Turkish Muse

Musings on Owning Your Identity

2010-03-17T17:36:57+02:00

I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

It's a small secret that I've never told anyone else other than Jeff.

Are you ready?

Ever since I broke my Turkish teapot during our move to Izmir last August, I haven't replaced it.

And I'm not planning to either.

For months I chided myself for not replacing my teapot after it smashed into pieces during our move. I fretted with worry. Every single Turkish household has a teapot -- shouldn't I have one too? What if a neighbor comes over and wants tea? What will I do?

After many months -- and several occasions where I served Nescafe and Turkish coffee to perfectly happy guests -- I decided that no, my household did not need a family-size teapot when I am just fine, thank you, making single cups of tea at a time.

I've exerted a lot of effort over the past two years accommodating, adapting, changing and molding, all to find a place here where I fit comfortably.

During that time, I have adapted new habits practiced more frequently in Turkey than in the US -- such as drinking tea and smoking the occasional nargile -- and also held steadfastly to old ones, such as refusing to keep the windows closed in case a draft makes me ill or giving up my cats simply because I'm of childbearing age.

But for a long time, I felt that, since I had left the US and am making my home here in Turkey, for however long that may be, I should adopt a lifestyle similar to my neighbors.

After all, I told myself, I moved to Turkey to live a different kind of lifestyle. So shouldn't I adopt it?

And yes, there are many things about Turkish culture that I am more than happy to fold into my own customs -- generous hospitality, tea and coffee culture, taking off my shoes before entering the house.

And then there are others that I am not. Like a complete disregard for personal space when standing in line at the ATM. Or giving directions -- any directions at all -- to someone who is lost despite the fact that you have no idea what you're talking about.

I'm still learning to be comfortable in my own skin, to understand and accept that I do some things one way while most people around me do things a completely different way. It's taken some getting used to and I admit, I can feel a bit anxious sometimes about it, but for the most part, I think I am making progress on owning up to who I am and how I do things.

What about you? Do you feel any pressure to adopt new habits since coming to Turkey? How do you hold onto what is you while adapting to customs here?

The Next Best Thing to Being There

2010-03-15T10:05:35+02:00

Ever wanted to try a perde pilav from Siirt or some delicious manti from Kayseri but couldn't actually get to those places yourself?

If so, check out this article from Today's Zaman, which lists restaurants in Istanbul that specialize in food unique to Turkey's other regions. I'm embarrassed to say that I've only tried a few of these restaurants, but there's no time like the present to remedy that!

Over the last 20 years İstanbul has grown enormously. A city that had at the time of the Ottoman conquest in 1453 a population of around 60,000 is now bursting at the seams under the strain of perhaps 16 million residents, with its furthest reaches now sprawling almost all the way to Tekirdağ on the European side and Kocaeli (İzmit) on the Anatolian side.

Check out the full story here.

Have you been to any of these places before? Do you have any other suggestions to add to the list?

How To Plan a Trip Within Turkey

2010-03-12T17:26:26+02:00

It's easy enough to find information about traveling to Istanbul or Cappadocia but what about to Urfa, Batman or Mardin?

It can be a bit more complicated to plan a trip outside major cities and tourist areas, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Knowing a few tips and tricks can help you plan a trip in Turkey. We're going to Mardin next weekend for Newroz, so I'm going to use that city as an example as to how I go about planning a trip here in Turkey.

Buy plane tickets directly from an airline's website.

Unlike when buying international tickets, it's always best to buy a domestic flight ticket directly from the airline. There's no use in using Kayak or Momondo here; their rates won't be any cheaper. And you will always get a cheaper ticket from an airline's website than if you go to their offices in Taksim or Sultanahmet.

There are five airlines I check -- Turkish Airlines, Atlas Jet, Pegasus, Sun Express and Onur Air -- but I only fly regularly with the first two and only occasionally with the third. I know for a fact that THY flies to Mardin, so I go there first. Tickets to Mardin are cheap -- 29 TL for each leg of the trip (with a stop-over in Ankara) -- adding up to a total of 326 TL for two people. (I have since learned that Pegasus flies direct from Izmir to Mardin, but I didn't know that until after I purchased my THY tickets).

Call, don't email, hotels.

For hotel recommendations, I turn to my trusty Lonely Planet Turkey guidebook, in this case, the 11th edition, published in April 2009. About 75% of the time, I choose my hotel accommodation according to the Lonely Planet guidebook. If the city is small, like Mardin, it's more likely that I'll make a hotel choice based on my guidebook; if the city is larger, I'm more likely to ask friends for hotel recommendations.

In Mardin's case, it looks like the Erdoba Hotel is my best bet. Mardin's not known for inexpensive hostels (the way that, say, Selcuk is) so if I'm going to pay like a king I figure I might as well sleep like one too. I know from experience that sending an email through a hotel's website often gets me absolutely nowhere in Turkey, so I pick up the phone and call. Here's where speaking a little bit of Turkish comes in handy; most hotel receptionists outside of large cities don't speak English and if they do, they'll quote you prices in dollars or euros. I ask about the price of a double room for March 19-22. The nightly rate is 150 TL, I'm told.

I balk at the price and on a whim decide to ask my friend, a travel agent, if she can get me a better rate. In the meantime, I also call up the Artuklu Hotel and they tell me a room will be 140 TL. I decide to hold out on Erdoba.

A week passes and it turns out my friend can't get me a better rate. By the time I call Erdoba back, the rate has gone up to 180 TL. Sigh. Time to turn to my second choice, the Artuklu Hotel. At this point, they're charging 160 TL a night. I bite my tongue and book a room for three nights. Next time, I tell myself, I'll do it early and I'll do it myself.

The internet is your friend.

My guidebook gives me a basic overview of Mardin (population, exact location, a general description) and offers up a brief history. The book also offers a list of sights -- the famous bazaar, Ulu Cami, the Mardin Museum, Sultan Isa Medresesi, Forty Martyrs Church and the Kasimiye Medresesi, to name a few.

I then turn to the more updated Lonely Planet web page about Mardin. Can you tell that I have a thing for Lonely Planet? The info online is sometimes different than what is presented in the book, so I usually look here for updates. In the case of Mardin, though, Lonely Planet's website doesn't offer anything different than what's in my guidebook; in fact, it had a lot less information (which makes sense because they want you to buy the guidebook, not use their free website for everything).

While I'm on the Lonely Planet website, I jump over to its Thorn Tree travel forum, a place where travelers can post questions and answers about their trips and experiences. I do a search for Mardin and see what pops up. Most of the questions have to do with accommodation, which apparently is on everyone's mind because Mardin doesn't offer much in the way of budget lodging. The forum doesn't help me much.

Every now and again I'll check out Tom Brosnahan's Turkey Travel Planner. At the bottom of the page, I plug "Mardin" into the search box and away we go. I learn on this site that the Saffron Monastery, a holy place in existence since 495 AD and now an orphanage run by monks, is the city's number-one attraction. I definitely add this to my to-do list. Sometimes I also visit All About Turkey to see if there's anything there I haven't seen elsewhere.

Social media is also your friend.

After that I post a message to Twitter and Facebook saying that I'm heading off to Mardin. No, it's not to boast -- well, maybe a little -- but to ask if anybody has recommendations or tips regarding hotels (you never know), restaurants, museums and the like in Mardin. That's how I find out that Cercis Murat Konagi is not to be missed. Another friend sends me the link to this Syrian wine house in Midyat, so we're totally going to check that out.

At this point, I figure, I'm as prepared as I can be. I know how I'm getting there, where I'm sleeping and what I'm going to do. The rest will come easily and naturally while I'm there.

Provided that nobody makes ME jump over a flaming fire, it's going to be a great trip!

What about you? How do you go about planning for a trip in Turkey? Do you have any secret tips and tricks? Do share please!

*Note: Not one of the websites mentioned above -- including Lonely Planet, THY, or the Erdoba or Artuklu hotels -- know who I am or care about this website. I wasn't paid to write about them and they wouldn't care if I keeled over tomorrow. Just an FYI.

Ask the Expat: Running in Turkey?

2010-03-10T06:58:00+02:00

Alyssa has a good question for our Ask the Expat series:

Hello! I saw your blog and wanted to ask about running in Turkey. I am a 26-year-old female training for a 10-mile race. I will be visiting Turkey for 12 days right in the middle of my training and wanted to ask about safety and appropriateness of me running through the streets in Turkey. I have been to other Middle Eastern countries where this is completely inappropriate. I would appreciate any advice you can give. Is this acceptable? And if so, should I be somewhat more covered? Thank you.

Funny you should ask ME, of all people, this question, Alyssa. I am that person who runs for no other reason than to catch a bus or a ferry. I think running is a laborious way of traveling from place to place and do my darnedest to make sure I never have to do it.

That said, I do have some insight into this matter, though not through personal experience. The short answer to your question is: Whether or not you can run depends on where you are in Turkey.

The long answer is: Let me explain what I mean by that. When I lived in Cihangir, for example, which is a small neighborhood adjacent to Taksim in Istanbul popular with expatriates and foreigners, I saw very few runners. They were out there, sure, but the fact is in Istanbul the sidewalks are so narrow and so precarious that it's difficult to walk on them let alone keep up a sustained run. On occasion I did see one guy who would run around the block -- literally -- multiple times as a way of exercise. I couldn't see how that was any better than running on a treadmill at the gym.

In a neighborhood like Cihangir, for example, people wouldn't think twice at a woman running except to think "geez, look at her go!"

In other neighborhoods, it's quite different. I've heard stories from friends of mine (all women) who have tried running in Tophane and Eyup (two more conservative areas of Istanbul) and have been harassed by young men (and some children) who are simply not used to seeing a woman huffing and puffing along in shorts and sneakers.

In my experience, if you can get yourself to a coastal area -- like those that exist in Istanbul along the Bosphorous, in Izmir along the Aegean, in Antalya along the Mediterranean, or in Iznik along the lake -- you'll be just fine. Those places are meant for exercise, and some areas even have that nice cushy stuff that's good for runners.

Walkway along the lake in Iznik

If you're in a city without a coastline (like Ankara or Cappadocia), you'll have to deal with uneven pavement, people staring and streets that don't usually follow any discernible pattern. Streets in Turkey, unlike in American cities where they run parallel and perpendicular to one another, tend to wind and weave their way around each other so following a set pattern can be difficult if you don't know your way around.

My advice? Wear pants, not shorts, as this will help a little bit with the staring. And then get out there and run.

I have long ago stopped bending my will to the ways of Turks all the time. I used to defer to their knowledge, their culture, their way of doing things, but the longer I am here, the more I realize that I, too, have something to teach, something to give back. Sometimes the sight of a confident woman running along a street can be that something.

What do you think, readers? What has been your experience with running -- either by doing it yourself or seeing other people do it, especially women -- in Turkey?

UPDATE: A friend of mine this morning just told me about a Facebook group called Istanbul Expat Runners, and I also just found this article about Istanbul's growing running community.

Got a burning question for Ask the Expat? Send an email to barbara@turkishmuse.com and I'll try my best to answer it! Check to see what other questions have been tackled here.

Amerikan Pazarı

2010-03-08T19:29:47+02:00

A bag of Hershey's Kisses: 10 TL

A can of Duncan Hines frosting: 10 TL

A tube of Crest toothpaste: 25 TL

Paying more than quadruple the price of something back home to satisfy a craving: an occasional indulgence.

At the so-called "Amerikan pazarı" (American pazar) in Alsancak here in Izmir, you can find a whole myriad of stuff that you probably don't need but reminds you of home. There's boxed pancake mixes, canned frosting, the most ginormous bottles of Listerine I've ever seen, and Juicy Fruit gum.

Among the weirder stuff they have: Maxwell House coffee and Lipton tea. Both imported from America.

Because Turkey totally lacks a coffee and tea culture.

You can also get a tattoo, pick up a vinyl record and a bottle of Jim Beam while you're at it.

The Amerikan pazarı is actually housed in the Kervan Pasajı (click for map), but I think most people around here refer to it by the former name. The easiest to find entrance to the pazar is across from Altin Kapı restaurant on 1444 Sokak.