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.
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