"Aynı tas, aynı hamam" is a Turkish idiom that means "same bucket, same bath." Its English counter-parts are "Same old, same old" and "Same shit, different day. This idiom was taught to me by my officemate Salim.
Salim has also told me stories about visiting hamams on special occasions, like for bachelor's parties and coworker parties. He told me two particularly strange and funny stories--one that involved him scrubbing our former director's back while the director scrubbed a new hire's back. Apparently, the former director made a joke, saying he was "investing in the future of the program."
Another story involved the delivery of çig köfte into the hamam. Çig Köfte is a Turkish food that is made from bulgur, tomato paste, and spices. The köfteci (köfte-person) squeezes the tomato-y bulgur into ergonomic nuggets that are complete with ridges from where the bulgur began to come out between köfteci's fingers. He then drops it on your plate. You eat this stuff raw by wrapping it in iceberg lettuce leafs or a lavaş (tortilla). If you want, you can squeeze some lemon on it and put some pomegranate sauce on it as well. I thought it was disgusting at first because I couldn't stop thinking about how the bulgur had tried to worm its way out between some dude's fingers before it got to my plate. But once I got over that, I realized that it's actually pretty tasty.
However, it gets disgusting once again when you imagine this stuff being consumed at temperatures above ninety degrees by a group of really sweaty, nearly-naked men, sitting on a hot marble slab while people are getting lathered and scrubbed nearby. You can just imagine how the çig köfte got warm, how it's shape didn't hold up, and how it began to crumble and drop onto the marble floor, hopefully to be carried off by the open Roman-esque channel drainage system. Ew.
Needless to say, when I was invited on a Friday afternoon, to join some coworkers for a trip to the Hamam after work, I said I wanted to go if for nothing else than to see where this boss-scrubbing and çig köfte eating had taken place.
Because I had just bought a car that was slightly bigger than everyone else's, one of the four other guys volunteered me to drive. In a normal situation, say on my home turf, this wouldn't be a problem. But everything's different here in Turkey, of course.
The five of us packed into the car, three of whom are good friends who act like a never-ending comedy show. One Turk, one American, and one Brit. Then there was me, and there was Paul, two of the newest coworkers.
So imagine driving stick-shift when you haven't done so for ten years, except for a week-long trip in Germany. And of course you're doing this in your new car that is less than five-hours old. Used, but new to you. And imagine you're driving during rush-hour in the waning dusk in downtown Kayseri with, like I said, a car-full of jokesters. Finally, imagine that no one in the car knows exactly where to go.
Jena looked at me before we left and told me to be careful with her car. I said "Of course." I violated that promise big-time.
In Turkey, there aren't really any rules to driving, except that you generally stop at red traffic lights. Getting to the hamam meant swirling through Turkish round-abouts (a topic that warrants its own blog post entirely), cutting between giant city busses (despite the fact that another coworker had told me to stay away from them at all costs), and shooting down streets that are just barely the width of your car while pedestrians and bikers and trying their best to psyche you out so that they can share some of the road as well. (In Turkey people on foot or on bike have no right of way, so it's actually dangerous when you try to give it to them because everyone gets confused.)
Somehow we found the damn hamam. While we were driving in circles searching for it, the Americans suggested that we just park and find it by walking. This idea was vetoed by Savaş, the Turk, because Turks have this intense belief that the cold will make you sick if you even think about going out in it, especially after you've been in a warm place like a bathhouse. They're also deathly afraid of drafts from things like slightly opened windows. This causes many conflicts in an office environment where some of the Americans prefer to let some fresh air into the office once in a while.
With remarkable luck, we found a parking spot that was about fifty feet from the hamam, and this distance was good enough to please Savaş.
From the sidewalk, we went down a narrow staircase and into a large domed room. There was the faint smell of cigarettes held by the humidity, and chairs with a seventies-color scheme lined the square shape of the room. Three guys were sitting there, wearing only towels, watching a soccer match. Two were eating çig köfte. While Savaş made arrangements for our bath, I inquired about whether this was the place where the çig köfte from Salim's story had been consumed. "No," Gareth, the Brit, told me. "It was in a hotter room."
When Savaş had finished, he led us up to a balcony. Along the wall were tiny changing chambers with ceilings that were about six-feet high. We put on these pieces of canvas-like fabric (similar to a sari), and headed down a marble tunnel to a room with slabs for scrubbing. From here we wove into another room with a huge heated marble slab. And from here we went into a sauna.
Once there we sat and sweated for a while, and then we went back into the hot marble slab room. Hot and cold water splashed into little basins. Perched on the faucets were metal bowls that you used for pouring the water over yourself.
We hung out there for a while, talking about things like shaving and how to get yourself clean when using a Turkish toilet (without toilet paper). Eventually, a fully clothed guy came in and asked whether or not we wanted anything. He offered water. We said yes. He offered other beverages. We said no. He offered çig köfte, and finally I understood that this was the place at last. Although it wasn't as hot as the sauna, I was still sweating like crazy. On the opposite edge of the hot marble slab two guys in their forties or fifties were scrubbing dead skin off one another with a glove-shaped wash cloth. Adding çig köfte to this situation would have been disgusting.
To make things just a bit stranger, when the server guy came back with our water, he also brought a plate of lemon slices and insisted on feeding them to us with his fingertips. "He's hoping for a big tip," Savaş said.
Since we had arranged professional scrubs, we each got scrubbed by workers, one after another. Paul went first, and someone in our group had the ingenious idea for us all to sit in the room, about three feet from him, to watch the scrubbing take place. I appreciated getting an idea of what would be done to me. I did not, however, appreciate seeing these bluish rolls of dead skin coming off his arms.
When it was my turn, I laid on the flat marble slab, with my head on a hot water bottle. The professional scrubber scrubbed me down. He would sort of slap me on the back when it was time to turn over. In order to scrub me nearly everywhere, he had taken off my sari and turned it into a roll. This covered my butt when needed and my front side.
We each opted for massage that followed the initial scrub, and it was more like a full-body shampooing at first. The soapy cloth he used felt like a jellyfish with steel-wool tentacles that swam across my back. Following this, he gave me a massage, and somehow knew to focus on my crazy tight quads and the golf course-like mounds of knots in my back. I groaned with pain when he jabbed his elbows into these spots. Some stupid bit of macho-ness had kicked in, and I didn't want to tell him to ease off.
Following our scrubs, it was time to wind down. We wandered back into the first room that we had seen, the one with the seventies chairs. There, we leaned forward while different worker guys rubbed cologne on our backs and our chests. I opted out of having them rub cologne all over my arms and face because eczema is my arch-nemesis. Then they used towels to wrap up our shoulders and heads in such a way that we all looked like kids in a nativity play. It was time for some pictures, which I have yet to receive.
Following the hamam, we went out for dinner where we ordered Adana kebabs and iskender, followed by künefe for dessert. The latter is deep fried hot cheese covered in pastry crumbs with cream and a sprinkle of pistachio-nut-dust on top. Delicious.
As we walked back to the car, Paul and I were a little ahead of the others. By then the haze and the magic was wearing off. We were full of food, and the heat of the hamam, that which we still held in our bodies, was dissipating into the night. I was thinking about the order in which I'd drop everyone off. Shops were closing down and everything was getting darker except for the bridal boutique that shown brightly at the corner where my car was parked. Paul looked at me then and said exactly what I wanted to hear: "I could really go for a beer."
We dropped the other three guys off, and when we got back to my place, we coincidently found Jena hanging out with Paul's girlfriend Cece. We cracked open a couple beers, and the girls forced us to tell them everything. "Details," they said, "more details. What the hell were you guys doing. You were gone for such a long time."
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
The Bizarreness Continues
It's been a long time since I've written.
Today I'm inspired.
Jena and I returned to school this afternoon to an onslaught of "Hayır olsun's" and "Güle güle kullanın's" from our coworkers. The phrases more or less mean "Congratulations" and "Use it well," though the second one has a literal translation of "Use it while laughing."
While we were gone from work for the afternoon, it seems, the news had spread that we had gone off to buy a car.
My officemate Salim said to me, "That was fast. You just started talking about getting a car two days ago." I agreed. I told him that Jena and I were having trouble following through with our plans. First, we wanted a new apartment, and although we looked at one at one point, we didn't like it and gave up our search soon thereafter. Our next half developed plan was to find out whether we could rent a car every other weekend for six months for a good price. After looking into that, we realized it wasn't particularly cost effective. Our most recent plan to spice up our rather dull lives--a dullness that set in quickly after we returned from a refreshing trip to Germany during our week off--was to buy a bunny. Technically we aren't allowed to have dogs and cats in our apartment, but we thought we could get away with a rodent. We debated this idea for at least a week, and even though we couldn't come up with a good exit plan for the bunny when we move, we still thought it would be a good idea. We made a list of things that we would need--a pen, a bunny rug, a litter box, hay, leafy vegetables. We sat there on the couch, waiting for one of us to make the first move to take the bus downtown to the pet shop. We stared at the list again. We decided, actually, maybe it wasn't a great idea.
A day after we had gone an a great day hike and to lunch with some friends, we decided that buying a car might be the way to go. While Jena was doing the dishes, I pointed out that we hadn't followed through with any of our life-improvement plans thus far. I suggested, "We need to be more strategic."
Jena said, "What does that mean?"
"We need to have concrete steps to follow and a deadline. I'm thinking the end of February. By the end of February we should have a car."
That was three days ago. Now we have a car.
If there's something Jena and I are good at, it's working ahead on projects that motivate us. You should have seen how early we completed assignments in graduate school.
Our car is dark red. It is a Hyundai, which I always considered a poor man's Honda. I think I developed this notion because we always had Honda's growing up, and the prices of Hyundais advertised on television were relatively low. In any case, I'm happy it's a Korean car because of it's potential longevity.
The thing about a car here in Turkey is that it's like driving a chunk of very, very slowly depreciating gold. We put a lot of money into it because used cars here aren't cheap they way they are in the US. But everyone you ask says that you can expect to sell it for nearly the same price that you bought it for. Some people say you might be able to get more. This sounds good, but it also makes me paranoid because my money has been converted into a big metal shape that could easily get smacked around in an accident. Banks are more secure parking lots. But in the end, I guess you have to live a little sometimes and take a risk.
I plan to go hiking this weekend. I don't care where we go, whether it's to Cappadocia or to one of the canyons around Talas. I'm just psyched to be able to get into a vehicle and get out past these apartment buildings quickly and efficiently, instead of doing it laboriously with a 45 minute walk.
My dad used to drive to trailheads to go running. On some level I never understood that. Why not run to the trailhead to get more exercise? As a runner, I know now how it feels to be wasting away on sidewalks and at intersections when the only place you want to be is in the mountains. Running is more than the sum of the exercise that you put in. It's a peaceful feeling of being alone in a setting that you enjoy.
The year of our new car is 2007. Jena pointed out that it's significantly newer than either of the cars that we had back in America. Mine a 1998 and her's a 2000. 2007. Was it a good year for cars?
In 2007, I drove my mom's white minivan back to college during the middle of our winter break. I drove through a snowstorm. When I got to my house in Colorado, I got snowed in and only braved the road once to pick up a friend at the airport. He bought me dinner and suggested that I get out of the house more.
During the second half of my senior year of college (2007), I used the car to drive to Classic literature readings at a professor's house. I drove to concerts in Denver. I eventually packed up everything and set up a bed in the back. My plan was to drive back home to Utah overnight. I would pull to the side of the road and sleep in the back when I got tired. I never got tired. (Well, actually, I did, but I didn't stop driving.)
Toward the end of senior year, when all of us were talking in uncertain tones about their future plans, I decided to throw my plan to move to Denver into the wind. I would live in my minivan instead. I dropped my things at home, worked for a month, and on the Fourth of July, I took off on a road trip that involved touring through the West, eating canned vegetables straight from the can (my vegetable-hating father donated these foodstuffs to my cause), staying overnight at rest areas where I could find free electricity for my computer and free light to read by, and a visit to a sparsely attended family reunion Nantucket where I wondered what the hell I was doing and why I had left my only means of escape, my car, on the mainland, twenty-five miles away.
It was during this time that I spoke to a friend and decided to move to Portland, Oregon as soon as possible.
Then, before the year ended, I decided to move from Portland, down to the sunnier climes of Arizona. I met up with my parents in Utah, and I happily volunteered to transport our family dog Walter to Arizona where he and I would live together in Flagstaff.
While driving through the winter barrenness of Utah, an hour or two or three south of Provo, I looked into the sky and saw a metallic object. I fixed my eyes on it as I drove. It remained stationary in the sky. Slowing from 75 miles per hour, I pulled over on the highway and stopped. I pushed past Walter who was copiloting my minivan, and when I looked into the sky again the object was gone.
I almost swore it was a UFO. Then I called my father. He said that it wasn't unusual for the military to potentially fly experimental aircraft over that part of the country. And besides, B2s can do crazy things like like practically hover in the sky. My UFO became a possible IFO. Not nearly as interesting.
So yes, 2007 was a good year for cars. It was a good year for my minivan, anyway. My minivan kept running until 2014 when I sold for 800 dollars to a solid guy in Flagstaff who promised that he'd try to keep it running until it reached three hundred thousand miles. Now that's a car. (It needed about twelve hundred dollars of repairs, but I think they guy actually did them.)
All of this has very little bearing, I realize, on my new car, but we will take it on new adventures. Our adventures may not be as reckless as running around the US from coast to coast while sleeping in the back (I want to keep my money in better shape than that). But I'll be happy if once in a while the car gets us out into the world where we can feel that 1950s sense of freedom, empowerment, and wind-blowing-in-your-hair mobility.
Today I'm inspired.
Jena and I returned to school this afternoon to an onslaught of "Hayır olsun's" and "Güle güle kullanın's" from our coworkers. The phrases more or less mean "Congratulations" and "Use it well," though the second one has a literal translation of "Use it while laughing."
While we were gone from work for the afternoon, it seems, the news had spread that we had gone off to buy a car.
My officemate Salim said to me, "That was fast. You just started talking about getting a car two days ago." I agreed. I told him that Jena and I were having trouble following through with our plans. First, we wanted a new apartment, and although we looked at one at one point, we didn't like it and gave up our search soon thereafter. Our next half developed plan was to find out whether we could rent a car every other weekend for six months for a good price. After looking into that, we realized it wasn't particularly cost effective. Our most recent plan to spice up our rather dull lives--a dullness that set in quickly after we returned from a refreshing trip to Germany during our week off--was to buy a bunny. Technically we aren't allowed to have dogs and cats in our apartment, but we thought we could get away with a rodent. We debated this idea for at least a week, and even though we couldn't come up with a good exit plan for the bunny when we move, we still thought it would be a good idea. We made a list of things that we would need--a pen, a bunny rug, a litter box, hay, leafy vegetables. We sat there on the couch, waiting for one of us to make the first move to take the bus downtown to the pet shop. We stared at the list again. We decided, actually, maybe it wasn't a great idea.
A day after we had gone an a great day hike and to lunch with some friends, we decided that buying a car might be the way to go. While Jena was doing the dishes, I pointed out that we hadn't followed through with any of our life-improvement plans thus far. I suggested, "We need to be more strategic."
Jena said, "What does that mean?"
"We need to have concrete steps to follow and a deadline. I'm thinking the end of February. By the end of February we should have a car."
That was three days ago. Now we have a car.
If there's something Jena and I are good at, it's working ahead on projects that motivate us. You should have seen how early we completed assignments in graduate school.
Our car is dark red. It is a Hyundai, which I always considered a poor man's Honda. I think I developed this notion because we always had Honda's growing up, and the prices of Hyundais advertised on television were relatively low. In any case, I'm happy it's a Korean car because of it's potential longevity.
The thing about a car here in Turkey is that it's like driving a chunk of very, very slowly depreciating gold. We put a lot of money into it because used cars here aren't cheap they way they are in the US. But everyone you ask says that you can expect to sell it for nearly the same price that you bought it for. Some people say you might be able to get more. This sounds good, but it also makes me paranoid because my money has been converted into a big metal shape that could easily get smacked around in an accident. Banks are more secure parking lots. But in the end, I guess you have to live a little sometimes and take a risk.
I plan to go hiking this weekend. I don't care where we go, whether it's to Cappadocia or to one of the canyons around Talas. I'm just psyched to be able to get into a vehicle and get out past these apartment buildings quickly and efficiently, instead of doing it laboriously with a 45 minute walk.
My dad used to drive to trailheads to go running. On some level I never understood that. Why not run to the trailhead to get more exercise? As a runner, I know now how it feels to be wasting away on sidewalks and at intersections when the only place you want to be is in the mountains. Running is more than the sum of the exercise that you put in. It's a peaceful feeling of being alone in a setting that you enjoy.
The year of our new car is 2007. Jena pointed out that it's significantly newer than either of the cars that we had back in America. Mine a 1998 and her's a 2000. 2007. Was it a good year for cars?
In 2007, I drove my mom's white minivan back to college during the middle of our winter break. I drove through a snowstorm. When I got to my house in Colorado, I got snowed in and only braved the road once to pick up a friend at the airport. He bought me dinner and suggested that I get out of the house more.
During the second half of my senior year of college (2007), I used the car to drive to Classic literature readings at a professor's house. I drove to concerts in Denver. I eventually packed up everything and set up a bed in the back. My plan was to drive back home to Utah overnight. I would pull to the side of the road and sleep in the back when I got tired. I never got tired. (Well, actually, I did, but I didn't stop driving.)
Toward the end of senior year, when all of us were talking in uncertain tones about their future plans, I decided to throw my plan to move to Denver into the wind. I would live in my minivan instead. I dropped my things at home, worked for a month, and on the Fourth of July, I took off on a road trip that involved touring through the West, eating canned vegetables straight from the can (my vegetable-hating father donated these foodstuffs to my cause), staying overnight at rest areas where I could find free electricity for my computer and free light to read by, and a visit to a sparsely attended family reunion Nantucket where I wondered what the hell I was doing and why I had left my only means of escape, my car, on the mainland, twenty-five miles away.
It was during this time that I spoke to a friend and decided to move to Portland, Oregon as soon as possible.
Then, before the year ended, I decided to move from Portland, down to the sunnier climes of Arizona. I met up with my parents in Utah, and I happily volunteered to transport our family dog Walter to Arizona where he and I would live together in Flagstaff.
While driving through the winter barrenness of Utah, an hour or two or three south of Provo, I looked into the sky and saw a metallic object. I fixed my eyes on it as I drove. It remained stationary in the sky. Slowing from 75 miles per hour, I pulled over on the highway and stopped. I pushed past Walter who was copiloting my minivan, and when I looked into the sky again the object was gone.
I almost swore it was a UFO. Then I called my father. He said that it wasn't unusual for the military to potentially fly experimental aircraft over that part of the country. And besides, B2s can do crazy things like like practically hover in the sky. My UFO became a possible IFO. Not nearly as interesting.
So yes, 2007 was a good year for cars. It was a good year for my minivan, anyway. My minivan kept running until 2014 when I sold for 800 dollars to a solid guy in Flagstaff who promised that he'd try to keep it running until it reached three hundred thousand miles. Now that's a car. (It needed about twelve hundred dollars of repairs, but I think they guy actually did them.)
All of this has very little bearing, I realize, on my new car, but we will take it on new adventures. Our adventures may not be as reckless as running around the US from coast to coast while sleeping in the back (I want to keep my money in better shape than that). But I'll be happy if once in a while the car gets us out into the world where we can feel that 1950s sense of freedom, empowerment, and wind-blowing-in-your-hair mobility.
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