Zekeriyaköy bazaar! ...and then a nice boat ride

At work today, the children went on a field trip to the Zekeriyaköy bazaar. I was invited along. I really like these small markets and they are especially enjoyable visually since there are so many different colored fruits and vegetables.

Of course with all that fresh food around, I had to buy something. I
quickly decided that I wouldn't mind a kilo of those grapefruits. It was also fun to watch the teachers and children shopping together. The children selected fruits they wanted and the teachers would help facilitate the purchase. Like a child myself, I walked around most of the time with one of the teachers, constantly asking her "what's that called? what's that called?". "Enginar," she told me in one case. Then she would ask me what it's called in English. "Artichoke," I replied.

I missed the boat home by 2 minutes. At first I was bummed but then I didn't mind because the sun was on its way down and the view would be better 30 minutes later. I figured since I had waited for the next boat, I should get as much out of it as possible. I took lots of pictures including these ones.

A very typical boat. I felt like such a tourist taking this photo.

The view of Kadıköy, my hometown in Turkey, from the water

It's still just me!

What I left out of the last post

- Stew and I went to the European side to see the Rangers-Celtic match in a pub that shows all the games.

- While there we met a Scottish/Turkish couple. We stopped watching the game to chat with them. They were very friendly and we might meet them again this week.

- All of a sudden this girl from work whom I kinda like called me. I had tried a few weeks ago to get her to come over to Kadıköy to hang out, but no such luck. Suddenly she calls saying that she's in Kadıköy and where am I. !!! I mean seriously, the one time I leave the neighborhood... but alas, I think in the end it was better that I wasn't there.


- When we got off the boat, we heard these Americans speaking and Stew tried out his American accent on me which always cracks me up. We found out later that evening that one of the girls had heard him and decided to see where we were from. That's how we met the ladies and extended the evening.

- At the end of the night when we left, one of the girls went to shake my hand, but I handed her my phone as if that's why she held out her hand. The number was entered.

- Two weeks ago I made a list of 3 things I wanted to achieve in the short term in order to be happy and make others happy. The were: Make a new friend, buy things for the folks back home, and apply to a bunch of new jobs. Well, I'm making progress on all three of those and it has really boosted my mood.

The recent past and recent present

The following are some photos I took over the last couple months of various special moments.

Upper left, we have Ayhan, my friend, as I'm teaching him the game of cribbage. I have NEVER met a Turkish person who knows how to play the game. In fact roughly 90% of the folks I talk to here have never heard of it. This amazes me because its luck-to-skill ratio, segmented progression and routine style of play, is perfectly in line with popular games here such as backgammon and okey. I think the game would catch on here if people only knew it. Anyway, continuing counter-clockwise with the photos, we have the Wednesday bazaar in Sarıyer. I bought half a kilo of mushrooms, a kilo of tomatoes and a kilo of clementines.

Next we have a very specıal moment. I drank the last of the really good beers from Denmark with Stewart at a favorite pub of ours. Then we enjoyed some baklava that he brought from ANTEP!! We were so spoiled that evening. Lastly, there's the nostalgic tramway in İstiklâl, Taksim. It was decked out for the holidays and I thought it looked a bit dumb, so I took a picture.

Those four pictures were taken with my phone, but this next picture was from my camera one morning on my way to work. Some days I work on the European side and I have to take a boat. The view while waiting at the docks at sunrise is... not bad.

Those shots were all fairly random and spanned a couple months. These next few are from earlier today.

There's a new tramvay car and Stew and I were just lucky enough to finally catch it. Isn't it pretty? The interior was a much smarter, more spacious design than the old tramvay cars.

We visited the original end of the famous Orient Express, instead of just passing by. There's an old restaurant there. By old I mean 120 years old. This is at the Istanbul Gar in Sirkeci.

After a few pints, it seemed comical and appropriate to take pictures of ourselves wearing Stew's hat.

 

 

The evening wore on, and as we got off the boat back in Kadıköy, we met some friendly ladies who had recently moved to İstanbul. So we went out for beer with them. The Galatasaray match was on, and to my surprise they were winning. However, this one guy sitting near us was cheering whenever GS got scored on and I knew what was going on. Our eyes met and I began kindly flipping out on him about why he was cheering for GS's demise when even to a Fenerbahçe fan, it shouldn't make a difference given the circumstances of this season. We had a lively conversation and it felt really good to speak a bunch of Turkish fast and with passion. Anyway, those guys were awesome and I'll probably visit that bar during the match next weekend to see if I run into them again.

Altogether it was an excellent weekend. I called home to my father who turned 60. I talked a lot with my brother as well. I went out, I stayed home, I was industrious, I was lazy, calm.

Copenhagen

Stig and Anna invited me to Copenhagen for Christmas and I just couldn't say no. The result of that decision was one of the best weekends I have had. Thinking about it later, I realize that it was more the combination of how I felt there and the awesome company I was among than the actual events that took place.

Copenhagen in the winter is a very spooky version of everything I remember about the place in the spring and summer from previous visits. At 55 degrees north, 4 days after the winter solstice, the Sun didn't seem too interested in sticking around long, let alone seeing what was over the treetops. The weather was far colder than what I was experiencing in İstanbul, but I was happy to trade that for the crisp freshness of the Denmark air. Stig and I enjoyed that fresh air in style on Christmas day with an afternoon of sledding.

We aimed for the jumps and hit them pretty hard. It didn't take long before the sled broke into pieces. I put the pieces of the sled back together to demonstrate its damage in this video of Stig taking on the hill and trying to avoid collisions with small children.

On the way back from the sledding, I took a picture out the bus window of the Carlsberg Brewery. This was really a tribute to Pete-Pete, my friend and former roommate who so relentlessly insisted that we pay the brewery a visit, but we never did. I'm still holding off on a visit to the place until we can be reunited in Copenhagen and go there together. Anyway, if all this means nothing to you (i.e. you're not Pete or you're unfamiliar with this story), the picture at least shows what the streets look like in Copenagen in a particularly snowy December.

Christmas evening rocked. Before I continue, I really should point out that it (the weekend, the atmosphere) didn't feel like Christmas in the ways I am used to. There wasn't an excessive amount of decorations in the streets, on buildings or in advertisements. It was evident that the people were having a holiday which was Christmas but it just wasn't in my face 24/7. I like that. Moving on, Christmas evening was excellent. Our friend Thomas came over for the evening. Henrik couldn't make it, so I'll just have to catch him next time. Anyway, Stig and Anna made a wonderful rendition of traditional Danish meal. I say rendition because they substituted the main ingredient, cabbage, with spinach. It was awesome. We also ate caramelized potato balls and ham (the first pork of any kind I'd eaten in about a year). I shouldn't have to mention that we also drank really delicious beer.

After dinner, we finished our game of Settlers. Most of us learned the rules as we went along, which caused strategies to change frequently and therefore made the game last very long. We all had a lot of fun with that. I find myself wanting to play again.

I'll tell you now that I was not feeling particularly well health-wise at the beginning of the trip. On the plane ride in, I felt absolutely terrible. Friday night, I took a little medicine and slept in a well heated room under warm blankets. I mention this now, because by Saturday evening I was feeling better than I had felt in several weeks. The sledding was rigorous, but the movement kept me warm. The food I ate was always hearty and delicious. Also, I really felt like I could relax there. In İstanbul, it's never really quiet and life is often hectic. It can be stressful for me. However, Copenhagen is the opposite of that and I think the change of scenery was valuable to my health in many ways. Unlike with my recent trip to Amsterdam, I had a fair amount of familiarity with Copenhagen before I arrived, and really felt like I could relax there.

Sunday.

We were invited to Stig's parent's place (I think it was in Gentofte) for dinner. There were about a dozen others there. Of them, I had only previously met Stig's brother and their parents. I was promptly introduced to the others and handed a beer. The house was warm and the scent of various unseen foods in the kitchen filled the air. For a while, I just listened to the conversations, challenging myself to understand what they were about. I actually did pick up a few words here and there. I also conversed about several things with the folks sitting near me, including Danish football, Turkish football and life in Turkey. You might laugh about the football part, but it is something of which people can easily have common knowledge and therefore has its use when meeting new people (especially guys).

The evening included a gift exchange game, which was really fun. Then we sat around the living room, drinking coffee and eating pastries. It was about as hyggelig as it gets (as far as I know). The evening ended with warm thanks and goodbyes. We made the trip back to Anna and Stig's place, through the quiet snowy streets of Copenhagen.

I marveled at how quickly the weekend flew by, but each moment was special for me. I really thought that the cold and the darkness would bother me, but it was actually enjoyable to see the city in a quieter state. Anyway, this trip was such a good idea. I'm really happy that Stig and Anna invited me. The weekend was additionally meaningful to me in that there wasn't any alternative. By that I mean, I had already let Thanksgiving pass without so much as a slice of turkey or the sight of a member of my family, and it looked as though Christmas would pass in a similar manner. For lack of family here in İstanbul, it was especially meaningful to me to have enjoyed the warm company of friends and their family and traditions for at least one holiday in 2010. It came at a time when I really needed something different, if only for one weekend.