Berlin was at a disadvantage. That’s where we were heading after four surprisingly sunny, whirlwind days in London. I feared that the Germany half of our December trip, organized to use soon-to-expire hotel points, would be a disappointment. And I knew that part of the problem was my stereotype of Germans.

In London we ate pappadums and paisam with Sankar’s cousin and family. We strolled along the Thames with old friends, Matthew and Louise, photographing landmarks such as, “the walkie talkie,” “the cheese grater,” and “the London Eye.” At the British Library, we peered at manuscripts ranging from the Magna Carta to Paul McCartney’s jotted Yesterday lyrics.

I thought ahead to Berlin. I’d long perceived German people as stern and humorless. Exacting, and demanding. Waiting for an Agatha Christie play to start on our last evening, I commented to our friends, with only a bit of hyperbole, “I’m afraid I’m going to do something wrong in Germany. I’ll break a rule or something, and people will yell at me.”

“I don’t think so,” Matthew replied

As we carried our suitcases through Paddington Station the next day, I felt the kind of fatigue that indicated a cold was coming on.

My Stereotype of Germans Goes Way Back

I’d spent just one day in Germany over twenty years ago, and had no significant interactions with Germans. But back in the eighties I’d spent a year working for a German boss who was temperamental and disapproving. I’d found German foods—sauerkraut, dumplings, pickles—lacking.

I also have a kind of psychological back story with Germany. I guess every American does. Although the country has done an admirable job of reconciling its 20^th century history, how can it counteract the near-continuous onslaught of Holocaust-related books, films, and television programs? It can’t. I’d been saddened and horrified more times than I could count.  

Thus, my perception of Germans. I had actually been known to proclaim that I had no interest in visiting Germany. It’s not difficult to make that kind of statement at age 64, because there are so many countries to visit and so little time.

One thing I never did, however, was connect my proclamations about Germany with my irritation over the question, “Aren’t you afraid to visit Turkey?” that Sankar and I receive whenever we travel to that country.

So why, then, did Sankar and I choose Berlin over, say, Bruge or Amsterdam? Well, we felt Berlin was a cosmopolitan “world city,” with fascinating Cold War and World War II sights. A place we really should see. We also knew Berlin had a Turkish neighborhood that might evoke the wonderful years we spent in Turkey. And I think a tiny part of me knew that my stereotype of Germans was ridiculous, and that it was time to challenge it.

A Rainy Start

It was drizzling when our plane landed in Berlin. We caught an Uber to our hotel, just three blocks from the Reichstag. The city appeared spread out, almost suburban. The Tiergarten, adjacent to our hotel, looked more like a forest. Aside from the regal Brandenburg Gate, most buildings appeared modern and undistinguished. They reminded me, disappointingly, of downtown Minneapolis. War—and the Soviet emphasis on functionality—had apparently erased most of Berlin’s charm.

A Worldly New Friend

We checked into a comfortable hotel room at the Marriott. There was a coffeemaker on the side table, but no water bottles, a nice nod to the environment. When we visited the lobby for information, the concierge, to our surprise, was a slim, neatly groomed Turk named Oğuzhan. We were so happy to meet someone from Turkey that we greeted him like an old friend.

Oğuzhan told us he had grown up in Germany, his parents Gastarbeiters, guest workers, who arrived over fifty years ago. When we lived in Turkey, I met several offspring of Gastarbeiters. My elegant supervisor, Dilek, fluent in Turkish, German, and English. Several 3M Turkey wives, well-educated and secularly inclined; their mothers had worn the headscarf, but they did not. One, an engineer, worked for a German company that sold chemicals to Iran, which she told us was the makeup capital of the world. “I go there every month.”

Oğuzhan was warm and eager to help, hardly my stereotype of Germans, and I realized with some envy that growing up trilingual would make a person quite cosmopolitan. He smiled when we told him we had, several years ago, spent a night in his ancestral town of Afyonkarahisar.

Oğuzhan gave us a map of a dozen or so Berlin Christmas markets, and we walked to the nearest one, in Gendarmenmarkt Square. Gendarmenmarkt contains the 19^th century Berlin concert hall and the 18^th century French and German churches, all of which, I later read, were restored after the Second World War. In the center of the square stood several dozen holiday shops in white tents with pointed tops. Some had open sides, but many were enclosed by clear plastic, and even heated. Shopping delights beckoned.

Christmas Galore 

Gendarmenmarkt stores were bursting with colorful ornaments, wooden candle carousels of all sizes, leather wallets and purses, hats, gloves, scarves, and hard candies in long, pointed cellophane bags. Close to a dozen establishments offered refreshments: glühwein, various bratwursts including “currywurst,” which sounded slightly alarming, and dishes involving noodles, potatoes, and pork. I was curious, but not quite ready to dig in.

History Lessons

Over the next two days, we walked through the extensive and up-to-date German History Museum. We learned that Germany prior to unification under “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck, wasn’t much more than a disparate collection of provinces, each with its own ruler. After an hour and a half, which brought us up to the twentieth century, we sat down for tea in its formal, but somehow cozy café.

The next day we visited the Pergamon museum, located on an island in the Spree river. It was a dazzling (but shameful) collection of artifacts from other lands, including the gates of Babylon and the market gate from Miletus, a Roman site in western Turkey.

Nearby was “Pergamon Museum. The Panorama.” This new site featured a three-story, multimedia diorama that put viewers in the middle of the ancient Roman city. With dramatic background music and evocative lighting, we watched Romans emerge from their homes at sunrise, worship at temples, shop at agoras, and gather to view performances in the evening.  It was a don’t-miss experience. 

On our last day, we toured the Berlin Wall Memorial, a sober, informative remembrance strung out along a quarter mile stretch of former Wall.

Tall, sometimes slightly plump, but rarely fat, Germans dressed in earth tones, wearing sensible shoes and warm-looking jackets. They appeared casual, confident, and unpretentious. I felt the comfort of looking similar in appearance, something I’ve missed in our travels to Latin America, southern Europe, and Asia, where Sankar has blended in.

It was odd, but as soon as I arrived in Germany, I got so caught up observing and interacting that my stereotype, alive for years, seemed to exit my mind. It was like when you imagine a place, but find that when you get there, the old image becomes difficult to recall. New impressions were quickly writing over my old ones.

Patriotic Immigrants Were Not my Stereotype of Germans

We climbed into an Uber early one day with, “Good morning,” only to hear an emphatic “Guten tag,” from the driver. This was the one and only reprimand we received in Berlin, and it was given by a Turk. A recent arrival, he told us in Turkish that he liked Berlin, particularly its manageable size and ease of getting around, and jotted down for us the name of a popular restaurant in Kreutzberg, the Turkish neighborhood.

A-a-a-choo!

The rain kept falling and my cold kept getting worse. Sankar and I both felt tired, and with no social engagements, we found ourselves dozing off in mid-evening and sleeping late in the morning. That felt good, but we were wasting precious sightseeing time.

We had forgotten to bring decongestants, so we stopped at a pharmacy. The woman at the counter was the pharmacist herself, and to my surprise, I had her attention for more than five minutes. “How much congestion do you have?” “Do you have a cough?” “Would you describe it as a lot, a little or not at all?” “Do you want to take something dissolved in water, or would you prefer a pill?” Again, not my stereotype of Germans. The Grippostad she sold me for less than $10 made me feel a bit better, though I longed for Sudafed.

A Splurge

The night after our Gendarmenmarkt visit, I woke several times, thinking about a small black purse I’d seen there. The leather on one of its sides had been worked into a lovely flower shape. We went back to the market and ended up buying it. The vendor was also the artist, one Karin Scholz, from Dusseldorf, her card read, perhaps fifty years of age. After we finished the transaction, to my astonishment, she came out of her booth and gave me a long, tight hug.

Seeking a light lunch, we sat down at a picnic table in a market café warmed by heating lamps, and ordered noodle soup. We were surprised to find ourselves beside four travelers from Guatemala, and enjoyed a lengthy Spanish conversation.

We returned to the market another day, this time for chocolates and candle holders. After making our purchases, we sat down in another café, whose menu highlighted goose products, and ordered potato soup. It came full of various herbs and weiner slices, delicious, but not overly fatty. It was only 2:00 pm, but daylight was fading. We lingered in the warmth of the cafe, feeling a glow of companionship with the other patrons.

Unexpected Kindness

The Marriott charged thirty Euros for breakfast, so each morning we headed to a coffee shop across the street from our hotel, whose counter displayed a tantalizing array of pastries. I can say that German croissants are every bit as good as French ones. On our second morning, with no hint of their availability. Sankar asked if they had eggs. I was a little surprised he’d asked (but it didn’t occur to me to wonder that he—or we—would get yelled at). The young clerk admitted that they did have eggs. In just a few minutes a plump, beaming Fraulein emerged from the back kitchen and placed in front of him a generous plate of scrambled eggs topped by herbs and accompanied by a green salad. 

It was pouring the afternoon of the weekly market in Kreutzberg so, sadly, we gave up on visiting the Turkish neighborhood. Late that afternoon, the sky still dark, we were resting in our hotel room. We had 5:30 Reichstag reservations, made online back home, which had generated official-looking confirming paperwork. But we couldn’t motivate ourselves to put on our rain gear and venture out.

We didn’t even want to leave our hotel, so for dinner we decided to splurge at our hotel’s “American-style Steakhouse.” The menu was limited and expensive, and the waiters a bit snooty, but I was able to order barbecued pork ribs (I think pork is on every menu at every meal in Germany) and Sankar a ribeye. After our food was served, we were surprised by a visit from another smiling Fraulein, whose job seemed to be to make her way around the restaurant asking every diner how they liked their food. She was delighted when we told her we were pleased.

Debriefing

Our Berlin guidebook opens with the phrase, “Berlin is a city of leafy boulevards.” It goes on to say that, “Berliners love to hang out in parks and along riverbanks, as if enjoying a continuous open-air party.” Clearly, the city is at its best in warmer weather, and I don’t really recommend it in the winter. For Christmas markets, we might have chosen a smaller, more picturesque German city or town, although we probably would have experienced rain there as well.

Back home, my cold lingering and combining with jet lag, I slowly completed my Christmas shopping and house decorating. I didn’t download my photos for a couple of weeks, nor did I reflect on my travels. But then a friend asked, “How was Berlin?” and my quick answer, “Fine. The people were really nice, friendly and helpful,” made me realize that my perceptions had changed.

Immersion—even one as brief and lackluster as our four rainy, half-sick days—had produced positive emotions—gratefulness, warmth, feelings of connection and inclusion. And these emotions had replaced my stereotype!

Everything, it seems, boils down to emotions. And now I began to understand “Aren’t you afraid to go to Turkey?”  It’s a stand-in for emotions surrounding decades of sad and horrifying news from the Middle East. But it is also changeable.

Over our three years in Turkey, we hosted 26 visitors. Some hesitated to make the trip. But as they left, they all had the same comment. “Wow! What a great place!”

For additional reading about Berlin, go to: https://www.fodors.com/world/europe/germany

For more on unexpected kindness, go to: https://suesturkishadventures.com/unexpected-kindness/

For more on stereotypes, go to: https://suesturkishadventures.com/perceptions-and-illusions/

The post Is My Stereotype of Germans Fair? appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

As if on cue, when September arrived, the humidity dropped. The days remained sunny, but the sky turned a deeper blue. Cool breezes ruffled the Bosphorus. I turned our living room air conditioner off, stowed the controls in a closet, and kept the doors to our balcony open all day long.

Now my walks down through the forested path to the sea were a treat. On the shore of the Bosphorus, I jogged between water and rows of pastel-colored Ottoman houses. Then, breathing the scent of pines, I climbed back up to our apartment.

It wasn’t just the drier air that felt invigorating. So did the thought of new fall activities. First priority: enrolling in a Turkish class.

Speaking Turkish would be my entry to the culture; it would help me start to develop my own pathway here. The Turkish language, neither Indo-European nor Semitic, is related faintly to both Finnish and Hungarian, and is spoken by many people to the east, in Azerbaijan and many of the “stan” countries. I already knew it was difficult: it has few English cognates, and requires to speaker to place verbs at the ends of sentences. On the plus side, Turkish is pronounced exactly the way it is written, and its rules have few exceptions.

As soon as language schools reopened for the school year, Umit and I set out to investigate. I had seen advertisements for schools named Tomer and Dilmer, and we headed to their somewhat shabby offices, one on Barbaros Street in Beşiktaş, and the other near Taksim Square.

I had cherished language classes in both of “my” previous countries. In Yemen, my employer, Catholic Relief Services, had granted me two months off work so that I could participate in Peace Corps language classes. The training had been scheduled for late fall, 1979, but after American hostages were seized in Iran, the American government had held its Middle-East-bound volunteers back.

“Yemen 13,” the country’s thirteenth group of American volunteers, didn’t end up arriving until January, after I was nearly six months into my job. I’d already completed an introductory Arabic course, taught by a Swiss priest, but relished the chance to review words and structures. Often, language classes move too fast and end up building on unsteady foundations. The repetition helped fix Arabic in my mind.

I had loved studying Arabic. In fact, some of my best days in Yemen had been spent reclining in the cushioned top floor mufraj of our mud-brick training building, listening to our teachers spool out Arabic lessons. And the results were rewarding: when I could finally comprehend what people were saying and begin to converse, my stress declined dramatically. And Arabs forever ceased to appear threatening.

Alas, I didn’t recognize what was clearly in front of me: I was far more interested in language than in my health education job. It was a sign that should have put me on a path toward working with words. Doing so would have eased a great deal of angst in the upcoming years. But the sign went unnoticed.

I arrived in Costa Rica a decade and a half later with adequate Spanish, but augmented it with much-anticipated weekly conversations and forays into Latin American literature with a wonderful tutor. And finally, after returning from that country at age 41, I realized that my professional work needed to focus on words.

I was so glad to have had experiences conversing in foreign tongues. Although nearly all of my friends had studied German, French, or Spanish in high school, most had never had a chance to use what they’d learned. That was a pity. Being able to understand another person’s words—even if one is not able to replicate that level of speech—was, I thought, a kind of magical phenomenon. It was like breaking through dense clouds into bright light, a seemingly dramatic emergence that actually required months of plodding study which, like the pain of childbirth, was forgotten once the breakthrough occurs. Rarely in my life had there been such a straight path between mundane effort and exhilarating reward. To me, this sense of exhilaration was even better than sex, and there was no question I was going to pursue fluency here in Turkey.

It was typical of the newcomer fog I went around in here that I hadn’t given much thought to what might happen when I visited a language school. At both Tomer and Dilmer, I was immediately guided to a small, empty classroom and handed a written test to complete: ten or so pages of multiple choice questions photocopied so many times that the lettering appeared blurry.

I had never taken a written Turkish exam before; heretofore my “tests” had simply come in the form of verbal communication. And I wasn’t particularly interested in reading and writing Turkish, only in being able to speak and understand it. Perhaps, I thought, there would be another phase of the test, one in which someone would converse with me.

Impatient, I turned in my papers before trying to complete all the questions. But apparently that was the end of the assessment. At Tomer, a stern-looking middle-aged man glanced at my test paper, but not at me, and told me I would be placed with students who had absolutely no knowledge of Turkish. At Dilmer, the situation was similar.

My Turkish was better than that of a rank beginner! I had taken an online course for three months, had amassed several hundred flashcards, and had a firm grasp of the present tense. True, that hadn’t made me very conversant, but at least I was able to communicate my needs to shopkeepers. Miffed by the impersonal treatment I’d received (and now with considerably more pride than my younger, more flexible Yemen self), I didn’t stop to consider that perhaps my Turkish underlayment was also weak, and thus taking a repeat course might be a good idea.

Back home, I expressed my frustration to Sankar. He listened and then, to my surprise, took my complaints to his secretary, Didem, whose job description included helping me get settled in Turkey. The next day, Didem called and offered to accompany me to the final school on my list. Its full name was unclear, but it went by the acronym EFINST.

EFINST was just off the main road that ran through the upscale suburb of Etiler, not far from our apartment. Inside its offices Didem and I sat down with the director, a heavily made-up woman of about forty named Ciğdem (CHEE dem) and, formalities first, sipped tulip glasses of tea. The two chatted in Turkish, referring to the organization as “EF,” and I noticed that Didem was poised and self-assured beyond her clerical job title.

After a few minutes, I went off to a classroom and took yet another written test. It was not much different from the others, but this time I was expecting it and applied myself more diligently, making educated guesses when possible. The result? I wasn’t told my numerical score, but Ciğdem told me I could join an intermediate class if I was willing to take two weeks of private lessons to bring me up to that level.

Ten full days of tutoring paid for by the company? What could be better? I thanked Didem for her role in securing this.

I had approached EFINST different from the first two schools, and in a manner I was unaccustomed to, bringing in reinforcements and throwing the weight of the company around. That went against my usual modus operandi—I disliked the feeling of getting something I didn’t deserve. But having recently capitulated to having a driver, I decided there was no use complaining about this new prerogative. I brushed any negative thoughts away: the school was probably pleased to have a new student and I was determined to work my very hardest.

I have always been the language person in our marriage. In our first years together, Sankar and I made several visits to Spain, and, not knowing a word of the language, he took my lead. In the mid-1990s we moved to Costa Rica, and he started Spanish lessons. He did well, thanks in part to his willingness to speak even when he didn’t quite know the right words. But I’d had a head start, and throughout our time there had enjoyed being the family translator.

With Turkish, Sankar and I had both started out at zero, but from the beginning I’d had more time to study the language. And Sankar’s job here involved traveling outside of Turkey a great deal, making any kind of mastery both more difficult and less useful.

I’ve always been a competitive person, and I enjoyed having this advantage. But my language skills didn’t always prevail. Perhaps because Sankar was raised in multi-lingual, multi-cultural India (and had spent his childhood moving from state to state in India, each time learning a new language and writing system), he used a kind of full-context approach, taking in body language, eyebrows, gestures, and tones of voice in addition to words, to suss out meaning.

From the opposite kind of background, in which everyone I knew had been essentially the same (this, I was beginning to realize, was a real handicap, and not just in the realm of language), I tended to focus solely on words themselves. When stumped, I’d find myself reaching for my pocket dictionary while Sankar focused on capturing an approximation of meaning and then acting on it. In those cases I ended up feeling both chastened (it galled me that imprecision, approximation, could save the day) and envious.

Umit dropped me off at EF for my first day of lessons. On a large, shaded terrace in front of the building, I sat down with Ferda, EF’s director of language studies and my Turkish tutor for the next two weeks.

Ferda didn’t look the way I expected. To my inexperienced eye, Turkish women fell into just two categories: stylishly Italian (slim physique, shoulder-length brown hair, careful makeup, stylish clothing) and Russian peasant (filmy headscarf with a point halfway down the back; baggy, often floor-length coat; little or no makeup). But Ferda didn’t fit either of these. Tall and forty-something, she had black hair that she wore twisted into a braid, and little makeup. She was wearing a woven peasant top and a wrap skirt that almost looked Guatemalan. She would definitely fit into my more nuanced American categories: crunchy, earth mother.

Ferda greeted me in Turkish and always spoke it thereafter (I didn’t know if she spoke any English.) Her voice was light and almost singsong-y, a pitch that could have been annoying, but wasn’t. I found her words unusually easy to understand—and have never figured out quite why that was so. Even more amazing, she understood all of the broken Turkish that came from my mouth. She talked, I listened and understood. I tried to talk, and she affirmed. Our two weeks flew past. I wished I could continue private study with Ferda, but knew that wouldn’t be practical.

On the first day of intermediate class, I arrived early and was directed upstairs, where I waited outside a locked classroom. A portrait of Atatürk hung on the wall and I stood in front of it, gazing at this fierce, handsome Turkish demi-god. His pale blue eyes were the key, I decided: both arresting and exotic. I tried to read the lengthy quotation under the picture, but quickly gave up.

Soon another student arrived, a compact, athletic-looking blonde. She introduced herself in British-accented English as Annika, from Sweden, and we began to chat. She told me she’d been living in Turkey for a year, having moved here with her husband, who managed a subsidiary of a German machine tool company. Their 11-year-old son was with them, and they had four grown children back in Sweden.

A staff person came and unlocked the classroom door for us, and other students drifted in. Two Germans, one named Karl, who said he was spending his two week vacation here studying Turkish, and the other, Adrian, a Gallic–looking young Berliner. And finally Anete, a striking, chestnut-haired young woman from the Czech Republic.

Ten minutes late, the teacher, a thirty-something woman with dark, curly hair, named Gülcan (GOOL jahn; Gül = rose and Can = dear) sauntered in in no particular hurry. She seemed to know both women from previous classes and greeted them. Then we went around and introduced ourselves. When it was Monica’s turn, to my surprise, Gülcan broke in with, “This is Annika. She is very karamsar.” Gülcan explained in Turkish that karamsar meant positif değil (degil negates the word in front of it), not positive. Annika looked surprised, and her face reddened, but she gave a shrug of admittance.

Then we got started. First, Gülcan spoke to us in Turkish—about the weather, about what she’d done the past weekend, about the previous night’s television programs. This was difficult and, as she was going too fast for me to use my dictionary, I found myself leaning forward and staring intently at her, desperate to try and pick up any and all cues. After that we got to work on a Turkish verb tense. A printed reading followed. The class would continue in this pattern.

At noon (the class met from 9 am until 2 pm three days each week), we students walked several blocks to a tiny Turkish restaurant run by a family from Anatolia. This was my first exposure to Turkish neighborhood food and it was positif. The place offered a buffet of rice and barley dishes, meat and vegetable stews, bread, and usually a sütlü tatlı, milky dessert (Turks are hopelessly addicted to pudding). It made me smile to think of the provincial staff having, simply by dint of their café’s location, to accustom themselves to tongue-tied students stumbling in, pointing dumbly at foods they wanted to eat, and then fumbling to count out Turkish lira.

After lunch, if the weather was sunny, the five of us would walk to a tiny park nearby and sit and chat (in English) about life in our countries.  

It was quickly clear that I was the weakest student in the class. First, I had to tune out the others in a kind of trance just to understand what Gülcan was saying. Self-consciousness forgotten, I raised my hand for help whenever I was stumped, which was often. But then, when asked to come out with spoken Turkish, I became tongue-tied.

I remember a conversation about “what we did over the weekend,” in which I wanted to tell Gülcan about a delicious orange-colored tabbouli-like salad I’d encountered. I thought the salad was called kisir, which would have been pronounced keeSEER, but it was actually kısır, using the undotted Turkish i, which pronounced “uh.” As I struggled to say kuhSUHR, Gülcan looked at me, first with puzzlement and then with annoyed exasperation. The class fell silent, embarrassed. Finally, she rolled her eyes and gave up, turning back to the board.

Speaking out in a foreign language opens a person to ridicule, and I hated being in this position. These excruciating moments would occur again and again in class—and would come back to me every time I ran into the now-hateful salad.

I had always been an eager, sit-in-the-front-of-the-class kind of student. Smiling, keeping my homework up to date, always turning in assignments on time. But here my effort and interest seemed to draw the teacher’s ire. I began to feel anxious about asking Gülcan questions, and was even less able to produce Turkish. One day she even singled me out, much as she had done to Annika on the first day, with, “Susan, siz duygusal, bence,” Susan, I think you are emotional.

One morning in pouring rain—the dry, fall weather had given way to frequent thunderstorms—Umit dropped me off at EF and then headed back to Asia to take Sankar on a customer visit. I went upstairs and waited by our classroom as usual, but nobody turned up. After ten, then fifteen minutes, I went down to the administrative offices and asked what was going on. The secretary informed me that Gülcan had cancelled class that day. I hadn’t been informed; clearly, the others had.

If it had been nice day, I would have simply left, making the half hour walk back home, but with rain coming down, I didn’t quite know what to do.

“I don’t have a ride home, and I wasn’t told about the cancellation,” I informed the secretary. I was angry, and becoming more so as I thought about what had happened. But I was also aware of being a guest here—and acculturated enough to be embarrassed at having fallen out of favor with my teacher.

One of EF’s drivers (all organizations had them) finally took me home that day. I called Annika and learned that Gülcan had emailed her, and presumably all the other students, about the cancellation. The next day Gülcan told me she hadn’t had any contact information for me.

If this incident had taken place back in the States, I would have headed back to the administrative office, insisted on seeing my files and contact info, and then taken that information to Gülcan to show her. But I didn’t do that. I didn’t want her to treat me even worse.

Gülcan was one of only two hostile Turks I would meet in my years in Turkey, and I spent time trying to figure out the reasons for her behavior. The first thing that came to my mind was that perhaps she disliked Americans. Surely our war in Iraq had given her and her countrymen reason. During our several days of language and culture training back in St. Paul, a Turkish trainer had confided that she had been furious with the U.S. back in 2003 and afterward because our war had nearly destroyed Turkish tourism. But the woman had gone on to say that most Turks had gotten over those sentiments.

I was Gülcan’s oldest student, the weakest in Turkish, and probably the most intense. My face took on a confused expression whenever I didn’t understand something, and then my hand would shoot up. Maybe my eagerness irritated her. Maybe my constant curiosity seemed like a challenge to her teaching. Or perhaps she simply realized that she was the gatekeeper for my ambitions, and decided to lord that power over me.

I disliked going to class each day. But I didn’t think seriously of quitting. Staying home would be worse than putting up with Gülcan: it would put a roadblock in my way here. At least I was meeting people and making a few friends. I appreciated having something to do three days a week—and having homework to do in the evenings. Besides, after failing to pursue my interest in language for so many years, how could I step off the path now?

I remember sitting in class frustrated almost to the point of tears, but I don’t recall many conversations about the situation with Sankar. I recently asked Sankar about this, and he said he doesn’t remember me being overly upset. Apparently I hadn’t made a big issue of it at home, hadn’t asked him for advice on whether I should continue. This strikes me as an inadvertently healthy move: I was making my own way, not tying this problem to his bringing me to Turkey. I had insisted on a higher-level class, he had helped me get it, and now it was my own business.

At this point, it simply became a matter of waiting the class out. It was only eight weeks long; perhaps we would get a different teacher for the next session.

The class did have one non-language positive: my interesting classmates. Karl, from Neuss—oddly, the only place in Germany I had ever visited—was quiet, but he apparently worked as a salesman. I suspected interest in a Turkish girl was his impetus for studying the language, but I never found out.

Anete, 27, was from a village of less than 200 people in The Czech Republic. She had been discovered as a model at the opera house in Prague, and had come to Turkey on location. Here, she had fallen in love with and married a Turk.

Adrian worked as a German teacher back in Berlin. Most days he arrived in class carrying a bright yellow duck umbrella (the weather was becoming more and more rainy), and he told us he taught German simply by walking his students around his city. Ever since, I’ve always pictured Adrian leading a group of student-ducklings along Berlin sidewalks with his umbrella unfurled, rain or shine. Adrian had forgotten to bring his passport to Turkey, but had managed to talk the normally ultra-serious Turkish authorities into letting him in—an amazing feat. He had a genuine interest in learning Turkish because, as he said, “I want to get to know the Turks in my city.” That sentiment would have melted the immigration officials.

And then there was Annika. I had experienced First Overseas Friendships before, and knew they didn’t always last, but Annnika and I were getting along well. To be sure, she was negative; I would always associate the word maalesef, (MA luh sef), meaning, “unfortunately,” with her. She used it all the time. Maalesef, she didn’t see her other children enough. Maalesef, Turkey was not at all like Sweden. Maalesef, there wasn’t much to do here.

Hearing Annika criticize Turkey made me want to defend it. I pointed out interesting places Sankar and I had visited, urging her to appreciate the bountiful treasures in Istanbul and outside the city. I offered to lend her a guidebook, and asked her if she was interested in coming with me to the upcoming International Women of Istanbul meeting, but she shook her head. These kinds of conversations ended up buoying my own mood, if not hers, reminding me of the positives here in Turkey.

I understood how Annika was feeling and behaving because I had felt and acted the same way in Costa Rica. Being with Annika was like revisiting my past, like taking a look at Expatriate Wife 1.0. while I was busy working to build version 2.0.

Annika did have some habits I admired. She told me that every morning, she went to her apartment complex’s gym and ran several miles on the treadmill, all the while composing Turkish sentences in her head. Simultaneous exercising and language learning: what a boost to the entire body!

And so I continued, attending a class I often dreaded. I was gaining the kind of perspective adversity often provides: I had never bothered to consider the “bad” students who had been my classmates in my school days—the ones that sat in the back or off to the side, fooling around unhappily and silent when called upon, but now I had ample insights into how they must have felt.

Was my Turkish improving? Probably. My flash card pile was growing, and every day I felt just a little more confident.

Stone by stone, step by step. Building a path that would lead me out of isolation. And before long I got some good news. Our next eight-week class would be taught by Ferda!

The post Old Dog New Tricks: Trying to Learn Turkish at Age 55 appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

“Try to remember that you are a guest in their country. Try to be respectful.” University study abroad brochure.

As many of you know, it was quite a challenge for me to get used to living in a Turkish mega-city. But now, after two years in Istanbul, I generally feel competent as I run errands, head to my volunteer job, meet friends for tea and lunch, and guide visitors. When I encounter a situation that gets the better of me, I hesitate to share it because it represents failure. But it’s all part of the expatriate experience.

I went to Istanbul’s enormous Grand Bazaar yesterday to look for Ottoman cloth for some pillows I wanted to make. A friend recommended a shop called Deregozu. When I arrived there, I noticed it was smaller than most Grand Bazaar shops, many of which are the size of walk-in closets. I told the proprietor, a man named Hassan, what I was looking for, and he insisted on walking me to the Deregozu warehouse, a few blocks outside the bazaar, to view a larger selection.

At the warehouse, it was quickly evident that Deregozu did not have the elegant, thick cloth with slender tulip designs that I sought, but instead lots of suzani embroidery work and colorfully-dyed silk ikat.  Hassan offered me a cup of tea and, along with several other customers, I looked around.

I noticed a piece of fabric covered with attractive needlework called kaitag, from Daghestan (the name of this area of the world would become notorious a few years later because the Boston Marathon bombers hailed from there) in southern Russia.

When I asked the price, Hassan quoted me $200 (400 Turkish Lira — TL).  While I pondered whether to offer a lower price, he said goodbye and I was left with his friendly brother, Hamza, and Ayse, a sweet, young headscarfed woman.

I looked around some more, and then asked Hamza for the prices of a suzani table runner and the Russian piece. He replied that they were 250 TL (about $125) each. Pleased, I picked up the Russian piece to buy and offered a debit card, which Hamza told me the shop did not accept. Opening my wallet, I noticed I had just 250 TL inside. Hamza told me I could pay later, but I told him no, I would pay now, but would then need to be directed to a cash machine so I would have some cash for lunch and the trip home.

I completed the transaction and said goodbye and thanked Hamza. He offered me a stack of business cards to give to friends. Then Ayse took me down the street to the cash machine. As we walked, we chatted about her English studies, and she asked where in Istanbul I lived. When we reached Garanti Bank, I said goodbye to her and got in line.

A few minutes later, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and there was Ayse again. She held out an IPhone and, surprised, I took it. “Hello?”

“Hello,” said Hamza. “Were you going to bring back the 100 lira you owe me, or pay me later?”

“100 more lira? I thought the price of the cloth was 250 lira.”

“No, it was 350.”

“Hmm . . .  okay,” I replied. I had repeated the lira price to Hamza several times in both English and Turkish to make sure I understood it. He had nodded in agreement. Had I mixed up two hundred and three hundred in both Turkish and English? That didn’t seem likely, but now I felt confused.

The Garanti machine thrust out my cash and Ayse was standing there with her hand open. I gave her 100 TL and she turned and was gone.

I quickly realized I had been scammed: deceived, or at the very least, mistreated. I was angry at the Deregozu shopkeepers but also at myself. There were other ways I could have handled the situation. I could have marched back to the store and asked for my money back, apologizing for “my error” and telling them 350 TL was simply too much. But I didn’t.

Although I’m proud of my progress with Turkish, it is easy to knock me off balance, language-wise. On top of that, I carry with me the firm belief that I am a guest here in Turkey and should avoid unpleasantness. Most of the time that works well for me, preventing an impatient comment or roll of the eyes, and causing me to observe the people around me and act as they do (for example, remaining quiet on public transportation). But wise as that sentiment is, how can I turn it off when an unpleasant situation suddenly arises?

In my case, I simply cannot. Oh well. My positive interactions here outnumber the negative by at least 50 to 1. Yesterday’s incident was simply part of the (low) price I pay for living here.

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