Reason to celebrate…

December 17, 2009

I woke up two days in a row before 10:30! Reason enough to celebrate.

I ran on the track today! Reason enough to celebrate.

We went for beers and coffee with a club sponsor. Reason enough to celebrate.

We randomly ran into people at the rink who were going out! And this became our real reason, or excuse, to celebrate.

At the rink Brittany and I ran into Ankara University’s two import players, Yannu and Natasha. We were shooting the shit while watching the men’s Police Academy practice. They are friends with the men’s Police players. So after they were done with practice, we all went to the Last Stop for beers. Last Stop is a bar/restaurant not too far from the rink. It ended up being the Police coach, his girlfriend, four of his players, and us four women import players.

It was the most interesting table at which I had ever been. The Police coach and Natasha are from Slovenia, Yannu is from Estonia, all the players and the coach’s girlfriend are from Turkey, and Brittany and I are from the US. All sorts of languages were being spoken. But the one language we all had in common was English, which was the only one Brittany and I understood and spoke. Natasha and the coach would have a side conversation, while the Turks laughed at one end of the table, while the rest of us sat back and listened in confusion and amazement. I’ve never been so close and fully immersed in a ten person conversation with at least three different languages.

After beers, we just had to go for food and çay (pronounced chai), which is tea. They told us, let’s go eat and drink, then we’ll take you home, which was only about five blocks away. We went to a place whose name translates as “cheap cheap.” We started out with mussels. The mussels had rice and other things stuffed in them. You eat them cold with a squeeze of lemon. After the mussels, we had a small appetizer which I have no idea what it was. It looked like ground up food, shaped into little decorative balls. And finally, we had a soup that was broth and meat chunks. It was a milky colored broth, but with the absence of milk. The appearance of the soup’s broth reminded me of the thinned out gravy we had on chipped beef on toast I used to eat growing up. The meat we learned was tongue and meat from the head, but it not brain. The two meats were easily discernable, they were two different colors and two completely distinct tastes. I don’t know which was which, but one was definitely better than the other. After the meal, we enjoyed çay.

The same tea is served across the board in Turkey. Every place I have been, it’s been the same tea served in the same glass. The glass is an hour glass shape without a handle, making it somewhat difficult to drink hot tea. But after such a meal, we sat around for a few cups of çay. Turks don’t have a cup then go their separate ways, they sit and enjoy their çay. In all the guide books we have read, it says that if you accept an invitation to çay, you should be prepared to spend at least an hour. And if you don’t have an hour, then don’t accept. So we sat around drinking our tea into the wee hours of the morning, enjoying the company and trying to learn a word or two in the other languages being spoken.

Will I ever learn enough Turkish to understand a simple conversation?