You'll never walk alone.

I like a spectacle, so any large gathering of people can pique my interest, regardless of whether I intend to share in the emotion of the experience. Whether it's airports, concerts, sporting events, political rallies, or the end of the school day, I'm always keen to be on hand to watch.

This last week was special because I was witness to two spectacles.

Wednesday morning, I got up early (3:30 AM) to watch election results come in with a gathering of expatriates. The event was interesting, and I'm sure that Obama's election is important... I'm just not sure if it is for me. There were tears of joy, shouting, and cheering when Obama was declared the winner. My first thought was:

"It's 5:30 AM, and we've only been here for an hour. How can the show be over already?"

The memories of two successive elections, left undecided after a night of tallying results, left me feeling that Obama's landslide victory had robbed me of my spectacle (for which I had payed 5 TLY).

Friday, I made up for it by going to a Beşiktaş match.

They say that there are three types of foreigners in Istanbul, and you can distinguish them by the team they support:

Fenerbahçe fans are 'fresh off the boat', and taken by the widespread popularity of the Blue and Yellow. They don't know Turkish, and certainly don't know Turkey, so they can hardly be blamed. These are people who buy Yankees hats when they visit New York City, fair weather fans.

Expatriate Galatasaray supporter have been in Turkey long enough to meet some actual Turks, and at least make their acquaintance. Self-identifying "liberals" (according to the American definition), this group will take up the Red and Yellow mantle for the experience of "Turkish" football, and upon their return to Starbucks, email friends and family from their MacBook Pro and blog about their experience at "the crossroads of civilization".

Foreigners in Turkey have to find Beşiktaş. The informed ex-pat, one who speaks Turkish and knows about Turkey and Turkish history, who approaches the world with a sense of ideology, and who knows that the fan base is more important than the team, will sift through the mosaic of Turkish football and come realize it's fundamental duality, embodied by the Black and White.

In my first year here, Beşiktaş was merely the home team. The stadium was close, and it made sense to support them... I could hear the games from our apartment. These days, home games are part of the rhythm of living in Istanbul. It isn't about about geography anymore, nor the team, and much less football, instead it's part ideology part song. If I'd been in Spain in the 1940s, I would have been a leftist for no other reason than the people. Beşiktaş offers me that, so I'll continue to walk with them.

Friday afternoons, school lets out early, so myself and two colleagues were in Beşiktaş and sipping rakı by 4:15. We snacked on appetizers, drank, talked about past matches, and were joined later by one colleague's mother and two English teachers. Around 6, things began getting rowdy...

It started with songs. These were hymns, really, as the tunes were often the same while the words changed. Our fan base is creative, and the song list is endless. For over an hour we sang and cheered, drinking and eating, until at 7:30 we began the march to the stadium.

I've been in Kadıköy during a Fenerbahçe match, and one could always distinguish when the goals occurred by the peak in sound. From outside Inönü Stadium, it sounded like a riot was happening around some corner. It was sheer volume.

Inside, the sound was the constant white noise of a cheering croud. Occasionally, coordinated in song, but never less than the volume of a baseball game when a run is batted-in: a crush of sound. The passion of Beşiktaş has no analogy, and I now remember ball games as study destinations, like libraries or well-lit corners.

The match took ninety minutes, but for my effort I got a lasting, six-hour dose of pure spectacle. It should tide me over to the next game.

A quick update...

There's been a lot happening, and I feel bad that I haven't been writing as much, so I'll throw all these out there in short-form:

- My employers have finally figured out why they hired me, and I've been doing actual work, at work. That's not to say they can keep me completely busy, because I found time to write this.

- I bought a bicycle, and I'm taking new risks with Turkish cab drivers and delivery mopeds with each new day. It's exhilarating. I'm also perfecting the over-the-shoulder-flick-off with my left hand, while keeping control of the bike with my right. Good times.

- We have a new President... apparently, he's a black man?

- We threw a crazy Halloween party at our place, last Friday. One of the neighbors got angry, and challenged our forty-strong group to a fight in the street. We sent him home without his fight, and brought the party to Taksim. Homeboy didn't want things to end, though, and came back looking for a fight (specifically with me) on Saturday evening. Luckily, I was busy, looking at a bike.

- Turks are ridiculously happy about Obama becoming the President... all except the two guys who make my sandwiches, at the grocer's. They don't think that the American political system changes dramatically with a shift in leadership. They believe the United States is a fundamentally right-of-center country, no matter who's in charge. They also don't think that a black man will behave all that differently from a white man, when it comes to issues of foreign policy (they cited US support for Israel, an aggressive posture for foreign interventions, the diplomatic stance to leftist nations like Cuba and Venezuela). All I could do is shrug... I am about as cynical as they are, and the excitement about Obama has been lost on me. I just don't place hope in people. They, on the other hand, are Marxist-Lenninists, so their opinions probably don't matter.

- My room mate Emrah went to India. I hope he's having fun there. He'll get back tomorrow evening to find an American using his bed... I love guests!

- If it has ninjas, it must be cool? Ask this guy...

Hauz Parti!

I've written, quite a bit, on the woefully absurd elements of my experience in Turkey.

So, I decided post a story about the cheerfully absurd ones.

House parties are rare, in Turkey.

Let me rephrase that... house parties seem rare, in Turkey. It only just occurred to me that, perhaps, Turks simply do not invite me to their homes for parties. In any event, we hosted one last weekend, and things got out of hand (as they do).

There was alcohol...


There was food...


There was dancing...



There was a room mate, who didn't know about the party until he got home...


There was romance...


I don't know how to explain this, but it was there, too...


He is calm as a coma about the chips in his lap.



Stats for the night:

People - 25
Annoyed Neighbors - 1
Broken Bottles of Beer - 3
Trashed rooms - 2 (my room and the kitchen)
Vomits cleaned up by the hosts - 2 (one in our small bathroom, another on a car beneath our balcony)

Road Trip!

We had the week off from work, to spend celebrating the end of Ramadan... or to do something cool, like traveling. In the last two weeks, I considered no less than six destinations: Athens, Belgrade, Chicago, Mardın, Marseilles, and New York.

We went to Edirne!



Just three hours north of Istanbul, getting to Edirne was as easy as swiping a Turkish room mate's car (he was out of town with family), rousing the riffraff, and hitting the long, empty highway.

My friends, Kristen and Henry, had business to attend to (renewing their tourist visas by passing into Greece, and then coming back), so Gregg and I dropped them off and made arrangements for a place to drink and another to stay.

Here are some pictures, courtesy of Gregg:

Henry and I enjoy Turkish börek, starchy potatoes wrapped in greasy, flaky pastry.

Kristen reacts to something Gregg said....

Turkish 4-wheeled people carrier.

Gregg and the Prophet, Muhammad (peace be upon him).

This image is here for no other reason than to satisfy Orientalists.

It was really great to travel, though Edirne can only be described as "quaint". Despite my fascination (or lack thereof) with the city, I still realize that there is something therapeutic about such mindless doffing about as we experienced in Edirne.

Destinations be damned, I need movement to really be happy!

True Story...

When I'm back home in the states, I get a lot of questions about Turkey. Most often, a pretty flaccid, "so, how is Turkey?" Sometimes, people ask me about the food, or the lifestyle, politics, safety, terrorism or my worries about it.

Very occasionally, I get asked about the people. I always answer the same thing, which is, that I find the people here to be similar to people back home. Of course, conditions are different, there's culture and history and language to consider, but at the end of the day, I've found a life with friends, here in Turkey, consistent with that I have in the USA.

This story should illustrate my point. I wasn't there, but since returning to Istanbul last Sunday, I've been appraised of the situation by the parties involved and one eye-witness. Next time someone asks about people in Turkey, I'll tell them this (I have concealed the names to protect the intoxicated)...

Last Friday there was a party, which I would have no doubt attended, had I been in the city. My room mate was celebrating his 26th birthday. T, a friend from my Ultimate team, was celebrating his new job. Another Turkish friend was having a housewarming party, at her house. To set the scene, you must understand that Turkish apartments don't come equipped with a refrigerator or an oven, and nothing had been moved in, save a card table and chairs. Sparse conditions at best.

As my room mate put it, "there wasn't even salt or lemon for the Tequila."

The three friends and the larger group, eight people total, sat together around the table, drinking and talking. This was a pre-party, before heading out to the bars in Taksim.

It was three parties in one, so the pre-party was looong, and T drank about three times as much as he probably should have. He is also a very enthusiastic story teller. Three hours into the party, the mix of alcohols (Tequila, Absinthe, and who knows what else) combined with his wild gesticulating... poorly.

In mid sentence, T stuck his head under the table and spewed vomitus onto the floor.

In Turkey, taking off ones shoes upon entering a house is a nearly universal practice (the logic is sound, considering some of the things I've stepped in here). Generally, they stay by the door, in some kind of cupboard. I was once robbed by a con man, who came to our apartment pretending to a solicitor, and even he took off his shoes before coming in (that story some other time).

There are exceptional cases, though, and this was one. The apartment was still pretty dirty with the sort of dusts that go along with moving, and so all the guests in attendance were still wearing their shoes, as small bits of T's dinner prepared to ricochet off the floor towards them.

Everyone, that is, except my room mate, who had taken his off to be more comfortable.

T is a smart guy, and when his head dipped below the surface of the table, he knew what was about to happen. Quick thinking, a keen eye, and fast hands saved the day. T grabbed my room mates shoes and proceeded to fill them "to the brim" with puke, surfacing from beneath the table to continue his story.

It's hard not to notice a person vomiting at a small party (as I know all too well), and the detail was not lost upon my room mate. The argument that followed went something like this:

RM: "You asshole! Why did you throw up in my shoes?"
T: "Why did you leave your shoes in the living room?"
RM: "What do you mean?"
T: "If you hadn't left them in the living room, I wouldn't have thrown up in them!"
RM: "You asshole! I can leave my shoes in the living room, that doesn't mean you, or anyone, has the right to throw up in them."
T: "If you leave your shoes where they don't belong, I think I do have the right to throw up into them."

And so on.

The shoes were eventually cleaned out, and the party continued. There was the lingering problem of what to do when they left to go dancing in Taksim, and my room mate was sly about preparing for it. He was already wearing one of T's shoes when everyone else began getting ready to leave.

A wrestling match ensued, in which T managed to regain his other shoe and put it on, basically bringing the situation to a stalemate. Oceania and Eurasia, it seemed, were going to have to try diplomacy.

There was a long argument, my room mate insisting that T surrender the shoe, and wear his wet, smelly ones instead. T fell back on the strength of his logic, that the situation was indeed unfortunate, but that he wasn't personally responsible as the shoes should have been by the door, and not in the living room.

With diplomacy failing, and half the party leaving to go on ahead, a truly brave sole stepped forward and demanded that they both shut up, take one of his own shoes each, and he would wear the soggy, smelly shoes.

S, wore the shoes out of the house, and half the walk Taksim. At some point though, with my room mate and T still arguing, the discomfort of the wet shoes, and the knowledge that the contents of a stomach had recently found a home there, S reasoned he should get his own shoes back. Reluctantly, T and my room mate each took a barf shoe.

When my room mate woke up, the following morning, with a hangover that kept him vomiting "until after dinner", there was one brown Adidas tennis shoe and one white Adidas tennis shoe, kicked haphazardly onto the floor of his room.

The point of this was just to say, on any given day of the week, the same absurd behavior can be expected from my very American friends and myself. If there exists a place, where the people don't do hilariously stupid crap... well, I'll do what I can to avoid going there.

Cheers to all my friends, who've gotten it, all this time.