I went to Bulgaria for lunch last Saturday, and was back in Istanbul for dinner. I left Istanbul around 8am to meet a fellow couchsurfer, and we headed off to the Istanbul bus station. The bus station itself is a labyrinthine structure, made up of dark passageways that these huge Coach buses somehow make their way through, winding up to the top deck, past garages to fix broken down buses, dry cleaning shops, magazine stands, tiny restaurants and tea houses. It's like a regular city, settled in the bowels of a giant structure, complete with its own mosque and homeless population. Finally, we made it to the top of the building, found the correct bus and were on our way to Bulgaria. Marry, the girl I was traveling with, and I both needed to cross the border to renew our Turkish visas. She's from France and we both are allowed to stay in Turkey for three months before having to renew our visas. For both of us, time was almost up, and after a little research, found that the closest border was the Turkey/Bulgaria border, just north of Istanbul.
It took a little over two hours to reach the border town, then we had to take a taxi the last 15 km to the actual border. We must have been a strange sight, exiting the taxi with just our hand bags, and walking past the cars waiting in line to cross the border. We literally walked from Turkey to Bulgaria, collecting the necessary stamps along the way from the border police. Luckily, between the two of us, we knew enough Turkish to ask what the procedure was, and the process was relatively easy. Once we got our Bulgarian stamps, we promptly turned around and reversed the process, literally staying in Bulgaria for the three minutes it took to walk over the border again.
I was really happy to see a duty free shop on the Turkish side, and was excited to get to buy a couple of bottles of good wine without having to sell a spare body part to afford it (as seems the case in the rest of Turkey). Really, it's about $30 US for a decent bottle of wine in a store (absolutely ridiculous considering that it's equal to more than one day's pay for most people), and you can forget about buying wine in a restaurant. I don't have enough money in my checking account to cover the cost! There's plenty of relatively inexpensive Turkish wine, but I'd rather drink a liter of gasoline than go that route. So, I rarely get to drink anything decent. Needless to say, I was psyched at the thought of getting to bring back 2 bottles of great looking Chilean wine for a mere 6 Euros/bottle. Until Merry had to open her big French mouth at the check out. She just HAD to go and use some of her limited Turkish to explain that we were only over the border for a minute, then were back in Turkey! ARGH!!!! Why!?!?!? In my view, there is never a reason to talk to anyone near the border, especially anyone in any kind of official capacity, lest the figure out that we're straddling the line of legal/illegal by doing a "border run." It turns out that to shop in the duty free shop, one must be out of the country for at least 3 days. Well, I'm sure they were not going to look through all of the stamps in each of our passports to try to figure out when we left and came back, so we would have been in the clear. However, the store clerk called over the manager and he informed us that we couldn't buy anything. I was really angry, but it wouldn't have helped to get mad at her. She's French. She can't help it. I did, however, tell her to keep her big, fat, French mouth shut before we got our final stamps from the Turkish police upon reentering the country. (Not in so many words, mind you. I was a tiny bit nicer in the way I put it). I could deal without the wine, but to have to stay in Bulgaria for any length of time (and potentially miss work because of her) was NOT going to fly well with me. Luckily, we crossed without a problem, took a taxi back to the border town and caught a shuttle to the bus station in time to get an earlier bus than we had planned. We made it back to Istanbul in time for dinner, and I'm happy that I have another 3 months here without having to worry about violating my visa limitations. Just next time, I'll be going ALONE and getting that damn wine!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Heat of Spring
It's been some time since my last post and I apologize for that. I'm now in Istanbul, living with two Turkish people (a brother and sister, Ilkay and Deniz respectively) and a Polish girl, Natalia. I met them on my first visit, through another friend, and I "surfed" their couch for a week or so, becoming friends with all three of them along the way. When I arrived back here, I stayed with the sister of my Turkish roommates, Kezban, then was asked to move in here, with them. So, I've gotten to know their whole family quite well, even their mom, who doesn't speak a lick of English.
It's been difficult in some ways to move to a new country with no job and no job prospects to speak of. However, knowing them has made it much easier than it could have been and I'm grateful to have such good friends in such a short time living here. They've been helpful with my foray into learning Turkish, but unfortunately their English is so good, that English is the language mostly spoken at home. Along with the three of them, we also live with a cat, who Deniz rescued as an abandoned kitten. She's about 7 months old now and currently teaching us about the cycle of life, cat style. She's entered her first heat and for the last 36 hours has been almost constantly mewing. Loudly. She has never been the cuddly type with me, but for the last 36 hours, she has decided that I'm her best bet at mating. Apparently she doesn't know that I don't swing that way...I'm not "into" cats. But, she's got her little heart set on mating with me and has been underfoot and scratching at my door nearly incessantly since this all began. Funny at first, it's now a little disconcerting that she's aimed her entire attack at me. I must have some kind of hormones spewing from my body, unbeknown to me, that attract mating female cats. I'll just have to add this to my list of attributes. I wonder if I can put that on my CV? Under the "Skills" section, I can list something like, "Drives female cats wild while in heat". At this point of my job search, I don't see how it can hurt me!
As for the job hunt, I've given into the cliche American thing to do, and have begun interviewing at English Language teaching centers. I was the "guest teacher" at the Istanbul Bar Association's English language class one week and it was actually pretty fun. I have a friend who is a lawyer here, and learning English. She asked if I could come in to talk to the class, so they could practice their English on a native speaker, since their teacher is Turkish. Little did I know I would be teaching the ENTIRE lesson. So, I whipped something up in the 5 minutes I had to prepare and I think it went okay, considering. At least, it went well enough for their teacher to recommend me to a colleague to teach his wife and daughter English. I'm going to meet with them tomorrow to see if I can help at all. Other than that, there are not many opportunities here for a foreigner like myself who does not speak Turkish. So, I'm studying Turkish in my copious free time and actually getting better, little by little. Wish me luck with the cat situation and pray that my roommates decide to get the little thing fixed!
It's been difficult in some ways to move to a new country with no job and no job prospects to speak of. However, knowing them has made it much easier than it could have been and I'm grateful to have such good friends in such a short time living here. They've been helpful with my foray into learning Turkish, but unfortunately their English is so good, that English is the language mostly spoken at home. Along with the three of them, we also live with a cat, who Deniz rescued as an abandoned kitten. She's about 7 months old now and currently teaching us about the cycle of life, cat style. She's entered her first heat and for the last 36 hours has been almost constantly mewing. Loudly. She has never been the cuddly type with me, but for the last 36 hours, she has decided that I'm her best bet at mating. Apparently she doesn't know that I don't swing that way...I'm not "into" cats. But, she's got her little heart set on mating with me and has been underfoot and scratching at my door nearly incessantly since this all began. Funny at first, it's now a little disconcerting that she's aimed her entire attack at me. I must have some kind of hormones spewing from my body, unbeknown to me, that attract mating female cats. I'll just have to add this to my list of attributes. I wonder if I can put that on my CV? Under the "Skills" section, I can list something like, "Drives female cats wild while in heat". At this point of my job search, I don't see how it can hurt me!
As for the job hunt, I've given into the cliche American thing to do, and have begun interviewing at English Language teaching centers. I was the "guest teacher" at the Istanbul Bar Association's English language class one week and it was actually pretty fun. I have a friend who is a lawyer here, and learning English. She asked if I could come in to talk to the class, so they could practice their English on a native speaker, since their teacher is Turkish. Little did I know I would be teaching the ENTIRE lesson. So, I whipped something up in the 5 minutes I had to prepare and I think it went okay, considering. At least, it went well enough for their teacher to recommend me to a colleague to teach his wife and daughter English. I'm going to meet with them tomorrow to see if I can help at all. Other than that, there are not many opportunities here for a foreigner like myself who does not speak Turkish. So, I'm studying Turkish in my copious free time and actually getting better, little by little. Wish me luck with the cat situation and pray that my roommates decide to get the little thing fixed!
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