Türkiye - Europa

Turkish Girls

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

This Sunday was the big General Election in Turkey. For weeks before we had put up with political rallies, vans driving around with blaring election speeches and rousing patriotic songs. There were fireworks at night, and huge “vote for me” advertising posters replaced the football team banners.

Everyone was wondering if the ruling AK party would get back in, because there had been some concern about this party being strongly pro-Islamist. The big deal in Turkey, for which we all love the man Atatürk, is that the government must remain secular, while the country is generally very religious. In practical terms, this means, for example, that women cannot wear religious headgear in government jobs.

Well, the AK party did get in. But they have promised to maintain the status quo, secular government. Otherwise the military have promised yet another military coup - they will just step in and take over haberin devamı »

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Break

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

Working too hard. Need break.

Flying to Prague today. Meeting cousin Max who I haven’t seen for 37 years …

Back in 5 days.

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Easter in Prague

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

In Turkey, Easter in only celebrated by the (Christian) Armenian community - our colleague Alvin had taken Sunday off to celebrate with her family. But in Czech Republic, Easter is everywhere. We hadn’t really thought about the fact that we were travelling on Easter Monday, which is a public holiday.

After we booked into the hotel, while we were waiting for Max to return from his match, we decided to come out and explore the Ceskamoravska area. There was a bus station, and a Metro station, just a few metres down the road from the hotel, so we headed across to that.

After the hustle and bustle of Istanbul, this was a bit of a shock! It was like a ghost town. Where were all the people.

Nope, none of them this way either.

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“Please Remove”

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

They say “Life’s pretty straight without Twisties”.

Life can be pretty straight without TV too.

I grew up without TV, but it was no big deal - I didn’t miss it because I had never had it, and besides we had heaps of cardboard boxes, some scissors and sticky-tape to keep us occupied.

Peter and I got our first little black and white TV in the ’70s, soon after we were married. I was off work with a streaming head-cold at the time, and after a few days of staring at the walls of our tiny flat until I was ready to climb them, we decided it was time to become TV owners.

We spent most of the ’80s on Mer in the Torres Strait -no electricity, no running water, no newspapers/magazines, minimal radio reception, and of course no TV. In the evenings we surrounded ourselves with hurricane lanterns to read haberin devamı »

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Don’t you hate winter?

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

Before we went to China, Peter had never seen snow. He (and our daughter Beatrice) soon discovered that snow is pretty to look at, but after the first few minutes it can be really unpleasant and even painful.

We had hoped that winter in Istanbul wouldn’t be so bad. All people had told us was that “Winter in Istanbul is just miserable weather”.

So we have been waiting to find out just what “miserable” means. We’ve been waiting beautiful day after boringly beautiful day!

No wind, no rain (other than an occasional shower), no snow … beautiful clear skies. A couple of nights ago it was foggy - that was different!

Middle of January, here are people sitting around at the railway station waiting for a haberin devamı »

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Keen Supporters

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

The Turks love their football.

We were coming home from the cinema the other night and there was a crowd of FenerBahce fans celebrating a(nother) win by congregating in the middle of the (one way) main street. The traffic was banked up for miles, we thought there must have been an accident or something as we jay-walked our way between the cars … and when we got to the head of the line, all that was there was this bunch of excitable people standing in the street. The first car in line, a tiny red thing, was getting increasingly impatient, honking his horn and revving his engine so the air was full of a dreadful burning smell. Inch by inch he began to edge his way into the crowd. They surrounded him and rocked his car. But he kept on, and eventually broke through and roared his way angrily along the haberin devamı »

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Running Away

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

We’re a weird mob - us ESL teachers. We are none of us boring. We all have different reasons for doing what we do, we all have stories to tell.

We are of different nationalities, from different backgrounds, and have different beliefs … and yet we work together, and some of us even live together. We get on together, one way or another.

So when young Sarah joined our particular crew at the beginning of this month, we were mostly a little startled. “She’s too normal,” was a comment I heard repeatedly.

The whole teaching situation here was new to Sarah, and she asked lots of questions, and everyone pitched in and answered as best they could, and everybody seemed happy enough.

On Sunday morning we wondered why Sarah wasn’t teaching her class - its haberin devamı »

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Sand-between-the-toes

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

Yesterday I had a class to teach, but Peter was at a loose end, and Charlotte was going stir-crazy. So the two of them hopped on the train that runs right by our apartment - just to see where it would go. They went to the end of the line, and back, but on the way they saw a beach out of the window, so they got off and felt the sand-between-their-toes … (Charlotte is from Brighton where the beach has pebbles.)

So today I didn’t have a class, and Peter and I hopped the train and went 13 minutes down the track to be on the beach by the sea.

It was only a little bit of beach, and we weren’t at all sure if it wasn’t a private beach. In Australia haberin devamı »

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Life Without Water

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

I keep trying to be positive - in China the electricity and water would frequently go off for a day at a time - and we still have electricity here, so it can’t be that bad.

I didn’t have a class this morning, so I didn’t hurry into the shower. When I turned the tap on about 9.30 there was only a trickle. At that time, had I known, I could have trickled some into a bucket.

Now, at the end of the day, and beginning to feel slightly tacky - it’s been a fairly warm day - I decided to check the internet for news … and I found this:

Water to be cut for 30 hours in Istanbul

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

ISTANBUL – TDN with wire dispatches

Certain sections of haberin devamı »

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Hot Summer Evenings

Yazar bot | 08.07.2008 | Kategori Turizm

They said Istanbul has ‘miserable’ winters. Well, it hardly rained, it didn’t snow, we didn’t see any fog, there was barely any wind, and it didn’t really get cold.

But summer in Istanbul? Now that is miserable!

At the moment the middle east is in the grips of a heatwave - temperatures pushing the high forties day after day - and we are just on the edge of that. It’s hot, and the place isn’t geared for heat. Many places do not have air conditioning. And there is a water shortage and electricity shortage, so they turn off water or power to whole suburbs for up to a day at a time.

End of Time

Our contract ended precipitously somewhat sooner than we had originally intended, but we can’t go anywhere until we get Peter’s passport back from the British Consulate after our visa interview there on July 31st. We haberin devamı »

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