Malena in Turkey

Shortly after writing the last entry I went back to the hostel room and accidently deleted all of my pictures.  Fortunately, this was only the first day of travel so there weren’t many irreplaceable ones - I’m sure I’ll manage it again somehow though.

Our total tea number is only up to four a person because Kate and I are getting better at turning touts down - we’ve discovered the “We’ll visit you later because we’re in a hurry now, please give us a business card” technique, as well as the “We’re from New Mexico” version (infinitely confusing to touts, who then assume we’re from Mexico and comment on our striking Turkish looks, excellent English pronounciation, and very nice shoes (??) and then assume we’re too poor to buy any carpets and leave us alone. Haha, except that last part, they never leave you alone.)  We’re rating the salesmen based on looks and personalities and will return to those high enough.  Let’s just say our standards are very exacting and unlikely to be met.  Unfortunately, some lecherous old man touts are very persistant and I was waylaid by one of them last night (hence the increase in the number of teas we’ve drank.)  I think the best description of the situation is that of Kate’s last night:  To set the stage, while hovering in the corner of a street trying to decide which direction to turn to avoid them, you can hear ”Hello, would you like some tea?” echoing through the alleyways - ”Like a Stephen King novel.”  We just can’t escape!

 This morning we had our Turkish cooking class, which was delicious.  And enormously filling.  And best of all, involved no carpets!  I’m not sure I can actually replicate any of the dishes (my jobs tended to be fairly simple and along the lines of “Cut these carrots”), but everything was excellent.   And I ate and enjoyed lamb, and some tiny onions.  (Although I’m not an onion traitor, I just relax my principles while visiting other countries.)

 Another interesting thing to point out about Turkey is the calls to prayer.  Basically, there’s a huge speaker system over the entire city (and for all I know country!) that pipes the sound of people praying approximately 18 times a day. Okay, technically only 5, but it seems like more.  (Interestingly, the prayers seem evenly split between female singers and male singers.)  Everyone, including the locals, seems to ignore this, but after hearing the call for the 8th or 9th time last night Kate and I were joking about what time we’d hear it next.  Obviously, it would be at the most annoying time possible - my money was on 6am and hers was on 1am.  I’m pleased to report that we were able to decide which actually was more annoying because at 1am we were woken up by drunk Americans trying to get into our room (apparently thinking it was the exit of the hostel?) and at 6am by, of course, another call to prayer.  Lovely.

 (I of course was correct - it’s much more annoying to be woken at 6 than at 1, for the record.)

 Anyways, we’re off to visit a Roman cavern used for storing water and a Turkish bath, I’ll be sure to report back though!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 5:29 am and is filed under 01 - Turkey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.