A raised eyebrow

A while back I went to Kaş, part of which is pictured above with a Lydian tomb visible at the end of the street. There is a sunken Lydian city off of its shores, near Kekova island, so this harbor town is a favorite of scuba divers. Kaş is "eyebrow" in Turkish...I believe the name comes from the shape of the coastline.

On the way to Kaş from Antalya (it's about three hours west of Antalya), one goes through Demre, a town noteworthy for being chock full of Russians, kind of depressing by comparison to its neighbor Kaş, and for having the remains of St. Nicolas.
That's right, dear old "Noel Baba", is buried in his eponymous church. The author of my guidebook took particular delight in explaining that you can later "tell children you have visited Santa Claus's grave".

In any case, the waters in this region of Turkey's "Turquoise Coast" (aka The Turkish Riviera) are true to their name. They are pristine, clear, and most of all, blue. I could not wait to swim in them, and lo, swim I did. I opted for a boat tour which did not include diving...unless you count my numerous eager dives off the side of the boat. Boat tours from Kaş to Kekova Island generally take the better part of a day, include lunch, and stop in several coves where you can swim. Sometimes you end up anchored in a cove near other tour boats, a fact which was lamented on many a travel blog. I didn't particularly mind, as I had no illusions of being the only person who wanted to visit to a mystic Mediterranean wonderland where I could frolic with sea turtles amongst sunken ruins. This is Turkey after all, where tourist spots are almost always exploited to their utmost (not necessarily a bad thing--sometimes you want to be able to have tea at the bottom of a canyon, right?). At one point our boat drifted slowly but dangerously towards a nearby anchored boat, which caused a delightful groan of "Allahallahallahallahallahallahallahallahallah" from the other captain as he gingerly kicked our boat away from his. "Allahallah" ("Allah Allah", 'God God'), is what Turks say when we might say "Oh, for crying out loud!" or when Brits would say "Good lord!", and is separated usually as Al-lah-hal-lahhhh. The other captain, however, being a linguistic champion and particularly surprised by events as they unfolded, somehow made this exclamation last about 15 seconds. Brilliant.I had one of the top five meals of my life on this boat trip, which featured balık köftesi (fish meatballs, grilled on the diving platform of the boat), bulgur, and two kinds of incredibly fresh salad. The crowning glory was when another tiny boat approached us soon after the meal--the ice cream BOAT. It's basically a dingy with a freezer onboard. Turknology at its finest.

Kaş is a town I would consider retiring in (since that is a thing I consider from time to time, being a 50-year-old teze [Turkish for "maternal aunt," also a general term of endearment for older women] at heart). My cat and I will run a tourist shop that sells hamam-related goods...wait, dang it, it's already been done!


A hearty thank you to the Fulbrighter who accompanied me on this adventure, not only for being a great travel companion but also for taking all of the pictures I posted.

Two new words

arbiturkey [ˈɑːbɪtɜːki] adjective : 1. Turkish citing of historical 'facts' which are subject to individual will or judgment without restriction, e.g., He made the arbiturkey statement, "In Mevlana's time, people were two meters tall." 2. bureaucratic regulations which seem random at best, e.g., I can't understand the seemingly arbiturkey and ever-fluctuating rules surrounding the proper handling of residence permits.

turknology [tɜːkˈnɒlədʒɪ] noun : jumbled balls of exposed wiring, house walls propped up with old olive oil cans, or other such innovative solutions to everyday problems of modernity

Kahve Falı

I had my coffee-ground fortune (faal, or maybe just fal; it's unclear) read for the first time a few nights ago at a friend's house. It was vague and amazing. The woman who performed this feat cracked me up but I had to be really grave and serious the whole time to avoid offending anyone.

Example:

"There is a man...with....a short neck.... and combed hair....DO YOU KNOW SUCH A MAN?"
"Um...yes, that one guy...."
"He will tell you...NEWS. It will be ok, do not worry about the news."
"Uh...ok."

I don't think there was too much lost in translation...because I don't think too much of note was actually said. She said I had a "bright star" though, which sounds pretty neat, and also that I looked very "natural" (literally- doğal).

Catholicism, Communism, and [hot] Chocolate[...ism?]

My train trip from Prague to the motherland was a near-fiasco, but all's well that ends well. Just note that if you take the train from Prague and have to change trains in Katowice, most likely no one will speak English, and you ought consult the departure schedules yourself (and know the Polish word for departures) instead of waiting for the quaint flap-board to display your train. It's easy to get a ticket from Katowice to Krakow if you make a mistake, however, so I'd recommend the trip if you have a spare day.

The old town of Krakow has a wonderfully medieval feel. I thought I had reached hot chocolate nirvana in Prague, but that was before I went to Wedel and got a cup of their traditional drinking chocolate—heavenly. Big shout-out to Nowa Prowincja for their amazing drinks and beautiful interior. I went there thrice, I couldn't help myself.

Wawel Castle was as beautiful inside as its smok statue was brutals, but I was a bit disappointed that the “dragon's lair” is closed in the winter months. Entry to Wawel Castle Cathedral entitles you to a trip up and down the bell tower, where each of the huge bells has a name and a history. The Cathedral also has some beautiful tapestries inside, as do the castle staterooms. A word to the wise: admission prices and ticket-buying is a bit confusing, but all of it is cool, so you really can't go wrong. I bought tickets first and then tried to figure out what parts of the castle they were for, rather than trying to find tickets for parts I wanted to see. This worked nicely, but you need to be easy-going about it.
These guys were pretty easy-going, just kind of hanging out and crooning to the accordion on the entry ramp to Wawel Castle.

Krakow had more museums than I knew what to do with (which sounds funny after coming from Prague...). I would highly, highly recommend the Cloth Hall museum in the main square: it's only four rooms, but it has hands-down some of the most intricate and masterful paintings (some on 30-ft canvases) that I have ever seen. Also if you don't think you'll miss the 7 zloty (about 3 dollars), the Archeology Museum feels like a well-done 7th grade social studies project, as it makes ample use of dioramas. The big draw is the only Slavic cult god statue ever found.
I also rekindled a little Catholic feeling by going to Mass at St. Mary's Cathedral (pictured in the background above) and visiting the former apartments of Pope John Paul II (before he was a pope, when he was a professor and cardinal, from 1951-1968 or thereabouts).

Of course, everyone knows that a trip to Eastern Europe is just incomplete without some kind of communist history thrown in. Well, my hunt for remnants of communism in Poland took me nearby the Krakow School of Economics to see Skeletor, a Soviet building that was started but never completed and now stands as a skeleton due to the complexity of zoning laws that prohibit its destruction. But I repeat: it shadows the Krakow School of Economics. Best juxtaposition ever?
And speaking of amazing juxtapositions...
Being unsatisfied with this mere taste of the communist legacy, I continued along the tram line to Nowa Huta, or New Steelworks. This is a completely Stalin-planned community on the outskirts of Krakow (now a part of Krakow), apparently built to countermand how beautiful, medieval, and artistic Krakow was through its industrial, worker-championing layout and amenities. It was not nearly as depressing as I expected, but it sure was a lot of nearly identical dilapidated concrete buildings. I would have tried to adhere more to the route on the map, but I was a bit too cold to stay there too long.

On the way back to Prague I took a bus because the timing was more convenient. Please be aware: when you take a bus across the Czech/Polish border, border patrol will board the bus, take your passport, and then GET OFF THE BUS WITH YOUR PASSPORT. This is absolutely terrifying to someone who does not speak Polish and who consequently thought her passport was gone forever as the bus pulled away, but eventually at the dinner stop (20 agonizing minutes later) the border guards pulled up and returned all of the documents. In any case, one of the movies shown on the bus was called Holy Business (I think). It was about two men who supposedly inherit a car owned by Pope John Paul II. It was adorable, it mercifully had English subtitles, and it was a very fitting end to my time in Krakow.

Czech it out!

Prague is an utterly amazing city architecturally and artistically, but one thing struck me above all else: the sheer willingness of the Czech people to speak English. Even in situations that would in no way require a Czech person to go out of their way to speak English to me (such as reaching above me to get a bag, or just passing me in the grocery store), if they overheard English on my lips they would immediately exchange some pleasantry in English with me. I am sure that this is a result of the insane numbers of tourists that flock to Prague regularly. I never thought I would see the plus-side of relentless tourism, but it turns out that the incredibly welcoming Czech people have extended their hospitality to include language (there is also a goodly amount of French, German, and even Russian, to name just a FEW of the languages that clutter up signage in Prague).
"Are you flirting in English? Oh, do go on..."

Of course, I hit the tourist highlights: Charles Bridge, the Astronomical Clock, Prague Castle, Wenceslas Square, the Municipal Building, eating goulash and honey cake, and sampling some delicious beers. It took a lot to distract me from the ubiquitous hot winter drinks, especially hot wine and rich hot chocolate, but Czech beer is famous, after all. I saw a hilarious amount of malformed babies, either Jesus on his mother's knee or cherubs floating in the periphery of the Christian masterworks that litter Prague's museums. I unexpectedly came across some decaying saints in glass coffins in one of the churches I went to, because Christians are rather macabre.
But sometimes you also unexpectedly find peacocks in public gardens, which is cool.

Like many tourists in Prague, I simply could not spend enough time looking at Alfons Mucha collections. There are two museums dedicated to him (that I knew of), and the one that is simply called “The Mucha Museum” is well laid-out and informative, albeit a bit expensive for its small size. I would recommend if, like me, you are a devotee of his art. Another small, expensive, but worthwhile museum is the Museum of Communism, which somewhat passive-aggressively suggests that tourists are intellectual beings that deserve to know more about the Czech people than what can be seen through the bottom of a beer glass (I paraphrase, but the sentiment was the same). Despite this somewhat off-putting introduction, the museum is like reading a short book about how and why communism affected the Czech nation as it did, and it makes the vibrancy of Prague shine all the more, even from behind tacky tourist shops.
I also visited the Museum of the City of Prague (part of the interior photographed above), which is just adorable. Its “claim to fame” is a 3D model of the city made in the mid-nineteenth century, and every half-hour you can see a 3D film where you “fly” through the Prague of yore...a digitization of the model. There is also a beautiful painting of the city in the stairwell dome and far too much minutiae of how districts were divided for tax and municipal purposes throughout history. The temporary exhibit was about Prague denizens traveling to suburban “garden restaurants” for happy summer picnics and the like, which ended in a FUNCTIONING REPLICA of one such restaurants. They recreated a menu and had the foodstuffs on hand, in the museum, served by people in period waitstaff costume. Brilliant.

What is that in the lower-left corner? A dog? A lion? A lion-dog? A cool building near the Astronomical Clock nonetheless.


The only downside to Prague is that so many of the streets are lined with tourist shops, but in winter there are significantly less tourists, so I only really reaped the benefits. A light blanket of snow suits the Gothic spires anyways; I couldn't imagine Prague without a few big snowflakes falling and a cup of hot wine in a cafe.

The "-miş" tense

The Turkish language is a wonderful thing. It has fairly rigid semantic rules such that even a novice like myself can attempt entirely new constructions and find them to be grammatical. This unfortunately was not the case with my new word "nefretçi", which was my attempt at translating "hater" (nefret is 'hate', -çi is akin to the English "-er", as in builder or worker. A good Turkish example would be saatçi, a 'watch repairman/clock maker', since saat means 'watch').

In any case, one of the best and most wonderful things about Turkish is the "dubitative" or "reportative" tense, the "-miş" tense. This is the tense you use in order to report what someone else has told you, to deliver information second hand.

For example:
[I heard] There are two Americans in Uşak.
İki tane Amerikalı Uşak'ta varmış.

Now, this might not seem all that exciting until one realizes that it can be used in the first person to describe actions that you yourself did in the past but that you have no recollection of doing. The "-miş" tense is ideal for forgetful people, but even moreso, and more hilariously, for drunks. A friend of mine half-jokingly called it "the drunk tense", I prefer "the hangover tense".

For example:
I was drunk.
Sarhoştum.

[I was told that] I kissed every man and woman at the party.
Partide herkesi öpmüşüm.

[Supposedly] I danced on a table.
Masada dans etmişim.

Oh Turkish language, is there anything you can't do? I hope "nefretçi" makes it in to the popular parlance, as it will be my token of appreciation to the Turkish language after I return home.

Tiptoeing in the Travertines

This weekend my ev arkadaş and I went to a coworker's family's house in a nearby town, Denizli. It is famous for its textiles and perhaps moreso, for Pamukkale. Pamukkale ("cotton castle/fortress") is a geological formation with natural hot springs and travertines, or terraces of carbonate minerals left by the flowing water. Our English pamphlet (yours for the "low" entry price of 20TL) gave us, helpfully, the chemical formula for the reaction that forms the carbonate travertines. ("The reaction is Ca(HCO3) + O2 --> CaCO+CO2+CO+H20, chemically".) In any case, Pamukkale is also the cite of a sizable ruined Roman city, and the ruins are well-reconstructed and mostly in situ.

There are many tombs like the below surrounding the ruined city, which I believe I read somewhere is due to the supposed healing properties of the mineral hot springs being a last-ditch effort for the near-dead, and thus when they were not cured by the waters they died and were buried outside. So it goes.

These are travertines that you are NOT allowed to walk in. The water is actually pumped in- the hot springs do not produce water continuously, but the travertines look most beautiful with water in them. Solution? Pipes.

However there are other ones that you are allowed to wade in to your heart's content, and most people do. There is also a bath or pool area, but it costs extra.

This is a picture of two of the four pomegranate trees in my host's backyard. Her family gave me many pomegranates during the course of my three day stay and a small sack of them before I went home. I was a happy house guest.

My coworker's family was, predictably, impressed with my roommate's and my Turkish skills (for knowing no Turkish, she has improved greatly, but also it only takes a "Merhaba" to get complimented on your Turkish skills in most situations). They also predictably commented on how I look foreign but she looks Turkish (I have had one family tell me, "I can tell you are foreign from your face. Like Hilary Clinton," which I hope was likening me in foreignness to Hilary Clinton and not in facial resemblance). I bought a jezve, or Turkish coffee pot, and practiced making Türk kahvesi in their mutfak (kitchen). My coworker's mother was quite happy with me after this (even though my coffee was not the best), and would ask me to pour tea and assess my ability (or lack thereof) to carry a tray of beverages without spilling. Clearly she was grooming me to be an excellent Turkish housewife.

The Four T's (Things in Turkey Take Time)

Many things have happened in the past few days since I was on a cross-country bus using free Wifis. Many things...and nothing. I'm still not teaching for confusing reasons, and our housing situation is unclear at best. These hiccups aside, here's what's been happening this week.

My fellow American and I arrived in Uşak at 4PM on Saturday (Cumartesi). Three people from the university were there to greet us, two spoke excellent English, and all were exceedingly kind and helpful. We moved our heaps of belongings into the university guest house and then went to the main street of Uşak, known sarcastically by the students as "Compulsory Street", because if you want to do anything remotely cool you will probably end up on that street. After eating delicious pide and going to a cafe with our new coworker R, we then went to the local Migross-anchored mall (it is tiny and adorable) and met our head of department for ice cream. At this point, being too fat and/or sassy to move much, we went back to the guest house...for sleep.

The next morning (or early afternoon) we took the dolmuş into town and met R at her apartment. We then proceeded to the grocery store for fixin's to made fırında patates --chicken and potatoes oven roasted with tomatoes and onions. We also made tarhana soup (apparently really popular and famous in Uşak) and hazelnut chocolate instant pudding. After this small feast, we went bowling at the aforementioned mall. There are six lanes. This is a six-lane-bowling-alley-in-the-tiny-mall kind of town.

On Monday (Pazartesi) we went to the police station with our other coworker F, and the driver for the Rektör (head of university). The driver knows everyone in town and how to navigate anything in a Fiat SUV. I wish I could keep him around all the time. In any case, two cups of tea into our residence permit application, the police officer abruptly stops and says (in Turkish of course), "There is another American from Chicago here!" He then proceeds to call her from the number in the registry, instead gets her Turkish husband, and moments later said Turkish husband is sitting in the office with us enjoying a cup of tea. He puts his wife on and she informs us she is actually from Nevada, she met her husband on the internet, and she has been living in Turkey for some time,would we like to go on a picnic sometime. Her husband then takes his phone back contentedly and shares a cigarette break with the police officer. This is how Turkey's bureaucracy stays alive.

On Tuesday (Salı), we went to the police office again to get our completed permits. They are like tiny passports just for foreigners in Turkey. We tried to open a bank account but we need tax ID numbers from Ankara, which will take time. We returned to campus with the hope of meeting the Rektör himself and maybe getting our teaching schedules, neither of which happened. However, our head of department decided to make up for it by taking us on a magical mystery tour with our coworker, R. (I don't know if I can call her a "coworker" if we have yet to do any work and do not know if we will ever work due to bureaucratic concerns, but still.) We got in our department head's car and he started off towards Izmir, begging the obvious question, "Uh...are we going to Izmir?" (Izmir'e gidiyoruz, hocam?) He said,"Oh, maybe not tonight," thereby keeping the mystery alive through awkward use of English. Eventually we ended up at a very surprising place-a Turkish truck stop.

At the truck stop/rest stop, we were treated to some of the most delicious homemade pide, grilled chicken, and grilled (whole) fish I have had in a long time on shabby tablecloths and with bent tableware. Our head of department said "No need to be polite here. I come here to rest, they know me, they care for me." Then we had three cups of tea and talked about movies and the difference between "diseased" and "deceased", and also about how American accents are the worst (good thing they're paying us to teach people to talk real 'merican!) Then we drove back to Uşak towne and went to a cafe to play backgammon (super popular in cafes here). Then, more sleep.

On Wednesday (çarşamba), we finally met the Rektör and had a trilingual conversation with him. We mostly spoke French, but sometimes English and Turkish would slip in on all our parts. Basically it was the best conversation I've ever had (maybe not content-wise, but, you know, details). Our housing problem was somewhat solved as a result of this meeting, but I am still wary of unpacking lest our situation change again. We shall see.

More details on all of this forthcoming. My internet situation is shaky at times so I haven't been blogging much. I will post pics of Uşak U as well. Until then!

No! Really! Thanks!

So far, Turkey is great. It is beautiful and has actual hills and other changes in land elevation, unlike certain states I could name. On the extremely short (40 minute) flight from Istanbul to Ankara, they served us a full meal (!), including the delicious yogurt I can't wait to eat all the time. Also on that short flight I had my first Turkish tea in Turkey (well, technically, several thousand feet above Turkey). The sizable group on that Istanbul-Ankara flight arrived at the hotel utterly exhausted, and we headed to dinner in search of water more than anything else, when lo and behold the extremely attentive staff started trying to serve us a five course meal. After some hesitant bites of the first two courses, muttering "tamam" ("okay"), and general awkwardness, they discerned our meaning and skipped the main course...but they brought dessert out anyways.

But enough about food (ha ha JK! but I have the whole nine months for that). Let's go back in time for a minute to when I was still at the Ankara airport. I had long since decided my bags were too annoying to drag aboard a shuttle bus, so I took a cab with another Fulbrighter. Since we all have pretty ludicrous amounts of baggage, at first the other girl and I thought we wouldn't be able to fit in one cab. Suddenly a small taxi-directing man, cigarette in mouth, appeared at our side, spoke to our driver, and from somewhere a bungee cord was produced, and before we knew it all of our luggage was haphazardly secured bulging every which way out of the trunk and generally ignoring the laws of physics. Turkish driving entails a lot of ad libbing where the laws are concerned, for as our cab driver deftly demonstrated, the painted lane lines are there as guidelines only, and car horns are useful for either alerting other drivers' to your presence in the in-between-lane-zones or to tell a pedestrian they'd better decide RIGHT NOW if they want to run for it or hop back on the median, because this car is not slowing.

Now fast forward to tomorrow, when what basically amounts to an all expense paid vacation in a hotel in Ankara begins, featuring free WiFi in the lobby (YES!), and of course lots of meetings and lectures disseminating information about Turkey and how to live here without causing too much trouble, other than occasionally confusing attentive waiters and the unavoidable suchlike.