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.

Traffic wasn’t usually a problem until we were on the bridge, but one December morning, we came to a complete stop just a few blocks from our apartment.

“What’s going on?” Sankar asked, looking up from his text messages.

Up ahead, we could see a cherry picker truck. It seemed to be blocking a roundabout.. As we inched closer we could see a dense-looking artificial Christmas tree standing sentinel in the middle of the grassy circle. Perhaps fifteen feet in height, it was made of some kind of tufted green substance and blanketed with tiny white twinkling lights. A bright red, eight-pointed star already sat on top.

The tree had only about a third of its ornaments; this project could take awhile. What to do? Noticing a break in the oncoming lane, Ümit backed up a quarter car length. Then, with a snort of exasperation, he swiveled the steering wheel, turned sharply, and headed toward a different O-1 entrance ramp.

As we got into a long line of cars on the First Bridge, I pondered a Christian holiday causing Muslim commuters to be late to work.  I also thought about my job. My one-year contract would end in late January. I was a better teacher now, at least according to survey results I had just received. My students had given me above average ratings, and several had even commented, “She is a good teacher.” I was enjoying my coworkers. Six of us teachers who shared an office had become friends, telling jokes, passing snacks, and occasionally going out for coffee after classes. I was pleased to be included in this group. Everyone else was under thirty-five.

When ÖzU first offered me a teaching contract, I was so grateful that I thought, even if Sankar was transferred in the middle of a school year, I would stay and soldier on, finishing out the year, perhaps living alone in a small apartment on the Asian side. I thought the job would be just the thing for me: absorbing and fulfilling. And it often was. But it was also becoming too much. I was starting to dislike standing in the classroom for four hours each day and spending another three or four hours every day preparing. I was on a treadmill and I wanted off.

But the idea of not re-upping when my contract ended put me in a quandary. First, I had made a major fuss about getting work here in Turkey, and I had received considerable help getting a job. Second, work had carried me away from the boredom and frustration so corrosive to expatriate marriages. I actually believed it had rescued my entire Turkey experience. It had changed my focus from myself to my students. I had allowed me to have a professional experience just like Sankar. It had even boosted my self-worth, fragile after years at home raising kids.

Teaching here had also led to a significant personal discovery. Despite my struggles with unruly students, I loved the interplay of culture and language that teaching English as a Second Language involved. I wanted to pursue ESL teaching back in the States, and I planned take a certificate course when I returned, although I had no idea what my marketability would be at age 57. Now, with a year of experience under my belt, I asked myself: If I taught at ÖzU for another six months or even a year, would that increase my chances of getting a teaching job in Minnesota? I wasn’t sure it would.

I did realize that, if I wasn’t employed here in Turkey, I would certainly experience some unproductive days. But I didn’t think resentment would make a comeback. The decision not to work would be mine; there would be nobody else to blame for it. Still, it was an open question, sort of like, “If I stop taking the medication, will my headaches return?”

My teaching colleagues worked because they needed income. I was different. I didn’t need the money. My $28,000 annual salary wasn’t necessary to keep Sankar and me afloat. So increasingly, a Grinch-like voice in my head whispered: “Why are you giving up five full days each week? Why are you giving up eleven months each year?”

I had thought that, by moving to Turkey, I’d be saying goodbye to Christmas. There hadn’t been any signs of the Nativity in Yemen back in 1979 and ’80, and I didn’t expect any in Istanbul, either. While packing to move, I had, however, tucked a few Christmas ornaments into my suitcase. I thought maybe I’d be able to find the top of an evergreen tree or some potted plant to decorate when the time came. Last year, I had taken off for the States in mid-December to celebrate the holiday back home. This year, Sankar and I would be staying in Turkey. Angela and Greg would join us.

At Istinye Park mall, located in an upscale neighborhood  north of us, a huge cone-shaped Christmas “tree,” laden with gold stars and red garlands, now stood on the main floor. Hundreds upon hundreds of artificial red poinsettia blooms decorated the edges of the mall’s many balconies and arches, with strands of white lights hanging from them. Thousands of Westerners lived in Istanbul and I knew this was a commercial effort, but I felt sentimental during the Christmas season, and a dose of familiarity helped prevent homesickness.

Rows of blue and white lights now twinkled high above historic Istiklal Avenue. When I entered a men’s shop to look for a gift for Sankar, the middle-aged woman waiting on me confided, “Ever since I was a child, I loved Christmas!” At grocery stores in Kuruçesme and Levent, I stared in amazement at entire aisles devoted entirely to Santa hats, wrapping paper and ornaments.

It was a delight to observe creative and sometimes quirky Turkish efforts to commemorate the holiday. One shop window displayed a Christmas tree made of pale wooden dowels, with red and white wooden balls on their ends. A shoe store had a tree made entirely of overlapping red leather slippers. Santa Clauses of all sizes, made of ceramic, wood and felt, were everywhere. Several malls even had life-size mechanical versions that moved their lips and tilted their shoulders. Beside them, shoppers—mostly adults and mostly Turks—posed for pictures.

Perhaps all of this shouldn’t have surprised me. Turkey had been Christian for a millennium and the original St. Nicholas was the fourth-century bishop of Myra, a town in southern Turkey. And Turkey was secure in its identity, unlike neighboring countries bitter about Western colonization.

Christmas tunes burst forth in shopping centers and at Atatürk International Airport. Most were secular, but some lyrics were apparently not well understood. Over and over, we heard Loreena McKennitt’s devout “The Seven Rejoices of Mary,” with its verse about “the Holy Baby.”

We needed to find a Christmas tree. From what I understood, the city of Istanbul prohibited the cutting down of any kind of tree. And, although artificial trees were available, I wanted something real. So Sankar and Ümit, two good sports, neither of whom grew up observing Christmas, went to a nearby nursery and bought a four-foot-tall potted pine. It took some effort for them to lug it up to our apartment. When it reached there, I decided it needed as much light as possible, so I placed it out on our balcony. After Christmas, we would give it to Ümit’s mother to plant in her garden.

Earnest about helping me observe a major religious holiday, Ümit accompanied me to the mall to buy decorations. He quickly found a string of hot pink lights and held them up, declaring, “These are the best ones.”  I ended up buying them along with a matching set of ornaments.

The drive to the mall took Ümit and me through a tunnel. Now, the inside of that tunnel glowed with tiny white lights. “What are these for?” I asked Ümit.

“New Year’s,” he replied.

The New Year was already looking busy. It was possible we’d be transferred home in June. And in the early months, we had three groups of visitors arriving. Each would stay for over a week, a nice diversion from work. I was already feeling distracted, however, by something I wasn’t able to participate in. Waverley had gathered a group of expatriates—mothers from the international school—who went out each week to explore Old Istanbul. They called themselves The Monday Ladies.

A year before I would probably have dismissed a group like this as a bunch of bored wives trying to kill time. But I now wished I could go with them. I longed to wander the narrow passages of the Bazaar Quarter, poking into obscure mosques and defunct Byzantine churches. I longed to have the time to soak up the atmosphere of Constantinople.

With this allure and a feeling that my time in Turkey was growing short, I broached the topic of leaving my job with Sankar. He was surprised. The job meant a lot to me. He understood my desire to delve into Istanbul, but was wary of old patterns reemerging. “Don’t assume we’re leaving here in June,” he warned. “You might be sitting around here all year.”

He was right. But now that I’d opened the door to leaving, little things at work began to annoy me. Management tended toward severity. After I received eighteen positive and two negative ratings from my students, my boss said she wanted my reaction in writing. I  pretended I didn’t understand, murmuring that I was flattered my students thought so highly of me, but I knew which ratings I was being asked to address.

And then my Turkish colleagues. They sometimes acted as if we foreigners were just a necessary evil. Although formal meetings were conducted in English, occasional department discussions in Turkish excluded us. And how was it that they almost never asked us native speakers for English help? (A rare and admirable exception was the deputy director, who stopped me in the corridor one day with, “Sue, is it better to say ‘I am in the Internet’ or ‘I am on the Internet?’”)

There was an administrative assistant to whom we teachers had to go for office supplies, copier assistance, and other support. Friendly to the Turkish teachers, this person managed to “help” us foreigners as little and as grudgingly as possible.

“It’s because we’re needy,” Caitlin explained. Yes, we foreigners did have extra needs. We were clueless about department minutiae and we periodically needed help with paperwork for our work permits. It was very rare to meet unfriendly Turks, and now came the enticement: if I quit, I won’t have to deal with this anymore.

And finally, there was the upcoming Christmas season during which, regardless of whether or not I signed a contract for 2012, I’d have to work straight through. While Angela and Greg were here, I wouldn’t have much time to spend with them, nor would I have much time to shop, bake or decorate. I did understand that Big Nergis couldn’t give us five or six Christian teachers days off without looking unfair. We had taken advantage of all of Turkey’s Muslim and secular holidays. But still, I found the situation irritating.

Caitlin also felt squeezed by the holidays, and she and I discussed this dilemma. Finally, we decided to ask Big Nergis if we could work on Friday morning before the Sunday holiday (thank goodness we didn’t have to work on Christmas Day itself) instead of our usual Friday afternoon. That would extend our holiday weekend a half day. We’d have to make special arrangement, however, as classrooms would be full of regularly-scheduled students. After Big Nergis agreed, we decided to combine our two classes and meet in the auditorium.

“I know—we’ll show a movie! The Grinch who Stole Christmas,” Caitlin suggested.

“Huh? A Christmas movie?”

“We did it at Bilkent and it went over just fine.”

She was right.

As the holiday approached, Neslihan, a colleague who occasionally asked me for help with her American Studies doctorate papers, presented me with a pretty music box that played “Deck the Halls.” The elegant Çirağan hotel, formerly an Ottoman palace, hosted Christmas carolers from the British School, including one of Waverley’s daughters. Turks sitting in the lobby applauded. Adjacent to the carolers stood a gingerbread house of such dimensions that it looked like the Houses of Parliament. Next to it, customers could buy little Christmas trees made of white chocolate and adorned with the words, “Mary Christmas.”

Angela and Greg arrived the week before Christmas, and our gifts for each other began forming a line on the living room ledge overlooking the Bosphorus. They admired Istanbul’s decorations and enjoyed the balmy weather that allowed us to stroll comfortably outside.

We ate a huge Turkish meal that week at Gokhan and Burcu’s apartment alongside their small artificial Christmas tree. On Christmas Eve we went to St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church on Istiklal for late afternoon meditation. Christmas Day dawned sunny and 55 degrees and, after gift-giving, Angela and I walked with some sense of irony to the seaside Rumeli Hisar fortress that Mehmet the Conqueror had put up in four months in 1453 prior to conquering Constantinople. We climbed its ramparts and composed photos that included the European fort’s stone crenelations, ships gliding back and forth on the Bosphorus, and the distant hills of Asia. Two continents in a single frame. I would never forget this unusual family Christmas.

Back at work on the 26^th, I was still hearing “Merry Christmas” from my Turkish colleagues.

“It’s over,” I told them, “but thank you.” The wishes, oddly, kept coming. Was it because Turkey’s religious holidays generally involved multiple days? On December 29, several large boxes appeared near the office photocopier. The next day, an artificial tree had been assembled next to it, and the doorways in our suite of offices were adorned with shiny red garlands. Two cute little Santa dolls were rappeling up a ladder made of string on one doorframe. They had almost made it to the top.

I stood and stared. How had my colleagues gotten the date of our holiday so wrong? How had they not known?

But it turned out I was wrong. On New Year’s Eve, Noel Baba (Father Noel), a secular character long promoted to commemorate St. Nicholas, makes his rounds (I am not sure if chimneys or sleighs are involved), leaving gifts for Turkish adults and children. Preparations were right on time.

I would miss my friendly colleagues and our camaraderie, borne out of a kind of shared suffering. I knew that once I left ÖzU, I wouldn’t see them much again, and that pained me. And I felt guilty choosing leisure when they had to work. My array of economic choices was surely undeserved. But then I reminded myself that I hadn’t missed one day of work, not even one hour of teaching during the entire year. I had tried my hardest every class period, and although I hadn’t been a very effective teacher at first, I had listened to advice and I had improved.

I had earned my $28,000.

Finally, one morning as I struggled with an inattentive class, my decision crystallized. Teaching is above all a dance between teacher and students, and students can make or break the experience. Unfortunately mine were disrespectful, inconsiderate, and even disruptive. I would never quite understand why this was the case in such an otherwise courteous country, but I guessed their family wealth made them feel entitled.  I no longer wanted to teach spoiled kids.

Of course some of my students came from humble families and some of them were appreciative. But the image of Deniz strutting across the classroom in thigh-high suede boots trumped that of shy, simply dressed Yildiz. And the sight of Nilgun and Hamza roaring down Kuşbakışı Caddesi in a late-model SUV overpowered that of Recep trudging out of class with a worn backpack slung over his shoulders. I was painting in broad strokes, kind of like the hot pink holiday decorations around me. Kind of like a Grinch.

“And then! Oh, the noise! Oh, the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!

That’s one thing SHE hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!”

Yes! That was the truest true of all. Above all, it was the noise that was driving me away from Ozyegin. The noise from my students, who talked while I talked, and whom I had never been able to quiet nor tame.

And so, feeling as sour as the infamous Seuss villain—and just as eager to force a change—I pressed the GONDER button on a email to big Nergis late one December evening, informing her I wouldn’t be returning for a second year. But first, I called Sankar’s secretary, Didem, who had been of such great help ferreting out job contacts, writing letters, and setting up interviews for me. I wasn’t very eloquent in giving her my reasons, but I did thank her sincerely for her help. And I told her how deeply I had appreciated having the job. I meant it.

As I packed ornaments and bows away, I felt lighthearted. In less than a month I’d be out of the classroom, the Work Caravan to Asia disbanded. Then I could begin the rest of my life in Istanbul.

The post A Grinch-y Christmas appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

What are we going to do for the next two plus days? We’ve been to Istanbul’s major tourist sites more than once, and we either don’t yet know about or aren’t confident in our ability to get to the lesser ones. We don’t even have errands to do; I’ve already completed them with Umit.

Thankfully this August weekend is different: we have an invitation! Sankar’s Turkish colleague and his wife, both in their mid-thirties, have invited us to Bozcaada (Boz = earth-brown; Ada = island), just off Turkey’s Aegean coast. It will be a four-day weekend as Turks are observing the Zafer Bayram, Victory Day, commemorating the reclamation of Turkey from Allied Forces in 1922. We’ll leave for Bozcaada early Saturday morning, stay in accommodations on the island, and return to Istanbul on Tuesday. Even tonight we’ll be filled with purpose: packing our bags, throwing our Insight Guides in, and setting our alarms.

The term “Greek Islands” comes off the tongue with such familiarity it sounds like a single word. But the existence of Turkish islands is little known. Triangular-shaped, and fifteen square miles in size, Bozcaada is the smaller of two Aegean islands granted to Turkey in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. This finalized Turkey’s settlement with the World War I allies.

Bozcaada was called Tenedos by the Greeks and was long important because of its location at the entrance of the Dardanelles (known in ancient times as the Hellespont), the strait of water linking the Aegean to the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. Tenedos was where the Greeks hid their fleet in order to convince the Trojans that the war had ended—and thus to accept the Trojan horse. The island was involved in the 14th century Venetian-Ottoman conflict and served as a staging place during World War I.

With a year-round population of about 2,000, Bozcaada’s economy has been based on fishing, fruit, and wine since classical antiquity. 17th century travel writer Evliya Celebi, writing about Constantinople, commented, “The taverns are celebrated for the wine from Ancona, Sargossa, Mudanya, and Tenedos.” The island is also known for its strong northern winds.

The plan is for Sankar’s colleague to meet us on Saturday morning at a point on the E-80 highway just west of the Second Bridge. He and his wife have also invited two of their Turkish friends to join us. The four of them will be parked in a black Passat alongside the road. We will see them and pull over, and then our two cars will take off together.

I am flattered we are being included; this group is younger and would surely have a good time without us. It is an example of receiving a kindness here that I don’t know if I’d give: I would probably not invite a foreign couple along if I was going out of town with friends.

The highway meet-up goes as planned. After we pull up, Sankar’s colleague, trim and dark-haired, dressed in jeans and a sport shirt, gets out of his car and approaches ours. He hands Sankar a bag that includes fresh poğacas (savory, scone-like breakfast treats) and two bottles of orange juice. Another instance of kindness, and I think fast and pull out a bag of homemade chocolate chip cookies and give them to him. Guessing that chocolate chips wouldn’t be available in Turkey, I brought a large supply from home as well as two bags of brown sugar. Our hosts will comment on the cookies’ exotic flavor and ask for the recipe.

Our two-car caravan sets out, driving west through Istanbul’s diminishing sprawl and then along the Sea of Marmara. We are heading toward Greece and Bulgaria, but we will turn south before reaching international borders.

The piece of land we are on, wedged between the Balkans, the Aegean, and the Black Sea, is a historical area called Thrace. It is sometimes referred to as Rumeli, a word evocative of Rome, whose Eastern Empire flourished in Turkey for a thousand years.

Fields of sunflowers (for some reason, Turks call them ayçiçeği, moonflowers), grown for both oil and seeds, appear as soon as we leave the city. Soon both sides of the road are carpeted in yellow. The flowers stretch up gentle hills and into the horizon, their faces looking toward us as we move with the sun from east to west. I want to take a picture, but hesitate to stop both cars, and content myself with numerous shots from the car window, most of which turn out as yellow blurs.

After an hour, we pull over at a rest stop, a low, pastel-colored outlet mall with twenty or so shops, spic and span restrooms and, sitting on a new cement slab with spindly trees for shade, an outdoor tea garden. Sankar and I chuckle at the concept of an outlet mall, which we have heretofore considered solely an American phenomenon.

We sit down with tulip glasses of hot tea and meet our other two traveling companions, a divorcee in her forties with long chestnut hair, and her bearded, pleasant-looking 22-year-old son.

Then we continue south, through Şarkoy and onto the long Gallipoli peninsula that forms the western barrier to the Dardanelles. Fields of sunflowers continue, now on smaller plots slanting down to the Aegean.

This land was the site of World War I’s Gallipoli campaign, an intense naval and amphibious attempt by the Allies to capture Constantinople so as to gain a sea route to Russia. Many thousands of troops from Australia and New Zealand (referred to as Anzac forces) were sent to fight in this campaign, and over eleven thousand lost their lives under the hot Aegean sun.

Under the command of Mustafa Kemal, who would rename himself Ataturk, the Turks repelled both the naval and the land attack in a major defeat for the Allies. It was a defining moment in Turkish history as the motherland was saved, and it was also the beginning of national consciousness for colonial Australia and New Zealand.

Memorials to soldiers from both sides dot the peninsula, and each April 25, families from Australia and New Zealand arrive to observe Anzac Day. In 1934, Ataturk sent the following message to Anzac mothers:

To those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives . . . You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours . . . you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

Near Çanakkale (çana = friendly; kale = castle), the peninsula’s largest town, we catch a ferry east across the strait to the mainland, and then drive south to Geyikli, where another ferry will take us out to the island. This convoluted route is hard to understand without a map, and as we drive Sankar and I reflect that, with our landlocked Midwestern sensibilities, we wouldn’t have been able to manage it on our own.

Now we simply follow our friends’ car without thinking. Our hosts are also relaxed, and we make a couple more stops, eating a magnificent “mixed grill” lunch at the Troia Palace restaurant, and stopping by the ruins of Troy, a World Heritage site grandly proclaimed by an impressive sign and a faux wooden horse representing the one the Greeks hid in, but actually not much more than a rectangular mound of earth and several large clay amphorae.

Still, it is Troy, and we walk around hoping to catch the mood of ancient warfare and treachery. Finally we look at our watches and exclaim at the time. Only a half hour until the ferry leaves! We get back in our cars and zigzag with alarming speed through a series of tiny Aegean villages, making sharp turns on narrow, paved roads.

When we finally arrive at the pier, a white sedan we’ve been following hesitates, and our two cars edge past it and into the line of cars waiting to board. We end up being the last two vehicles allowed on this, the last ferry of the day, and for the entire weekend we joke about how “the guy in the white car” is surely angry and coming after us for revenge.

We received the invitation late, and this is a holiday weekend, so we are not able to stay with the group at their hotel. No problem; we’ve reserved a room at Hotel Katina only a few cobbled blocks away in Bozcaada Town—a picturesque grid of whitewashed one- and two-story dwellings with shallow-pitched red roofs and brightly-painted doors. We walk with our bags through its miniature streets. Alongside each dwelling sit wooden tables covered with tablecloths: instant family cafes, waiting for dinner occupants.

Hotel Katina is a two-story, hundred-year-old residence. Its windows feature blue grillwork and hanging flower baskets, and one of its outside walls is covered with grapevines that wind their way via an electrical line across the street and down the wall of a smaller building. Inside, the rooms are decorated in an incongruously sleek Euro-modern style that we will discover is quite typical in Turkey.

The six of us reconvene for a dinner of grilled fish at tables set up just a few feet from the wharf. The weather is warm and the sky a deepening violet. We are so close we can almost touch the colorful fishing boats that bump and jostle each other, making the silvery water splash upward. The physical separation of the island is facilitating our mental separation, and Sankar and I can finally relax. We will sleep well here, and wake feeling none of the jarring unfamiliarity that has been our companion all summer.

Each morning after breakfast, our four companions head to the beach. They return at lunchtime, only to set out for the beach again in the afternoon.

Two beach trips in one day seem like a lot of sun to Sankar and me, and we don’t want to overburden our hosts who, without us, can chatter away in Turkish. So we decide to stay back in the mornings. We have brought a couple of Turkish language textbooks written by a UCLA professor named Kurtuluş Öztopçu, his very name seeming to embody the difficulty of Turkish. The two of us sit at a little wooden folding table outside the hotel’s front entrance taking notes, watching the few passersby and smiling at the hotel’s namesake, Katina, as she bustles from the hotel proper to the vine-covered breakfast room across the street. This middle-aged dynamo is definitely the family powerhouse; her husband spends mornings at a teahouse down the street, sauntering home only at lunchtime.

Perhaps Katina senses our watchful neediness—despite some kind friends, we feel bereft, marooned here in Turkey—because she frequently stops her work to chat or to ask us if we want a pastry her bake staff is pulling from the oven. And one morning she walks up to us with an emphatic story in rapid Turkish that finishes with a laugh. Thanks to the timely arrival of an English/Turkish-speaking couple, we get the translation. Katina has had a dream about us—and in Turkish lore, that apparently means we are thinking about our mothers. Sankar melts, “We have the same saying in south India!”

Late Sunday morning we leave our books and set off by ourselves to explore the gray stone castle/fort that guards the harbor. It is long and relatively low, with crenellated walls interrupted by squat, hexagonal towers. We walk through weeds around it, reading in our guidebook that the Ottomans built it on a spot formerly used by Phoenicians, Genovese and Venetians. We reflect on Turks’ reputation for ferocity and decide that, with 5,000 miles of exquisite, strategic shoreline, it is fully justified.

A bored guard ignores us as we duck under a stone arch and enter the keep. We climb to a balustrade for a view of the tiny, curving harbor, feeling the gusts of wind the island is known for.

On Monday morning, our companions take us to breakfast at a nearby inn called Maya. The place, hidden behind an ordinary façade on a nearby street, offers a typical Turkish breakfast—olives, tomato slices, white cheese, boiled eggs—served in an enclosed outdoor garden, but is well-known for its extensive variety of homemade fruit preserves, eaten on bread pulled fresh from a wood oven. Indeed, several tables in the middle of the courtyard groan with a sticky paradise that includes standbys like strawberry and cherry, but also tomato, fig, lemon, rose, sweet pepper, mulberry, and ayva (quince) jams.

I don’t care deeply about jams and jellies, but pride in homemade preserves is “a thing” here, a cultural tidbit we are picking up thanks to our companions. Their eagerness to teach us about Turkey is one part an effort to deepen our friendship and two or three parts an expression of their intense love for their country.

I am beginning to see that, while some countries modernize and leave old customs behind, Turkey maintains a firm sense of its historical self. We are learning that Turks have a distinctive cuisine for every meal of the day and we will soon encounter peculiar beverages such as sahlep, a hot drink made from dried orchid roots, and boza, a fermented bulgur brew sold in the evenings by men who walk the streets with copper pots yelling, “boza.”

Each region in Turkey has distinct songs; indeed one evening soon we will poke our heads into a traditional Turkish meyhane, tavern, and listen to a chorus of Turkish men lifting cups of rakı, anise-flavored liquor, and singing mournful-sounding Arabesque folk songs.

Most of these customs, though different, do not seem strange; indeed they seem to echo our own culture’s past, which also contained preserved foods, folk songs and root-based drinks. Perhaps by getting to know Turkey, we will come to know ourselves better. At this point, I want to know everything.

In the afternoons, tubes of sun cream in hand, we head with our hosts to the beach. We pay a small fee to enter and occupy spots under charming pale blue wicker umbrellas. The water is warm and shallow, the sand soft, and the sea deep azure blue. In the distance we can see the craggy hills of the mainland.

In contrast to my female companions who wear bikinis, I wear a sturdy one-piece suit. Sankar wears some new trunks he’s had to buy from a shop near the wharf. They are long and droopy, their fabric patterned with beach scenes, and we tease him about his “partay” duds. We sit with our friends  in the sun, reading and dozing.

Leaving the beach, we drive the long way around the island, noting its barrenness and modest-sized rocky cliffs—were the Greek ships hidden behind these?—and stop at one of twelve wind farms, pausing to read signs describing how much power is being produced for Turkey. Then at the southern coast, we stop in at Corvus, the most prestigious winery in Turkey. It is startling to walk into a large, modern tasting establishment and realize that the gentlemen standing at the long counter, ready to pour, are all Muslims. We sample the same cabernet sauvignon that President Obama was served on his 2009 trip to Turkey, and purchase a few bottles to go.

Sun-dazed, after a rest, we reconvene in the early evening, and walk to one of the island’s restaurants. Under the shade of a huge plane tree, we eat pasta and more grilled fish, and sample deniz borulcesi or sea beans, long green segmented stems, not much thicker than cooked spaghetti. For dessert, a local delicacy: poppy syrup sorbet, tart and gingery, made with red poppy petals.

With the loneliness and challenge of Istanbul far away, Sankar and I can shine in our role as grateful guests, new kids in town to whom much can be explained. We ask questions in tandem, nodding to each other as we take note of new information. We exclaim our interest in future trips: one to southeastern Turkey is mentioned and will materialize in the fall. When something challenging is said—a comment that Turkey’s Kurds “. . . don’t want to work”–we remain silent, saving any analysis or re-hash for when we are alone.

These newly discovered social skills—questioning attitudes, intent listening—are both pleasing to us and promising.

One evening after dinner, I bring up the topic of our surprise at Turkey’s gleaming prosperity. “I don’t claim to know much about Turkey,” I start. “But it has a reputation for being—well, poor—and I’m guessing that reputation was true not too many years ago. What happened here to change all of that?”

Our companions are quick to answer: “Turgut Özal. He opened up the economy in the nineties, allowing more foreign investment.” They go on with specifics. I have heard the man’s name before and will look it up when I get back to Istanbul.

All too soon Tuesday morning arrives and we pack up for the trip back to Istanbul, hugging Katina goodbye, driving our two cars onto the ferry, and watching the little island recede as the boat approaches the mainland. We head back up the Hellespont, the water first on our left and then, after the second ferry, on our right.

Ever the good host, Sankar’s colleague has planned a final treat, a dinner stop at Tekirdağ, a town renowned for its kebabs. The six of us enjoy delicious, salty grilled lamb and peppers at the town’s best restaurant, our skin still flushed from the island sun. Then we glide east alongside the Sea of Marmara, the setting sun blending sea and sky together into a pale blue haze.

The trip has been unique. It has refreshed us and readied us for another run at Istanbul. It has given us some glimpses of Turkish culture—and Turkish hospitality. I am beginning to see that the Turks are wise and charitable in the ways of friendship, and I wonder if something in their upbringing, perhaps something more communal than ours, gives them this ease.

The sky is black as we approach Istanbul, but the city lights set the entire horizon aglow.

The post A Turkish Island appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

My friend Waverley and her family were wrapping up their tour of duty in Istanbul, scheduled to return to Minnesota in June. In April she wrote a blog post titled, The Rule of Three – Cat Version. In it, she explained how her cat family had grown from two to three. 

Back in February, a gardener at her Istanbul apartment complex had discovered two kitties, so new their eyes were still closed, underneath some shrubbery. Their mother had apparently abandoned them, and they were desperately hungry.Stray felines are a prominent feature of life in Istanbul. The climate is mild enough that they can survive outside year-round, and a plethora of climbing places and concealing vegetation provide the perfect habitat. Turks leave bowls of food and water out for the cats, so most appear adequately fed.

Mustafa Bey, the guard at Waverley’s complex, took the two kittens into the small apartment he occupies in the building’s basement. He warmed them back to life and began feeding them milk from an eyedropper. Other guards pitched in and the kittens survived.The female kitty was soon adopted by a family living nearby. The male became Mustafa’s pet, and he continued to raise it by hand, keeping it by his side nearly all the time. But then the owners of the complex decided that a security guard should not be spending time caring for a kitten. They informed Mustafa that he needed to find a home for the little guy, and he asked Waverley, who had already taken in two street cats. She agreed, and started calling him Tiny Cat.

I commented on Waverley’s post, remarking that cats were also on my mind. Sankar and I were thinking of replacing our tabby, who had gone out one spring evening three years ago and never come back. Waverley wrote back: “If you’re serious about wanting Tiny Cat, I will talk to Ray and kids about it. Honestly, for me, it would be great.”  

The next day I went to Waverley’s house and picked him up. Five months old, he was thin and leggy, with interesting black and gray stripes running down his back and enormous green eyes. We decided to call him Sultan.

Now, a month later, Sultan is starting to fill out. He seems to like his new home. He eats heartily and loves to commandeer the top of the family room couch or the flower pot on the upstairs deck. His favorite toys are two ninety-nine-cent stuffed mice from IKEA. The veterinarian was happy to add Sultan’s exotic new name to his list of patients.

Sultan has exceptional people skills. He is curious about everyone who visits, and he makes friends quickly. Because he is likely from a long line of street cats, Sultan is strong, smart, and more than a little bit stubborn. These characteristics seem Turkish, and help connect us to our favorite foreign country.Every day I say thanks for the tender way Mustafa Bey cared for Sultan. And last week Waverley and three of her children paid us–and Sultan–a visit. It was a happy reunion. Thank you Waverley, for delivering Sultan to us!

Sultan guards the perimeter while I blog about him.

The post A Tale of Two Kitties appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

It started with trying to take care of myself. Last Tuesday I had a long work day followed by an hour and a half Turkish conversation class. I love my teacher. We finished at 6:30 pm and I knew it would take me close to an hour to bus to my neighborhood and climb the hill to our apartment.

Normally I would suck it up and cook dinner after that, but this time I asked myself, why not eat out? There are several dozen restaurants within walking distance of our house, most laughably inexpensive. So Sankar and I agreed to meet at a little Turkish kebab place about halfway up the hill.

We had a good meal: soup and appetizers and then kebab (Sankar) and chicken (me), and then climbed back home. I went to bed at about 10:30, feeling rather full.

When I woke up in the morning and got out of bed, my head started spinning and I fell onto my knees. “What’s going on?” Sankar asked. “Are you okay?”

I sat back down on the bed and tried to focus my eyes. “I’m so dizzy,” I replied. “Why am I dizzy?” I also felt nauseous, but after a few minutes that passed.

There wasn’t a lot of time to ponder my condition because we had a 7:30 am ride to work.  Somewhat oddly, I felt better after breakfast, and I had the morning at work to recover. By the time the afternoon rolled around, I felt better and was able to teach.

On Thursday, I felt fine, but on Friday the dizziness was back. As before, it got better over the morning, and the afternoon and evening were fine. Saturday was a lovely sunny day, and Sankar and I explored the Old City most of the day with no problem. As I closed my eyes in bed Saturday night, however, the room began to spin. “I’ll think about this tomorrow,” I told myself, and fell asleep.

Sunday the dizziness was back in full force, and no, with more time to consider what was happenening, I  became concerned. I had discovered on the Internet that dizziness can be caused by food poisoning, and I left Sankar at the breakfast table to check further.

I entered “food poisoning decision chart” into Google, and a table of various types of food poisoning: bacterial, viral, and other came up. The third listing under “bacteria” was Claustridium Botulinin, and its symptoms read: “Headache: Double vision, vertigo or dizziness, loss of reflex to light. Weakness, droopy eyelids, constipation, dry mouth, muscle and respiratory paralysis.”

I Googled botulism. That entry mentioned also mentioned nausea and dizziness: “These are [all]symptoms of the muscle paralysis that is caused by the bacterial neurotoxin. If untreated, these symptoms may progress to cause paralysis in various parts of the body, often seen as a descending paralysis.”

The article went on to mention treatment, which involved the administration of an antitoxin.&nbsI got up and walked back into the kitchen. “I think we’d better go to the hospital,” I told Sankar.

There is a special kind of dread when you feel ill in a foreign country. It is partly from knowing that you are unable to express the kind of subtleties that could make a difference in a medical situation. And part of it involves all the local health-related comments and beliefs that you have run into.

Sankar and I have heard over and over again from Turkish acquaintances that exposure to cold breezes causes colds, coughs and even influenza. We have watched Turks bundle up with wool scarfs and heavy jackets when the temps fall under 50 degrees.  Turks have told us about receiving injections for colds, fevers and even anxiety. And a friend who teaches at a prestigious private high school tells us that whenever a student goes to the nurse’s office with a complaint, (s)he gets hooked up to an IV.

With these concerns and my Internet reading top of mind, I found myself thinking, “I am going to be put on life support here. I am going to die far from friends and family.”

We called a cab to drive us to the American Hospital in Nishantashi, an elegant suburb about 15 minutes away. Several people were seated in the tiny emergency entrance when we arrived. We were immediately ushered into a clean, somewhat-dated-looking exam room, and a nurse who spoke passable English came in to take my vital signs.

Five minutes later a doctor came in, about forty years old and fluent in English. After asking me my symptoms, checking my heart, breathing and reflexes, and asking me to do some simple balance tasks, he told me he thought my ailment was probably due to an inner ear disturbance.

How could he miss the obvious? I told him of the detective work that had led me to the botulism diagnosis, and he listened respectfully. But he would have none of it, instead quietly emphasizing that I would be much more violently ill if that was the case. Although I didn’t agree, I nodded. I planned to sound off to Sankar later.

The doctor wrote a prescription for Dramamine, suggested I visit an ENT specialist the next day, and gave us a phone number he could be reached at.  No IVs, no injections. Not even a prescription for anbiotics.

Back at the entrance, we showed our insurance cards to a dapper young man seated behind a desk and made our copay, about $35. The whole episode had taken about forty minutes.

It wasn’t until we got into a cab to return home that I began to feel a little sheepish. A serious toxin like botulism would definitely have made me feel horrible, worse every day rather than hitting me on an every-other-day basis. Why had I latched onto this gruesome condition? Perhaps because feeling dizzy was completely new for me.  Probably because the Internet and my cultural alienation had heightened my fears.

After I got started on an antibiotic, I felt better within a day. Apparently I had been living with low-grade amount of congestion for so long that it had begun to seem normal. Only when dizziness ensued did it get my attention. My head now feels clearer than it has in weeks, and I am not so tired any more, a condition I had blamed on my teaching duties.

I haven’t found a remedy for Internetus Panickus or Overseasius Dramaticus yet – but perhaps awareness is the first step.

The post Dizzy appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

Our children, Angela and Gregory, are here and we’ve been sightseeing. We visited Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, Topkapi Palace and the Hagia Sophia, and drove up the Bosphorus to the Black Sea. On Sunday the 22nd we left town for a five-day trip to Turkey’s west coast, the most progressive and prosperous region of the country. We were headed toward the ancient Roman city of Ephesus. The Turks call it Efes, and have named their national beer brand likewise.

After a full morning walking and climbing around the ruins of Ephesus, in midafternoon we are back in the little village of Sirince (pronounced Shi RIN jay), above which sits the country cottage we’ve rented. Hungry, we choose from one of four mostly-empty outdoor restaurants on Sirince’s main drag, sandwiched in among shops selling white peasant dresses and colorful pottery.

We sit down at a table in a garden, and a man of perhaps 27 or 28 emerges from an out-building that is probably a kitchen, carrying menus. He is medium height and handsome, with sandy hair and green eyes, coloring not so unusual here. For a country with few immigrants, Turks are remarkably diverse.

“Where are you from?” he asks, and when Sankar tells him the U.S., he looks at me and says, “Yes, you look like an American.”

“You also look like an American,” I counter, only to see his face fall.

“I don’t look Turkish?” he asks with real concern in his voice. He is a grown man, but I apparently hold his identity in my hands.

“You also look Turkish,” I reassure him.

We order flat bread stuffed with eggplant; kofte, the national dish of spicy meatballs; and soup, a strange choice given the heat, but savory liquid sounds appealing. As we wait for our food, a group of teenagers comes in and sits down a few tables behind us. They look about 14 or 15-years-old, three girls and two boys. There are no adults with them, nobody brought them here; they are residents of Sirince.

The four of us chat and I am not facing the kids, but at some point Angela says, “Look, they are drinking!” And indeed several of the teens are sipping from glasses of rose wine. I wonder what kind of behavior we are going to witness.

Our lunch comes, along with several frosty bottles of water. In the summer heat I am often more eager for water than for food, but the food is delicious. While we dig in, the kids get up and move to another table. Now they are sitting in my line of vision. One of the boys has a smooth face that is almost pretty, and a lanky, not-yet-filled-out frame. His hair is also sandy in color. The kids are talking animatedly and one of them is feeding bread to the black and white restaurant cat.

“I have never seen kids this age drinking in a restaurant. And in a Muslim country during Ramadan,” I comment. The legal drinking age in Turkey is 18.

We launch into a conversation about the drinking age in the U.S. Angela feels it should be lowered, that kids’ first drinking experiences should be under family supervision, not away at college where they’re pressured to binge. I am skeptical; I saw a lot of bingeing during my own college days, when the drinking age was 18.

The waiter appears with a couple of fat goblets of beer for the teens. We realize that he must know them; perhaps he is related to them. The population of Sirince is only 800. We also realize that, while we find Sirince peaceful, these kids probably find it excruciatingly boring. We talk about other topics, but ever so often my eyes move to the kids, contemplating the situation.

Our waiter emerges from the kitchen and asks if everything is okay at our table. But then, “I don’t smoke, and I drink lots of milk,” he tells us, to our astonishment. “Every day I drink two glasses or more.” We nod at him and murmur approvingly. After he walks away, we chuckle, “thanks for sharing that,” and Greg murmurs, “T.M.I.”

“Maybe he saw us looking at those kids,” Angela says. And I realize that she is right. He was probably watching us from the kitchen window. Often we are given help here before we even ask for it; the Turks are attentive to strangers—really to anyone—in their midst. But that means that we are observed even when we aren’t in need.

As we finish our food and sit talking, the waiter carries some stuffed pita bread and kofte out to the kids. Then, a few minutes later he approaches our table with something we didn’t order. He sets it down in front of us, a plate of plump, rich-looking peach slices. “I want you to taste these. They are from my own tree,” he tells us.

“Tesekkular,” we exclaim, thank you. The fruit is tangy and surprisingly juicy. I wonder how fruit juice can come from soil that looks so barren. On our drive from Istanbul, we passed dozens of stands selling heavily-ripe melons grown in dry, thorny fields.

We thank him and I ask him if it is difficult to grow peaches. He tries to answer, but the topic is beyond his English repertoire. As he casts about for words, he holds his left arm out to the side, snapping his fingers as if he’s impatient with himself. He ends up telling us that no, it is not hard, but yes, it actually is hard.

A few minutes later, as he takes the money for our food, he stops for a moment. “I would like to see you again,” he tells us. “My name is Ali.” We thank him several times with wistful smiles. Then we walk past the kids, eating quietly, and out of the restaurant.

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