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Aangeboden: grote pot Sambal Oelek. Onaangebroken.

Small defeats in daily life

How can you define your comfort zone? I guess it differs in time, depending on your mood, on the weather, on the number of people around you and whether you like them or not. Today (cloudy weather, cloudy thoughts) my comfort zone was quite small, meaning that I had to challenge myself several times to be brave and just do what I had to do without whining. I went to Istanbul Modern, the modern art museum that I visited last week with my friend Ali. There was an exhibition that I missed last time, and since entrance is free for residents of Turkey on Thursdays, I decided to visit the museum once more.

When I entered the building, my mind was wandering anywhere but where it should be: in the museum. I got my ticket and wanted to bring my coat to the cloak room when one of the ticket people suddenly interrupted my stream of thought. “Lady! Lady! Do you want an audio tour?” That was a hard question in the early morning. “No, thanks.” “You should take an audio tour.” “No, thanks.” “The museum is way better with an audio tour.” I started to feel annoyed. “No, thanks, I've visited the museum last week as well.” “Did you take an audio tour last week?” “Yes.” I didn't, but figured this would be the best way to get rid of the man. He studied me with a sceptical look on his face. “Really, did you?” Shit. I couldn't remember anyone asking us whether we wanted an audio tour last week. Maybe there weren't any audio tours back then. The man started to laugh at me. I felt so stupid and ended our discussion with a quick “I don't know, but I don't want an audio tour now”. Then I ran off. 

If I would have had a better day I would just have answered the man immediately in the sense of: “Thank you, but I'm not interested – I'm just here to visit the international film exhibition.” Or actually, why should I give up a reason for not wanting an audio tour? Who is he to keep pushing me into an audio tour? Anyway, the thing is that I felt like I had to defend myself, whereas on a sunny day, after a good night of sleep, this conversation would have been much easier on me. You don't have to feel like a deer caught in the headlights when someone asks you a simple question. He must have sensed my insecurity too, otherwise he probably wouldn't have kept on bothering me. Is there a way to teach yourself to answer any question any time in a smooth and direct way?

Another one of today's challenges: after the museum, I wanted to read my book in a nice chair with a good cup of coffee. Ece showed us some nice cafe's close to Istanbul Modern last week, so the only thing I had to do was pick one and go in. But they were all small and crowded and I didn't dare enter. I needed a half an hour walk through the neighbourhood before I could find the courage to go inside the cafe of my choice. How can it be so hard to just walk into a cafe? At one point I was even considering to just go home and drink a coffee in my room. Anyway, I was happy I went in, the cafe was nice, the waiter had a tunnel in his ear and smiled at me and they played the blues. I ordered “bir filtre kahve lütfen”, one filter coffee please, and got a latte macchiato. I don't even know how to spell latte macchiato, let alone ever ordered it. There is not many things I don't like, but milk is one of them. How can “bir filtre kahve” sound like “latte macchiato”?

I accepted the punishment for my bad Turkish and my current cowardice and drank the whole bloody thing. The audio tour I could not escape with a little loss of face and I was not going to admit I was wrong a second time. Besides, it was my own fault anyway so I should take the blame. Is drinking something you don't like stepping out of your comfort zone too?

The world is a good place

It is so sweet of people to give a spoiler alert when they write about films on the internet.

The way I use my walk

Do you know that song of the Bee Gees, stayin' alive, with an amazing video of the three Bee Gees brothers strolling around with stoic faces at an abandoned train station slash coal mine slash whatever the hell it may be? If not: eat your heart out. Eszter, Davidson and I got the luminous idea to reenact this music video with the three of us, in the ruins of a factory in Acibadem, close to Eszters place and the all time favourite Tuesday Market. We spent hours brainstorming about how we would design our music video, watching the original version at least ten times a day and memorizing the text. We made friends with a couple of film students, but the first didn't consider our video challenging enough to waste his proficient filming skills on, and Davidson managed to sort of get into a fight with the second, so our options for finding a semi-professional filmmaker were kind of limited. Then, to reduce our chances to actually execute our idea even more, I broke my leg on our trip to Pamukkale.

Pamukkale is a great place. The literal translation is “cotton castle”, a name well chosen, for the snowwhite terraces of this world heritage site seem pretty royal to me. To reach Pamukkale, you have to take the shuttle bus that commutes between the wonderfully depressing city of Denizli and our Istanbul. In Denizli, a minibus will bring you to your destination. The whole trip takes about twelve hours if you include the wait and the Istanbulese traffic. We left on Saturday evening at nine and arrived in Pamukkale around the same time on Sunday morning. 

Due to the heavy fog that we encountered when we got out of the minibus, we could not see anything past the distance of about ten meters. Wrecked from the long travel, we first went for a coffee in a nearby cafe. The cafe owner surprised us with his diverse skills: he could speak almost all languages, make funny faces and was able to fit his enormous belly in a onesie. After this dubious experience, we went back to were we came from in order to find the entrance to the world heritage site. Now the fog had lifted, we could suddenly see the immense beauty of Pamukkale's terraces. How could we have overlooked this before? To make a long story short: we spent the rest of the day climbing white rocks on our bare feet/pantyhose, making pictures and soaking our toes in the milky mixture of water and limestone, feeding cauliflower to puppies and swimming among the ruins of the old city Hierapolis. The last part was especially fun, for we had bought goggles (man, what trouble did we go through to find those, while I found out later that the grocery store on the corner of my street sells them too) and we were able to actually see the ancient columns that we passed while practicing our breaststroke. The water was kind of sour and made tiny bubbles on your skin, like you were wearing one of those fifty cent raincoats that you bring when you travel with only hand luggage. Life was cold on solid ground, but in the water everything was warm and fuzzy.

We closed our walk in the area with a good sunset and a bottle of raki (or a sunset and a good bottle of raki) on the stairs of the amphitheater. When I was hopping down to test my skills in moving with my ankles tied together, Eszter and Tessa warned me for the great possibility that I'd fall down a couple of stairs and break my leg. Were they right, I would at least have had a good story. Elas, the climax of my accident is less obvious: when we had found a restaurant to fill our stomachs before taking the trip back home again, I descended the stairs to the toilet. It was an outside stairs, tiled in far past years, with bumps and holes and loose parts to which I unfortunately didn't pay any attention. One of the tiles decided to walk down with me, and the next moment I was upside down in a pool of water, with a stabbing pain in my ankle. Never mind, I thought, no biggie, happened to me so very often. So I went to the toilet on one leg, hopped up the stairs on one leg and then decided that it was a little more biggie than I first assumed. My dear friends calmed me down, put me on a couch and called an ambulance, after which the paramedics took over control: wrapping my ankle in some bandage, laying me down on my belly, pulling down my panties in the middle of the restaurant and giving me an injection in my right buttock to ease the pain. The bustrip back was actually not too bad. With the bandages around my ankle it was fairly easy not to move it, and if you don't move it doesn't hurt, plus I beat Davidson six times with backgammon, a victory that significantly cheered me up as well. We were back in Istanbul around eleven the next morning.

I had expected for a broken leg to hurt more, but well, how could I know? I am just happy that I took my parents' advice and went to the hospital, where my röntgen picture indeed showed a cleft bone in the back side of my leg. I left the hospital in a cast and on crutches which I would keep untill Christmas day. This meant the end of our Bee Gees dreams: there are not many ways to use your walk when you only have one leg to experiment with. I still have the costumes for our art project, bought at the market for a few liras, in my closet. Davidson and Eszter have already left Istanbul and of course I'm not going to save any of my precious luggage space for a couple of seventies blouses and a pair of jeans which I don't even fit, for my hips might be perfectly suitable for giving birth, but not that much for tight men's trousers. Besides, where will we ever find the time and place again to make a video like that?

Probably it was an idea like every other anyway: really nice and exciting, but too complicated to find the energy to persevere. Especially since we're here in Istanbul, where distraction creeps at every corner, I am not surprised that we never finished or even started the video. I don't really mind. It was a nice fantasy, and stayin' alive will forever be Istanbul's signature song, reminding me of all the things I just talked about: making trips in- and outside of the city, the whole broken leg experience, the evenings spent dancing and listening to music, the fact that the Turkish don't serve proper coffee, my new favourite boardgame, our tradition of Friday morning market day and above all the great friends I made with which I share these memories. One can't ask for more, right?

 

Introduction

Introductions should be short but sweet, so here goes: this morning I said goodbye to Eszter on the Sabiha Gokcen airport, which means that my two weeks of lonely farewell have started. I would like to use the next fourteen days to:

1. Listen to all the yet undiscovered jazz concerts on Youtube

2. Open my eyes again for the peculiarities of daily life in Istanbul

3. Learn French

And of course there are many more places to visit, friends to meet, books to read and arrangements to make before I leave. But the main part is this: I will take my camera and notebook, walk around town and rediscover the magic of Istanbul, this wonderful city in which its seventeen million inhabitants don't stop me from running into friends on the tram. I would like to share and compare my experiences with those of my newly made friends who have either gone through the same process of learning how to love and live in Istanbul, or those who have lived in Turkey their whole lives and to whom I am the stranger. Therefore, I decided to write at least parts of this blog in English. Sharing thoughts is always easier when sharing a language, too. However, this does not imply that my English is flawless, so I would like to apologize in advance for the mistakes that I will make, whether they be in spelling, style or grammar.

I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts on my Istanbul adventures. Thank you for welcoming me here and I'll keep you posted!

Imme