hi guys,

with my language course half way done already, I am not experiencing many touristic anymore. So not so many pictures and stories, but more the daily life of Istanbul. For those who are interested in that I put some links at the bottom, for some nice articles about how it is here with Ramazan, what traffic is like, etc. etc. I really like them usually. 

Ramazan is quite the experience. Today I walked past my favourite lokanta (small restaurant) and there was a line of 50 people standing outside, because the call to prayer could come any minute, meaning that they could already order and then be right in time to start their iftar meals to break the fast. 

The weather was cooler lately, but today was hot again. Tomorrow I am going to tourist another new neighborhood, and my new housemate (Mia, form UC) will also arive pretty soon. 

Enjoy the links to the right.

x sacha

hi everyone,

Phil told me that today it was hotter in Utrecht then it was in Istanbul! Good to hear you have nice weather too. I put up a few new pictures. Yesterday it was 'Republic Day', when the Turks celebrate their victory over the Greeks in 1922, after which Ataturk founded the Republic and started his secular reforms. Everywhere we were, masses of big Turkish flags. I have been meeting more and more Erasmus students, and on Republic Day a big group of us headed for the beach about 1 hour outside of Istanbul. Especially the big group of German students was sensitive for this all this hyper-nationalistic energy. But on the beach itself we did not notice anything at all, and I was relieved that we fitted in perfectly with the locals who were also wearing bikini's. 

Tomorrow my language course starts, and I can't wait to get to know more about the Turkish language, and meet some new people. I am pretty happy in the end that I am not in the Erasmus course, since it is pretty massive, and now I will also meet some non-students.

I hope everyone is doing fine, with starting up there schools and jobs also, although most of you are already working again.

Hope your weather lasts for a bit,

love, sacha

Some more pictures, these are all of sunday.

I went into a beautiful mosque on the older part of town. After that I went to the Basilica Cistern, a water reservoir built in 532, that kept water that came from the Black Sea, via a 20 km aquaduct. It is huge and is held up by 336 columns! It could hold upto 80.000 cubic metres of water. Then I went home with  the boat. If you see the last picture up with a view from a  boat, there is a strip of green on the right, right above the water. The first building then is a little square block, I live 2 streets behind that block (which is a high-school).

So, now you know where I live, and seen some more pictures, hope you enjoyed it.

tea-suger-a-dream: my first Turkish steps

hi everyone,

I made it! my first steps were a bit rough, but now with all my stuff in my perfectly-situated room I feel fully landed.  

My first impression of Istanbul was not such a friendly one. With well over 20 kilo's of lugage, a sticky 35 degrees and no clue of were to go I headed for the metro. Confusingly the tickets are coin-shaped, so it took me a while to figure out that I had really bought them. I was occupying two seats with all my stuff and a older guy made a fuss about in Turkish and made me stand with everything in the middle of the metro for the rest of the busy ride. It took me a while to find a place, ended up in a girls-only dorm-room, that was very nice. 

I quickly befriended a guy who seemed to family to all t he restaurants, barbers, and hotel owners around the hotel. I ended up playing bagamon with  him and his friends. They told me how to say 'thank you' in Turkish. By now I know it should be 'tesjekur ederum', but they thought it was help me to say 'tea-sugar-a-dream'.. haha. Later some other french tourist joined and we danced till 1 and then went for some beers and they sang songs with their guitar. After a few songs I realized I had not even been in the city for more than  10 hours and realized how tired I was, so I went to bed. The next day I visited the impressive Blue mosque, then I packed my stuff and went to my new house. 

My housemate Mahir is a very nice guy, very friendly and relaxed. The neighborhood is very nice and quiet, only they are redoing the streets so that is dusty and noisy. I put some pictures of my room and the view (they took out the road, only one car was still parked on it so they left this one car like an island). I put my stuff in my room and got settled a bit. Then we went out for dinner, I have the feeling that eating out is very normal here, also for lunch. The food is usually not too elaborated, but nice. And I figured out pretty quickly that keeping up with my vegetarian preferences is going to be impossible, definatly for as long as I don't speak Turkish. We went for a drink and the begamon board came out again, and I am learning the 'kneepjes van het vak' so my tactics are getting better by the day. I am happy I knew the basics already since it is a fun and easy way to spend time with people and get to know them, and it is hugely popular around here. 

We ended up meeting the people from the day before again at the 'world (?) famous' Taksim square. That is the place to be at night and it is super busy and big. We saw super nice live Turkish music and had some beers and Turkish raki (kind of like the greek 'uzo').  The musicians were really really good, and first I thought I had a Turkish Stef Bos in front of me, but later when people who requested songs got more drunk it turned into more of a Turkish Andre Hazes. 

Today I have just ventured into the neighborhood in which I will be living: Besiktas. I could not have wished for a  better area to live in. The direct streets surrounding me are quiet (no mosques in the morning at 6 with 'allah alleahakbar'), but lots and lots of nice shopping area and restaurants and bars just three blocks down. Also lots of bus-connections and a ferrydock. The neighborhood's symbol is a eagle, so everywhere there are impressive eagle statues. And they are also the home of one of Turkish best soccerteams: BJK. There is a ringroad that fits exactly around the stadium. Because of all the hills, on one end of the ring you are on 'groundlevel' next to the stadium, on the other side of the ring you can look into the stadium and see the game! So crazy with all the hills in this city. 

Well that is a (maybe too) detailed account of my first impressions. I am going to be a tourist for a week more. Then on the first, like most of the students in NL, I am starting my language course. That will take two weeks. After that the Bogazici university has introduction and my actual courses will start. 

I hope (and am pretty sure) that The Netherlands is less sticky and hot, hope all is fine.

my baklava-love, Sacha

hi everyone,

just posted some new pictures. The powwow was the best. A celebration of native americans from all over the country. I still don't quite know what they were celebrating, but they were remembering their ancestors and spent quite some time commemorating their native american veterans who had been in the US army.  There was a small crisis because someone had dropped a ornament of eagle feathers, which apparently is a big deal since they are holy. And native americans are the only ones who can own eagle feathers in the whole of the US. So there was a public apology towards all the leaders of the tribes, and they had to shake hands and agree that it was fine for now. For the rest they had different dance competitions and groups that were performing music. Well, I really enjoyed everything and now we are just chilling out for the evening. I hope everything is fine with you all,

see you all later,

Sacha

hi everyone,

today it is time for a new post. We have done a lot and I feel I am getting used to the weather. It is a bit hard to estimate how hot it is because everything is in Fahrenheit degrees, just like the miles and the pounds are different.

So far, everything has been great. It is nice to get to know Phil's family better, and I even met many (many!) cousins and aunts and uncles and also Phil's grandparents on the 4th of July, which is one of the biggest holidays here. It is probably comparable to queensday in the Netherlands, but then there is a massive parade instead of a fleemarket. We were even in the parade (which is kinda like the Dutch avond vierdaagse on its last day, with marching bands, etc), because the whole family was handing out vans with the information on the company of Phil's parents.  

Phil, me and his sisters have picked over 17 kilo's of strawberries. We have been out on the boat of Phil's parents. Their house, by the way, is massive, has a small private beach to it and lies in a really nice green area! I have driven a car (while it is not allowed, we found out), went shopping in a massive mall (everything is has a bit lower price then here, and is on top of it in dollars! so that is really nice). Yesterday morning, we had a hot air baloon ride over the area, which was super nice. I saw some town and one of the twin-cities. The food has also been good, this morning I had blue-berry-pancakes for breakfast, so that was special.  I really appreciate that there is usually a way for me to eat vegetarian even. 

The people so far, have been nothing but cheerful and friendly (especially waiters and shopping-personal is incomparable to their Dutch counterparts), and it is nice to get a chance to correct our Dutch stereotypes of Americans. Yesterday, at the 4th of July, phil had an uncle and aunt over that have a 20 year old son who will leave to Iraq with the army in a few days. It lets you see a different side of the story when you get to talk to people like that, who are actually experiencing this war in reality. 

We have many more plans, and his parents have warned me for the camping trip that is comming up (1 week of hiking and canoeing with only 2x a shower, and all food will be dried or powdered). But for now, I will just try to get some pictures up here so you guys can see.

I hope you are having a good time and nice weather too, have a hertog jan or a broodje kaas for me,

love sacha

first blog

Hi everyone,
With a full summer, a promising fall semester coming up, and my parents complaining about my communication-skills. It thought, to keep things easy: I make a blog. And, to keep things even more easy: it will be in english.
So, I hope to post pictures and stories here, so that everyone where ever they may be in this world, can see what I am doing. And, most importantly, can tell me what they are doing!! Because if I am correct, you can post comments etc. So, I hope this blog will be fun for all of us.
Enjoy it,

Sacha