Changes in Beyoğlu

In Istanbul, I lived in the district of Beyoğlu. This is often known as the heart of European Istanbul, with tons of bars, outdoor cafes, shops and flocks of tourists. I lived very near to the 'dangerous' neighborhood of Tarlabaşı. Turks were often shocked to find out where I lived, because this is where the prostitutes, gypsies and transvestites lived, and therefore a place I shouldn't go. However, it was one of my favorite places in Istanbul. Its narrow streets were full of food sellers, beautiful decrepit buildings, women shouting to each other out the windows and kids playing soccer. During Ramadan, my neighborhood was one of the few that still had a man walk around drumming at 3 am, waking people up for pre-dawn breakfast. I took many wandering walks through the congested streets and never got tired of the sights. There was always something new to see - a woman walking a lamb on a leash, soccer fans waving scarves and singing team songs, women dumping dishwater out the windows and men praying in the corner of their convenience stores and women lowering baskets out their window to buy vegetables from street salesmen. Here is how wikipedia describes it: 

Historically, Tarlabaşı was home to a large Greek population; the neighbourhood's most prominent building is still a Greek Orthodox church from the 19th century. The city's oldest and largest Syriac Orthodox church is also found here. In the 1990s, large numbers of Kurdish immigrants from eastern Turkey moved into Tarlabaşı mixing in with the local Roma population. More recently, it has become the home to many migrants from neighbouring countries and Africa.

I was much happier living in a neighborhood like this than I would have been in one of the bohemian areas full of expats, international grocery stores and trendy restaurants. Now, following recent elections, government officials are working to beautify the city (an urban renewal project) and are evicting the poorer people from Tarlabaşı.


EurasiaNet has a few great articles on the subject: here, here and most recently here. This is a great blog in English about happenings in the neighborhood.  It will be a real loss to Turkish culture if Tarlabaşı's traditional buildings are torn down. There are enough places in Istanbul that are modern and Western. Officials should be working to preserve these old neighborhoods rather than destroying them.


In other sad Istanbul news, officials have been shutting down all outdoor seating in restaurants in bars. Istanbul Eats looks at how this has affected these locales here. One of the best parts about Istanbul in warm weather was the number of places with outdoor seating. The alleys off of İstiklal got narrower with tables, the Turkish men enticing you into their restaurant appeared more than ever and there was a wonderful atmosphere that filled these lively streets. The energy was infectious and I could have spent every night walking up and down these streets, people watching. It will not be the same if everyone sits inside. Will the Beyoğlu I see in November be the same one I fell in love with two years ago?

Language Learning

I have not blogged nearly as much as I would have liked. I went to San Francisco in December and Thailand and Cambodia in June, but just have felt writer's block for so many months.

I haven't traveled as much as I would like, but I have been taking lots of language classes. Since last fall, I've taken Polish, Mandarin, French, Russian and Turkish classes, and one thing is clear. Whether it's innate ability or as a result of studying linguistics, many foreign languages and TESL, I am a great language learner. Things just make sense to me that are difficult to others.

I have been taking community language classes, which are cheap, and so my classmates come from all walks of life. In Polish class, many had Polish ancestors and wanted to connect with their roots. French class was full of retirees who wanted to move to France. Turkish class is a good mix - one girl is taking it because she loves the Turkish restaurant in St. Paul, and a couple is learning Turkish so that they can communicate with their daughter's Turkish in-laws. Whoever they are, most have had no foreign language experience. When genders were introduced in Polish class, one man spent weeks and weeks questioning this since, "How can a chair be a man? Why is coffee a girl?" Turkish is a pronoun-optional language, but one woman asks EVERY time if, for example, "ben yorgunum" means the same thing as "yorgunum." YES, YES, YES! Every time, yes.

It makes it very frustrating for me since classes progresses at the speed of molasses in January. It also means that my classmates turn to me for help, but also secretly resent me. I'm sure they wonder why I'm in beginning Turkish when I seem to know it all. However, it's all new to me, it just happens to make perfect sense. Turkish is the most logical language I've studied, and it boggles my mind that others don't find it as easy as I do.

One would hope that university language classes, which cost about $4000 for a semester, have higher expectations of the students than the cheaper community classes ($50-$100 for 6-8 weeks). However, unless the class if full of linguists and serial language learners, I fear the same frustration would be there, only my bank account would be emptier. Private lessons would be the way to go, but they are more expensive and I need other students to motivate me to do homework. So, I guess I'll continue doing what I'm doing. It is definitely a good practice in patience, something I'll need in teaching EFL. If only "excellent language learning ability" was a real resume builder, and if only serial language learning was a real job I could get.

David Beckham in Salzburg

This is a travel blog, and I definitely think of myself as a traveller. However, now that I'm back to life in America, there has been no travelling and therefore not much to blog about. Every day, I dream about leaving as soon as I can (next fall at the latest), and my current fantasies are Svalbard, Norway; Irkutsk and the Sakha Republic, Russia; Cape Town, South Africa; and anywhere outside of the US with indigenous languages that need preserving.

However, blogging about my future travel plans is probably not very interesting to anyone. Last night I had a very vivid travel dream, so I guess if I can't travel in real life and blog about it, I can dream about travelling and blog about it. So here it is.

It was a beautiful sunny day in Salzburg (that's how I knew it was a dream), and I was shopping in the Linzergasse and looking at the cheap Central Asian bazaar clothes on display with my parents and my brother. We headed towards Theatergasse and were standing on a grassy median between the lanes of traffic. David Beckham (when he was still young and good at football) was standing there and doing some sort of demonstration, and I caught a fly baseball that he had thrown. He congratulated me: "Great catch! As a reward, you get to make the first kick at the season opening Galaxy game next year. What do you want to rename the team? Anna's Galaxy? The NHL Galaxy? (that's what all Americans call us!) The USA Galaxy?"

Then my alarm woke me up from this very realistic scenario of discussing a football/baseball/hockey sport with David Beckham in Salzburg and I was back to real life in Minneapolis, where snow and apathy reign supreme.

Tattoo ideas

I have been dreaming of a new tattoo for ages, and spent last night searching for pictures. These are some options, but I'm still so undecided! I just want them all...

Looks Are What Really Matter

Now that the World Cup is again upon us and I am for the first time very interested in football, I decided to blog about the only aspect of the game I feel comfortable commenting on - good looks! Using this handy dandy website with all the athletes' pictures, I looked at all the competitors and chose the 10 cutest in my opinion, based solely on these photos. (Cristiano Ronaldo, Frank Lampard, Nadir Belhadj and Nani, to name a few, are good looking in real life but didn't make the list because their World Cup pictures are less-than-attractive.)


1. Samara
2. Boateng
3. Afellay
4. Ljubijankic
5. Ziani


I don't even want to say the rest of the top 10 guys belong on the same list since they are much less attractive than the top 5, but when it comes to footballers I'm sorry to say but there are pretty slim pickings! Besides, leaving this as a Top 10 rather than a Top 5 will better showcase popular opinion which says that my taste in men is terrible. 


6. Muslera
7. Beto
8. Silva
9. Jedinak
10. Vela


Who would be in your top 10?

You Know You're in America When...

You hear this sentence uttered in all seriousness:

"He's the most dudiest dude douche of a bro."

Happy Marriage!

 My AFS friend Nick visited Istanbul for a week. He studied TESL at the University of Minnesota like I did and has a teaching internship in Berlin for the summer, so when he asked if he could shadow me one day at work of course I let him. In my last week of a long year at a private Turkish primary school, I figured he should see really naughty kids in action before he decides to be a teacher for the long haul.

I introduced him to my coworkers and my first class as "my friend Nick from America." The students immediately took this to mean that he was my lover/boyfriend/husband and spent the entire lesson writing us notes congratulating us on our wedding. Google Translate didn't give me anything useful (the horrible "I just learned how to write" penmanship didn't help)  but they say things along the lines of "Happy Wedding" and "I wish you a happy life together."  (The one ending with Hehhh... is especially intriguing!) I also broke the news to them that Friday is my last day of teaching, so they assumed that Nick had come to Istanbul to pick me up. They were sad to hear I was leaving and told Nick that he could go home but I had to stay. :)

In order to avoid the chaos of that first class, I told all subsequent classes that he was my brother. It was easily believed since we both are pale, skinny and blue-eyed (not to mention gorgeous and extremely fashionable) but I only realized afterwards that if the classes gossip about the stranger at school and find out that he is my brother AND my boyfriend, they will have a very skewed idea of what is socially acceptable in America. Let's hope their class teachers cleared things up before the went home and told their parents that Anna Teacher was marrying her brother! (Although, I might score some expensive wedding gifts before I leave...)

Luuuurve

One of my friends had this as her facebook status update:


why i am happy with my boyfriend (is this a lame status update?):

because he laughs at my hairy legs when others are disgusted.
then waxes them when my own attempts fail.

Could just be my mood of late, but the cuteness made me cry. What better way is there to describe love in 30 words?

Good Advice

I have been trying for a few weeks to write a blog about my current living situation (titled 8 Simple Rules For Living With Your Ex) but I am still much too close emotionally to it all to be able to express myself clearly. I often read the photocomic Surviving the World and came across this one today. This basically sums up a lot of what I wanted to say in my blog but in a much more succinct, less boring and definitely less bitchy way.

Funny

I have been looking for a while for a non-souveniry Istanbul t-shirt, and luckily for me, many of the Turkish clothing companies have had Turkey/Istanbul-themed shirts this season. Many were ugly, some were too glittery, and they were all too expensive. Until I found this one today:

5TL, flattering cut, beautiful Galata Tower, good colour, random words "Child dreams Istanbul" and, best of all, a cartoon PIG on the left! All in all a very good birthday present to myself.