‘It’s okay, just throw it down’, I hear my love say to the guys who are putting new windows and window frames in the kitchen and living room and who are not sure what to do with the old frames and glass. I want to protest: Are you crazy, you can’t just throw things down from the balcony! But I …
What I like about being in ‘the village’ in Kapadokya in central Anatolia are the seasons that are defined by which kind of crop is in the center of everyday life. At the end of september, it’s grapes (and pumpkins): they are ripe and being harvested. In the streets there are horse carts with wooden boxes full of grapes, on …
So bayram, as they call the holidays here, is over. Three days of eating, kissing hands and visits to family and friends, people seem to love it but I’m happy I’m not really part of it. The children are rather generous with kissing the hands of their parents, aunts and uncles, adult brothers and sisters, and, well, everybody who has …
She takes a coffee mug out of my cupboard, reaches for a bottle of cleaning stuff, then points to all the cups and glasses and says something about a smell. I have absolutely no clue of what she is saying. Does she want to spray all my cups and glasses with this cleaning stuff to make them smell nice? She …
A friend of mine lost 50 lira to a taxi driver. She took two 50 lira (about € 25,-) notes from an ATM, then paid the taxi driver with one of them. He said she only paid 5 lira, and showed her a 5 lira note. She believed the guy, since the 5 lira note and the 50 lira note …
Today the 88th birthday of the Turkish national anthem, Istiklal Marsi (Independence March), is being celebrated. Automatically my thoughts went back to years ago, when I first visited Turkey and went to a soccer match. I was in Fenerbahce stadium, the home team playing against Denizlispor. The atmosphere was good, even before any player kicked the ball. Next …
My Turkish friend A. got married. The most unusual marriage I have ever seen, but then again, I haven’t seen that many. The bride was in a borrowed purple dress with great shiny purple heels underneath, while groom T. was in jeans. Short ceremony, few friends, lunch afterwards, that was it. Now both the families try to convince the couple to …
The hamam encapsulates what I like about Turkey, I thought today when I was lying on the big stone in the centre of the hamam with my eyes closed, waiting to get my massage.
In Holland, I would go to the sauna now and then with a friend, and to be honest, that was nice mainly because of the company, not …
In my bag there were four newspapers, a book, a bottle of water and a simit. I even considered buying a small folding chair on the way. Why all this gear? I was going to the Great Big Horrible Foreigners’ Police Office this morning, to get my residence permit extended. The last few times I went there, I …
Bags of coal and crates of bread
Coal. These days it’s mainly coal that municipalities hand out to the poor, who don’t have a gas connection and cannot afford to use an electric heater, and who also find coal too expensive. Luckily there is the AKP holding some stock – it’s mainly AKP municipalities where the poor receive these gifts. Prime Minister Erdogan tries his best to …
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