Category Archives: Travelling

Apr 07 2012
36 Comments
Food, Travelling, Two minute read

Oh My God It’s Breakfast in Istanbul

I almost left my camera next to the plate on the right.

This is Istanbul, the city of beautiful street cats, the city coveted by empires over the centuries, the city of the Dardanelles, of eggplant, of sultans, of pretty silk scarves, of hills and bridges. This is the city of every kind of public transportation: ferries, trams, metro, trollies, busses, and funiculars. This is the city of roasted street chestnuts and bad haircuts.

I arrived yesterday at 2 am after our flight was delayed from Cairo. At one point, a voice had came over the loudspeakers and said, “The new time for the delayed flight to Istanbul will be announced….later.” It was never announced.

Nevertheless, we made it to our fun-sized hostel with fun-sized rooms and bathrooms, where your bum touches the door as you pull up your pants. And today, we ate breakfast. Oh the glory.

I believe in love, laughter, and breakfast. Sweet Lord in heaven is there anything better than getting up early in the morning bright, when mouth-breathing tourists like ourselves haven’t begun mobbing around the city? Is there anything fairer than  winding down and around the hilly alleys of Istanbul lined with Smartie colored houses, and entering an establishment with yellow walls and cozy tables ? Is there anything better than being hungry for breakfast, the meal that will determine the rest of your life?

And what a treat this was, selected with the aid of the gentlemanly restaurant manager himself. I had never seen so many tiny dishes at a breakfast before. We ate cheeses, jam, butter, nutella, peanut butter, honey and cream, omelette, olives, hard boiled eggs, yoghurt and cucumber, and pure joy.

Anything was possible with this breakfast. Butter and jam, cheese and jam, nutella and jam, peanut butter and jam. Cheese. Egg and cheese. Egg and cheese and salt. Egg and cheese and salt and tomato. Egg, cheese, salt, tomato, and nutella.  And so on. I could fulfill any dream I had, go past any horizon I saw. With regard to bread toppings, the sky was the limit, and I was in outer space, blowing moon bubbles with aliens.

After a while you stop trying to taste every possibility and instead just be with the breakfast and attempt to become one with the essence of the little dishes and the toppings. I failed, yet I shall try again. Mark my words, I shall try again.

And now, we’ll get a coffee and discuss what we want to eat for lunch. This is the nature of vacation.

For those who are curious, we ate at a place called Van Kahvaltia Evi in an area called Cihangir. See a review here (it’s the first place. And the website istanbuleats.com is awesome).

Tagged , , , , , ,
Jan 25 2012
8 Comments
Anecdotes, Stories, Travelling, Two minute read

Delta Surprise!

It took hours to absorb enough light for this photo

At the airport in Oklahoma City, I munched on a third Major Milk Makin’ Lactation cookie while contemplating the news of an unexpected 29 hour layover in Amsterdam. “That is a long layover,” I thought. Actually, I was a little angry at the time, so I believe my thoughts may have had some more descriptive words that connoted my irritation.

Apparently something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. I had been so excited about the future just an hour beforehand, gushing about the beauty of life like a simpleton. But now the beginning to my spring semester was darkened, and the shininess of the attending Delta employee’s bald head did nothing to ease my dread, and the fact he implied that this predicament was my fault only served to incense me. “Who made the reservation?” he said. “Does it matter?” I half snapped, half asked politely. A Muppet friend could have made the reservation, but that didn’t alter the fact that Delta had confirmed it and then changed the flight without notifying me. Someone was going to pay for this.

As it turns out, Delta/KLM agreed with me. In Atlanta, I learned that my flight from Amsterdam was no longer scheduled for Jan. 24th at 5:25 pm, but for Jan. 25th at 5:25, and that since it was not my fault, I would be taken care of in Amsterdam by nice people who would put me in a hotel and feed me.

At the airport in Amsterdam, I talked to some truly wonderful KLM representatives, one of which had a voice like the Swedish chef, and eventually wound up in a hotel nicer than one I would ever be able to afford (as an Arabic fellow making $520/mo.) and confronted with a lunch buffet of my wildest imaginings.

Bread! Butter!  Prosciutto! Little things of jam I could steal! Oh happy day! I even got a toiletry bag from KLM filled with, among other things, spray on deodorant with man-smell (the cooling sensation on the pits is quite nice), and a European size XXL white t-shirt, which translates to an American medium. This was perfect, since I didn’t have pajamas in my carry-on.

bunny bunny bunny!

Later that day, I chased and took pictures of bunnies in the hotel parking lot, went to Amsterdam, and ate a 3 course meal by myself while reading A Confederacy of Dunces and watching happy dinner parties in a lovely dining room lit by hundreds of votive candles and decorated with roses. It has been a most wonderful paid vacation.

A word on Amsterdam: at one moment I thought to myself, “If you’ve never considered suicide, try going to Amsterdam in the winter. There are many lovely bridges to contemplate jumping off of after tying a stone to your foot.” I had been to that city once before, in the summer, when it was sunny. I now realize that it may have been the one sunny day they’d had all year. While wandering around Amsterdam, I felt like I was in the surreal, dark world of one of the characters from a Rembrandt painting, surrounded by people who were hurrying to get home to the light and remember a reason for living. But that’s just my impression. The windows of the city are quite lovely though.

Hopefully I will arrive to Cairo for real-sies today.

Tagged , , , , ,
Jan 14 2012
4 Comments
Anecdotes, One minute read, Travelling

Another Okie Heading West

As I stood on top of one of the Twin Peaks and looked out over the bright city of San Francisco and into the bay beyond with its rust colored Golden Gate Bridge and the lumpy green mountains beyond that, and looked behind me and saw the setting sun and its reflection in the water so it looked like two suns, and glanced down and saw my lengthening shadow on the earth, and felt the coolness coming from the trees, and considered all the combinations of colors of green and blue and brown and bright that lay before me, I thought to myself that there is no other city I have found in this earth that has such a high concentration of everything I love. Creativity, nature, color, coffee, books, floral dresses, and sidewalks all combined and laid out on a grid set between hills on a peninsula in the bay.

And then I thought that I would like to live in California, if it would have me, and especially if it would find me a place to live and pay my bills. But those might have to be personal journeys. I would make the effort, though. It would be worth it to live here.

Here I come, just another liberal arts graduate with a job in retail.

Tagged , , , , , ,
Jan 11 2012
8 Comments
Travelling, Two minute read

California Prairie Dress Wearin’

It’s all come to this. The progression of time has brought me to the point where the plane ticket I bought to go to San Francisco is ready to be redeemed and I will sit next to someone hopefully not smelly for a few hours to LA and then someone equally pleasant smelling on the way to San Francisco, the land where dreams come true. Specifically, my dreams. This will be the land where  my dreams come true.

I’m going there for a week to visit some friends and do some future hunting, possibly accosting people on the street, grabbing their collars and saying “GIVE ME A JOB!” And then following them as they try to run away. I’ll be wearing a dress and boots so it’ll be difficult. But I digress.

I’ve never been to the West Coast, and most of my thoughts about it are informed by Hollywood and my conservative grandparents who are worried about the moral decay of America. I imagine it’s somewhere in between heathens roaming the street looking for souls to sway and a land of infinite possibility.  Perhaps the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Oh and I forgot about Full House. Most of what I know about San Francisco in particular comes from watching Full House.

There’s gold in them hills, or so they say, and now it’s my turn to go and get me some. If I don’t come back, it’s because I found my fortune out there. If I do, it’s because my fortune is not yet ripe for the plucking and I need money from my parents.

I even got a new dress for the journey. It was 5 dollars at goodwill. The brand is “California Girls.” It’s floor length and has shoulder pads and a high collar and a fetching print. I can’t wait to blend in on the sidewalks, just a regular prairie girl minglin’ with them city folk.

The next week or so of posts will likely describe a steep descent into culture shock and loss of moral bearings, followed by unlikely growths of hope and self awareness, ending with a reconfirmation of personal identity with added perspective on the entirety of reality. I hope I can deliver.

Tagged , , , , ,
Dec 22 2011
Leave a comment
Anecdotes, Travelling, Two minute read

Home Again. Police Coming Soon.

They made me throw my peanut butter away. You’ll be hearing more about this.

One mad dash in an airport, one jar of forcibly discarded peanut butter, my inaugural first-class experience complete with whisky, five days in a beloved city, three haphazardly finished final projects, a handful of not-so-final goodbyes, and one eager familial greeting at an airport after watching my airplane acquaintance, a man, walk into the women’s bathroom…..and I’m home.

Have I missed Oklahoma? Of course not. I’ve missed the humans that inhabit its suburban sprawls, specifically the ones that populate a small brick structure in an unremarkable town known for its ability to grow children well and then make them to want to leave.

The feeling of home, for me, is a combination of extreme fondness coupled with the intense panic at the thought I might never escape. Escape might seem a strong term to those who find Oklahoma’s tender chicken fried steak more toothsome than even the most succulent Kobe beef. And that’s fine. Here in America we have the sometimes ill-advised freedom to maintain and revel in our ignorance though we risk people on the coasts mocking us for it. I, however, have always needed to get away from Oklahoma, my efforts landing me most recently in Egypt where I have had a most rewarding experience.

Nevertheless, towards the end of the semester, I was looking forward to being in America, where I could walk down the street without turning even one brow, where honking the horn is the exception not the rule, and where there are sidewalks–usable, beautiful, sidewalks. America was once again the promised land, and my home, the most familiar place on earth, was now the object of my yearning.

Despite all this, as soon as I got off the airplane in Oklahoma City I remembered why I had wanted to escape. It’s not because I suddenly recalled how much I resent my dog or the fact my family only got a big screen tv as soon as I had left the country after waiting 18 years to upgrade. It’s not the annoying Central Plains female haircut or the cowboy boots that are as plentiful as Cairo street cats on a garbage pile.

It’s the fact I’m a wanted criminal. Forget all that sentimental mumbo-jumbo. I’m on the run and have been ever since my senior year in high school. After all that crazy revolutionary time in Egypt, I forgot the charges have not been dropped and that police officers with gravy still wet on their whistles will be hot on my tail as soon as I step foot inside my county, which I have already done.

So…thanks for the soup, Ma, and I hope you enjoy the cannolis since I won’t be coming back until some kind of computer virus destroys the record databases, expunging me of all crimes. PEACE!

Note: this is a joke. To my knowledge, I am not a wanted criminal.

Tagged , , , , ,
← Older posts
Newer posts →
Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started