A presentation of homelanddrifter.com, © (2002-2003)
[ Monday, December 22, 2003 ]
Antalya, Turkey. Dear Diary: Haven't seen Yessica for nearly 3 days now. Shortly after she met a group of Turkish sailors, she took off to experience the "real Turkey." I theoretically support this effort, I suppose. And she did promise to meet me back in Istanbul by Dec. 28. I guess what I'm additionally upset about is the fact that both boxes of Turkish delight were in her backpack . . .
New York City, New York. "Land of illegal dances . . . land of one thousand stances . . . "
After finally figuring out (sort of) how to work a Turkish keyboard, it is decided by Homeland Drifter - Homeless Drifter - Ausland Drifter staff to resume this travelogue. The voluminous requests for more Haiku contests didn't hurt, either, I suppose.
Land in NYC Dec. 5, just in time for the gorgeous first snowfall of the year, with our packs stuffed full of summer clothes and other tropical climate travelling accoutrement. Luckily, the primary mission in NYC is to visit friends, so we are well-supplied with various gifts and loans of puffy synthetic fabrics.
Decide in San Francisco to NOT buy the Rough Guide India, because Homeland Drifter staff thinks "of course we can always buy it in Manhatten," as it would be inconceivable that no bookstore anywhere in Manhatten would stock it. Two days and half a dozen bookstores later, it becomes apparent that no bookstore anywhere in Manhattten stocks it. Yessica gets ahold of Rough Guide NYC's marketing office, and we go straight to Andrew Rosenberg, managing editor, who kindly gives us the new edition (only a week in print), gratis, no, sort of gratis, on the condition that we e-mail him any glaring errors we notice while we're on the road with it. Thanks Andrew!
See the Jennifers, including Ms. DeMeritt doing a reading but miss her impersonation of a Chinese fortune teller later in the week, are hosted by Jenn Dowling who bakes us a fine chicken dinner and spend the evening at her new pad in Brooklyn trimming her Xmas tree. Have a few dinners with Jon Levy, go to Paul LaFarge's reading at St. Mark's Church one evening, and I meet a bunch of Yessica's NYC friends, which is also really fun. Most important, of course, is the arrival of our travel-edition Scrabble board the day before we leave for Turkey. Yay, eBay!
Istanbul, Turkey. Leave JFK on Dec.11, heading for Ataturk International Airport via German Express (aka Lufthansa through Frankfurt am Main). There's a techno station on the in flight radio selection, and this, in combination with a couple of Atavan, makes for a very enjoyable flight nach Deutschland. Girl Drifter (aka Ethel, aka Yessica) and I break out our matching inflatable neck pillows. All is well in the world.
Mornings. 2 a.m., wake up, wide awake and hungry, sit in bed and play Scrabble, have sex, read the Time Out Istanbul book, eat candy-coated almonds, and by this time it's 7 a.m. - damn! Still an hour and a half until our free hotel breakfast up on the roof terrace. The amplified call to prayer echoes through our pensyon room each morning way before sunrise, and somehow we manage to be in flagrante delicto almost every time this happens, which leaves both of us feeling slightly decadent and illicit. It's hard to shake the jet lag for some reason - it takes both of us days, but then again it's nice to be up in the very early hours for a change, too.
The Turkish Breakfast. Four slices of tomato, four slices of cucumber, one hard-boiled egg, a dish of black olives coated with tomato paste and olive oil, a few slices of soft white bread with jam or cheese, and a glass of tea. It's sort of appealing and is gradually growing on me. We both miss bacon a lot.
Istanbul. Wandering around Istanbul, gravitating from one historical/cultural site to the next, and keeping ourselves charged with handfuls of Jordan almonds, and roasted chestnuts weighed out and sold in little paper bags by old men standing over tiny charcoal-fired stove street-carts, which one of them declares are "vitamins." We discover that "Turkish Viagra" is a fig sliced open and stuffed with a few walnuts or hazelnuts. There are hazelnuts everywhere. Everywhere.
Selcuk and Ephesus. After a ferry across the Sea of Marmara, and a day in the snow in Bursa, we get on another long-distance bus heading the Aegean coast, Ephesus, and warmer weather. Buses are definitely the way to go for long distance travel through Turkey. There are scores of different private bus companies, but they've all got the big, fancy Mercedes Benz touring coaches, and free cologne and tea to boot, which are liberally distributed every hour or so by the smartly dressed attendant(s). It costs about 9 bucks to go a third of the way across the country. Free marble cake on the Pammukale line. Woo hoo!
We spend an afternoon touring the ruins of Ephesus and reading about the Byzantines, Romans, Goths, Ionians, Selucks, Crusaders, Christians, and Ottomans and all the other marauding hoardes and seekers of empire that occupied these parts and killed each other in waves of more or less constant warfare for over a thousand years.
At Ephesus, we are swarmed by tiny starving feral cats, one of which digs all the way into my messenger bag just to rip apart a small leftover piece of bread in a little plastic bag.
Scrabble scores during Turkey travels, Dec. 12 - 22:
Dec. 12, 6:20 a.m., Frankfurt-am-Main International Airport: Yessica 330, Mikita 312. Questionable words: Quot, obi, worts.
Dec. 14, 2:15 a.m., Side Pension, Istanbul: Yessica 273, Mikita 326.
Dec. 15, 4:43 a.m., Side Pension, Istanbul: Yessica 356, Mikita 265. Questionable word: faze.
Dec. 16, 4:35 a.m., Side Pension, Istanbul: Yessica 333, Mikita 277.
Dec. 17, 11:35 a.m., Ferry en route to Yalova across the Sea of Marmara: Yessica 333, Mikita 308.
Dec. 17, 7:30 p.m., Bursa, sitting at Cafe Gavefe: Yessica 309, Mikita 245.
Dec. 18, 8:28 p.m., Izmir Otogar (bus station): Yessica 360, Mikita 345. Questionable words: joey, tom, drat, ramy or ramie.
Dec. 20, 10:15 p.m., Nur Pension, in Selcuk: Yessica 309, Mikita 383.
Dec. 21, 5:15 p.m., bus from Selcuk en route to Antalya: Yessica 327, Mikita 334. Questionable words: vig, sally, nu, un.
The addition of the above games leaves the series tied at 10 games to 10, overall. Mikita's winning streak, coincidentally at the time he was reading Word Freak, has been dramatically reversed. Oh, well. She is a professional crossword puzzle writer . . .
Interview with Yessica, regarding her travels thus far in Turkey and impressions thereof. Homeland Drifter staff = HD. Yessica = J.
HD: So, how many more consecutive days of eating lamb do you think you can stand before you surrender and go get a Big Mac?
J: En byk ÃzelliÄŸi, kullanmak için bilgisayar bilmenize gerek olmamasdr. Ãok basit bir mantÄkla kurulmuÅŸ ara yÃze sahiptir fakat bu basit ara yÃzÃn altÄnda yetenekli bir program vardÄr.
HD: Did you change your panties today, or just turn them inside out again? And how the hell do you get laundry done in this country?
J: Ä°in bilgisayar bilmenize gerek olmamasÄdÄr. Ãok basit bir mantÄkla kurulmuÅŸ ara yÃze sahiptir.
HD: Who exactly is this Attaturk guy, and why is his portrait displayed everywhere?
J: En bÃyÃk ÃzelliÄŸi, kullanmak iÃin bilgisayar bilmenize gerek olmamasÄdÄr. Ãok basit bir mantÄkla kurulmuÅŸ ara yÃze sahiptir fakat bu basit ara yÃzÃn altÄnda yetenekli bir program vardÄr.
HD: How do you feel about the government's ban on head scarves at Istanbul University and in Parliament, and, more generally, what are your feelings for Turkey's prospects to balance its Islamic roots with its gravitation toward Europe and the EC?
J: MantÄkla kurulmuÅŸ ara yÃze sahiptir fakat bu basit ara yÃz program.
Hey Lady!. "Yes, please . . . yes, lady . . . you just look . . . come and have tea . . . no? What is the reason? You want carpet? Why not? Come here, Lady . . ." Thus far, my travelling companion and I are the recipients of only two coerced purchases, both shoeshines in Istanbul. The first is successfully bargained down from 20,000,000 Turkish lira (about 14 dollars) to a final price of 1,000,000 lira (70 cents). The second is bargained down to around 2 bucks and one American Spirit cigarette, which is returned to us when the bargaining gets a little more intense than we had expected.
Outside of these two encounters, though, we have found shopping and transportation and other transactions to be conducted in a scrupulously ethical and honest manner. In fact, whenever there is any discrepancy (or a lack of proper change), the bill is always rounded down, in our favor, by the Turkish person with whom we are doing business. Apparently, almost everything (except metered taxi fares and government-owned shops) is bargainable in Turkey.
Antalya. We've been on the Mediteranean coast for a day and a half now. Spent part of the afternoon chattiing with Kemal Ozkurt, owner of a dilapidated old used book shop here, who feeds us a fine mushroom and barley soup while he carries on about Islamist fascism and his dream of running a bookshop in Greenwich Village in the 1960s, or how liberal Istanbul was in the 1970s . . . and so on. Very interesting guy.
The owner of the carpet shop down the road from Kemal engages us in a mostly one-sided monologue about Zionism (although, of course, "I'm not anti-semitic, of course"), and noted that one of Bin Laden's sisters dropped 5 grand USD in his shop recently, after she and her husband sailed into Antalya on their yacht.
It's good to finally get to interact with Turks outside of the commercial realm, and I'm trying to find more of these interactions wherever possible. That's it for now. Miss you all, homelander kin, friends, family, and fellow-travellers. Hope everyone is well.
Reading List: Crescent & Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds
[12/22/2003]
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