Turk Tags

Fun fact: each Turkish license plate starts with two numbers that indicates the plate's province of origin. I heard recently that the numbers are assigned in order from an alphabetically ordered list of the Turkish provinces, but this only seems to be mostly true (see link below). 34 (top picture) stands for Istanbul. 06 (second picture) stands for Turkey's capital Ankara. My tour guide Metin joked that, as bad as Istanbul drivers are, Ankara drivers are notorious among Turks for making up their own traffic rules -- so, when Turks see a plate starting with 06, they give that car a wide berth.

The third picture's plate starts with 55; I didn't know that but it's evidently the code for Samsun, a province in north central Turkey on the Black Sea coast.

For more information, here's a resource on Turkish license plates

Catfight!

While walking to lunch today, I saw a group of dumpster-diving strays mixing it up over something I wasn't able to identify. The aggressor was the tawny cat, who was leaping up on the dumpster, hissing, and scratching. I was hoping to catch some heated rawrr-on-rawrr action pix, but the lag time* of my camera was such that it always missed the moment by a fraction of a second.

The closest I came is the second picture from the top, where the cat's paw is coming down from lashing out at one of its rivals, but its face had already returned to normal from a snarling hiss.

The bottom two photos just seemed cute. For a few more you can go here.

*This phenomenon often makes taking shots from a moving vehicle a frustrating, trial-and-error process; it almost always seems to be the case that between the time I press the button and when the camera actually records the image, some road- or track-side obstruction has blocked what I was looking at.

My Döner With Zikri

Döner -- lamb roasted on a spit and then shaved off in thin slices, usually served over rice or in a sandwich. Short for Döner kebap, from the Turkish for rotating, turning, rotary.




Zikri





I don't know what you Turks put in this stuff, but it sure tastes good!

Turkish Teamsters

Some better pictures of the "Turkcyclers" mentioned below.

Gimme That Old-Time Religion!

What will the friggin' nanny-staters target next? Warning, schmarning: "♪ If it was good for Jesus, then it's good enough for me! ♪"

Blood Tongue

An idea that might make an average Turk hungry, but not for the apparent reason.

That's the literal translation of the Turkish word kandil, which is applied to a series of minor feasts in the Islamic calendar (5, I believe).

Among these feasts is Mevlid-i Nebi or Mevlid Kandili, which was celebrated this year between the sundowns on March 18th and March 19th.

This brings us to....(see below)

1438: The New 40?

The observed birthday of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed fell on Tuesday the 18th. They had a live broadcast of services from a major Istanbul mosque (Fatih Camii or "Conqueror's mosque") on a few TV channels to celebrate. That makes it a banner series of days starting with last Friday with Pi Day, the Ides of March, Palm Sunday, St. Patrick's Day, Canakkale Victory Day, Mohammed's Birthday, the first day of Spring, and Good Friday today and Easter Sunday.

Turkcycling

Another interesting difference between Istanbul and the U.S. is how Turks recycle. So far, I haven't seen any effort to separate garbage into waste and recyclables or infrastructure like separate bins for trash, plastics, and aluminum like one sees in Europe.

Instead one throws away everything in the same bag, which then goes into communal dumpsters. Then, a group of men called "çöp toplayici" (roughly "cherp tup-lie-i-gee", misleadingly meaning "garbage collectors") go around pulling big cloth bags on specialized metal tube carts with handles that loop over their shoulders and pick through everyone's dumpsters looking for things they can recycle or perhaps resell. These men are distinct from the actual garbage men, who empty the dumpsters and whom I don't recall seeing.

Eskici!

One of the quaint aspects of Istanbul is the societal niches that have survived in the biggest and most modern city in Turkey. As far as I know, when one has old appliances and goods that one wants to get rid of, one does not go to the local Goodwill or wait for a charity to call and arrange a pick up.

Instead, Istanbul has a set of entrepreneurs called eskici ("ESSkigee" or roughly "old stuff guy") that walk around the neighborhoods pushing a cart and shouting "Es-ki-ci!" to herald his arrival.

Happy Pi Day!

Today 3/14 is evidently Pi Day. I'm not sure how one celebrates exactly, but perhaps one raise a glass of one's favorite beverage to toast the last-minute demise the 1897Indiana Pi Bill, which apparently sought to specify the value of pi by force of law. (It's a little more complicated than that: the bill itself mainly concerned affirming one charlatan's claims about squaring the circle using only a straightedge and compass, a process proved impossible 15 years earlier. The "proof" of this process, I believe, had implicit assumptions about the value of pi.) Perhaps then, another appropriate activity would be to listen to some of Stevie Wonder's In Square Circle.

Six months ago today, I woke up early in the morning in Helsinki after packing and rearranging my stuff for most of the wee hours of the night and started the process of heading for the airport for my flight to Moscow. I had heard that the Russian customs officials would search and catalog my possessions down to every last coin in my pockets; so, I decided to take only a week's worth of clothes and necessities in my back pack and to leave most of my possessions behind.

So my first stop: walking in the pre-sunrise twilight down to the Helsinki Rail Station and waiting for 10-15 minutes for their left luggage office in the basement to open. This gave me enough time to wrap my wire mesh around my big suitcase and tightly lock it up for its week's sojourn without me in Finland.

Then, I rushed outside to the bus lot to catch the FinnAir shuttle to the airport.

The decision to leave most of my possessions behind turned out to be a wise one, but for a completely unsuspected reason. When I got to the airport and was checking in, I realized I never investigated the specifics of economy travel on FinnAir. In particular, FinnAir has very restrictive weight limits for carry on baggage. So, although I had only a week's worth of clothes and other necessities in my backpack -- the lightest I'd ever traveled anywhere, my backpack was over that limit and I had to check it. This raised the specter of arriving in Moscow and finding myself without clothes, but fortuntately that didn't happen. In my rush, I accidentally left a few minor things of value in my backpack completely unsecured and was happily surprised to find them still in place when I collected my bag in Moscow.

Reminiscing again

A year ago Saturday, I had my first significant surgery of my adult life.

Seven months ago today (Sunday), I was scheduled to fly out of Seattle, but had to delay my flight for 24 hours since there was absolutely no way I could finish packing before my evening flight.

Seven months ago Monday, I left Seattle for New Jersey.

Six months ago today, I left Bergen, Norway to tour the fjords. By 11 pm that night, I had traveled across Norway to arrive back in Oslo on my way by week's end to Russia. Six months ago Monday, I left Oslo for Stockholm again; and six months ago Tuesday was September 11, when I took the overnight Viking ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki.

Five months ago Saturday, I left Helsinki on a rainy October afternoon after a two-week stay and took a ferry to Talinn, Estonia.

Four months ago today, I was in the middle of my tour of Turkey and had just arrived in Antalya on the Mediterranean coast. The next day I took my first camel ride!

Three months ago, I was lodged at the Marmara University hotel busily finishing my programming work.

Two months ago, I had just moved into the apartment here in Istanbul.

A month ago Saturday, my apartment-mate Jonathan had just come down with the flu--the same flu that roughly a week later would become my flu and then my pneumonia.

Aqua Lung

In early February, my apartment-mate came down with the flu. It took me roughly a week, but I started feeling sick in mid-February. Lots of coughing, especially at night, feeling weak and light-headed, and unpleasant headaches, which the coughing didn't help. Early this past week, I found that short walks led to shortness of breath. A leisurely trip to the store and back made me feel as though I'd sprinted a mile.

So, after feeling the sickest for the longest period of time (close to two weeks) in my adult life, I went to see a doctor this past Thursday. He listened to my lungs and took an xray.
His diagnosis: pneumonia.

Now, I'm on antibiotics, trying to get as much rest as possible, and feeling a little better. Wish me luck!

The Sadness of Sofiastication

(Or "Hope you had a nice trip!")

After a brief, but fun stay in Plovdiv in the last week of January, I headed off to Sofia on Wednesday the 30th. I didn't have my computer with me, but I remembered that my hotel was several blocks to the south and east of Sofia's bus station. So, at 3 PM, I left my bus and walked down the main Sofia road for one block and then headed over to the road my hotel was located on so that I wouldn't miss my hotel. And I walked south keeping an eye out for it. The weather was cold but nice; so, I didn't mind a little exercise.

Over a half hour later, I had passed the central part of Sofia and a bunch of hotels, but no sign of mine. I was starting to get tired. Eventually, I stopped at another hotel to ask if they knew where my hotel was. Initially the helpful woman at the desk didn't, but she looked it up online...and told me it was much closer to the bus station than I had realized. I must have missed it in the first block I went south on the main street.

So I turned around and headed back. Many minutes later, I caught sight of what must have been my hotel within 100 yards on the same side of the road as me since I could see places close to the bus station. A few feet ahead of me there was a car parked on the sidewalk so I had to step off the sidewalk and into the road to get around. Since there wasn't much traffic and I was getting fatigued after carrying my luggage for about an hour, I side stepped into the road without looking down. I expected to step onto a level road surface....

Instead I caught the side of a storm drain in the road (see third picture from top) and the next thing I knew I was headed toward the pavement. I heard/felt a kind of crunchy sensation from my left foot. Some nice Bulgarian close behind me saw me fall and offered to help me up, but I assured him I was fine without really knowing if I could still stand. Fortunately, I wasn't in much pain and I could in fact still support weight on my leg and walk, so no sprain or break.

I limped into my hotel and checked in. I managed to secure some aspirin or something and some ice from the front desk after explaining what had happened. And that was pretty much my journey to Sofia!

I didn't want to risk making my ankle worse since I knew I had 10-12-hour ride back to Istanbul on Friday. So, I just stayed in my hotel for the most part and rested and iced my ankle and foot down. I only left for meals, to buy my ticket back and to get some ketoprofen (I was told it was basically the same as ibuprofen by the Sofian apothecary) on Thursday, and to catch my bus back on Friday.

The top two foot photos are from my hotel room. The final one is from the following Monday after being back in Istanbul for a couple of days.