Turkish Muse

Telling a Different Story

In the past year, I've travelled to Istanbul countless times, cooked and baked some amazing food, drank Guiness in Ireland with my in-laws, spent a raucuous weekend in Bodrum with friends, visited London for the first time with my best friend, celebrated my 30th birthday in Paris, and on and on.

I wanted to tell you about it, all of it, and yet I didn't. I wasn't on hiatus from writing exactly, but on a long -- okay, very long -- hiatus from this blog, from this space, which I had been feeling for a long time no longer reflected the life I was leading.

The second reason I didn't write on the blog very much was because the last year has not been the easiest of my life, and I wasn't sure how much of myself I wanted to put out here. I wanted to hole up inside, bake brownies and pretend that nothing was wrong. But I couldn't bring myself to pretend that nothing was wrong here, to all of you, because I knew it wasn't true and somehow that didn't seem fair.

The problem was that I didn't know how to say what I wanted to say. A lot of what I wanted to say didn't seem to fit here, didn't fit in with previous stories and posts, and I was stymied by what I thought you all came here for and what you wanted to read. And so I didn't say anything.

To be honest, for a long time, that was liberating. To not consider every meal, every event, a story or a post or something I had to share. And since I figured you all came here for restaurant reviews and pithy stories about street cats, I figured I couldn't write about the pubs in Galway or birthday cocktails at Harry's New York Bar because....that's not what this space is supposed to be about.

But this morning I woke up and realized that in not writing anything, anything at all, that I am wasting this space as a forum for writing and thinking and musing and that I was throwing away five years of online living just because I didn't know what I wanted to say right here and right now.

And honestly, I still don't exactly know what I'm going to say here. This space I'm in now is fluid and flexible and a little bit confusing, but part of me is hoping that I'll figure a few things out here, on this blog, where I'll just write what I feel and what I want and the rest be damned.

 

Luck Be A Lady

I was online today checking my email when a message popped up from an old friend of mine from my Wichita days, which, by this point, are about five years behind me. This is a friend who has stuck it out in newspapers in the years since I hightailed it out of that industry, gotten a master's degree and is now writing a novel and looking for work as a teacher. So you could say she's been busy since I last saw her.

She mentioned that she liked reading my blog and I immediately confessed that I have gotten "very very lazy" with Turkish Muse and, shamefully, writing in general. 

Her response was immediate and simple: "Get unlazy".

And I thought, "Right. It's as simple as that."

Get unlazy. I've already started getting unlazy in other aspects of my life, so why not here? If I can get up every morning at 7 and half an hour later be doing jumping jacks and push-ups there's no reason I can't write 500 887 words. Right?

And so I promised my friend that I would write something today, something she could read while she was at work and in need of a break. And suddenly it seemed like there was everything to write about and yet nothing at all. There are so many stories I haven't told you, and it's hard to discern where exactly to begin. 

So perhaps it'd be best to start with where we are now and what we're doing and move on from there. Shall we?

For starters, Jeff and I are still in Izmir and we will be here for the foreseeable future. Life got in the way of my big plans, and I am, at long, long last, finally okay with that. The long and the short of it is: at some point you just have to realise what you've got, accept it and move on. 

When we first moved to Turkey, we said we'd stay anywhere from five to 10 years, and we're quickly approaching the five-year mark. I do think we'll stay here for a few more years, but the specific length of time will be determined by various things, including how high the AKP raises the tax on English gin and if Romney is elected President of the US.

In any event, we're here in Turkey, still making a life for ourselves, still trying to enjoy this country and the world at large as best we can. And as we've decided not to move to Istanbul this year, we'll be spending the money we would have spent hiring someone to drive us 7 hours with 5 screaming cats by celebrating my 30th birthday in October in Paris. So I think it's somewhat of a fair trade, yes? Kind of.

But I did promise my friend a story and this isn't much of one, is it? So let me continue the story of "The Cat Who Came Back", which I first told you about way back last July. If you haven't read the story or need a refresher, please go back and read part the first.

Go on. I'll wait.

Okay. So. Lucky remained in our guest room for about three weeks while we nursed her back to health. Although the vet said she was healthy enough to be reintroduced to the outside world as soon as I brought her home, I didn't believe him a) because he's an asshole and b) she still looked sick enough that I didn't even want her around my own cats, let alone around other sick street cats.

For three weeks, I snuck into the guest room, wrangled her out from behind the bed where she hid from her thrice-daily antibiotics and the antiseptic I had to squirt in her mouth to clean her jaw wound. It wasn't an easy task as she was still incredibly feral and there were many times I threw up my hands in frustration.

Eventually, though, she did recuperate, and I put her back outside. I couldn't keep her, I reasoned, and nobody had come forward to take her, so out she went. 

That didn't last long, however, as not a week later, her infection came back and she was raging sick again. This time I took her to my own vet, a wonderful man who understands the value of life and not just his bottom line. More injections. More daily antibiotics. More serum.

It went on like this for months. We would solve one health issue only to have another reappear in a different location. Once we cleared her lung infection, her jaw -- which the first vet had so clumsily stitched -- needed surgery. Then her body started producing open sores, the likes of which I'd never seen before, which eventually left two bald patches on her back.

But somewhere along the way she stopped running, stopping hiding behind the guest bed and stopped trying to claw my eyes out when I entered a room. Slowly, she warmed up to us. She started sleeping in our bed, hanging out with us while we watched tv and made fast friends with Frankie and Phoenix.

And one day, without even realizing about it, she was ours.

And so we renamed her Lady -- Lucky was never a forever name anyway -- and she is now the fifth feline member of our family.

 

In Which I Present Myself as a Child-Hating Ogre

This has been one helluva summer, and not in the beaches-every-weekend-margaritas-on-the-water kind of way, but more the oh-dear-is-it-7-pm-already-and-I'm-still-not-done? kind of way.

I sort of let summer slip through my fingers this year, completely unintentionally, with work projects and freelance gigs and a promotion (yay!), and so at the beginning of September Jeff and I decided to have one last (or first?) hurrah and head over to Denizli for a long weekend before the summer was officially over.

Which is sort of ironic in a way, as Denliz -- despite being literally called "with sea" -- is 4 hours inland and nowhere near a sea, or any large body of water actually.  And, to be honest, we didn't actually go there, save for a few unremarkable minutes at the otogar where we waited for our dolmus to take us to Pamukkale, where we could hike up limestone travertines and bathe in an ancient thermal pool.

And we did do all that, and it was indeed wonderful, one of the best mini-holidays I've ever had, I think. But before we could do all of that, we first had to get there, which is why I was sitting last Thursday at the Pamukkale bus company office in my neighborhood waiting for the servis to take me to the otogar.

(The town where we went near Denizli is called Pamukkale, and the bus company we always take is also called Pamukkale. Funnily, the bus company Pamukkale does not actually go to the town of Pamukkale, only Denizli, from where you must catch a local bus to the village.)

It was late afternoon and I was tired and stressed and hot. My laptop was packed so I could continue working on the bus, but for now all I wanted to do was sit in the air conditioning and stare out the window.

But as my luck would have it, a mother and her young child came into the office, setting down their bags and taking a seat across from me. The mother proceeded to play a game I like to call "What is Abla Doing?", a game I am familiar with but am generally not amused by.

The game goes like this: mother tries to entertain child by using me as bait and asking the child questions such as: "What is abla (big sister) doing?", "What color shoes is abla wearing?", "Is abla wearing sunglasses?", "Why is abla reading a book?".

Except this woman was taking it to another level, you guys. I mean, she was going on for about 5 minutes asking the kid questions about me as I just sat there trying to act pleasant. And the whole time the kid just stared at me with her finger up her nose, not answering, not smiling, not nothing.

Finally, the woman got the hint that the kid didn't particularly care for this game and she got up to head out of the office. Before leaving she turned to me and asked if I could watch her stuff while she ran out to buy something. Sure, I said. It's easy to "watch" somebody's stuff; it basically involves me sitting here and staring out the window some more, so I was all for it.

Not a minute later she came back, child in tow, and told me it was difficult to shop with her daughter, and could I watch for a few minutes while she went back out?

I was shocked. I know Turks love children, and they assume everyone else does too, but I have never been asked by a complete stranger to watch their kid.

And so, in what is not my finest moment in life, I said the first and only thing that came to my mind.

"Ama istemiyorum." ("But I don't want to.")

To my credit, I did sort of sheepishly shrug my shoulders at the same time, as if to say, "it's not my fault I don't want to, right?".

As you can imagine, the mother did not take too kindly to my lack of interest in her precious offspring and she roughly swooped her up and stormed out of the bus office. 

The only other person in the office this whole time was the Pamukkale sales representative, who I swear snickered at this point, but I can't be sure. 

When the servis to take us to the otogar arrived, the woman and child sat directly in front of me, from where the mother glared at me a few times and made excessively loud cooing noises over her daughter (who I swear still had her finger up her nose).

As I mentioned, it was not my finest hour. I mean, what am I, some kind of ogre who hates children? No, of course not, though, to be honest, they aren't really my cup of tea. I get that a lot of people -- especially Turkish people -- adore and worship children but I simply don't. I like the children of my friends -- who are interesting people and thus have interesting and clever offspring -- but the children of random people? Goodness, no, I am not interested.

Living in Turkey without children is not difficult, but it can be strange sometimes, particularly because my choice to not have children sets me apart from so many people who just don't understand my decision. But I learned a long time ago that I don't have to explain my decision to anyone, and if they ask me about it, I only have to tell them what I want to tell them and no more.

And in fact, I love that Turks are so involved with children. I love that men and women will pick up a baby at a restaurant and walk away with it to give the parents a few minutes to eat in peace. I love that people truly do band together to help raise children, with neighbours and shopkeepers all playing a part in a child's welfare. And I think it's great the way perfect strangers will trust each other with something so important to them.

But I'm more than happy to let those people watch someone else's kid.

A Life Once Lived in Istanbul

I took a walk today in Istanbul.

I was at breakfast in Cihangir when I decided to walk to Taksim the long way and pass the apartment we used to live in before we moved to Izmir two years ago. I hadn't seen it since we left, and since I was alone, I was free to cater to my whims.

On the way, I passed the pet shops where I bought 10-kilo bags of cat litter and searched, in vain, for felt mice for my cats to play with. I walked by Susam Cafe and remembered that when Jeff and I first came to Istanbul, we used to eat fajitas there.

I passed the Cihangir Manav and wondered why I didn't buy fruit and vegetables there more often. I walked by the three-storey house I toured when we were searching for an unfurnished flat to rent and wondered who decided to move into a house where the front door opens straight into the kitchen.

And then I turned onto the street where Jeff and I last lived in Istanbul. This wasn't the first house we lived in -- that one is three streets away from the second one -- but I didn't go by there today. 

The building, which used to be a mint green color, is now a soft yellow. The windows were open on the top-floor flat where we used to live and I noticed that the screens Jeff and I had put in after our cat fell out the window were gone.

I wondered if the people living there now had cats. I wondered if they, too, cursed that awful bathtub that was too high to climb into. I wondered if they barbequed on the balcony the way we did.

I stood outside the building and thought about all the parties we had in that apartment. I thought about the friends who came for dinner and stayed the night and made us breakfast in the morning. I mostly thought about all the people who had passed through the front door for food, for drinks, for company, some of whom are no longer in Turkey.

I thought all this and was glad to be wearing my large sunglasses so no one could see the tears filling my eyes.

Suddenly those two years we lived in Istanbul felt so far away, like another world, another time. I felt like a different person than the one who lived in that two-bedroom flat with four cats. Suddenly I was fiercely sad for that old life in this city.

I finally tore myself away from the building but I couldn't stop my nostalgia. I walked up towards Taksim and meandered down Istiklal, remembering the cafe where Jeff and I used to eat ice cream and the bar where we celebrated a colleague's birthday till 2am. I noticed that even though so many things were different, so much of the city looked the same.

I miss this city. I miss that time.

 

Would We Stay or Would We Go?

In the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake several months ago, interspersed with heart-wrenching stories of people rendered fatherless, motherless, childless and homeless by the earthquake were stories of foreigners living in Japan who were wondering what to do now that their homes and lives had also been destroyed.

I read those stories with a lot of interest because I, too, am an expatriate living in a foreign country on a major fault line. I was shocked by what I read in some of those news reports. Foreigners abandoning their cats and dogs, their homes, their friends and jobs, all for a one-way ticket back to their home countries. To be sure, some stayed, openly defying the wishes of their governments who had arrived to evacuate them out of the country.

Those stories made me think, of course, about how I would react in a similar situation. What would I do if there were a massive earthquake in Izmir and my house was destroyed? What would we do if the unthinkable happened here?

What would I do with my four cats? I would never leave them behind in any situation, not if I could help it. I've read that Americans being evacuated from Japan were not allowed to take their pets with them, and I thought, "How awful!" To me, and to a lot of Americans, our pets are part of the family: they go where Jeff and I go, no matter where that is in the world.

If an earthquake leveled Izmir, what would I do with all my possessions? My washing machine and bed and clothes and carpets? I'm not worried about the monetary value of such things or having to replace them, but wouldn't it be my responsibility to clean up at least my part of the mess? To dredge away my refrigerator to the landfill instead of making my neighbors and friends do it?

The thing is, Turkey is my home. It's been my home for almost four years. And though it isn't my forever home maybe, it's where I live now. I have made friends here and my neighbors like me. How awful would it be to abandon them if an earthquake were to hit Izmir?

A lot of my expatriate friends don't live in Turkey for work; they have jobs, yes, but they come second to their lives. They, like I do, live in Turkey because they like it here. We like the people and the culture and the food. It is where we have chosen to be at home, and Turkey has welcomed us graciously. If something happened here, I can't really imagine myself turning my back on Turkey.

Have you ever thought about these things? Am I the only one with these crazy thoughts? Maybe I worry too much. What do you think you would do?

The Best -- Even if it is the Only -- Reason to Visit Izmir

I am not the world's best advocate for Izmir tourism. I have often pointed out on this blog and to friends that Izmir is a rather boring, quiet town with no museums of note, no beaches, and no historic sites or monuments worth visiting.

Visiting Izmir is not for every traveller coming to Turkey. Most of the typical, traditional reasons people visit a city -- good food, vibrant nightlife, history, museums -- don't apply to Izmir. Simply put: if you're interested in sun and sand, you'd be better off in Bodrum or Antalya. If you want to see historic Ottoman mosques, go to Bursa and Istanbul.

However, I have also said before -- and I stand by this -- that anyone who professes a love of Turkey should visit Izmir to get a better sense of what a modern, nationalist Turkish city looks like than you can get from just visiting Istanbul or a few cities along the Mediterranean.

Izmir is Turkey's Republican dream, the concrete manifestation of its utopian vision of a "Turkey for the Turks". You don't really see that kind of philosophy play out in Istanbul, where the city's more international, cosmopolitan inhabitants are frankly more welcoming of outsiders, whether they're from the US, Eastern Europe or Diyarbakir.

But Izmir did start out like Istanbul: like Istanbul, Izmir has always been a center of commerce. Throughout the city's several thousand year history, Izmir's port saw heavy trading with the rest of the world. Trading and commerce flourished, particularly during the latter years of the Ottoman Empire, and people from all over Europe (known as Levantines) settled in Izmir, opening businesses, hotels and restaurants. All that changed, though, in 1923.

Now, Izmir does not many attract international tourists, except those on a cross-country bus trip who are on their way to Ephesus and who stop here for a few hours in the afternoon. Many tourists who come to Izmir mistakenly believe there are beaches here and are sorely disappointed to discover that Çeşme, which Izmir's marketing material lists as a great spot for swimming, is at least 30 minutes away by car and much longer if you go by bus.

However.

In the past two weeks, we've had two sets of visitors stay with us. The first set consisted of two American women, one of whom was Jeff's former colleague from Philly, and then two CouchSurfers from Germany. In explaining to them what Izmir had to offer, I started out with what the city doesn't have: museums, sites, historic buildings, mosques, churches, beaches.

But when pressed for what there is to do here, I kept coming back to the same answer again and again: soaking up Izmir's culture and lifestyle. Izmir has a very particular vibe that is unlike any other Turkish city I have visited. Life here is relaxing. It's slow, laidback, not necessarily quiet, but definitely calm, especially in summer when people don't work too terribly hard.

Life in Izmir is sitting on the Kordon at night and watching the sun set. It's navigating Alsancak's alleys and sipping Turkish coffee at one of the few historic Greek houses that survived the devastation of 1923. It's spending several languid hours eating a lavish (but not necessarily expensive) fish and meze dinner. It's sitting for tea with your butcher in the middle of the afternoon just because.

Maybe what Izmir has to offer tourists is not a harried day tour, or a jog through a spice market or covered bazaar. So it doesn't have beaches where you can sunbathe and order a cocktail. Perhaps that's not the point. Maybe Izmir has something different to offer: a respite, a chance to slow down for a moment while travelling, a space to eat and drink well.

Because eating and drinking are two things Izmir does exceptionally well. The food in this town, especially in summer when all the gorgeous produce is in season, is phenomenal. If you're a vegetarian, you'll eat very well here. And if you love meat, there's plenty for you too, as Izmir is famous in Turkey for head meat. (There are more traditional cuts of meat available as well, of course.)

Izmirlis are also proud of the fact that there are so many bars in this city. (Never mind that they are all the same and only serve Efes.) Even though we lived for two years in Beyoğlu before moving to Izmir, I was still surprised at the sheer number of bars in Izmir, not just in the central district, but all over.

Perhaps the best reason -- and maybe the only reason -- to visit Izmir is to simply see a "real" Turkish city, to see one side of what Turkey is. There are few tourists in Izmir, there are no foreigners who own beachfront property. There's just a bunch of people going to work every day, teaching their children right and wrong, planning for their retirement, worrying about the AKP winning another election.

And maybe that's reason enough to visit Izmir. To see what Turkey looks like when you get away from its massive tourism industry, to sit with the locals on the quay and feel the breeze blowing off the Aegean, and to catch a glimpse of what modern Turkey looks like today.

A Few Thoughts on Travel (and Paris)

It has taken me far too long to write this post, and for that I do apologize. I kept thinking that I wanted to write about Paris and I couldn't think of anything to say about the city that hasn't already been said ad nauseum already. As I deleted draft after draft, I realized that what I actually was trying to write about was why we travel, not just to Paris, but to everywhere.

My favorite kind of travel are city holidays, as evidenced by such recent visits to Prague, Munich, Sofia and Paris. I'm most happy walking through a city's street, visiting its cafes, revelling in its museums, watching its people. I'm not interested in anything so-called "outdoorsy" unless you consider walking outside "outdoorsy". I like to notice the way people dress, what they order to drink at cafes, what a country holds in its museums.

Many people, of course, travel to see things. We go to see the Louvre, or the Eiffel Tower, or the Sultanahmet Mosque. We go to these places to be awed, to be imbued with just a smidge of the grandeur that these buildings and monuments add to the world.

We go too to obtain a bit of "cultural capital." We go to say we have been there, to show off the photographs we have taken of famous sculptures or monuments or landmarks, even if we know absolutely nothing about them other than that they are famous for some reason or another.

I saw this first-hand at the Louvre, where you are, sadly and inexplicably, allowed to photograph sculptures and paintings. Even if you're not supposed to use flash, many, many people do. It saddens me to remember people actually touching sculptures with their oily fingers, and complaining that someone stopped a moment too long in their lingering and ruined their photograph (never mind that everyone has digital cameras nowadays).

On our first night in Paris, I caught my very first glimpse ever of the famed Eiffel Tower and my first thought was: yuck. I mean, really? That montrosity? From afar, seeing only the top half of the tower with its antenna sticking out the top, the dark tower seemed hideous, completely out of place with Paris's Baroque, Gothic, and Art Nouveau architectural masterpieces.

Then I got closer to the tower and decided it was the most beautiful manmade monument I'd ever seen. When sorting through the more than 500 photos I took during the week we were in Paris, I discovered that I had taken dozens of the Eiffel Tower, more than any other site, more than I took at the Louvre even.

There's some essential truth about travel in that, isn't there? That from afar something can seem scary and ugly and unwelcoming and then, the closer you inspect it, the more you begin to fall in love with it.

I also travel, I'll admit it, to eat. Especially things I don't eat in Turkey. On this trip, I made sure to partake of the duck confit, the spicy sausage sandwiches, and yes, copious amounts of champagne and bordeaux.

Instead of hopping on one of Paris's famous public bicycles or the city's metro, we opted instead to walk everywhere. On one day, we clocked about 6-7 miles walking from Les Halles to Champs Elysses, to the Eiffel Tower, through St. Germaine and the Latin Quarter, then back over to the Louvre, all the while zigzagging through interesting streets and stopping in cafes for fuel.

That was how we stumbled across a restaurant where we had the most amazing bœuf bourguignon lunch (we later saw that the restaurant was listed in our guidebook, but we felt pretty cool for having "discovered" it first). Most of the time, we followed our instincts to find shops and restaurants, but we did consult the guidebook several times for recommendations.

Which brings me to one of the great undertalked about benefits of living in a foreign country: when you travel to yet another foreign country you're already (sort of) wise to the tourist trap. Living in Turkey not as a tourist but not as a local either has taught me how to size up a potential cafe or restaurant or how to gauge the quality of a souvenir shop. These are things you don't even realize you've picked up on when you're abroad (out of Turkey, I mean) until you pass a restaurant with a sign proclaiming its authentic Indian food, and you say "no way". You can't get "authentic Indian food" for 10 euros, sorry, at least not in central tourist areas.

For expats living in Turkey, going abroad also means going shopping, and I don't mean for touristy trinkets and miniature Eiffel Tower statues. We bring back suitcases filled with stinky cheeses, hunks of ham, bacon and wine. We stop at duty free and pick up hard-to-find liquers such as Cointreau or crème de cassis so that we can partake of a kir on the balkon and pretend we're in Paris again.

I ended up coming back from Paris with a removable-bottom tart pan, a muffin pan, a springform pan, ground mustard seed and celery seed, things I never in a million years would have purchased in France if I lived in the US. When I was in some of Paris's specialty kitchen shops looking for bakeware that I can't find here in Turkey, I marveled at the Americans buying whisks! Whisks! Which you can find for $2 at Target! Gah!

But people are different, and they do crazy things like buy whisks in Paris instead of macaroons or chocolates and, hey, if that makes you happy, then that's what matters, right?

I'm curious to hear from you guys though: why do you travel? If you're an expat in Turkey (or elsewhere, for that matter) what is it like for you to travel to another foreign country from here? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Kayaköy: A Photo Journey

In trying to find the words to write this post, I discovered that what moved me more than anything I could say about Kayaköy were the photos I took of the city, which was largely abandoned after 1923 as a result of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey saw the two countries forcibly exchange Christians from Turkey and Muslims from Greece.

I started looking through all my pictures and realized that what I wanted to say about the Treaty of Lausanne and the deportations was better portrayed through my photos of the empty houses themselves, the dilapidated churches, the poppies pushing up between the foundations of people's former homes. So I created this video of my best photos (the song is A Diamandidis Dalgas by Huseini Manes, an example of rembetika, Greek underground music from the 1920s):

  

Kayaköy is a lovely place to visit, but it does help to know a bit about the town's history and why it is such an important site today. If you're interested in learning more about the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey and the events leading up to it, I can recommend the following books (descriptions from their back covers):

"Birds Without Wings" by Louis de Bernières: "Set against the backdrop of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, the Gallipoli campaign and the subsequent bitter struggle between Greeks and Turks, [the novel] traces the fortunes of one small community in south-west Anatolia -- a town in which Christian and Muslim lives and traditions have co-existed peacefully for centuries.

"Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City" by Marjorie Housepian Dobkin: "Dobkin has rendered the first account of what took place within the city. She has used as sources diaries, letters and eyewitness reports of the participants themselves."

Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey" by Bruce Clark: "Clark's fascinating account of these turbulent events draws on new research in Greece and Turkey, and interviews with surviving refugees who lived through those years, allowing the victims of this large-scale ethnic cleansing to speak for themselves for the first time."

"Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922, The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance" by Giles Milton: "A powerful tale of destruction, heorism and survival -- told with the narrative verve that has made Giles Milton a bestselling historian. It unfolds through the memories of the last remaining survivors and the eyewitness accounts of those who found themselves caught up in one of the greatest catastrophes of the modern age."

If you can recommend any other books, please let us know in the comments.

Practical Info: You can get to Kayaköy easily from Fethiye. From the town center, look for a dolmuş that says "Kaya" on the dashboard. At the time of writing, the cost per person was 3.50 TL, and the ride takes about 35-40 minutes. Admission to the historical site is 8 TL.

Next: A wine restaurant in Kayaköy. Previously: Louis de Bernières in Kayaköy.

The Aegean Work Ethic

Over the weekend Jeff and I were at a party for his work and got to talking with some people about the variable work ethic (some people call it laziness) of people from the Aegean region and, specifically, people in Izmir.

One guy says, "Well, if we're lazy, you know who's even lazier? The Cypriots. They're the laziest."

And another guys say, "What? No way. The Italians are the laziest of all. And the Greeks!"

"Oh yeah!" another guy pipes in. "And the Spanish. And the Portuguese."

People all start nodding and murmuring in agreement.

"Basically, people all along the Mediterranean and the Aegean are lazy," one guy sums up.

"Yeah, and you know what other people say, like you Americans and the Europeans?" says the guy who said that the Italians and Greeks are the laziest of all. "They all say 'Oh, but they live a slower pace of life and they really know how to enjoy themselves and they don't rush.' Yeah, well, that means they don't work!"

This elicits a hearty laugh from the group, and I have to admit, I do agree with him.

The funny thing is, I read all the time, especially in travel writing, about the slower pace of life along the Aegean and the Mediterranean, about how people there really know how to live and don't take life too seriously. They have a better work-life balance, Americans like to say.

And while most of us like to wax poetic about that lovely lifestyle and how wonderful it is, many people don't realize that the Aegean and Mediterranean propensity to relax means that cafes, restaurants, barbers, produce shops, electricians, even museums, will close at random hours, especially in the summertime, leaving tourists confused and perplexed as to what, exactly, they are supposed to do between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m.

And while on the Turkish side of the Aegean, most places don't actually shut down for the afternoon in the summer (though some places do), it's difficult to get anybody to do anything around here in the afternoons. But would you want to fix a leaky faucet at 3 p.m. in 35 degree heat? Neither would I.

I'm looking forward to summer already.

Top 10 Perks to Living in Turkey

There's a lot to like about living abroad: the daily challenges of speaking a foreign language, the small triumphs over hurdles you thought you couldn't possibly handle, the widening of your outlook on the world and life in general.

And while that stuff is all well and good, let's face it: there are lots of other reasons expats move to Turkey and stay there. There's a lot of perks to living here, many of which wouldn't be available to me if I lived in the US.

Here are my favorite perks of living in Turkey:

1. Free tea. Everywhere. Even the most wet-behind-the-ears tourist to Turkey knows that you are offered tea while buying a carpet. But you also get get free tea with pretty much everything else. Buying a bedroom wardrobe for your new flat? You'll be offered a cup of tea while you mull over the options. Waiting for the vet to finish giving your cat her annual vaccinations? Yup, a cup of tea will be handed to you. Getting your hair cut at the salon? There's tea with that too.

2. I can get basically anything delivered to my door. I've had vodka and chocolate bars delivered at 10pm on Saturday night from the 24-hour tekel and tomatoes and cheese for Sunday morning breakfast from the produce shop down the street. With a few clicks on Yemek Sepeti, I can have Burger King brought to my door too. These kinds of services are simply an inherent part of life here. It's like the original version of all those fancy organic produce delivery services making the rounds in NYC and Seattle!

3. Skilled labor and maintenance services are plentiful. Tailors, cobblers, butchers, plumbers, electricians: you name it, we've got it at arm's length. My neighborhood alone is pretty cool, but these services can be found all over Turkey. I can get my Italian leather boots resoled every couple of years easily and cheaply here, and my dresses and pants tailored to fit perfectly. And since I am horrible at general household maintenance, it's really great for me that I can get all kinds of servicemen to come by and fix all the problems I encounter in my apartment. Having plumbers and electricians in my neighborhood who are available when you need them truly makes life so much easier.

4. If it's raining, you can buy an umbrella on the street. The same is true for scarves, hats and gloves if it's cold. Last week we had a bit of a cold snap in Istanbul with snow, rain, sleet and all. I found myself without a scarf one day and was delighted to pass a man with a wooden cart selling handwoven hats, gloves and scarves outside the office. I bought a scarf on the spot for 15 TL, promptly put it on and was much warmer!

5. You can take a taxi for insanely short distances. In Philly I would never dream of taking a taxi to cover a distance I could walk in 10 minutes, but I don't think twice about taking a cab from Çukurcuma to Taksim, a distance that takes me 15 minutes to walk but is 80% uphill. Given that walking in Istanbul can be quite a chore -- hills, uneven cobblestones, random missing bricks -- and the fact that sometimes you've got luggage or maybe are dressed up to go somewhere nice, taksicis don't grumble and huff when you ask them to take you a short distance.

6. Spices are both fresh and cheap. At pazars across Turkey, a packet of what amounts to about a half-cup of spice will generally cost you about 1 TL. This includes simple spices such as black and red pepper but also cumin, curry and saffron. Gone are the days when I used to pay $7 for a jar of processed spice in supermarkets of the US. I'm also incredibly pleased that I can buy fresh nutmeg and cloves -- which I have to grate and ground myself -- which makes a load of difference in something like my Pumpkin Spice Bread.

7. Visits to the salon are not considered a luxury. I like that in Turkey, you can pop into a salon without an appointment and get a quick manicure, your eyebrows shaped or your hair trimmed for a fraction of the cost in other European countries. Here, manicures and eyebrow shaping are just considered basic hygiene and maintenance. For men, face shaves and haircuts are a weekly ritual and can cost between 5 TL and 10 TL depending on the quality of the salon. Not bad for what is typically considered a "treat" in the US, eh?

8. Genuine fakes. A lot of people scoff when they see signs around Turkey that say "Genuine fakes for sale here" but what they don't realize is that a lot of brand-name products are actually made in Turkey and what you can buy sometimes in the Grand Bazaar, for example, isn't a knock-off of an original product, it's simply overstock of the original that was made in Turkey. Likewise, the knock-offs of name-brand shoes, bags and clothing -- which usually look identical to the original but lack a brand-name tag -- are of pretty good quality too. I've actually purchased Turkish-made knock-offs of brand-name products and thought the quality was superior to that of the brand-name because Turkish craftsmanship with leathers and fabrics is pretty damn good.

9. Free rides to work and free lunch at work. Most large companies in Turkey offer free shutle service to and from work for their employees from a location close to their homes and also offer paid lunches. Companies that aren't large enough to have their own shuttle service or cafeteria will pay for their employees' transportation and food costs associated with work. This is a pretty sweet deal as this money is in addition to your regular salary.

10. Living 4 blocks from the Aegean. It doesn't matter how long I end up living in Turkey, I don't think saying "I live on the Aegean Sea" or "I lived on the Bosphorous" will ever get old. There's something so romantic and inspiring about living along these famous bodies of water.

So those are my top 10 perks to living in Turkey! What about yours? What are the best things for you about life in Turkey (or where ever you are an expat!)?