Fran You're The Best!

My friend Fran from my MBA program at UW came to visit me this last weekend from her exchange program in Madrid, Spain. Fran was here from Thursday until Sunday and I tried to pack in as much fun and adventure as possible.

 

We spent roughly two and a half days in Istanbul and went on an overnight trip to the city of Bursa. Bursa is about 4 hours away from Istanbul (more long bus rides of course). It’s Turkey’s 4^th largest city and its very historical and cultural. It hardly has any tourists and I was hoping that would work in our favor in terms of having more authentic experiences and better value….turns out I was right!

 The hostel we stayed in was the only known hostel that had a somewhat decent review online. The hostel had no website and I should have taken a clue from that. When we arrived we were 

greeted my an old but friendly Turkish woman who spoke no English. She also smelled terribly and had dirty hands that made me think she had beendigging in dirt, but friendly nonetheless. I’ve stayed in terrible places before, but this one ranks near the top for most ghetto places I’ve stayed at. It had a shared bathroom with a squat toilet that was completely nasty and the showerhead literally dripped out cold water. I knew hot water was not going to be accessible because the old lady kept repeating “problem, hot water, Bursa…problem, hot water, Bursa….problem, hot water, Bursa” and so on. But what I think she was trying to tell us was that starting from a certain period at night until a certain time in the morning there is no running water in Bursa because when I tried to brush my teeth the next morning there was no running water.

 Accepting the reality that we were staying in an awful place, Fran and I set out to eat some good Turkish food and see some sights. We headed back to our hostel later that evening to drop some things off and met a nice man by the name of Ahmet. Ahmet is a friend of the couple that runs the hostel and he was 1)very friendly (and spoke English) and 2) clearly had nothing to do on a Saturday night. He ended up taking us around town to a teahouse where anyone from the community can come and play traditional Turkish music on the house instruments. After that we went to visit the cultural center that used to be a madrassa in a previous life. Then he took us to dinner at a great restaurant famous for its kebap dinners. I wasn’t even hun

gry but Ahmet ordered us out own plated full of kebap meat. It was overwhelming to be eating an entire plate of meat at 9pm but I did anyway because I didn’t want to be rude. After that we went to another part of town where there was a FREE performance of …………., the traditional Turkish dancing. The shows are put on nightly for the Bursa community and we were one of the only tourists there. It was such a great, authentic show because it was put on for the enjoyment of the community and not for tourists in order to make money. I felt a little out of place when the entire place starting chanting/praying afterwards, but I just enjoyed it as a very unique event not many tourists get to experience.

 Since there was no running water in our hostel and we wanted to experience the hamam (Turkish Bath) we got up at 6am the next morning and went to the neighboring area of Cikerge where they have hamams and mineral baths. I’ve wanted to experience a hamam since I arrived in Turkey. No one there spoke English and we weren’t sure how far we should strip down our clothes or really even what to do. It was a little funny, weird and awkward all at the same time. We soaked in a hot tub of mineral water before we were called out by two women who were going to give us our bath and massage. I was lead to another room where the woman pointed to the doctor style bed that I was to lay on. I then proceeded to get my entire body scrubbed with a sandpaper-like scrubber by this strong, brute Turkish woman who would partially grunt when she wanted me to turn over. It was very painful but I got over the initial shock of the sandpaper on my body after about 10mins. Then she lathered my entire body from head to toe in soap (using a regular soap bar! – I only use shower gel at home) and then gave me a painful massage where she pulled and twisted my body parts until every muscle was stretched and every joint was cracked. I then rinsed off and felt so awake and refreshed!! We hopped on a bus back to the bus station just in time to make our 9am bus ride back to IstanbulJ

 

Fran, you’re a great friend and make a great travel partner! I look forward to more travel adventures with you in the future!

Turkish Norms and Culture

Wow, I clearly had no idea what I was signing up for when I chose to do my exchange program in Turkey. I think it was a combination of seeking adventure and being naive that brought me here. 

Turkish norms and culture are very different from the U.S. For starters, the U.S. is a very developed, westernized country and Turkey is a developing, trying-to-be-westernized country. Also, the U.S. is a highly individualistic country and Turkey is a collective society. Just these differences alone have huge implications and make daily life for me challenging because differences come out in even the smallest of events. 

The language barrier is by far the thing that makes living here difficult. By not being able to read or speak Turkish, I am essentially illiterate. Living independently and trying to accomplish mundane tasks when you cannot read or speak the language is a tremendous challenge. For example, I went to the grocery store the other day and made the mistake of not taking my Turkish phrase book with me. I needed a shopping cart but did not know where they were so I did hand signals with a guy for about 5mins before he realized what I wanted. I usually make pasta because the foods sold in grocery stores are very different from the U.S. so I make pasta often because that's a food that I actually recognize and know how to make (and don't need to be able to read the cooking instructions on the back). I do my food shopping by examining packaging and looking at pictures. Yogurt milk is very popular here and it is packaged exactly like milk so I accidentally bought yogurt milk instead of milk. The next morning I had it with cereal and was convinced I had bought sour milk until I looked up the words for milk and yogurt milk and realized I bought the wrong thing. I didn't want to waste food so I ended up eating the cereal with sour yogurt milk. I obviously quickly learned the Turkish word for milk. 

Turkey and the US are very different in the way people think about things and the way things are done here. The ideas of discipline and structure are not part of Turkish culture. So the idea that someone would create a schedule, stick to it and successfully accomplish what was supposed to be done just doesn't exist here. The reason this doesn't happen is because if a person doesn't stick to the schedule or do what they were supposed to do, there is no one to hold them accountable and the person never feels that it was important anyway. The ideas of accountability and responsibility are completely absent here. This was very difficult for me to grasp when I first started school here because I actually assumed that the people in the administrative offices at school would actually do what they told me they were going to do. I realized I was making assumptions that people feel a sense of responsibility to get my request done; they don't. I was also making the assumption that people enjoy their jobs and are self-motivated to work; they aren't. These were assumptions I had brought with me from the U.S.

People think and operate in completely different ways than they do in the U.S. When someone tells me they are going to do something I just assume that its not going to be done or it will take on average 5 days longer than they originally said it would be completed. There is no trust in transactions between people and so I still wonder to this day how this society manages to operate when the idea of trust does not exist? All the things I've mentioned is part of the reason why things in society either don't operate or they operate with much lower standards for quality and time than they do in the U.S. There is tremendous bureaucracy and inefficiency in the way pretty much everything is done here. From the bus system, to the school registration process to the way people think. It is completely engrained in society.

Since I am a person that thinks logically and tries to do things in an efficient manner, life was very frustrating, stressful and confusing for me during my first month. I can only laugh now at the difficult adjustment I went through and be proud at how much I have adapted. I am way lazier than I am in the U.S. and I don't have the ambition and drive that I do when I am at home. Its not that I want to be this way, its that in order for me to live successfully in this society I have to be this way or I will find myself unhappy all the time if I try to think and operate as if I'm in the U.S.

I have talked to some students here who have done exchange programs in the U.S. or western European countries and some of them loved it and some of them hated it. For those that hated it, they said they did not like all the rules and all the structure and the fact that people were punctual. They said they felt like they had to be a machine and they're not a machine; they're human!

Ephesus and Afrodesias

Ephesus is the best preserved classical city in the eastern Mediterranean and is the place to get a feel for what life was like in Roman times. Ancient Ephesus was a great trading city and a center for the cult of Cybele, the Anatolian fertility goddess. When the Romans took over and made it the province of Asia, Ephesus became the Roman provincial capital.

 Ephesus is a huge tourist place and so we had to deal with tons of old people on tour buses. The entrance fee was outrageously expensive and I got really annoyed wh

en

after waiting in line for 20 mins, the guy selling postcards in the street starts leading some tourists to the front of the line telling them that its ok to cut!! Like selling postcards gave the guy some sort of authority to do that. There was no official person monitoring the line and the Turkish people that were cut in front of didn’t even say anything! 

I was annoyed but not surprised. In general, the idea of queing and first-come-first-served is one of those foreign “western” concepts of  "order" that don't work in Turkey as they say here. There are hardly ever lines for anything, usually everyone just crowds around and pushes their way to the front. I hate it.

 Afrodesias is one of Turkey’s finest archaeological sites. I really liked it because it was less overrun with coach pa

rties compared to Ephesus (mainly because its in the middle of the desert in the middle of nowhere). By the 3^rd century AD Afrodesias was the capital of the Roman province of Caria with a population of 15,000. Under the Byzantine empire the city was changed dramatically and temples were turned into churches. The stadium was definitely the coolest thing there. 

Izmir

Last week Turkey had a week long Muslim religious holiday, Bayram, to celebrate the end of Ramazan. Ramazan lasted the whole month of September and its where Muslim people fast for 30 days. School was of course closed for the holiday so I went with my friends Marisa and KG to the city of Izmir and we stayed at the house of our Turkish friend, Basar (pronounced Bashar). He is also a student at Koc. We orginially wanted to go on a tour of the Black Sea coast region, but we started planning too late and so all the tours were booked.

 Izmir is the third largest city in Turkey (pop. 2.6 mil.) and is the second biggest port city behind Istanbul. Its right on the Agean Sea, but its very much like the port of Seattle – with beautiful waterfront but no beaches or anything like that. We took a 9 hour overnight bus from Istanbul to Izmir and then took another bus for 45 mins to the part of town that Basar’s parents house is located. I was excited to stay with a Turkish family to see what Turkish home life is like. His parents were so welcoming and every morning his mom made a huge traditional Turkish breakfast (bread, cheese, honey, tomato, cucumber, olives, peppers, jam and tea) and a huge Turkish dinner. I’m not for sure, but I would consider Basar’s family to be middle class by Turkish standards. His parents do not speak English so there was a lot of face and hand gesturing and smiling going on all week.

 Basar had to translate any verbal conversation that took place.

 We spent the first day walking around Izmir and doing the typical things: bazaar browsing and having Turkish coffee and chai at cafés. The next day we got up early and took the bus to the main bus station and got on a 1.5 hour bus ride inland to the city of Selcuk. From Selcuk we caught another bus to the preserved classical city of Ephesus (see related post). After spending most of the day there we caught a bus back to Selcuk and caught another bus to the neighboring village of Sirince (pronounced siringe). Sirince is up in the hills and the housing is very pretty. We only had time to walk around for a bit and have dinner there before catching the bus back to Selcuk and then catching another bus back to Izmir.

 On Wednesday we again woke up early and caught the bus to the bus station and got on a 3.5 hour bus ride to the southwestern towns of Denizli and Pamukkale. Although those towns are talked up as a place to visit, we found them completely boring. So we sat and had chai and watched the sunset. We stayed the night in Pamukkale in a cute hostel where I went to bed at 8pm because I was feeling sick. Probably from all the bus riding. The next day Mehmet’s “uncle” (Mehmet is the hostel owner and he referred to his older friend as hi

s uncle) drove us in his little car to another great archeaoligcal site, Afrodesias (see related post). It was a 1.5 hour car ride in sweltering heat in the middle of the desert. We paid Mehmet’s uncle a good amount of money to take us out there and Afrodesias is in the middle of nowhere so private car or tour bus is really the only way to get there. Mehmet’s uncle drank chai and waited for the two hours we were at the site. He then drove us back to the bus station in Denizli where I bargained and pitted bus companies against eachother to give us cheap tickets home. I consider myself to be an above average haggler. I enjoy itJ Another 3.5 hour bus ride back to Izmir.

By the time Friday rolled around I was exhausted. We did some more sightseeing in Izmir and I made the mistake of wearing flip flops. It was raining all day long and I ended up stubbing my toe and now I think its either broken or sprained. It does not look pretty. Friday night I left on the 9 hour overnight bus ride back to Istanbul with a swollen toe. A 9 hour bus ride is very rough, but tickets to fly to Izmir were way too expensive for the holiday, especially on a student budget. I spend an enormous amount of t

ime on buses. Buses are the main mode of transportation around Turkey. On our bus was a family that I believe was moving to Izmir because they had literally all their belongings with them. I saw boxes of toys, dishes, bedding, appliances, etc. It was insane! There’s no luggage restrictions on buses here.

 Travelling is exhausting and very logistically difficult in Turkey. I would definitely not recommend traveling through Turkey for anyone who has not had prior travel experience in developing countries (unless you hire a tour group to do everything for you). Now I’m back in Istanbul and its back to school again I guess.