Die Hard Three

So I survived today’s protest march. I wasn’t too worried. One of the veteran demonstrators was wearing a pair of crazy high-heeled shoes – and this put my mind at ease. I figured this was evidence that there wouldn’t be a lot of running.

But the cops, they weren’t messing around. They brought one of their tanks and this one guy had this real cool-looking paintball gun, or that’s what it looked like anyway. Anyone out there know what it’s for? Rubber bullets? Beanbag gun? Tagging troublemakers?

Also, his head is way too big for his body.

And is it just me or do these guys look like they’re extras from the sequel to Spaceballs?

For a group of medical professionals, there was an unusual amount of cigarettes and hearing damage. The Turks love smoking and loud things.

The bus ride home was uneventful – I slept for about half of it. Ankara seems like a pretty boring city – relative to Istanbul anyway.

Earlier in the week my landlord invited me to travel to Turkey’s capital (Ankara) to participate in a good old fashion protest march – Turkish-style! I’m not sure what to expect but I don’t think it’ll be water cannons and gravel sprayers. This is because the group I’m traveling with is made up almost entirely of medical doctors and medical nurses. They are going to be marching to protest changes to the regulations that govern their profession. It’s not clear (to me) what their specific demands are but what is clear is that they have some really good protest songs.

This one guy has a flute and he’s got everyone clapping and singing – even thought it’s after 02:30 in the AM and we’re all really tired. I’ve noticed many of the protests in America are severely lacking in this area. Even though we’ve had lots of things to protest, the last good song came out in the early nineties and it was for a cartoon.

I was told we’d be taking the bus to get there and I had visions of some beat-up old school bus, with pleather-covered benches, no seat belts, and a crazy driver names Mahmet. My visions turned out to be inaccurate because the bus we got was a Mercedes!

So here’s our itinerary

Depart Istanbul 01:30
Arrive Ankara 08:00
Protest 11:00 to 13:00
Depart Ankara 14:00
Arrive Istanbul 21:00

Will make for a long day, but these seats are pretty comfortable. I should be able to get a couple hours of shut eye.

Today I realized that all forty of my Thanksgivings have been Canadian. I mention this because on Thursday I was invited to my first ever American Thanksgiving meal / event / party. And it was great. Stuffing. Chicken pretending to be turkey (the food not the place). Beer. And a good mix of Yanks, Canuck, Turks, Swede and a ridiculous number of Finns (two).

So I spent the better part of the evening talking with one of the Turkish guys who happens to be gay. It was a fascinating conversation. I have some Canadian friends (and one American) who are gay and I talk to them pretty regularly but I’ve never talked to them about being gay. So the other night, dude was more than happy to answer my interview-style questions about what it’s like to be gay in Turkey.

Disclaimer – when I blog my travels, I’m reluctant to write about any of the negative aspects of my host country. This is because of how the human brain works – I could write a hundred articles saying that country X has the best toilets in the world but if I publish a single sentence about a single bookstore selling a single novelty item with a quote from Adolf Hitler, then that’s all the reader will be able to remember about the country for the rest of her life.

I’m told it’s his “big lie” quote and not his “Armenian” one.

So here’s the thing about Turkey – the military service is mandatory for men. But, you can get an exemption if you’re gay. In the US it used to be that gays were exempt from joining the army. Of course the main differences between the two systems are a) the American statute has been abolished b) an individual’s decision to join the US army is a voluntary one and c) the manner in which the army goes about determining ones… how do I put this… level of gayness? Yeah, I think that will have to do.

In America, disclosure of this information is voluntary. In Turkey the current system involves an interview, a six-hundred-question psychological test, and then a second interview. And here’s the kicker – once you get exempted, you get to have your information in the giant, countrywide government database include a record of your sexual orientation. This is all very unsettling because the country has been moving in a more conservative religious direction. If an extreme government were to come into power, this information could be used to very negative ends.

It’s also a huge change from the previous system where individuals were required to provide video evidence of their homosexuality. I’m not making this up. And this system, it had to work inside a large government bureaucracy. Just imagine a bunch of (presumably) straight, old, Turkish army guys sitting around a meeting room trying to decide which sex acts are “gay” and which ones are not.

Somewhere there exists a written record of this meeting. Internet, don’t fail me now.

I really didn’t want to have the Hitler bookmark be the thumbnail. Here’s a photo of 2.5 litre bottle of Coke instead. We don’t have these in Canada.

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When asked to explain what a Turkish toilet is, most people will describe of what is commonly referred to as a squat toilet. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular type of toilet, I alluded to them briefly in my birthday blog post from back in February. You can read the whole thing here.

And while they may seem strange to Western eyes, they are (in some respects) superior to the traditional toilets we enjoy in Canada and Germany. For example they use less water and the person operating it doesn’t have to actually touch it with any part of his / her body. Also, the squatting position is supposed to be a more natural way to go number two, as this short (but tastefully made and safe for work) video demonstrates.

I also used to think there was only one style of Turkish toilet, so you can imagine my shock, when I arrived here in Istanbul and discovered that there’s a another kind that’s specific to Turkey (and hopefully, in the near future, Canada). Yesterday I visited a home renovation superstore called Koçtaş (the funny little tail on the c indicates a hard c like in cat – to get familiar with the correct pronunciation feel free to say the name of this store out loud at work a few times for practice).

As soon as I arrived at the store I made a beeline for the toilet section and snapped this photo. Can any of you see what makes the toilets here in Turkey so special?

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Sorry I haven’t been posting these last couple of days, I’ve been kind of busy trying to discover my life’s purpose and something this important isn’t going to happen overnight – it takes a whole weekend to reveal itself. I read once that a man without a purpose is like a fish out of water – flopping all over the place trying to not die too quickly. Most people go thorough life with minimal direction and until today I was one of them.

Here’s what happened.

This morning as I was leaving the apartment I decided to take a walk upstairs to find out exactly what sort of renovations they’ve been doing to the top floor of the building I’ve been staying in. I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned it already, but every morning since I arrived in Istanbul (save two) my “alarm clock” has been the (honest-to-god) jackhammering of concrete one floor above my room.

I though about complaining (to whom, I’m not sure) but then I realized the irony of my situation – renting a room with a massive construction project taking place on the floor above – and decided to let it go. The hunter has become the hunted, so the expression turns.

Anyway, when I got up there I found that the entire top floor of the building is being completely renovated. I spoke with the architect (the seventh one on this trip – that’s good luck right?) and she showed me the whole project. It’s going to look great when it’s done (I’ll put some pictures up later).

So it was while I was inspecting one of the unfinished bathrooms when I saw the roughed-in Geberit wall-mounted toilet – it was at that moment when my true purpose revealed itself. I’ve been told that for many men their purpose is uncovered only after dancing naked (and drunk) in the woods for several hours. I tried that on Saturday and nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Things were revealed, but “purpose” was not among them (if the official police report is to be believed).

So it was this morning, in an unfinished bathroom, as I was staring at the tiled wall where the toilet is going to be installed, that my vision quest came to its (logical) conclusion:

My purpose is to bring back to Canada with me the secret of the Turkish toilets.

I’ll explain the details later but I will say this one thing now – I was not planning on writing about toilets on this trip. I honestly didn’t think Turkey would have anything meaningful to add to the subject. But I was wrong. So very wrong.

More to come.

And thank you Turkey, thank you for giving meaning to my life.

And also for not confiscating my passport on Saturday. I need it to get home.

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Two incidences in the previous twenty-four hours have reminded me that a given traveller is more likely to die not at the hands of kidnappers or terrorist bombings, but by the simple act of doing rather unspectacular things in a moderately interesting world. Allow me to explain.

Incident the first: Last night when I went to the movies with the architects, the show finished late and the metro had already closed when we got out (around 00:30) so we decided to grab a cab back to Taksim. Taking a taxi is a straightforward enough activity in most parts of the world and I was more concerned with the driver ripping us off (by taking the long way) instead of what I should have been worried about – dying in a fiery car crash where speed was a factor.

He was driving like a maniac from the second we got into the car, almost hitting two pedestrians as we left the taxi stand (he actually went *between* them). Where we almost died was when our driver was doing about 110 kph in the fast lane (in what would have been an 80 zone in Canada) when another car going, I’d say, 150, passed us on the right missing our car (and another in the right lane) by mere inches.

It would have been doubly horrible given that 66% of the seat belts in the back of the cab were non-functional. We made it from Levent to Taxsim in one piece and (I assume) record time.

Incident the Second:  I decided to visit the Prince Islands. Nearly everyone I spoke to who had visited Istanbul said I have to go and today looked to be the final day of nice weather for about the next 5 months. So I grabbed the ferry at noon and landed at the big island around 13:30. The island was really nice – the absence of cars made it a lot more peaceful than Istanbul (which is anything but).

So I walked around and I somehow found my way to the highest point on the north side of the island – a forested area with a surprising amount of livestock wandering about. I managed to snap some really nice photographs of the west-facing part of the island without noticing that I was standing at the edge of a small cliff – a cliff from which I probably would have survived a fall, but the fact that there was no one around and it was two hours from nightfall, would have made a tumble rather precarious.

Standing there looking down, I had a vision of me laying at the bottom of this cliff with two broken wrists that rendered me unable to bypass the security features of the two iPhones I brought with me – oh cruel irony, what use is a backup phone if one is unable to operate the dialer?

Anyway, neither of those things came to pass but it did drive home the importance of functional seat belts and posting something on Facebook about my plans for the day before setting out on a mini-adventure all by myself.

Here are some more photos from the island. Stay safe everyone.

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Yesterday I had to kill an hour while I was waiting for the barber to get back from his siesta and I used this time to look around this gigantic book-selling place.

From what I can tell, the Turks love their media. Print. Film. Sound. They have it all. Marconi may have invented the recording studio but the Turks took it to the next level.

Anyway, I’m wandering around this book store and I happen upon this book.

What is it about? It’s all in Turkish so I have no idea. The girl in the store said the title in english means – Dangerous Passport. And what is Jason Love? Is it a state of being? Is this book an instruction manual on how to reach this higher plane? Does one require travel documentation to get there? Is this documentation only obtainable at great risk to the applicant?

So many questions. Anyway, I’m going ask one of my Turkish architects to get it translated. I’m really curious to find out what it’s about.

I’ve been meaning to write about the rather excellent photobombs I’ve been executing on this visit to Turkey. I’ve aways enjoyed the practice but on this trip they’ve been a lot more fun. I think this is because I’ve expanded somewhat from the standard-issue photobomb people are most familiar with.

Done poorly and you could end up in a fistfight. Done well and can you make the world a more magical place. What I’ve learned over the years is that a successful photobomb is all about technique. Your garden-variety photobomb is pretty safe – it usually involves surreptitiously making your way into a photograph of a large group of people and it usually takes place in a bar or close to a prominent landmark. But on this trip I thought I would take it to the next level and find out if it is possible to photobomb a single individual who is posing for a random photo.

So on Saturday night Ozan and I had just left the bar to go get something to eat when I noticed a man setting up to take a photo of his supposed wife. I immediately seized the moment and jumped down to where she was standing and posed next to her. She laughed. And I laughed. And her supposed husband laughed. And he took the photo. And we all laughed.

And then they told me they were from Sweden! And then I told them my Swedish jokes! And then we all laughed even more! The man was especially enjoying it.

Ja it’s true! We Swedes *do* make a mess when we visit Denmark!

So the next day I was thinking about the whole thing and how it turned out pretty good. But there was something that was bugging me. Like it could have been even better. And I couldn’t pin it down. But this morning I think I figured it out.

I posted the other day about my trip to the barber shop and my objectively fantastic mo. I received a lot of positive feedback from the Interwebs, but the architects I’ve been hanging out with here in Istanbul – they didn’t say much about it. Which struck me as odd, because it is a pretty awesome mo.

Lucky for you, this morning I realized the problem: the beard part of my face was camouflaging the mo part. I also came up with a very simple solution: I just need to go back to the barber and get him to shave off my beard. Then, and only then, will I be able to fully commit myself to some truly epic photobombs.

Lumbersexual will have to wait a few weeks – right now, I’m turkmensexual.

That’s a play on the word “metrosexual” but for describing the Turkish men whom I’m trying to emulate. It’s not intended to describe men from Turkmenistan – although I imagine it could work there too.

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So I went out last night with some of my architecture friends and the bar we were in got raided by the cops – the notorious Istanbul police. In my whole life I’ve never been so disappointed (except that one other time). Anyway, around 23:30 Ozan and I were in there drinking a half pint of Tuborg on the second floor overlooking the street when we saw about half a dozen guys in what appeared to be Power Ranger costumes enter the bar through the entrance on the main floor.

And they weren’t like the regular Power Ranger from the televisions show, they were more like the ones from the feature film reboot that never got made. You know, the one where the producers think they need to change something to hook the audience so they make everything gritty and realistic. So the lights come on and the WiFi goes off and I’m thinking, “oh man, it’s on”. I have no idea what “it” is, but “its” current state is one, not zero.

Anyway, so we end up sitting upstairs for what seems like a million years, waiting for the cops to bust in and start cracking skulls. But after half an hour of nothing happening I’m so bored I decide leave Ozan and go downstairs to see firsthand the chaos on the main floor. I get to the top of the stairs and all I see is one of the Power Rangers in the door trying to check some people’s identification.

And that’s it – after a few minutes they just left. And no one was able to explain to me what had gone down. Some people said they were looking for a specific person, others claimed it was underage drinkers. Either way, I think I know who they were looking for. Yes, that’s right. They were looking for Keyser Soze. I mean the Devil himself. It makes perfect sense. He is supposed to be Turkish. We are in Turkey. And there were a bunch of Hungarians in the bar. What more evidence do you need?

The view from the top of the stairs

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