The Home Stretch

We're counting down to our last few days in Istanbul, before a short Blue Cruise, before heading home (yay!) The movers came the other day, whirling through here like a tornado, shoving our clothes and everything that wasn't tied down into boxes that all seemed to be for

"knicknacks."

If the movers' exuberance and lack of English speaking skills weren't enough, I stepped out onto the balcony to check out our moving truck, where I immediately noticed that it was similar (identical) to the trucks that bring fruit and veg to our Monday market. The picture below left is one of our belongings, the one below right is of our street as I am writing (as it is Monday) - notice the similarities for yourselves.

We are both excited to come home and then move on to our next adventure, but a little bit sad to leave such a unique and interesting home. The other morning, quite unusually, I woke up with the 4:20 am call to prayer. The call to prayer is the sound that initially terrified me about moving to such a 'foreign place' when heard incongruously in my Greenwich apartment through the a telephone call with Chris, and the sound that now is so normal that it can fade into the background of our lives here, but can also be a main focus, depending on the day/time (ie if you wake up at 4:20 in the morning from the sound.) It is something that if we ever hear outside of Istanbul will immediately transport us back here.

One thing we are going to miss is the great feeling we get when actually making ourselves understood in Turkish. Living in an expat-free neighborhood (with the exception of the 10 -15 of Chris' coworkers who also live in our building or surrounding blocks) you really get a chance to practice your Turkish, and today I actually made 2(!!) appointments over the telephone, completely in Turkish. I was so proud of myself, I had to call Chris immediately and tell him (update to follow on whether the appointments I THINK I made, were actually made...) Of course this progress is all just in time for us to leave.

I thought, as I'm a little hopped up on caffeine and I have all day to finish packing, I would make a quick list of top things I am going to miss and not miss about this place (I haven't yet decided how long each list will be...)

Top Things I Will Miss:

Lahmacun - As I have only discovered this fine culinary treat recently, I feel I have to eat it as often as possible..Once a week? Definitely not enough! We will be eating this tonight...

Inexpensive and quality beauty treatments and other services: Hemmed pants (original hem), 3$! A suit jacket and trousers for Chris, completely taken apart and taken in, 45$! Eyebrow threading, 6$! It's amazing...

The thrill of making myself understood in Turkish (on the rare occasions it happens)

Travelling in Turkey: Cappodocia, wow.

Ciya

The unique and extreme friendliness, helpfulness and hospitality of the Turkish people (with the possible exception of taxi drivers)

Crossing the Bospohorus on the ferry

Top Things I Won't Miss:

The amount of paperwork and silly things necessary in order to get things done (Chris is currently on full day 3, in attempt to get ownership of his car removed from his passport)

The bizarre rules that accompany much of your daily life ("Yes, you can put more money into your savings account. But you must wait until the day of the following month that is the same as the original day you opened the account or you will miss a full month's interest." Um, what?)

The dirt. Never before have I been a "take my shoes off as I walk in the door" kind of person. But I can't bear to wear shoes that have been on the stray-dog strewn streets in here.

The smoke. Everyone smokes. Everywhere.

Being stared at incessantly, every time I leave the house, unless I am in a full turtleneck/long pants combination.

Being screwed over by nearly every taxi driver in the city.

Crossing the Bosphorus (or going anywhere on) the bus: Hot, windows closed, armpits everywhere. It's not nice.

In that vein, this is my all-time favorite Time Out Istanbul article. It perfectly sums up public transportation here. Before you read it: A dolmus (pronounced domush) is a van that seats about 8 or 9 people and follows a loop all day/night. They are very convenient, as you never have to wait long for a bus, and they are cheap, less than $1 for a ride, but as you'll see, the dolmus, and really you can substitute any regular bus, are not always the plush, relaxing ride you might hope.

After re-reading my list of the things I won't miss, I realize I probably sound negative about Istanbul. I don't feel that way, it's an amazing place, but you definitely have to take the good with the bad!

Tonight, however, I'm going for some inexpensive beauty treatments, going out for Ciya and Lahmacun and then taking the seabus (fast ferry) out to the airport to meet Chris' friend Jessica, our final visitor, so it should be the perfect Istanbul night. Let's just hope our taxi ride home doesn't screw it up!

Unrelated:

I didn't get a lot of responses for what to re-name this blog when we move (next week.) If I don't get any more ideas, I will have to go with my father's suggestion: http://www.jennaandchrislivinginsin(gapore).com/ and we all know I don't want to do that :)

Larry, Moe and Curly Work the Border Once Again

I have been meaning to update for awhile (again) as things have been busy here with finishing up work and entertaining visitors (life's tough, i know)...But the one thing I have meant to write about for awhile, because it's amusing, at least to Chris and I, is the latest "border fiasco" that took place when we went to Kalymnos a couple of months ago...

Getting to Kalymnos requires about 2 days and several transport changes...First, we flew down to Bodrum, in the South of Turkey, and then had to take a ferry to the Greek Island of Kos and from there, another one to the less touristed island of Kalymnos. We flew to Bodrum one night, stayed in a hotel and headed to the ferry first thing in the morning. Because we were taking the boat to another country, we (along with the other passengers) had to navigate x-ray machines, metal detectors, passport control and customs agents before getting on the boat. This being Turkey, it was more haphazard than was really necessary. First, as we were going through the metal detectors, there were children on one side of the detectors, handing large wooden boats bearing the names of local beloved football teams to their parents, around the metal detectors. The guards at this post were merely raising their fists in the air and shouting in agreement "Galatasaray, woohoo!" Let me clarify the size of these boats - they were at least two feet long, definitely large enough to hold large weapons and/or many, many drugs. After passing through this checkpoint, we then were able to decipher (despite the lack of any signs telling us about this) that we had to head to another, slightly out of the way building to visit passport control. After getting our passports stamped for exit from turkey, we got in line to get on the boat. Well, first our visiting friends showed their passports and moved onto the small ferry. Then I showed my passport, with no problems. Chris was behind me in line, and as the humorless and stereotypical customs agent flipped through his passport, he stopped at one page, looked up at Chris and said "Where is your car?" In Turkey, foreigners who own cars have that information stamped on their passport, I think so that they won't abandon the car in the country and disappear forever (which seems to me to be less of a problem for the government, who could just reposess the car than for the owner who would be out their money and a vehicle, but that's just my opinion.) As Chris was the owner of lovely Renault Spring (and still is, if any foreigner you know in Turkey is interested...) this fact was stamped in his passport. He incredulously looked at the customs agent and said "It's in Istanbul" to which Customs replied "You cannot leave the country without your car" which was of course in sharp contrast to our Bulgaria trip, when we couldn't leave the country WITH the car." There was an exchange in which we explained that we lived in Istanbul and flew down to Bodrum, and besides how would we get the car on the small boat. I was getting frustrated by the lack of sense of what this man was saying, and started to get a bit, well...mouthy. As Chris, who has much more experience with this sort of thing than I do, later informed me, you want to be polite and deferential to these official and things will generally work out much easier. Of course that didn't occur to me at the moment though, when, after asking if we understood what he was saying, I replied "I understand the words that are coming out of your mouth, but it doesn't mean it is making any sense" and "Does that mean that any who ever wants to leave this country via an airplane has to find a way to take their car with them." At one point, after we had been pulled out of line, waiting on the back ramp of the boat, unsure of whether the climbing trip that Chris had been planning and looking forward to for months would actually occur, Customs said to him, absolutely deadpan "These are our RULES" - it was all very intimidating and infuriating, and also of course mildly amusing. About twenty minutes later, once every other person had made it onto the boat, Customs called over his buddy, who looked like any tourist, and certainly not a customs boss with his big belly, comb-over and gray Member's Only jacket, who took a look at the passport, grunted and said "It's okay. They can go," we got on the boat, to the stares of all the British package tourists and sailed off to Greece.

The best part is that we thought we were being very funny once on the boat, saying "Yes, like we're supposed to bring a CAR on this tiny ferry (who's bottom floor had enough room for the passengers' luggage and a couple of plastic chair,) haha..." When we walked back downstairs to get off the ferry, we saw that there WAS in fact a car that had been driven on before we departed. It was a VW Golf-type thing, and was barely on the back the boat, being held up by the boat's raised ramp, and had a few suitcases resting on the hood...

And one more quick customs note: Greek Ouzo and Turkish Raki are very similar, anise flavored drinks. Also, there is no love lost between the Turks and the Greeks. Both of these facts came into play when we arrived at the port in Greece, and while waiting in line for passport control, saw signs hanging all over that said "Yeni Raki (a popular brand of Raki) is not allowed to be imported into Greece for health reasons"

Besides the initial passport problem, the rest of the trip was amazing and our photos, which I can't remeber if I have previously posted, are here...

Next up, a report on our evening living like the rich and famous...