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[tarte tatin]

When you are away from Turkey what are the little things you miss?

I'll go first: Toothpicks and cloves, it is just great to leave a restaurant knowing you have not got lettuce stuck between your teeth and really nice to sweeten breath with a clove.

Turkish bread and poca are about the only Turkish food stuffs I really miss when away.

Dolmuses are fantastic. Don't actually miss them as I drive a car in the UK but they are a wonderful facility here and what a shame they haven't caught on in other countries.

[justme]

Delivery from the bakals.

[batukhan]

What I would miss as a smoker is cheap smokes and the ability to smoke in bars and restaurants.

[Golightly]

ice cold raki, big wedges of sweet watermelon, plates of meze, good sea views, the Karadeniz Pidecisi opposite the train station in Bakirkoy, properly made doners, fresh food.

[ghost]

Even though ghost had some experiences in Turkey which were negative, in retrospect the general friendliness of the Turks is missed - even though at times it seemed intrusive.

But now that ghost is in Korea and facing a lot of robot like humans who all seem the same, the Turkish experience seems even better. In Korea the general indifference that foreigners feel from the Koreans gets to you after a while, and one suspects that underneath the polite 'Korean mask' lies a repressed xenophobe who basically hates anything foreign and not Korean.

Korea is a country where ghost can live in splendid isolation and not talk to a human for days on end, when not teaching. In Turkey that type of situation would have been unthinkable. While a balance between the two would be good, Korea is at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to friendliness. Basically most of us do not 'exist' in the eyes of most Koreans. The Koreans are indifferent to most foreigners, while not outwardly hostile.

In Korea ghost has forgotten what it feels like to love and be loved in return. In Korea ghost is in a state of perpetual 'anomie.' It could die here and no one would notice. Koreans don't care.

Ghost in Korea

[zaylahis]

My apartment in Tesvikiye, the view of the Bosphorus, the ability to openan account with the bakkal, the kindness that shopkeepers showed to my children. Watching the snow fall onto the Tesvikiye camii from my window, the friends my children and I made ( the good, the bad and even the ugly ones).

[yaramaz]

1. The long, leasurely meze and raki evenings out in the fresh air meyhanes, with lots of good conversations and wandering musicians and drunken businessmen singing and waving handkerchiefs.

2. The relationship approach to business: when I moved to my new flat last month, i called up a few moving companies to move my furniture and things about 20 minutes by car to a new neighbourhood. I was quoted some absurd, undoubtedly yabanci-based prices which made me panic until i mentioned this to one of my students who immediately called her husband who immediately made a few phone calls and next thing I knew, I was offered a price less than 1/3 what the others quoted. And when those guys came to move my things, they went out and bought ME cookies and cherry juice to tide me over even though they were the ones hauling my wardrobe up three flights of narrow winding stairs. This also applies to the 2nd hand shops in Cukurcuma, where I've been picking up most of my furniture for the past three years. There is one shop that knows me well now and they give me excellent prices with free delivery and let me pay whenever I feel like it. And anytime I want, I can call round for tea and kurabiye and chat with absolutely no pressure to buy anything.

3. The cheap and excellent fruits and veggies and village cheeses and yogurts.

4. Ferry rides on the Bosporus.

[billybuzz]

When I go back at xmas I shall reply to this thread but I do miss a few things from the uk, a good fry up for starters .

[yaramaz]

I'm going back at xmas too... my first time home since mid 2004. I'm very curious if it'll be different from my many jaunts abroad over the past few years to Oman, India, Dubai, etc. Looking forward to good sushi though. And tomatilla salsa. Wah!

[mthood]

[yaramaz]

Said mthood,

[dagi]

I have been in Turkey for just a year, visiting my different home countries for a month now. What I miss? The service culture e.g. good customer service. Specially being in Holland, where people don't even have a word for customer service in their vocab.
Yesterday in H&M, fitting some clothes the girl asked ME if I could put the items I did not want back into the racks...later in a cafe I had to wait for hours until an arrogant waitres had finished her conversation with a colleague and was ready to take my order and the list goes on and on...

I miss turkish breakfast, too. And the generla friendliness of Turks. On the other hand I really enjoyed riding a bike through the city again Being in a place with no smog/pollution is also very nice, specially for my tortured lungs.

[tarte tatin]

Ghost said