sobota 23. dubna 2011

Cleaning your nose in Turkey

My favourite issue. Why? Because my doctor once told me I am allergic to cold. What does it mean? I basically can´t take one step without a tissue, no matter if it´s winter or hot summer. What more? I am sensitive to spicy food which reflects on my nose again. A problem? Kind of, in Turkey, everything is spicy.

First I definitely should explain that it is considered digusting and a sign of bad education to clean your nose in public in Turkey. I even have the impression that the problem is the tissue because I saw the act without the tissue many times (to be fair to Turkish, I saw it in other countries, too, especially Portuguese can be highly disgusting).

To me this issue actually became a sort of science. How to deal with it since it is badly seen by the society. Where it´s ok to deal with it and where not. Am I more tolerated as a foreigner?

Before going to Turkey for the first time, I already knew it is a faux pas in there, still I won´t forget my first sightseeing day in Istanbul when I saw my boyfriend´s cousin´s reaction to that. The girl saw some tourist, a man older than us, cleaning his nose the way we do it. With a tissue, as the most natural thing in the world. I was astonished at her reaction. She acted as if the man had just vomited or something like that. I guess that was the moment when I decided that no matter what, I am not going to repeat the man´s mistake in Turkey. Let´s do it the Turkish style.

But well, what is the Turkish style? I am not a 60 years old man to be spitting on the pavements, am I? But come on, I can make it somehow, can´t I?

Since that, I spent a lot of time snuffling. In the street, in the bus, at the table. I was all the time doing something that is considered highly disgusting in my country. I was doing something that I hate when somebody does it. Every time I see someone doing it in my country, I am fighting myself not to pass him my tissues.

Still, I could make it, couldn´t I?

Dinner with all his family. In a nice restaurant. One million kinds of food on the table as usual. A nice view from our saloon. What do I do? Run to the toilet. For how long will it help me? Not much.

Help in the street? Any corner where I can hide at least a little bit.
In the bus? No help. Although my boyfriend is almost two metres, still he can´t hide my blowing nose.

Sometimes the people try to be nice so they tell you to do it, that it´s ok. But I just got into some paranoic phase with it. I am always wondering if they are testing me. When a man in the restaurant offers me napkins because of my snuffling, he makes me confused. What for if I can´t clean my nose? How come that the woman sitting next to me in the bus going to Istanbul has just cleaned her nose? Is she trying to show me that in the case of need I can feel free to do so, too?

With time, I discovered that the problem is not that the people can see you, the problem is the sound. Good, I can blow my nose silently. My father, on the other hand, he would possibly have to leave Turkey immediately if they heard him.

The funny thing about this is that I feel nervous to clean my nose even here whenever I have my Turkish friends around. I guess that without realizing it, I am actually entertaining myself with a cultural difference that for me in fact is quite complicated. Anyway, it is interesting to see that if necessary, one doesn´t need what they usually can´t live without.

neděle 17. dubna 2011

How does a foreign girl feel in Turkey

Let´s make one thing clear before writing this: What kind of foreigner am I in Turkey?

I spend most of my time in Turkey in Eskişehir (as you must have noticed if you read my blog) which is a place with basically no tourists and an extremely small number of foreigners, which I love. I never felt the need to look for my people abroad, sometimes I even feel annoyed when meeting them there. My impression is that if there are some foreigners in Eskişehir, it always has to do with Anadolu university. Either there are Erasmus students, or foreign professors, invited for some special lectures or something like that. Now, the only thing I have to do with this university (so far), is that my boyfriend studies there. But do I feel like a tourist in Eskişehir? Not really.

One thing I realized this time when I was in Eskişehir is that I feel safe there. A little safer than in Porto (where I lived for one year), for example.

Another thing is that a lot of (non-Turkish) people imagine that a foreign girl in Turkey is necessarily constantly bothered by Turkish guys. That´s nonsense. That might happen just in touristic places and if you wear some mini provocative stuff. In Eskişehir, I can wear exactly the same clothes like in Brno and not to feel provocative. Yes, ok, sometimes people stare at me a little in the streets but I think the Porto´s people stare more. But noone shouts or whistles at me, noone blows the horn or stops me in the street. And if some shop assistant gets a little cheeky asking your name and where you are staying, it is always enough to mention your boyfriend.

Still, I kind of get nervous with Turkish guys. I try to avoid looking at them so that they don´t think I am provoking them and I can get confused when some guy tries to help me although his help might not be so needed. Why? Because I think Turkish people in general have some funny stereotypical ideas about European girls, let´s say. I always wonder what the people imagine when they smile or frown at me, when I notice a Turkish girl hugging her boyfriend stronger when seeing me or when a guy asks me where I stay. Would the guy ask that question also to a Turkish girl? Do some people think I deserve less respect just because I am a foreign girl? Am I for them someone who automatically lives in a sin? Do the guys imagine that after a five-minute conversation I will take them home?

I don´t know answers to these but then there are some situations like when I fall asleep in a small bus station in Asian part of Istanbul (Ataşehir) and half of the station comes to wake me up and takes me to the bus to the airport that just came (even trying to help me in English that it´s number "sixteen" although they mean eighteen). Or when in a train, I help some family whose members are all a head shorter than me to get their luggage and for that, they insist on me taking some fruit from them.


Well, I guess that what I´m trying to say here is that I feel good in Turkey. I start smiling already at the airport when Turkish people appear around. I get crazy about the smells and food there. I become a shopping maniac and my desire of speaking and reading in Turkish reaches its peak. Every time, I get fascinated what a neverending neverstopping organism the country is (this hits me especially in Istanbul). And the sounds that I miss most from there are the ezan (the sound coming from the mosque which the imam calls the people to pray with) and the street bread seller.