A Day in the Life

I’m getting on close to a month in Turkey – a whole month! It’s (still) staggering to believe. Since I’m here studying, school and school commitments have been taking priority, especially in this period of starting classes and solidifying schedules and figuring out a basic level of language to get by day-to-day. This whole process has led to daily routine. Mundane, perhaps, but hey, there was no guarantee of entertainment when I started this blog.

My classes don’t start consistently at the same time, so my morning departure time can vary significantly. But no matter the time of day, my first stop out of the house is the Ulusoy bakery, a block away from the apartment, and only a couple hundred metres off the path to school. My order is always the same in the mornings: “Bir simit, lütfen”. One simit, please. A simit is one of my favourite Turkish foods – a thin, bagel-like circle, covered in sesame seeds. The best days, of course, are the ones where my timing lines up perfectly with a fresh batch and the inside is warm and steamy. The staff at Ulusoy are delightful – they know I’m a foreigner and so they speak slowly and clearly so I understand. If I’m with Yasin, they may ask him questions about how I’m adjusting. One woman regularly chats away to me when I come in and I just smile obliviously, and that seems to be just fine with her. As I become a regular, I am provided with one of the biggest motivators to improve my Turkish – I long for the day when our daily conversation can become more meaningful and go beyond a simple order of a simit.

Looking up my street. My building is the brown and yellow one, to the left of the pink one.

From the bakery, I cross Ziyabey Caddesi, the busiest street in Balgat. Like every street in Turkey, there are no crosswalks or lights for pedestrians, even though this is one of the most popular places to cross and is already an intersection. At least this is not really a busy road relative to the rest of the city. Only two lanes of traffic, and I can often take advantage of someone’s red light. And at least I can run. It makes me think about the systematic ableism in a city like Ankara – what about the elderly or those with disabilities who cannot so deftly dodge cars? I don’t know how they ever cross the street. Drivers have virtually no respect for any pedestrian, and I have yet to see additional compassion on their part for those who are less mobile.

I walk down a quieter side street, now, past the neighbourhood mosque. I love how it looks against a bright blue sky.

Beautiful neighbourhood mosque.

Next, I cross into Balgat Parki, or Balgat Park. I pass the Syrian beggars, quietly asking for money in Arabic. I pass the man who sells çay, scratch cards, and Kleenex. There were flowers in the park, too, even – amazingly – while it was snowing, but yesterday I noticed they were all dug up – I hope that means they’ll replant soon.

The sign for the park.

A mediocre picture of walking home through Balgat Park in the snow a couple weeks ago, in what was one of my favourite evenings in the city so far. The mosque pictured above is the one you can see just off to the left at the end of the park.

I emerge from the park behind two ugly, imposing government buildings: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Sayiştay, which I understand to be the government archives. Down the Sayiştay driveway, I reach the bustling highway which cuts through the city. Up the escalators I go – they do not work, nor have they ever, so it’s just a staircase – and across the overpass. More Syrian beggars, usually.

The overpass over the highway. Way down at the end, you can see some beggars. There is usually someone there.

On the other side, I descend, and then I have to run out to a partition where I wait to wave down a dolmuş. The dolmuşes are well labelled, I simply have to look for “ODTÜ” in the front window – that’s the Turkish acronym for METU, my university. In the mornings, the dolmuşes usually come every two to five minutes, so the wait isn’t long. I wave one down. It doesn’t quite come to a complete stop as I scramble inside.

What I see while I wait for the dolmus to show up.

Someone (not a native Turkish speaker, so the reliability is not guaranteed) told me that the word ‘dolmuş’ is derived from a word meaning ‘full’. If that’s true, it’s terribly accurate. Each dolmuş is privately owned, so it’s in the best interests of the driver to get as many passengers as he can before he makes a trip. Especially in the mornings, then, my ride is a cramped on to school. The dolmuşes all have seating, but it’s a hot commodity. I’ve never gotten a seat on the way to school. Instead, you just hold on and try not to knock over everyone else when you lunge around a corner or up a hill.

The most sought-after seat in the dolmuş is the front passenger seat. Sometimes, if I play my cards right on the way home, I can get the seat. This is ideal not just because it’s the most comfortable and roomy seat in the dolmuş, but for me personally it also (almost) guarantees I won’t miss my stop coming home, even if it’s dark out. The dolmuş costs 2.25 lira each way, and when you get on, you pass your money forward. I've learned how to say "one person" so the driver gives me change if I need it, but sometimes there's some confusion when people are passing money to me. Usually it's a straight-forward pass up to the person next closest to the driver, but if people say things other than how many people they're paying for, I lose my ability to pass the message along. Especially at the end of the day, when a whole ton of people are crammed inside and trying to pay, it can get a little hectic. I've had the driver yell at me at couple times, and I usually just look around bewildered (I am) until someone else can step and solve the crisis. But I'm certainly getting better, and here's more motivation to learn the language sooner rather than later.

On the way to school, it’s pretty easy to get off at the right spot, since the last stop is fairly central on campus, and if I am getting off somewhere before that, there are always others on the dolmuş getting of at the same place who will let the driver know. Otherwise, though, there are no “set” stops that the driver makes – he stops only if someone waves him down, or a passenger asks him to pull over. On the way home, this sometimes causes me trouble. I theoretically know what to say to get the driver to pull over, but I’m still incredibly self-conscious about yelling it out in a crowded dolmuş, when I know my accent is still really embarrassing. Compound that with the fact that I’m often coming home after dark, and standing in a crowd making it hard to see where we are out the windows, and it’s no surprise that the frequency with which I miss my stop is still rather high. No worries, though, since there is, without fail, always someone who wants to get off or on at a nearby metro station – it usually doubles my walk home, but that’s not so bad, and on nice days I’ve purposely stayed on the dolmuş a bit longer to enjoy the time outside.

At school, I’ve solidified my course sequence now (here’s hoping uOttawa approves the courses and lets me graduate!). I’m taking Current Issues in Central Asian Politics, Beginner Turkish Language, the US and Major Asian Powers, Turkey and the EU, and Experimental Psychology. It took a bit longer than I wanted to figure out the courses – I attended some classes where the professors bluntly told me that the course would be running in Turkish, not English (this despite, of course, the fact that they’ve all signed contracts to teach exclusively in English, and that English is listed as the SOLE language of instruction at the university. Oh well). But what I’ve been left with here is actually a nice, diverse semester, and it works out so I have both Wednesdays and Fridays off (before you jump on me for having a breeze semester, I’ll just say that my other three days are therefore ultra-busy, and one of my courses is Master’s level, so the workload is nice and heavy).

Campus (or perhaps Narnia) a week or so ago.

But now! Spring has sprung! Students flock to the grass to hang out. The white building is the President's building,

On weekends, Mustafa, Yasin and I usually eat breakfast together. We have the Turkish breakfast staples – cheeses, olives, hard boiled eggs, bread, and honey. As I mentioned last post, we take time on Saturday to go to the market to buy fresh fruit and vegetables. For dinners during the week, half the time I stay on campus and eat with friends, and half the time I come home and eat with my flatmates. I have much work to do to make up for all the cooking Mustafa does at dinners – he prepares delicious meals without fail. But he’s also been teaching me how to cook things “the Turkish way”, which I should put to use soon.

While I'm incredibly behind on stories I meant to tell on this blog, I'm also running out of time right now and I need to finish this post. So one quick story only!

Last weekend, my Slovenian friend's Turkish roommate, Ozge, invited us to a concert of Turkish pop sensation Mirkelam. Mirkelam was very popular in the early 2000s, especially noted for his 2004 hit Aşkımsın (and my favourite song of his). Now, his fan base is mostly the young-adult versions of the teen girls who fanned over him back in the day, but going to the concert was fantastic anyway. I find Turkish pop to be upbeat and fun, with a unique enough sound to differentiate itself from Top 40 pop back home. The concert venue was incredibly small, too, so we got to enjoy the music from close up. And afterwards, we slipped backstage because nobody seemed to care and got a photo with the star himself! You're jealous, I know it.

Mirkelam and band.

Ozge and I with Mirkelam.

I seriously have a list of stories to share, so I'm sorry that this post ended up only being a bland description of my day-to-day. This weekend I'm heading on a trip with the International Students Network to the famous region of Cappadoccia - it will be nice to leave the city finally, and I'm sure Cappadoccia is going to be absolutely stellar. My plan is to have an update post on the trip as soon as possible once I've returned!