One of the few remaining old wooden homes in Bakirkoy.

The view from my classroom on one of the rare sunny days we've had.

Istanbulizzard 2012

I hear shrieks of laughter outside my bedroom window as I wake up.  I pull back the delicate, white, shimmering curtains to find not one, but two, families rolling balls of snow down their sidewalks toward the growing snowmen at the street. It has been snowing for a week. My students tell me this is the most snow Istanbul has seen in 15 years. I welcome this sort of novelty. It came at the perfect time. Something to push all Istanbulians outside their comfort zones- something I’d been experiencing for the two weeks prior. I feel like it leveled the playing field a bit. Who doesn’t love it when 90% of people are carrying snowballs while walking down the street- regardless of age? Snowball fights everywhere. People walk so slowly, trying desperately not to fall on the icy, snowy, slushy streets and sidewalks. I passed two men playing fetch with their dogs with snowballs today in a park around the corner from my house.

The past two weeks have found me feeling infinitely more grounded. I did move again. Into another one of Cherry Mama’s apartment buildings. I’m pretty sure that if there is a Bahcelievler mafia, Cherry Mama is its Godmother. It’s a bigger space, closer to the metro, on a quiet sidestreet a block removed from a busy street in Bahcelievler. It is definitely somewhere I can live for three months, which is how long English Time will pay my rent. After that, I trust that I will feel comfortable navigating the world of apartment rental. We’ve got two perfectly 70s orange sofas in the living room, a TV stuffed in the corner that hasn’t been turned on once, and beautiful, shimmering curtains in every room. It’s a quiet neighborhood, close to grocery stores, metrobus, restaurants, cafes….

I take language notes in my phone and practice them at every opportunity. I quiz my students about Turkish. They laugh at my pronunciation, but its obvious they love to correct me. I love it- its fun. I feel more confident to explore now. Fear has left me. Culture shock has worn off. I feel happy, content, no anxiety anymore. Settled. I am able to lean into the unknowns now with the curiosity that inspires me to travel. I am feeling my personality come out more, even through the language barrier. It is incredibly fascinating to see which personality traits surface in such a foreign environment. I am learning how much I truly love people- across cultures, oceans, religious beliefs, socio-economic status. I want to know about all of them. I want to understand. Demographics are fascinating to me…. What leads people to have the life that they do?

Bahcelievler vs. Bakirkoy

26 Jan 2012

On the eve of my second move (third, if you count my moving bedrooms in the Lojman), I was sitting in my living room on my orange couch, listening to the wind howl over the Stax-Volt Collection. Or maybe that’s the kids in the apartment upstairs. Or maybe its the singing pipes in the bathroom. It was freezing rain on my way home that night. I had accomplished my goal for the day. I bought a Turkish cell phone. I discovered a new area of Bahcelievler in the process- what is most likely B.Evler proper, actually. I liked it. Mellow, but modern. Lots of restaurants, specialty shops, bakeries, cheese shops, cafes… It isn’t nearly as busy as Bakirkoy, where school is. I found a little restaurant where I ate lamb kabob (kuzu shish). I popped into a cell phone shop and sat with the owner, Adem and his customer, Aytac for about an hour, drinking coffee and communicating through Aytac’s limited English and Google Translate. Adem spoke no English and Aytac spoke a little. The both want English lessons and Adem has a pilot friend who also wants lessons. I told them about my time in Taksim and told them that I needed some time to get settled, but that I may consider giving lessons later. I got a used Nokia phone and a pay-as-you-go SIM card. I paid about 150TL, which is about $75 US.

I am starting to look and feel more like myself again. I’ve been walking to and from Bakirkoy for work, which takes about 30-40 minutes. Bahcelievler is separated from Bakirkoy by a massive highway. Four lanes in each direction plus two center lanes dedicated to the public buses so they don’t have to deal with traffic. There is a pedestrian bridge over the highway with the Metrobus stops in the middle. It’s a huge interchange that is always clogged with people. I walk across this bridge every day. There are usually vendors on the bridge selling cheap watches, hot water bottles, glowing animal trinkets, books, Kleenex packets, movies, necklaces…… On the Bakirkoy side, I can catch a minibus right to my school for 1.40TL that takes about 5 minutes. Lately though, I’ve been walking.

Its between 20-25 minutes to school from the skybridge. I stay off the busy main street, Incirli, for as long as I can, sticking to the side streets. Passing the ubiquitous 6-10 story cement apartment cubes, which typically have commercial space in the bottom in the form of markets, cafes, flower shops, or of course, clothing stores. This architectural style is nothing to write home about for this girl who gets off on gawking at groovy architecture. I find it a bit boring. The more unique examples are entirely covered in tiny shimmering tiles approximately 1”x1”, mosaic-style. Most of these tiled buildings are a single color, but a few are multicolored and they truly are beautiful. The tiles have an iridescent coating and when they catch the light, the whole building glimmers. Another defining characteristic is vertical mosaics running up the narrow band of cement separating rows of windows. I can’t quite place the style- some of them look Art Deco, some Southwestern American, some Aztec, and some just pure ‘70s. If I were in the States, I would definitely put these buildings squarely in the 1970s style, but I’m unsure if our architectural time periods match up…. I’m guessing not.  Supposedly all the historic homes here were quite cute and unique, with big gardens. Bahcelieveler actually means ‘houses with gardens.’ In a period of rapid development in the ‘80s & ‘90s, most of the namesake historic garden homes were torn down and replaced by the apartment cubes. I’m sad they didn’t make it. In Bakirkoy I’ve spotted a couple of older homes with wooden siding and balconies, and delicate latticework, and I’ve read that there are some surviving older homes in ‘central’ Bahcelievler. Hunting those down is on my list.

Bahcelievler seems to be a bedroom community- apartment block after apartment block, grocery stores, furniture stores, mini-markets, hair salons, a couple of mosques, a few street vendors selling roasted chestnuts, round Simit bread (the equivalent of the bagel), fresh nuts and fruit, flowers. There are nearly always people on the move here in Bahc, but not nearly as many as Bakirkoy. The main street in Bakirkoy, Incirli, is loud, crowded, and congested. Tons of buses, people…. It has the feel of one long strip mall with everything you could possibly need: hookah bars, eye glass shops, cell phone stores, rug shops, pharmacies, electronics, flooring, shoe stores, food, food and more food, formal wear, formal wear, and more formal wear. And this is before you even hit the main square: Meydan Square, which is a pedestrian shopping corridor. And this is before you even get to the two actual shopping malls on the other side of the Meydan. I just discovered that on top of all these shopping options, there is also an underground OUTLET mall that runs the entire length of the pedestrian mall. Damn! Istanbulians love to shop. I suppose America isn’t much different. The Meydan is a shitshow- a massive TV screen is always flashing, people walking in every direction. Once the weather gets a little warmer, I am going to plant myself in the Square and just watch.

Working in Bakirkoy makes me glad I live in Bahcelievler. Its quieter and quainter. I have heard that its more conservative than Bakirkoy, so not much nightlife, other than cafes and hookah bars. No ‘alcohol’ bars that I’ve found yet. All-in-all, I’m happy with where I’ve landed. I haven’t done much sightseeing yet, just been enjoying nesting and getting to know my new hood. I’m expanding my radius very slowly. The freedom to do this slowly is one of the benefits of actually LIVING somewhere, rather than just traveling there. I know I have time to get out and see everything. I don’t have to feel rushed. There isn’t the feeling that I have to DO IT ALL NOW or I’ll miss it. I can ease into it. It’s a nice feeling…….

Bakirkoy Promenade

Bethy's Turkey Blog

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"The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity"

“There’s something wonderful about drinking in the afternoon.  A not-so-cold pint, absolutely alone at the bar-even in this fake-ass Irish pub.  It’s new, built to look old.  Erin Go Braugh bullshit with it’s four flat screens silently flashing sports crawls for games I don’t care about.  The generic Irish bric-a-brac they deliver by the truck-load.  Empty moving vans roaming the Irish countryside right now, I imagine, waiting for old Missus Meagher to drop dead into her black pudding so they can buy up the contents of her curio shelves.  All of it shipped straight off to a central clearing house, where it is divvied up between Instant Irish Pubs in New York, Milwaukee, Singapore, Verona.

         

I’ve been at this bar before, of course. We all have. Yet I’m strangely, indefensively happy here. Even the stink of Lysol from the too-clean floor, the fruit flies hovering over the garnish tray do not distract me from a general feeling of well-being.

Bushmills or Jameson, Celtics or Rangers, don’t mean a thing here. This is a nondenominational Irish bar. No difference no raised eyebrows. Few Irish, now that I think about it. And the Guinness, of course blows.

         The owner’s got ten or twelve of these bars and they all look the same and they all have names like Paddy McGee’s or Seamus O’Doul’s or Molly whatever-none of whom exist or ever existed.

Among the pool table, the juke box, the inevitable dartboard, the moose head, toy trains, Yankee banners, the photos of Irish authors who never came here and whom nobody here ever read. You want to talk Joyce or Behan? A Yeats’s bust may sit dust-covered on a shelf, but start spouting lines from The Second Coming and you can just fuck off down the street, ya prat.”

-excerpt from “I Drink Alone” Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food & the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain

         

My first week in Istanbul, I found myself at one of these ‘fake-ass’ Irish pubs in Taksim, down an old, crooked alley. It was named the James Joyce and, it being my first week in Turkey, I understand Turkish about as well as most of the world’s population understands Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. (If you’ve never taken a look inside Finnegan’s Wake, the next time you’re in a book store, if you are one of the precious few who still visit bookstores, open it up and give it a whirl.)

I was with my co-worker, Alex, recently arrived from Orange County. Alex is 25 and he is a fellow fan of Jameson Irish Whiskey. We were on our way home from an outing to Asia (oh, did I forget to tell you that I went to Asia?), and we decided to pop into the James Joyce to satisfy our craving for one of our favorite adult beverages. We walk into the “pub” to witness 2 Turkish men playing acoustic versions of Radiohead, REM, and Willie Nelson songs. We take a table in the back and each get a Guinness and a Jameson. We sit there for a couple of hours getting to know each other. We talk music, California, travel…. Mostly music….

The table next to us turns over a couple of times as we sit there, each party speaking English. Men in business suits, primarily. I admit that I had a modicum of guilt sitting there in this “pub.” This is usually the kind of place I only visit after I’ve been somewhere foreign long enough to feel that I’ve ‘earned’ something kitschy. By my standards, I haven’t been in Istanbul long enough to be in a place like this. It made me feel even more like a tourist than I already did. That said, Alex wanted to come here, and I did find it valuable to bond with him over Radiohead covers and lukewarm Guinness.

After two Guinness each, we decide its time to go home. We get our bill (hesap, in Turkish). Our bill is 170 Lira. Do the math on this: we had 6 drinks between the two of us. This puts each drink at roughly 30TL each, or $15. A $15 Guinness? We call over our server and he shows us that, indeed, our beers were 30TL apiece and our Jamesons were 25TL. Damn.

I guess when you’re importing Missus Meagher’s curios directly from Ireland, costs really add up.

Moral of the story: Always look at a menu before you order.

Life lesson: Stay away from ‘fake-ass Irish pubs.’

Duly Noted.