. These were swimming in the Med this morning.

In Turkey, we don’t have piped-in gas for stoves or heat, so if you want gas in your house (which you do, because running an electric stove would cost a fortune), then you call up the gas man and he brings a canister of gas to the house and hooks it up to your stove. It’s basically just a larger version of the gas canisters used for camping, and when it’s all used up you just call for a refill and they come again and trade it out. The cost is 35YTL (today: $26, £13, €20), and we have to refill ours about twice a year.

So there you have it, five photos of daily life in Antalya. Next time I’ll try to be a bit more free with the trigger finger.

Believe it or not, Turkish cuisine isn’t all about kebaps and Turkish coffee. Our housemate Emrah made menemen last night, and though technically I guess it’s a breakfast food, it’s one of my favourite dishes at any time of day (and from what I understand it’s “South Beach friendly,” whatever that means— are certain foods against the law in South Beach or something?).

Meneman, as Burcu over at Almost Turkish Recipes points out, “can be defined in a couple of different ways such as Turkish breakfast specialty or lazy dinner option or great summer dish.” I’ve had menemen in many different places, and it’s always made differently, but basically what we’re talking about here is scrambled eggs and vegetables. Tomatoes, onions, and peppers are the most common, but “nothing is written in stone, so you can use more or less of [any of the ingredients]. You can use finely chopped onion instead of green onions, and you can also add pitted and chopped black olives.”

Generally the way we decide what goes in our menemen at home is by opening the fridge and throwing in whatever vegetables we have. At the moment we have a surplus of tomatoes and not much else, so last night’s menemen was heavy on the tomatoes. It was heavenly, and of course it was served with cucumbers on the side (also please note newspaper tablecloth, which for me defines a Turkish table). I know it sounds weird to the Americans and to some of the Europeans, but cucumbers are pretty much required on any Turkish breakfast plate. I don’t think I’ve ever had a Turkish breakfast that didn’t include cucumbers. On the other hand, don’t try to serve a Turk sweet things for breakfast— they absolutely can’t understand how doughnuts or anything sweet from the bakery could ever be a breakfast food. But I digress.

Anyway, go check out Burcu’s recipes— she makes Turkish recipes with a twist. I like her idea of adding cheese to the mixture (and it made me giggle that she dared to suggest Greek cheese), and I love olives too, so perhaps we’ll try that next time. Link to Burcu’s menemen recipe

Note: yes, I’ve heard of the South Beach diet, I’m just being deliberately obtuse because I find it difficult to hide my raging hatred for all fad diets. In fact, I may write more on this very subject tomorrow.

Yesterday I was talking about differences across the language-culture barrier as regards what translates as funny and what doesn’t. I also said that I had some more thoughts about grammatical problems that sound humourous to native English speakers but wouldn’t necessarily seem odd to people who speak English as a second language. I have some examples of those for you today, and I’m curious to know if those of you whose native language is not English understand why these make us giggle.

One of my friends works at a large all-inclusive five-star resort here in Antalya, and the hotel has one of those guestbooks on display where you can write your comments or whatever else you like for all the world to see. The resort sees a mixture of holiday makers, convention attendees, and business guests, and the guestbook is full of entries in multiple languages written by guests from all over the world. It seems, however, that most people try to write their entries in English if they can, sometimes with results that made me chuckle. In almost every case I knew what the author meant, but what they actually said implied something completely different, or sometimes didn’t make any sense at all. Here are a couple of gems:

One of my best business vacation that I have never ever have been. Thanks a lot from everyone. And I would like to mention in particular that the paint of traveling was worth the comfort to be here. [I'm confused— did he have a good time or didn't he?]

I come with my boyfriend to your hotel two times. He made me come the first time and this time he made me come again and we had a good time at both times. [okay, gutter minds, you know what she meant. But yeah, it's still funny.]

There were also a few entries I wanted to share with you that didn’t catch my attention because of grammar, but rather because of the content itself. These are off-topic, granted, but nonetheless I think you’ll find them entertaining and enlightening:

Holiday was a good time. Bedroom broken now. Sorry about that. Thanks. [this was followed by three signatures]

[In a child's handwriting] My dad and I had a great time here at [hotel name]. I wish they wouldn’t allow girls in the pool but the rest was fun. [yeah, he'll change his mind about that soon enough.]

Your chambermaids are the BEST. I mean it. The. Best.

Please get rid of your lobby pianist, because he doesn’t understand the meaning of “that was just a one-time thing.”

I’m sure next time you’re in a fancy hotel you’ll have a look through the guestbook, right? Let me know what you find.

I’ll admit it, I love lolcats, and lolpresidents, and every other variation you could possibly come up with. Sometimes stupid-funny annoys me, but other times it just catches me the right way, especially when there’s an opportunity for the virus/meme to spread in such a way that it allows for either (A) clever captioning with a pop culture reference you either get or you don’t (see photo above, my current favourite lolpresident), (B) creative photoshopping (see also: Worth1000), or both.

But over the past couple of days, I’ve been thinking a lot about how so much of what I experience daily in the English-speaking internet community doesn’t really translate into Turkish. I live with three Turks, two of whom have very limited English and one (Emirhan) who has excellent English language skills, but like the other two has limited knowledge of western pop culture. And the language jokes, even if they don’t involve pop culture references, are still difficult to explain sometimes. For instance, Emirhan almost always understands why the items from the bazaar are funny, but he doesn’t always get the captions I write, especially if a particular caption plays on a tricky grammatical problem that sounds funny to native English speakers but wouldn’t necessarily seem odd to people who speak English as a second language (I have many more thoughts on this issue which I will address in a separate post tomorrow). Sometimes I can explain the joke, but other times it doesn’t translate at all and I’m met with a blank stare.

So I guess what I’m trying to get at is that although the four of us live together and share group jokes of our own, the three of them have Turkish jokes that I don’t get, and there’s certainly a huge part of my social life (namely the meme-infested English-speaking internet community) that they can’t really participate in on any meaningful level. Lolcats, for instance, is one of those things you either understand or you don’t, even if English is your first language, and once you start trying to explain it to someone, you’re already overexplaining and the joke loses a lot. There’s an element of timing that’s necessary when it comes to clever one-liners. I’m curious to know if this sort of thing exists in the Turkish-speaking online community; I know things like blogging and podcasting are just barely getting started here, but the Turkish have a very well-developed sense of humour and it wouldn’t surprise me if they have their own little funny memes community that I’m not even aware of, and that I wouldn’t find funny anyway.

Turkish Daily News ran a story today about Itsumi, a high-end sushi restaurant in Istanbul. The article goes on to mention several other sushi restaurants in Istanbul, and then continues with speculation as to why sushi has not caught on in Turkey the way it has in the United States and Europe. At the end of the story the author points out something I have been complaining about since I first moved here: “the ingredients needed to prepare Japanese food are exceptionally difficult to find in Turkey.”

I am a huge fan of sushi and Japanese/SE Asian cuisine in general, and the lack of Asian restaurants here (especially in Antalya) is baffling and frustrating. A couple of the local hotels here do boast sushi bars, but on every occasion that I’ve tried to book a reservation or even drop by unannounced, the sushi bar has always been closed and I’ve been told that “it’s not open very often.” I’m glad to see that sushi finally seems to be catching on somewhat in Istanbul, even it if it is mostly fueled by the Japanese community there… sadly I don’t think we have enough of a Japanese population here in Antalya to follow suit. Link

I had no idea this even existed, but apparently we have a local cocktail called Dreaming In Antalya:

• 2 cl Dark rum (Bacardi)
• 2 cl Light rum (Bacardi)
• 2 cl Cointreau
• Juice of 1/2 Lemon
• 1 tablespoon Grenadine
• Ice cubes

I don’t have everything required for this cocktail at the moment (and I’m not a big fan of rum anyway except in frozen daquiris), so maybe one of you can whip one of these up and report back. It’s got a 9.4 rating on the site, so it can’t be too bad I guess. Link