Friends. Making them, meeting them, and enjoying the Turkishness.

Istanbul has turned out to be incredible. It’s been a month and a half of general awesomeness and meeting cool people. Everybody likes fun, right?

It also qualifies for a place on the coveted List of Cities in which I could See Myself Living. There is a constant energy of random possibility in the air. I never know what is going to happen when I walk out of the apartment, but it’s invariably something, invariably interesting, and, Indian consulates aside, invariably good.

With a smile on your face and the right attitude, meeting one person leads to meeting four more. At that early point on the geometric growth curve of friendly goodness, you’re only limited by your own energy and how many hours there are in the day. …That and the fact that rest of the world tends to have to work or go to class.

To wit:

Our Valentine’s Day party, No Couples Allowed, 2009, ended up being a hit. Any early fears of it ending up being six people serenely sitting on the couch, making small talk, watching television and calmly drinking glasses of wine were roundly allayed by 9:00.

I also ended up being in charge of making the advertised “Magic Punch.” It turned out to be excellent and went quickly once we brought it out. I even whipped up an animated logo loop that we played on the television during the party (because that’s what I do). This is what it looks like in filmstrip form:

There are a bunch of pictures in the Flickr photo gallery from the last two weeks. Let’s hit the highlights here for those short on time:

This man is my Turkish Unkle. He is an ex-engineer and current volleyball ref who travels around to different countries for volleyball games. He stayed at our place for a few days. Our sink broke and he fixed it.

When French Marion was here visiting for a week, we had a dinner party which included fresh fish and the Turkish drink called Rakı. (That’s an “i” without the dot. “ı” — It’s pronounced “uhh.” So the drink is “rakuh.”) Rakı is a clear liquor that is normally imbibed by adding water to it. When you add the water, it changes from clear to milk-colored. It’s good. Once we were done eating, we took a bunch of pictures.

 

Bryan and I go out. We meet people. These are some of them:

 

Sometimes people make me food. I’ve also flip-flopped like accusations in a Republican attack ad from not liking olives to craving them. Here’s a typical Turkish breakfast (and some tasty noodles):

 

We went to a mall called “Kanyon” to see the architecture. I don’t generally care about malls, but this place was cool:

When we go home at night, we eat Wet Burgers on the way home at the Wet Burger place:

We did a bunch of shopping for No Couples Allowed Party 2009. Items purchased include a bubble gun and a bunch of string for Bryan to make his string wall art. Unfortunately, my camera battery died on the night of the party after taking only one picture. But that picture, my friends, is classic. Thumbnail to the right. It’s the only picture I got from the entire party on my camera, but, good grief, I really can’t complain if this is all I, erm, shot.

Fortunately Juan Miguel was ready to take pictures and posted them on Facbeook:

Great party.

In other news and important observations, I’m glad I like the shirts I brought with me. One product of traveling light is I have two button-down shirts to pick from every time I go out. (It used to be three, but I’ve managed to get what I think is wine on the white one when I was in Budapest and it won’t come out. By “won’t come out,” I mean that I put it in the washer once. Probably should try a little harder.) I was just looking through some old pictures and realized that when I’m done with this trip I’ll have a year’s worth of photos of me hanging out with people in one of two shirts.

I go back to Ankara on Friday to attempt to pick up my Indian visa. It’s entirely possible that they’ll stick me with some sort of procedural red tape again and I’ll have to change my flight again, but hopefully things will work out. If I’ve knocked on wood enough times, I should be in a plane to Mumbai on Sunday night, arriving on Monday the 23rd.

Here’s a link to the entire Flickr photo gallery, should you be interested.

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