Turkey | The Intrepid Teacher: Bringing English to the World

Here, at last, is my final post. Thank you to those of you who have taken this journey with me by reading my blog; it has been such a pleasure and a comfort to have your company.

Getting home, back to the U.S., during this pandemic had the feel of a movie to it — the thriller kind, where you’re not entirely sure the hapless protagonist’s plane is actually going to take off and clear enemy airspace. I may not have been donning a wig to impersonate someone or running down hallways, but there was nevertheless a much greater feel of uncertainty and challenge than I typically experience in travel. A feeling that I couldn’t be certain of success until I exited customs in Boston.

Back in the early days of the pandemic, perhaps the end of March, the American embassy sent out a warning to Americans in Turkey that anyone who did not leave at that time should be prepared to stay “for the foreseeable future.” A couple weeks later, after flights had been suspended, my friend Lisa and I were walking along when she mentioned she’d just received another ominous notice from the embassy, this one saying there was one flight leaving at some early morning hour from Istanbul to the U.S., and anyone who wanted to leave needed to be on that flight. The footage I’d seen of people cramming onto the the last flight out of Saigon flashed through my mind. “What was the date?” I asked out of curiosity. Lisa pulled her phone out and read the date. “That’s today,” I said. “Whoops!” she replied, and we laughed. Neither of us felt like our safety depended on leaving at that time, but there’s something to be said for knowing there’s an exit door.

Fortunately, air travel resumed in the summer, and I booked a ticket for September 1. As the date approached, though, I kept getting notifications that my flight had been cancelled and I was now leaving on some earlier day with another transfer tacked on. If they keep moving my flight up, I thought, I may soon discover that I was supposed to leave yesterday. Luggage was another issue, and a major one. I hadn’t been able to bring items home in March when a convention had been cancelled, but right when I needed every baggage allowance there was, carry-ons were prohibited and baggage allowances reduced. One day after a fruitless discussion on the phone with my airline, it occurred to me that I might get around a number of the complex hurdles I faced by flying out of Istanbul. I had wanted to get a trip in to Istanbul, so why not go a couple of days early and turn this into a positive? I couldn’t fly there (more complexities), so I asked Lisa if she would like to drive up there with me for one last adventure. She was game, but it wasn’t until the week before we left that we knew she could leave for that time. The trip was a go.

The evening before our departure from Izmir, we went to the Izmir airport to pick up the rental car we had reserved. The woman at Enterprise flipped through Lisa’s passport. “Hmm. Where is your recent entry stamp?” “I haven’t entered recently,” Lisa responded. “We live here.” “Ahh – you must enter in the last six months to rent the car.” “What? Why?” “I’m sorry, it’s regulation. I agree with you, no good. I agree. Sorry.” “Uhhh…there’s been a pandemic…nobody has been able to travel outside the country,” Lisa protested. “Yes, I agree with you. So sorry.” We stepped back to look at the other car rental counters and settled on the other name we knew, Avis. They had a car we could take, so we filled out all the paperwork and were just about to receive the keys when the man said, “Oh wait, can I see your passport?” The same conversation ensued, but frankly it had lost its novelty, and we had places to go. I argued we should be treated as residents since we had residence cards. He looked at our cards, looked at my expression, and gave us the keys.

The next morning we stuffed my suitcases in the car and I bid farewell to my friends at the guard station.

We were on our way. I must say it was somewhat anti-climactic to celebrate leaving the city and zoom onto the highway only to stop and sit in traffic. For hours. Okay, now we were on our way! We traveled north, close to the coast, with the goal that day of setting foot in the Aegean Sea. I could hardly go home after a year of living on the coast in Turkey and say that I had never been to a beach. It seemed unacceptable. So mid-afternoon we swung off the road, changed into our suits, and got our Aegean experience at a little spot called Onur Beach. The sand there was so hot that I did not know if I would feel the bottom of my feet ever again. Lisa was smarter; after three steps she suddenly stopped, hopped back over the hot coals to her sandals, and chose to wear them right on into the water.

Onward to the city of Bursa, where we stayed our first night. Bursa is an ancient city and the fourth largest in Turkey — but there was no time to explore, for Istanbul lay in wait across the Sea of Marmara. Neither the evening nor the morning host at our hotel had information about the ferry, which I found odd, but one of them did find out for us where we should go. It’s too bad that he didn’t also find out that the only ferry of the day left at 6:00 a.m. The gentleman there directed us to another port city, where we were able to make an early afternoon crossing.

Getting back to our rental car before boarding the ferry. Let’s see…ours is white…

It was quite an advantage to dock in the middle of Istanbul, very close to our hotel, and thus cut out much of the dreaded Istanbul traffic we were warned of. Even so, like a dog getting ready to lay down, we had to circle around a bit before landing on our hotel.

Looking out our room to the narrow cobblestone street below.

Cobblestone streets led up the hillside to the Hagia Sofia, the Blue Mosque, and the Grand Bazaar. The walk itself was fun and scenic, with steep slopes reminiscent of San Francisco. That feeling is reinforced by hillside views of the water, and even cable cars. The security around the Hagia Sophia was tighter than when I was there a year prior, likely because of its recent controversial change from museum to mosque. We had both been there previously so did not make the effort to get in again.

On our first full day in Istanbul, we went to the place I was most eager to visit: The Grand Bazaar. I was surprised by two things. I had not realized that so much of the bazaar was covered, and had beautiful painted ceilings. The other surprise was that it was a more manageable size than I expected. I’ve had the impression my whole life (or for as long as I’ve known there was a Grand Bazaar in Istanbul) that it is huge, so that you can’t see more than part of it in a day, and are likely to get lost. Somehow, though, it didn’t feel much larger than Kemeralti, the old bazaar in Izmir. We got to most of its sections, and ended up passing the same places multiple times. It was a most extraordinary time to be there, since there were virtually no tourists from outside of Turkey. This was like our experience in Cappadocia earlier in the summer. It afforded us the opportunity to see it without throngs of people, but also meant that the shopkeepers were very hungry. I’ve experienced aggressive shopkeepers on my travels — some encounters in the Old City of Jerusalem and in Beijing stand out in my mind — but they really poured it on here. There are many set phrases they use to bait the line, the most common being, “Where are you from? England? America? Australia? Where, where?” Some of them are good at using humor to engage, with lines like, “Madam, let me change your life,” or “Come and see all the things you want but don’t need!” Lisa and I remarked time and again that these tourist-dependent shopkeepers didn’t seem to realize that leaving us alone was the secret to making us comfortable to browse and buy. Their actions were effectively producing the opposite of their desired result. However, we were strong and mighty, and came out at the end of the day with intentional purchases: Turkish lamps, silver jewelry, and artwork.

The next day we went to the Sultan Ahmet Mosque, known to most of us as The Blue Mosque. Sultan Ahmet the First had it built during his reign, between 1609-1616. It’s a shame that he died shortly after it was completed, at the young age of 27. It is renowned for its multi-domed façade, but unfortunately the trees obscured much of our view. Visitors are able to enter just a small section and have to abide by a dress code. We had our scarves with us and were provided with slippers to wear and bags for our shoes. The Blue Mosque gets its title due to the many interior tiles painted with blue flowers, but I have to admit I was not overwhelmed by the color blue.

Friends back in Izmir had recommended visiting the Basilica Cistern, located underground near the Hagia Sophia. The Emperor Justinian had this enormous cistern built in 532, the same year that he ordered the demolition of the Hagia Sophia burnt in a revolt against him, and commissioned the building of the one that stands today. My guide book tells me that it has 336 columns and can hold 80,000 cubic meters of water, but those number are frankly lost on me, like appreciating differences in any income over a hundred grand. But from my personal experience of being down there, I understand that it is big. There is a wooden walkway above the water that takes you zig-zag-zig-zig-zag to the back of the cavernous cistern, where large carved Medusa heads stare out at you from the base of two of the columns.

This “Crying Column” is said to represent the tears of the many slaves who died during construction of the cistern. For some reason, it is always ‘weeping’ water.

Soon it would be time to head to the airport. We decided to get a lunch-dinner before walking back to the hotel, and happened to walk by the same little restaurant where my parents and I had eaten a year and a half earlier, on our first day in Turkey. Well, wouldn’t that be full-circle! We had a couple of my favorite Turkish items, including eggplant and a baked rice pudding for dessert.

The brand-new airport in Istanbul is an hour’s drive outside the city; the distance and lack of convenient ways to get there are a common source of criticism. Perhaps the taxi drivers came up with the location. My colleague Greg, who had just moved from Istanbul, told me about a shuttle bus service that was a small fraction of the taxi fare to the airport. As was the case so often in Turkey, only the Turkish websites gave helpful information about the bus service, but Lisa and I were pretty good at piecing together the bits each of us could understand. We also knew that things were often not as advertised, and had the foresight to find a bus driver near the Blue Mosque to approve our plans. Good thing, because he informed us that the bus stops during COVID had been reduced, and told us where we now needed to go. A taxi was still necessary in order to get us and all of our (my) luggage from the hotel to the bus stop, a seemingly simple step that became complicated when the taxi driver claimed he could not fit all of my luggage. Due to a lack of reputable companies and who knows what else, it took about an hour before we were able to get another driver to agree to come. At this point, as I was nervous, on edge, with an uneasy stomach (par for the course before a major trip), here came the renowned chef at our hotel, wanting to give both Lisa and me aluminum bowls brimming with a Turkish specialty he had just made. Aşure is a sweet chilled soup of garbanzo beans, raisins, pistachio nuts, bulgur (a grain), dried apricots, walnuts, white beans, currants, sesame seeds, orange peel, cinnamon, and cloves. I had had it at the school cafeteria, which did not do it any favors, and my stomach gave a firm no to eating it right then. As gracious as the gesture was, it was clear that he had not put himself in our place. How, exactly, were we supposed to manage carrying that with us? Lisa is kinder than me, though, and she eventually accepted one of the bowls while I was showing the new driver how to configure everything in the trunk. When we got into the back of the taxi, I could hardly stop laughing at her efforts to keep it from sloshing over. The taxi driver’s vigor in driving was well-matched with his aggressive manner, as he announced more than once that he would take us all the way to the airport. No, sir, no, you will not.

We did finally make it to the bus stop, and then to the airport. We got there the evening before our flights for my sake, because information about the COVID test at the Istanbul airport was so sketchy. There was an article that came out in May, touting the cutting-edge rapid-result testing that would open at the airport in June and provide travelers with COVID-19 results within two hours. But not a word was written about how it was functioning after it had opened. Even trying to get information from the airport and my airline had yielded nothing. It was around 9 pm when we found the testing site, and I left Lisa with all the luggage and went on in. At 9:30 I exited, glad to be done but still feeling the swab behind my eye socket. I was told to come back in 5 hours for the results, and indeed, at 2:30 a.m. I picked up a piece of paper that said I was negative for Coronavirus. Curled up on some seats with luggage piled around us, we got snippets of sleep until check-in time a few hours later.

I had a good itinerary, with only one transfer in Frankfurt. I love being in Germany, even just on a layover: to hear the language, eat German food, and buy some Ritter Sport. Many seats in the terminal had been taped off, so it was a challenge to find a place to sit. The flights were otherwise relatively uneventful, and thankfully I had no one next to me on the long flight from Frankfurt to Boston. It would have felt like a cushy flight if it hadn’t been for all the necessary safety precautions and adjustments.

And now, it is all a part of the past. A year of my past, which makes it forever a part of me.

Growing up, I thought of ice cream as a very American food. It turns out that, as with many other things in life, China appears to hold claim to the earliest forms of it back in the BC’s. The ice cream we are familiar with today in the U.S. became more widely available and popular in the latter 19th century, although Dolly Madison served it at James’ inaugural ball in the early part of the century. But of course, other countries were enjoying their forms of it by then as well; Marco Polo is credited with introducing it to Italy after his travels, and the gelato I’ve sampled there is something Italy has every right to be proud of.

Turkey, too, has its own special claim on ice cream. Google it and you’ll find most sites describing it — nay, hailing it — as wonderfully “elastic,” “stretchy,” and “sticky.” My descriptor would be “gummy.” Turks love mastic, a resin that comes from trees on the Greek island of Chios (which I visited last fall). Mastic is what created a very early form of chewing gum (before chicle in the Americas was found to work better), and unfortunately flavors many Turkish foods today. This, then, includes ice cream. The mastic as well as salep — ground up orchid root — render the ice cream gooier than our American style.

Another aspect of Turkish ice cream culture involves the cheeky vendors. Because the ice cream sticks to the scooper and to the cone, they have lots of guffaws tricking the customer into thinking they are handing it to them, and then pulling it away. This is such a beloved tradition that when I just typed in “Turkish ice cream vendor” on Google, I came up with over 46,000 videos of their hi-jinks. Perhaps you can tell from my tone that I am not a big fan of this. I can’t stand it. To me, it’s just teasing. If you want to show me your tricks, do a performance for me before you hand it to me. Ah — you think I have been played, been the teasee? In fact, I have not. This performance only occurs in places where there are tourists; I never saw it in Izmir. When my friend Lisa and I were in Cappadocia and stopped for ice cream in the touristy part of Avanos, the vendor handing a cone to Lisa tipped it over, pretending to drop it, and then pulled it back up with a big grin. Ha ha ha. When he handed a cone to me, he did nothing but hand it to me. I’d love to know what look on my face caused such uncharacteristic behavior. As we sat and ate our cones, we witnessed the next victim: this young girl, whose siblings thought it was hilarious, and whose dad was capturing it all on his phone. The girl was not too pleased, and after a few times getting the ice cream pulled away from her, she started to really get angry and cry. What a hoot.

But the hold-back fun doesn’t end there. While no one may have tried to pull ice cream away from me, they found other ways to put me in my place. Turkey, like most countries of the world, has more normal portions of food than the U.S. I absolutely appreciate that, but…well…my first time ordering ice cream at a restaurant, I ordered just one scoop. One “kiddie scoop” in Maine is really more than a person should eat, but the tiny ball of ice cream that came, suspended in the neck of the parfait dish, was a truly comical sight.

And keep in mind, that is a small ice-cream spoon.

So, I can adjust: I learned to order multiple scoops. It was great, in fact: when scoops are the size of a plum, you can get a whole variety!

You might think that I would be fully satisfied with these tasty scoops in a fancy bowl. Ha ha ha – no. After a while, I was missing sauce (topping) on my ice cream. The U.S. may not have invented ice cream, but it did invent the ice cream sundae, supposedly when it became illegal to serve ice cream sodas on Sundays in the late 1800’s. I’m really glad they did. Turkey, in general, is not big on sauces or condiments, almost as if they are afraid it might change the taste of the food. So it seemed to me a challenging yet noble quest this summer to find a place that would serve sauce on my ice cream. We (Lisa happily accompanied me in my quest) ventured beyond our usual locales to a fancy sit-down ice cream parlor, where lo and behold! the menu showed little jars of sauce that could be ordered with ice cream! I excitedly ordered two scoops with a jar of chocolate topping and waited for my special treat. Now, in Turkey it is a common occurrence for your order to look different from what was stated or pictured in the menu — pita instead of a french roll for your sandwich, or beans instead of fries, or no cheesy top that was pictured on the dish — so it was a surprise but not, when the ice cream showed up without the jar of topping to pour on, but rather a little dribble on the top. Lisa had a bit more than me, but not much. The picture below shows ALL of the topping that was there, and again, keep in mind that that is a smallish ice-cream spoon. I did not consider my quest fulfilled.

There was another fancy ice-cream establishment at our mall, so the next time we visited, it was their turn. We perused the menu and saw that out of many pages of ice cream delights, there were one or two parfaits that showed they were served with caramel sauce, nuts, and a cookie. Lovely! I just didn’t want that particular combination of ice cream flavors, so I worked out how to ask our waitress in Turkish if I could get the three scoops I wanted with sauce. When she came to take our order, Lisa ordered the special parfait. Then it was my turn.

Me (in broken Turkish): Can I get three different kinds of ice cream?
Waitress: Three dishes?
Me: No, three different kinds, together.
Waitress: Uh, okay...we have (she points to the parfaits).
Me: But, can I say three different kinds?
Waitress: Uh, okay.
Me: Great. I want lemon, honey almond, and caramel. And then, can I have some caramel sauce on it? 
Waitress: What?
Me: The caramel sauce, like the parfait.
Waitress: You want that parfait?
Me: No...I want my kinds of ice cream, with some caramel sauce on top. Is it possible?
Waitress: No.

I wish I could adequately convey the matter-of-fact, unapologetic way she said no. Nothing else, just “No.” Clearly, I had taken this too far. Un-sauced ice cream it would be.

Lisa’s as-on-the-menu parfait, and my un-sauced ice cream.

Did I enjoy my ice cream? Sure, I did. But we couldn’t stop laughing every time we replayed the end of that conversation. “Could I get some sauce on my ice cream?” “No.”

Finally, we discovered a place that had a chocolate fondue-type fountain flowing in the window of their little kiosk. Very promising! I asked the waiter if I could get some scoops of ice cream with the chocolate sauce on top, and he said yes. Another excited-nervous wait…hey! Look at all the sauce! Woo hoo! I’ve done it!

Too bad the sauce had such an unfortunate flavor that Lisa couldn’t even eat it. I think I’ll stick with no sauce after all…

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