Follow Me As I Discover Land, Language and Self...
The first stage of our international relocation is complete: we are physically back in Minnesota. Our belongings are making the trip more slowly, arriving over the next few months. We got out of Istanbul just in time. A few hours after our flight left, the city was hit with a snowstorm. Snow in Istanbul usually melts the same day (think Washington, D.C.), but this accumulation lasted for several days, snarling…
Looking back at blogs from my early weeks in Turkey, I notice that one of my early posts was titled Driven Crazy. In it I fretted about having my humble, daily errands becoming the focus of another human being. Now, after two and half years, it’s time to comment on how having a driver has played out. With the exception of cleaning ladies, most people in the States don’t hire household…
It was a sunny day with temps in the high forties, but I started it in a bad mood, knowing I’d spend most of it hunting for Christmas gifts. I’ve been known to lament that Christmas is nothing but a part-time job for women each year, and this time it seems particularly onerous as we’re packing up to return to the U.S. As I left the house, I muttered to…
The Turkish Republic does not officially observe Christmas, but. . . . . . in the Old City, bolts of bright Christmas fabric are stacked near the entrance of a fabric shop, . . . the local grocery store, Migros, has an aisle of decorations, . . . an artistic Cihangir window features Christmas decorations–and a reflection of the author, . . . a Turkish teacher friend has updated her…
A small town alongside a long, deep lake. Mountains around the lake, a Roman wall around the town. An ancient amphitheater rises from a field of rubble, a brick Byzantine church crouches in the center of town (the Nicene Creed was written here), and 16th century kilns recall the Ottoman era. This is Iznik, formerly Nicea. For me, the best town in Turkey.
Just inside my health club here in Istanbul there is a small machine into which you step to have your street shoes encased in blue paper booties. The kind of booties you put on manually in the States if you are going on a fancy house tour. Like many other members, I generally ignore this machine, a mechanical extension of the Turkish custom of taking off shoes when entering someone’s…
Last Sunday, Sankar and I participated in the only marathon in the world that encompasses two continents. It’s called the Istanbul Eurasia Marathon. Here is a route description from its website: “The Marathon, 15Km, and 8Km races both start on the Asian side, cross the Bosporus and Golden Horn Bridges,pass under the Aqueduct and follow the Marmara Sea beach, to the finish line on the European side at the Hippodrome,…
Since June, 2010, I have been either living in Turkey or paying short visits to the U.S. Last week I broke my two-country streak by visiting a third country: France. < You don’t visit a new place as a blank slate. You bring your life experiences along, the latest ones most of all. Living here in Turkey affected my approach to France and how I experienced that country. Preconceptions and…
The hardest thing for me to adjust to back in 2010 when I moved to Istanbul was being in a near- constant state of bewilderment. With its perilously steep, wooded hills and curving cobblestone streets, the city seemed impossible to navigate. Narrow pasajis beckoned me but then seemed to tuck themselves out of view. Centuries of history overlaid nearly every edifice—was this structure built by the Romans? The Byzantines? The…
Last month we traveled to a part of Turkey with evocative stone architecture and a mixture of Muslim and Christian inhabitants. Mardin, Midyat, and Hasankeyf lie in southeastern Turkey, an area long-ago named Mesopotamia, meaning the land between two rivers. Buildings in this area blend with the honey-colored landscape. Cliff caves look down on 5th century Deyr ul Zaferan monastery A tomb outside the 13th century Kasimiye Madrasa faces southern Mesopotamia Talented…
