Would You Like a Massage or Some Alcohol?

It´s been more or less two months that I moved to Istanbul. I´ve been very busy so I am discovering the city step by step. (Actually Istanbul is so huge that I think even if I had nothing to do, it would take me a lifetime to discover all this incredible organism.)

I live in an area with a lot of banks and markets. If I want to go to a shopping centre, I need to take a bus but except for that, I have everything I need within walking distance.

Last week, I wanted to buy some wine in one of these markets. I entered the biggest one near my home. No alcohol. Ok, I walked in the opposite direction to the second biggest one. No alcohol. Another market. Nothing. Well, no alcohol in any of these markets! How is that even possible?! I move to Istanbul, to a nice neighbourhood that doesn´t seem exactly super conservative and I can´t buy wine anywhere? Wow. In Eskişehir to buy some alcohol was the easiest thing in the world! At last, I remembered I had seen a small tobacco-alcohol shop on the way home, so hallelujah!

Massage. What about the massage? I have really wanted to go for a massage here in Turkey. I even found some special offers on the net. I showed them to my boyfriend. He said it might be ok but I should be careful because these places in Turkey are usually used for prostitution. For what?! As usual, I thought he was exaggerating. One or two days later he wanted to show me some cards distributed in our street. They were business cards inviting people for a massage. The photos on the business cards were quite interesting. Girls in lingerie with their legs wide open. And what was written on them? Something like "if you have doubts, just call us". My only doubt is – how can I be sure that I am going to a real massage place and not to a brothel?  

The Turkish Language

First of all, I would like to say that the topic of languages is my favourite. I studied Philology and I work with languages. I speak a couple of languages and I really love studying, teaching and translating them. Languages are my passion. They are my life.

Here in Turkey it is not very common to speak foreign languages. And if someone speaks a foreign language, it is hardly ever more than one. In my little country in the centre of Europe it is let's say more necessary to speak different languages.

There are nine languages in my CV. It might sound crazy or incredible but I can always explain it. I hate showing it off so I never really know how to answer the question "how many languages do you speak/know?". Why? Because I don't know. My reply gets unfortunately a little long because I try to explain that I for example understand Italian on intermediate level but I can't speak it (it would become a horrible mixture of Spanish, Portuguese and French). Or I can read a book in Slovak but again, I can't speak it. So the best question would actually be: how many languages do you speak fluently?

Anyway, enough of this long introduction that has very little to do with the Turkish language. People like to ask me: Petra, which language is the most difficult for you? I don't hesitate for a second to say it is Turkish. Still, I do believe that my mother tongue, Czech, may be more difficult (unlike Turkish, we do recognize feminine, masculine and neutro and we don't change only nouns, pronouns and verbs, but also adjectives and numbers).

Now what is difficult about Turkish? Writing and pronounciation are easy, but (alike us) Turkish uses cases and its word order doesn't really have enough rules to follow. The shock comes when you realize it has nothing in common with all the Germanic, Latin and Slavic languages you have ever studied. The biggest grammar difficulty (at least for the beginners) is the suffixes (ev-house, evler-houses, evlerim-my houses, evlerimde-in my houses, ...) and the vocabulary also teaches you a lesson: you were a fool to believe that some words (such as student or literature) are kind of international. Student in Turkish is "öğrenci" and literature is "edebiyat". Welcome to Turkey. The only thing that sometimes helps me a little bit is my French. (Some of the modern terms of the 20th century were taken from French.)

And my impressions of Turkish? It is not an ugly language to listen to but you are probably not going to fall in love with it like with the pretty romantic French language.

There are two aspects of Turkish that make the people both extremely polite and slightly rude.
The Turkish use so many polite expressions that are almost impossible to translate to other languages! For example, after a meal, it is a custom to wish health to the cook's hands. Or if you visit someone, you are supposed to react to their "you came nicely" (=welcome) with "we found it nice". You can also use "let it be overcome" (=get well soon) when someone drops a lot of things on the floor. Or if you see someone washing the dishes, working or studying, you should wish them "let it come easy (for you)". To learn all these expressions and to use them in the right situations, is a real challenge.

So what makes the Turks slightly rude if they have so many social expressions? Overuse of the imperative. Instead of "could you", "would you" etc., they usually prefer the form of imperative (e.g. "bring me water"). Not only do they love the imperative even with people they don't know, but many times they forget to use the magical words "please" and "thank you". Oh and sometimes, people automatically treat me as "sen" (the informal pronoun, like "du" in German and "tu" in the Latin languages) although I am for example their teacher. But I mean, of course these are some things that make the Turkish people a little impolite in my eyes. At the same time, I am aware of the fact that I cannot quite "feel" their language yet. İnşallah (as the Turks always say to express their hope, no matter how religious they are or not), I will feel it soon.

A Couple of Things You Probably Didn´t Know about Turkey

(I say probably because if you live in Turkey and pay a little bit of attention to what is happening around you, you must have noticed.)

When I came to Turkey for the first time (more than two years ago), I wasn´t able to open youtube. Why? Censorship. (Though, every Turkish knew of course how to get on youtube and nowadays, it works normally again.)

Today, if you watch TV, you are not going to be able to see any cigarettes there. They hide them. In my opinion, they just manage to call more attention like that, but what do I know, right?

I also remember how nervous I was about any kind of intimacy in public in that summer 2012. I was so worried not to offend anyone in this new exotic country that I was refusing just to hug my boyfriend. Well, of course I was exaggerating. Still, unlike in many other countries, you can hardly ever see any French kissing in public.

About Turkish dining, a couple of things are going to surprise you too. Like that even in many restaurants, it is not common to use a knife. Or when visiting someone at their place, you may eat on the floor (I actually like it, I believe that it somehow brings the people closer). And you are all probably going to eat from common plates, bowls and pans. (My mother was stunned when I decided to do that with a saucepan in her house this summer. Unfortunately, the board I chose to put under the pan wasn´t exactly wooden...)

There are some funny details we, Czechs, have in common with the Turks. A couple of words (kral-král, cezve-džezva, hele, na, vişne-višně, fasulye-fazole etc.) and a few habits. We for example both knock on the wood when we say something good and we don´t want it to get bad. ("I have never had any problems with my teeth." - knock, knock, knock!)

What else? The people are extremely generous, they love talking about money, they are too curious, they have a very large amount of social rules, they love foreign brides (I don´t know why but they do), they are crazy about visitors and they are mad, mad drivers. They are more than that (long live generalizing!), but about that next time.