Afiyet Olsun, Part 1: Kaşarlı Pide

My life in Turkey would not be nearly as enjoyable without all the great food. With that in mind, I decided the local cuisine merited its own ongoing series. I'm calling it Afiyet Olsun, which is the Turkish version of "bon apetit" and roughly means "may you have good health." It's one of the first Turkish phrases I learned and is still one of my favorites because it usually means I'm about to eat something great. I thought about calling it "Hey Marcus, check this out!" but I think only my friends in Somerville would understand that.

We're starting off with Kaşarlı Pide, if for no other reason than that's what I decided to pick up for dinner tonight. Pide is one of those perfectly simple and cheap dishes that makes Turkish cuisine so great. It's a type of flatbread molded into kind of a canoe shape, topped with cheese and any number of things like sausage or vegetables, and cooked fresh in an oven. The kaşarlı type of pide is topped with kaşar cheese, which is a soft white cheese (normally cow, sheep or goat) that is the closest to mozzarella I have seen in Turkey. That's probably the reason most Americans I know refer to pide as Turkish pizza. It's not exactly pizza, but it satisfies a similar craving and I'm far more likely to go for a pide than I am to hit up the Domino's Pizza down the road (and yes, we do have a Domino's down the road). The one I got tonight was rolled out fresh and popped into the oven right in front of me, giving it that really fresh taste that characterizes so much of the food I have here. And for 5 lira (roughly $2.50 at current exchange rate) it really can't be beat. I'm going to do my best to branch out and try as many dishes as I can this year, but with great stuff like this it's easy to get stuck in a rut! I'll keep you updated on new dishes whenever I can.

Afiyet olsun!

The Road So Far

Since I'm into my third week in Istanbul it seemed like it was time for an update on how my life here is taking shape. I have settled into the apartment, got over my jet lag, and developed a bit of a routine, which is reminding me of the things I love about living here and the things that can be frustrating, too.

We'll start with the positive bits. The first day Amanda and I arrived, we found our way to a little commercial district not far from our new place that has just about everything we need on a daily basis. Since then I've fallen into the routine of heading down there every two or three days to pick up a bunch of fresh fruits and vegetables, a loaf of fresh-baked bread, and anything else I may need at the time (which too often includes a whole rotisserie chicken from one of the street vendors). On my other trips abroad I've always been able to visit these little markets and pick up some fresh food, but this is the first time that I'm really forced to fend for myself and I'm enjoying getting the hang of it. There's something I really love about going to one store to pick up a bunch of farm-fresh fruit and eggs and then going to the baker next door to get a fresh-baked loaf of bread (especially when it only costs about 35 cents). I'm definitely eating healthier than I ever did in Boston, though I'm sure I'll be trying to convince one of you to mail me a burrito in about a month.

I've also been settling into a daily routine of preparing for my summer language program. After breakfast and a little time trying to entertain the cats, I've been sitting down and going through a chapter or two a day from my Ottoman textbook. I'm still not at the level that I need to be for the program, but I've got a little time left and I think I will get there. Just being immersed in Turkish again is helping a lot, as things that I learned two summers ago are starting to come back to me in waves. Granted, it takes a bit of effort to use what I know of Modern Turkish and figure out that it's mostly there in the Ottoman as well, just in a different alphabet. I'm still at the stage where I feel like I'm doing two sets of translation - from Ottoman to Turkish and then Turkish to English - but the more I practice the more natural it's feeling. I'm still sticking with the Turkish novel as much as I can and using my Turkish whenever I head out of the house, but it's a slow process trying to get back to where I was when I was in Ankara two years ago. One of the most frustrating things about using a language outside of a classroom is that no matter how many times I think I know what I need to say in a given situation, the person I'm talking to always goes off script or has a slightly different way of speaking than I'm used to. I leave the house feeling like I'm really starting to understand the language again and then head home having been knocked down a peg or two. It's all good for me and part of the process of learning, but damn it's frustrating sometimes! But that's also another reason why I'm happy to be living in a smaller neighborhood outside of Taksim or Sultanahmet, where most of the tourists end up. Most of the people I encounter on a daily basis don't speak much English and I'm forced to use my Turkish, even when it would be so much easier to just slip back into English for those really hard to craft phrases. Hopefully by the end of the year it will feel a bit more natural.

Tomorrow I brave the ferry boat to find my way to Sultanahmet and visit the archives for the first time. I am meeting up with a student from Georgetown who was on Fulbright last year and has kindly agreed to share her wisdom about life in the archives with me. I'm hoping to get my research permissions squared away while I'm there and maybe even look around a bit. I will post an update on that when I can.

Our New Home

As promised, here are a few pictures of the new place and the view from our livıng room. I`m settling into the apartment and really starting to get comfortable navigating the neighborhood and getting around town. This keyboard at the internet cafe is terrible so I will keep this short for now, but I will have an update soon on what I have been up to in the last week or so.

View of the Golden Horn from our living room

Sunset over the Golden Horn

Our living room

Hoş Geldiniz!

One week ago today Amanda and I boarded a plane in Boston to begin our Fulbright year in Turkey. So, I decided now was as good a time as any to put together my first post for the third iteration of the blog and kick off another year of sporadic updates.

Everything feels a bit different this time. Not only will I be here longer than I ever have before, but Amanda will be with me and I will be living a less structured life outside of a planned program. As of now, I'm still in the pre-game period; I won't begin my archival research until the fall and I'm still three weeks from beginning my big Ottoman program in Cunda. All this was fine last week when Amanda was still here and we were preoccupied with settling ourselves and the two cats into the new apartment. But, now that she's off at the dig and I'm faced with a large block of free time, I'm struggling to keep myself productive.

I should start at the beginning. Amanda and I made it through the long flight from Boston to Frankfurt to Istanbul, but more importantly so did our luggage. We hopped in a taxi from the airport and met up with our new landlord to get settled into the apartment where we will hopefully be living for the next year. It's a very nice 2-bedroom on the second floor with a bit of a glimpse of the Golden Horn from our balcony. Since we're pretty close to the water and at the top of a hill we get somewhat of a nice breeze to keep the place cool. With no air conditioner this has proven to be a lifesaver, though still not perfect since trying to keep two cats from investigating the screenless windows is almost a full-time job. We spent most of our first week exploring the neighborhood and doing the necessary but tedious work of provisioning the apartment. Luckily, the place is already furnished, but picking up all the odds and ends that really make the place home took a little effort, especially when there is no Target Superstore around the corner that will let us pick up everything at once. All in all, the place is a bit more like home now, which has made the transition much easier. Something about being back here with Amanda and not having anything too pressing to do for the first few days reminded me a lot of our honeymoon in Turkey a few years ago. We even got to spend our third wedding anniversary together (for once!) by enjoying a nice dinner out around Taksim Square.

Now she is off at her excavation in the Hatay for the next two months and I am faced with the prospect of entertaining and fending for myself for a while. I'm using my time before the Ottoman program to reintroduce myself to speaking and reading in Turkish. I have been able to get out into the city at least once a day since we arrived and have had a couple nice chats with the guys at the cell phone store and the locksmith. I'm also getting back into the practice of reading thanks to a new novel I picked up by Ahmet Umit. I tried reading one of his books a couple summers ago in Ankara, but found it difficult to stick with, especially after I returned to Boston. He is almost Dan Brown-like in his weaving of murder mystery with bits of historical fiction, which helps keep me interested in a way that jumping straight into historical scholarship might not for now. I have an ambitious plan to read for at least a few hours a day and get through most of the book before I get to Cunda, though reading a few lines and flipping back to my dictionary is rather laborious and can be difficult to stick with when I'm not properly motivated. I will keep you all updated on my progress.

So, for now my life is a little boring. The apartment is quiet without someone to share it and no TV to fill the empty space with noise. Maybe it will be a good adjustment period to get me ready for a long year in the archives starting in September. Though, since I'm not getting out much this space may not be all that exciting for a little while. I will update when I can and when I have something fun to share. I'm sure things will pick up when I make my way down to the Aegean for my summer of deciphering old Ottoman handwriting.

P.S. I will put up a few pictures of the new place when I can. For now, I'm working solely off a 3G key for internet in the apartment and it is just too slow and too expensive to justify uploading photos. We'll see if I can't make it to the internet cafe in the next few days to give you all a glimpse of our new life here.