In order to spare
my dear foreign friends from Google translate torture – although I was laughing my
head off while reading what translator had made up from my story, but then again
I new what I had written… - I will try to tell my story about Istanbul in a
worldly recognized language. So here it comes.
All my previous
trips to so called warm southern countries have turned out to be complete
disaster. I remember then my colleagues sent me to Spain in November hoping to
get back tanned chocolate-Raine… Yeah right, the week in Spain passed in warm
winter coat and boots. Turkey didn't turn out that bad because the weather was actually
warm! Although other people were walking around in warm sweaters or jackets or
coats, I was only wearing a T-shirt and sometimes even that was too much…
People gave me looks, maybe wondering who’s that fool… Anyway, I should be used to travelling around by now and talk about my trips
quite calmly but a fool as I am I’m still wondering and paying attention to details and I'm
completely surprised about every new place, taking photos like crazy. I just love
to get emotional, don’t I?
Right before
landing in Istanbul we had a bit of an unexpected experience – our plane took
back off a second before touchdown… My children (who had their first flight
ever) looked at me puzzled but soon we just enjoyed our extra round tour above Istanbul :) Afterwards we had another experience with passport
control queue which seemed endless together with people of around thirty
different nationalities – my first encounter with women wearing burkas (high
heels twinkling down below…). Too bad my camera needed to stay in the bottom of
my bag. Thanks to this crowd we managed to get out of the airport almost an
hour and a half later and our dear friends were already desperately searching
for Lohusuu School’s phone number in internet ready to add us in Interpol’s
search list…
The key word for my
Turkey trip was definitely MUSIC. Never before
have I heard such a cacophony of sounds. Male voices endlessly yearning,
instruments sound like out of key, shrilling sound of the kanun and creepishly crying violin… Only percussions offered some sense into this chaos of sounds, smoothing and binding everything
together into the rhythm of the soul. So, I turned off my ears and listened
with my heart. And danced. Already in the first evening (although being up for
almost 38 hours straight) we managed to try the Turkish dance. Thanks my dear
ones for teaching me one of your dances. I will never forget it!
I wasn’t ready for
this trip. I wasn’t ready for the metropolitan lights or endless street noise,
or hearing drum beat under my hotel windows two o’clock at night, or seeing
hundreds of brightly shining dark brown eyes looking at me, or for nothing at
all in that matter… Our first encounter with Istanbul was when we decided to go
and look for the money exchange. Man in the hotel lobby said: money change
everywhere, go this way. First man in the street: go that way, five minutes;
another man: go this way, ten minutes… So we went, for…. hour and a half… but
we finally did it – we found the main street and the place. This taught us our
first lesson about Turkish time – minutes are at least twice as long as Estonian
ones :) But we were happy!
Another quite
confusing thing is Turkish language. As a linguist I’m always trying to learn
at least some of the important phrases in local language. But… having no clue
how to read, as letters are spelled differently according to some specific Turkish rules of which I have no idea whatsoever… I only managed to remember
few of them. Mainly thanks to my dear new friend Belgin who wasn’t giving up on
me :)
In my head
One thousand and
one little men
Are playing unknown
melody
On strangely
sounding chimes
Tamam tamam tamam
Okay okay
I’m trying to remember
Günaydin ja teşekkürler
Bir, iki, üç, dört beş...
Oh my, this symphony
Has a bit too complicated libreto...
The main aim of our trip was to meet our Turkish project partners, so in
the morning we started to move towards Çatalca which in all the Istanbul’s endlessness was one-hour-ride away. Red schoolhouse
reminded me of buildings at home, so without having the name Tayfun written above the main entrance it
would have easily been any of the Estonian schoolhouses. Only people were
different – smiling and shining and cheerful and of course these dark eyes...
uhhh!!! We had a priceless opportunity to visit lessons and as I moved towards
my 9B class accompanied by English teacher Latif, I had no idea what kind of emotional
experience awaits for me. I will never forget these 45 minutes in front of this
class! Such a warm children, such funny questions and how they reacted to my
singing and dancing... Oh my, let me go back! I’m getting too emotional again,
right?
 |
Another key
word for our Istanbul trip was food. During our stay at school we had a special
lunch made for us and I have to say – I’ve never tasted such a great amount of
sooooo tasty things in my whole life. I tried everything, whatever the name
was. It started to remind our last visit to Romania... but fortunately we could
stop before eating too much :) Anyway, it seemed like whatever kind of meat or in whatever form it was
cooked, it was still called kebap. Very confusing. I still don’t know, which
one of them is the REAL kebap. But nevermind, as long as it tastes good, it
doesn’t matter what’s it called. The only thing I never get used to during my trips is the fact that nobody ever drinks milk. I’m the dedicated milk-drinker
because I usually consume at least 1 liter of milk every day, so I was kinda
excited when my colleagues spotted a bottle on the table, which looked like it
could be milk inside it. Of course it wasn’t. It was Ayran, some kind of salty
yoghurt which tasted like... I better not say... So, next time I bring milk
with me. In vodka bottles :)
In my trips I
usually find places which resonate with me in the same universe. It’s not as
complicated as it sounds – if you just listen and feel, you can find out that
some places talk to you, you touch a stone and you feel its story... well, this
time it happened to me in İnceğiz caves. I can’t
even try to explain this overwhelming feeling I received when touching the
walls of the caves. As I was looking at my own shadow on the wall, I realized
how insignificant and tiny I am, just like a butterfly wing – present during a
fraction of time, then gone and forgotten forever…
to be continued...
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