Best Day in Turkey Yet!

The final call to prayers for today just finished coming in over the loudspeakers. For me this functions like the Stanford clocktower.. it serves as a subtle reminder that the hour is getting late. Thus its time start blogging!

What a day:

Prepping for a Picnic on the Beach
After spending a number of days wandering around lost in Istanbul, I can now say we're pro's at getting around. We woke up this morning and maneuvered the streets like an expert to get to our favorite market. We're big fans of this particular mini-supermarket with its elitist English slogan "European Standards of Excellence." We frequent this market at least once a day partly because it has the cheapest chilled bottled water in town at 0.65 lira per 1.5 litres. Since drinking tap-water is a no-no, we've quickly become regulars. We always deal with the same check-out lady who is roughly our age and I can only imagine what this individual thinks of us. When we first arrived here a few days ago, she was one of the first locals we interacted with us and she rolled her eyes as we both walked in, spoke no Turkish and tried to pay for our water with a 50 lira bill (in Turkey getting change for is a huge imposition for some reason that still unknown). Today, however, we were on top of things. We got some bread, turkey, cheese and veggies, paid with Visa and even had a decent conversation with the deli guy behind the counter, without too many references to the phrase book. Then we headed to the Prince's Island to eat our lunch on the beach. The ferry-ride is where our adventures really began.

Ferry-Boat Diplomacy
I'm always surprised where we meet cool people. In Prague it was at the Subway sandwhich restaurant and in Belgrade it was on a 4-hour mid-day bus-ride without AC in the midst of a scoarching heat-wave. It's only fitting then, that in Turkey I met possibly the three most fascinating individuals on a lack-luster ferryboat ride to Prince's Islands. Ahat was the first individual who sat down across from Ethan and I on the ferry. We weren't sure what boat we had walked onto, so we asked him where we were going and we quickly became best of pals. Ahat is also 22 and he also just finished university. He is a local from Eyup a part of town a ways north west of us. He speaks a solid smattering of English and knows just enough crucial words and phrases like "no problem," "good," "bad," "nice" and "beautiful" that, between his pre-exisiting knowledge, our phrase book and various cartoon-pictures and pantemimes, we were able to carry on in-depth conversation and he was even able to translate for us. Ahat became the rock-star of the day as he showed us the ropes, took us to the local spots and introduced us to new friends! More on Ahat later.

Sitting next to Ahat there was an interseting couple from Libya. The husband was an EE professor at one of the Universities. (See Ethan's post) The Libyans were very friendly and we had a lively discussion about Bush's foreign policy. As the conversation turned political, we found out that the other group of people sitting next to us were from Iraq. Kareem was a former officer for (but not a fan of) Saddam Hussein. He says he is glad to see Saddam go and he personally welcomed US army officials into his home in Baghdad in 2003. He signed up as a translator for the US Army, and the stories he told made me feel terrible. He talked about how he recieved death threats as the security situation deteriorated. Insurgants tried to intimidate him from working for the Americans by harassing his family. They kidnapped his son and he had to pay a $40,000 ransom just to get him back. He had finally had enough so he took his whole family to Egypt where he is still out of work. He is here in Turkey on vacation.

To me the most demoralizing part is that the US refused to take care of him. He says when he fled to Egypt he contacted the US embassay there for help. "They said 'There is nothing we can do,'" said Kareem. That just sounds terrible!


Everyone is a Brother in Turkey!
We had to cut short our conversation with the Iraqi translator because we had reached the island where Ahat knew of "good swimming." Its a good thing he was there because we NEVER would have found this place. We walked on a seemingly arbitrary road behind some military installation for about 20 minutes but eventually we ended up at a cove with a small beach bustling with young-people! As the only foreigners in the area we were quite a novelty! We relaxed on the beach and swam in the Sea of Marmara. The swimming area was roped off and it was nice and shallow and full of people. We learned that water horse-play trasncends all language boundaries and Ethan impressed the locals by doing 12 consecutive under-water flips without taking a breath. This drew quite a crowd and was enough to initiate us into the family of a competing water-flipping group of Istanbulus. We spent the rest of the time in the water laughing and shouting "brother" in Turkish as we pounded our chests and generally had no idea what was going on but had a great time nonetheless!

Turkish Girls
Ethan's antics also earned us the attention of some of the Turkish girls. While Ethan was spinning in circles (literally), I met Elif and Nazan-- two university girls who were also enjoying the water. At first Ahat did most of the communicating, but we soon began the usual mix of pantemime and proper nouns and Elif and Nazan were quickly added to our growing party of friends. Elif was especially talkative and patient and she and Ahat worked together to teach us some Turkish! The five of us relaxed on the beach and then headed back to town to catch the ferry.

Discussing Brad Pitt while Marooned in Asia
Americans are equated with hollywood and pop culture and at times this has its advantages. Names such Ben Afflick, Eminem and Angelina Jolie are constant across all language so one of the few converstaions that we can consistantly carry out wherever we are is the canonical "List your favorite movies, actors and bands!" conversation. It always surprises me whichmovies are popular abroad. Star Wars, Pirates and Ocean's 11 are a big hit. Lord of the Rings--- not so much. We discussed movies and days of the week and the words for "nice to meet" you for a while and eventually found ourself stuck in Asia. The ferry boat wasn't running as scheduled or something (we're still not really sure) so we said goodbye to Elif and Nanaz and Ahat, Ethan and I started a long journey back home. A train and another ferry-ride later we landed in Europe and split ways with Ahat.

We swapped contact info with all of the friends we made today and hopefully we will all keep in touch. I'm encouraging everyone to come visit in Boston, hopefully somebody will! Its time for bed. Tomorrow we have a full morning in Istanbul and then its off to London. Goodnight!