Follow Me As I Discover Land, Language and Self...
Did you know that Santa Claus is Turkish? In the 4th century, an orthodox priest named Nicholas became the bishop of Myra, a small town near Turkey’s Mediterranean Coast. He was known as unfailingly generous and pious. Legend has it that he performed numerous miracles and that he was present at the Council of Nicaea. Later he was canonized. St. Nicholas’ petite Byzantine Church still stands in Myra, and we…
Hi Angela!It is very exciting to hear from you as you are in Istanbul! You guys are very lucky because you are staying at one of the best places. Bebek neighborhood and the Rumelihisar castle are such great places but there is a lot more beauty you are about to see! When you go up hill from the castle, there is the campus of my undergrad university. I can say…
I have never lived in a place in which people are more involved with food. Wherever I go, at whatever time of day, I see coffee shops, restaurants and cafes full of people. Fresh fruit and vegetable stands burst with color in every neighborhood, more so in the poorer areas. Simits, pretzel-like bagels, are sold from carts everywhere in the city. Once I commented to a rather indifferent store clerk that I was going…
This past Saturday, we took a bus downtown and walked to the military museum to see The Chain. Former guardian of the Golden Horn, it is piled in a heap in its own alcove, black iron with little sign of wear. Somehow it was anticlimactic, maybe because thrown together that way, it looked weak and helpless. I was able to lift a link just a bit using two hands because…
Went to the airport on Saturday morning and waited for our visitors, Scott and Arlene. To pick up travelers, you have to go through security, but after that, you can sip coffee at a Starbucks or a Gloria Jean’s (a California franchise), and pass the time. At the arrivals door I saw two adorable little girls with long, neatly combed brown hair, holding bouquets of flowers for their dads’…
It’s so nice to meet an old friend and pass the time of day And talk about the hometown a million miles away. . . (Gordon Lightfoot, “Did She Mention My Name?”) That’s what’s been going on for me lately. Jean, a dear friend, arrived last Saturday with Mary, a colleague from 3M days whom I had all but lost touch with. We rode the tram to the Old City,…
Just like the stock market making a correction, my feelings about Turkey had to level off, and last week was the week it happened. On one hand it was a very good week. I was offered a job! It is teaching English for a young company called “Intellenglish.” My responsibilities will be regularly conversing with Turks who know some English, and devising strategies to help them improve. It’s part-time, up…
Special salad at Canli Balik restaurant in Amasra. It contains 26 different ingredients. My day starts with Nestlé, the Swiss company that in the 1970s promoted infant formula in developing countries in which clean drinking water was unavailable. That company somehow has its name on a majority of the breakfast cereals here, including those that carry the Quaker brand in the U.S. At first I vowed to continue my lifetime…
Part of the fun of having guests is watching how they react to Turkey. Their impressions mingle with ours, deepening and enriching our experience of the place. I have already mentioned nephew Jonathan’s joking confusion about which continent he was on. Angela was so impressed by Istanbul that she is calling it the best city she’s ever visited (even though we apparently missed its most elegant shopping street, Bagdad Caddesi,…
“It was considered one of the most disagreeable places we could have been sent to,” the French woman said. “People told us there was only one worse place on the entire continent.” We were standing with our husbands waiting to check out of a little hotel in Safranbolu, not far from Turkey’s Black Sea coast. Her well-behaved dog, an Irish terrier, had broken the ice between us. To my surprise,…
