Every workday morning, I wait for a bus near my apartment. The bus comes at 7:35, I get to the waiting place about five minutes earlier, and take a few minutes to watch this view.
It does my eyes and my spirit good to be able to look long distances. I’m thankful for this view.
I’ve been trying hard to pay attention and appreciate the small things in life, because these days the big things are really kicking me in the ass.
The weekend was mostly grey and cold, not really encouraging me to go outside. But on the 2nd afternoon at 3pm the sun appeared and I scampered out. I stayed in my neighborhood but walked on a new route, on Eski Bağdat Caddesi, just above the train tracks.
I turned a corner and my heart leaped with green pleasure when I saw this little path. Probably a dangerous place at night, but in the sunlight it felt like the closest thing to a stroll in the woods I would find in Istanbul. My joy was muted when I realized it was just a one-block-long dead end, but it was still a nice find.
Next to the fence by the train track, a tree was blooming.
And a lovely overgrown garden filled with little purple wildflowers.
And something that looks like forsythia except it has pink flowers. Maybe it’s quince? It looks just like something in my mom’s yard, but I can’t remember what it is.
I’m really enjoying the warm spring weather (despite the almost nonstop rain) and new plants I see peeking out everywhere. During the winter I reaaaallllly missed the smell of green, and didn’t even get the smell of white to make up for it.
I’ve managed to shake off my listlessness and got myself out and about a few times this week. On Sunday morning (the first day of my weekend) I woke up around 9:30 and thought “I MUST GO OUT”, but couldn’t get excited about any particular place to go. So I left the house with a book and a knitting project but without a plan and wandered north. I ended up in lovely Çengelköy, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus between the two bridges. Here is the view I had for my book reading:
The nicest part was that the bench I found to sit on in order to look at this view had rather short legs, which made it much more comfortable for me than normal city benches. My feet easily reached the ground!
After reading my book (The Thirty-Nine Steps, by John Buchan) and soaking up the sun and view for a while, I continued my wander north and ended up meeting up with Emrah in Beykoz. We went for dinner at my favorite fish restaurant, the Beykoz Balikci Barınağı (basically a fishsellers area with a big grill and outdoor seating – short tables and little square benches). As far as I can tell, there’s just one thing on the menu: ızgara uskumru (grilled mackerel) served with arugula, parsley, onion slices and bread. Best of all – no forks, just dig in with your fingers! If I hadn’t been so hungry I would have taken a picture before we ate almost everything…
The next day we stayed home and relaxed for the most part, just wandering near the local seaside in the evening, people and animal watching. On Tuesday (a work day for me but due to cancellations I had a big chunk of the day free), we went to Büyükada and rented bicycles for a couple hours.
Eventually I did have to leave and head to work… but it’s nice that the adalar (islands) are close enough that I can spend a few hours even on a workday.
Finally, last night, taking advantage of another cancellation I was able to leave work just before sunset so again decided to go up to Çengelköy because I wanted to watch the bridge at night. After dark (these days around 9pm) it is lit up with lights that change color in interesting patterns. Also last night there was a lovely crescent moon (waxing) just above the bridge. As it sunk lower in the sky it turned a lovely orange color. I unfortunately forgot to bring my camera so no pics this time, but if you want to see for yourself, try this google images link. I plan to go again before too long, with my camera.
I finished The Thirty-Nine Steps rather quickly (it’s a thin book) and started another called Balthasar’s Odyssey by Amin Maalouf, a new author for me. Jenney lent me four of his books while she is away and this first one is very enjoyable so I’m looking forward to the three others to follow… Here in Istanbul it can be hard to find good books in English without spending a fortune so teachers (who tend to also be readers) do a lot of sharing. Yay for book sharing!
A little of this, a little of that… a roundup of the last month-ish. Mostly working … a fair bit of walking … not enough knitting! Now that the weather is nice, all I want to do is sit outside in parks or outdoor cafes, watching people and ferries come and go and KNIT KNIT KNIT. And drink tea.
My work schedule is now at maximum (24 teaching hours plus travel time) but since all but one class is 1-1 students, every week I have a cancellation or two that eases the load. I’ve been walking to and from work more often now that the weather is warm. It’s about a 40 minute walk total over easy terrain except I’m still befuddled about the correct etiquette for passing people on the sidewalk. The rule seems to be “The foreign lady should step off the curb into the street while the three turks walk down the sidewalk arm in arm with 17 bags completely oblivious to anyone else on the sidewalk”.
A few weeks ago Emrah and I rode a new ferry (for me), from Beykoz meydanı to Yeniköy, and then had a nice twilight walk to Istinye and back. I took a picture of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridge, keeping the shutter open extra long because of the dark. And then we drank some tea.
Last weekend it was raining, so after giving up on a plan to go to Camlıca, we ended up at DenizAtı Cafe above the Kadıköy iskele (ferryboat terminal) reading the newspapers and watching the ferries. I worked on the crossword puzzle – in Turkish – and actually got five answers! The problem isn’t understanding the clues, which are relatively simple to read, but thinking of ANOTHER word that means the same thing. Emrah helped me with a few but I don’t think he’s crazy about crosswords, so I let him read the paper. And we drank tea.
This was a while ago, but a couple ex-students Zafer and Tuba (in photo) came to my place and cooked lunch – spanish omelet. We drank tea juice. Also, on the 6th Emrah and I went to a dinner party in Sultanahmet, the 25th wedding anniversary party of a couple friends of mine. We drank champagne, ooh!
Below are a couple of the things I’ve been knitting recently. First, a set of cute coasters for my boss’s birthday. They’re from the Mason-Dixon ballband dishcloth pattern (see Mason-Dixon knitting in my rather short blogroll to the right). And a pillow sham I’ve barely started, using some turkish patterns I found on the internet. I got the yarn for that from the Yarn Han in Eminönü, on a shopping expedition with Anne. The yarn for the coasters came from my local yarn shop – they’re starting to get to know me there, which means they don’t feel the need to follow my every movement while I’m in the store. Every time I buy something, they say goodbye with “güle güle kullanın”, meaning approximately “go and use it happily”.
Good news, the aquarium is alive again! This time the fish (5) are a bit smaller, Emrah replaced the gravel with a more natural variety (his theory for why the original fish died), and I’ve put in a few more plants to give them places to hide and play “obstacle course”. I’m not 100% sure fish like playing obstacle course, but I would if I were a fish.
I still spend a fair amount of time absorbing news from the internet, and I like to keep up with long-distance friends via livejournal and facebook. Whenever I look at facebook and find myself feeling envious about particular aspects of other people’s lives, I contemplate how they undoubtedly must feel different on the inside than they seem from the outside. Everyone has the mundane moments of doing laundry, the difficult moments of personal relationships, the occasional moments of extreme personal angst, right? Yeah, they’re running marathons, doing aid work in Africa, and designing their own knitwear, but for the most part, most people have pretty normal lives, right? Is it possible that my 87.8% mundane life seems interesting to other people who only see it from the outside? Is it possible that I’m living my life okay even though I’m somewhat unsocial, rather scattered career-wise, unmarried and childless, and a bit pudgy, given that I’m also mostly happy? Is it okay that I’d rather knit and drink tea on a sunny afternoon instead of collecting trash while scaling a mountain, rescuing kittens or doing a million other possible good deeds? Can making breakfast for my sweetie count as a good deed? Sometimes I wish I had an overarching purpose for my life, like Al Gore with his slide show, so I could feel useful to the world and less worried about wasting my time here on earth. But on other days I think it’s okay to be just a normal person, living as millions of other normal people do, never to make history or even a really exciting facebook profile. And the fact is that no project has come up yet that makes me want to give up knitting, walking the streets, people watching, and drinking tea.
None of these questions are rhetorical, answers are wanted. And, especially, from what you know of me (assuming you are a friend reading this), what kind of life-project could you imagine me taking on? Inspiration wanted.
Registration for commenting has been temporarily suspended as I await your answers. Big hugs to everyone. XOXOXO Now, how about a glass of tea?
It’s spring here, how about where you are?
People here in Istanbul like to ask me how their city compares to New York City, and in some ways they’re very similar: both the primary cultural center of their country, where the intellectuals, artists, and people with alternative lifestyles choose to live, both the most politically liberal and ethnographically diverse city in their country. In terms of geography, Istanbul is a huge sprawling city, which people might say is also true for NYC if you include the outer boroughs and the bedroom communities, but is definitely not true for the island-bound, vertically-growing borough of Manhattan. But the primary geographical feature of Istanbul is the Bosphorus, the strait that delineates the border between Europe and Asia, and splits the city in two. The Bosphorus is the reason for Istanbul’s existence, is a huge part of the beauty of this city, and is, transportationally speaking, a permanent challenge for Istanbullus needing to traverse from one side to the other. I personally choose to ride a ferry instead of a bus whenever possible. Here’s some pictures I took yesterday when Emrah and I went to Eminönü to buy an aquarium!
This pic is taken from a ferry that looks very much like the one in the picture. Seagulls follow the boats and passengers will throw scraps of bread in the air to them, watching the birds dive and swoop to catch the pieces. Yesterday was a windy day so there were some noticeable waves and I got a little damp sitting outside, but what’s the fun in sitting inside on a ferry?
Another pic from the ferry, showing the Asian side of the Bosphorus bridge in the distance with one of the typical ocean-transport ships that follow the Black Sea to Mediterranean route through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.
This picture shows part of the European side of Istanbul in the background and in the foreground is some massive equipment that is currently digging a tunnel across the Bosphorus. One year ago it was a lot closer to Europe, now it’s well on its way to Asia. I like this picture because it shows Istanbul as the industrious city that it truly is. Many photos of Istanbul show just the historical parts (which are of course magnificent and definitely deserving of photos) and the business/industrial side gets overlooked. This is the real Istanbul.
Before we got on the ferry, we had to cross through Kadıköy where many of the ferries to Europe leave from (they also go from Bostancı, which is closer to my house, but the Sunday schedule from there is much more limited). Yesterday, the traffic was horrible (on Sunday!) so we got off the minibus and walked. After a little distance, we realized why the traffic was so bad: a major street had been blocked off for a demonstration. There were police everywhere and people were taking advantage of the opportunity to walk in the streets rather than on the narrow sidewalks. Down by the flag you can see the rally was put on by the TKP (Türkiye Komünist Partisi) but the main theme was people protesting against the current ruling party (AKP) and their pro-Islamic leanings. According to this news article, the slogan of the gathering was “No to headscarves, no to the AKP!”
Before we went aquarium shopping, we paused for a typical outdoor snack: I’m having cheese toast and fresh-squeezed OJ (kaşarlı tost ve sıkma portakal suyu), Emrah is having cheese and spicy meat toast with tea (karaşık sucuklu tost ve çay), and, unfortunately, his ubiquitous cigarette. Emrah told me yesterday that he wanted his own web site, so I made him one. I have no idea why he wants it, but he seemed happy with the result. Go visit!
Finally, the newest residents of my apartment:
March 27, 2008 update: All the fish have died. I’m really sad about this and the living room feels empty when I walk in, but I don’t think I’ll get any more fish, I can’t figure out what killed them all (one by one) and it’s too hard to try to communicate about it with fish sellers.
