FISH & FISHERMEN

Black Sea, Aegean Sea, Islands, Dardanelles, Mediterranean Sea, Bosphorus, Sea of Marmara, Feribot, deniz otobus, fish and fishermen. What wonderful memories I carry around from living in such close proximity to all that water.

Our apartment building in the Goztepe section of Istanbul was two blocks off the Sea of Marmara. At any time of the day we could look out the front windows of our apartment and see the Marmara, the islands right off the coast, and if the day was clear enough we could see over to the part of the old city on the “nose” of the coast as it rounds into the Golden Horn.


To get anywhere, it most often entailed a taxi ride to a dock and then a ride on either a Feribot or a deniz otobus (a smaller catamaran “feribot”). It all depended on where you were going and where you were coming from.


In the summer many people moved to one of the Princes Islands off the coast. The air was always “fresh” – a bit cooler than in the city and far less crowded. Any time you felt the need for a change, hopping on a ferryboat to Heybeliada or Buyukada was called for. One of the most delightful days of my life was spent at the island home of Walt and Vivian Leitner. They invited three couples to their house for a meal and a visit. We slightly knew the other couples, and it turned out to be one of those rare occasions where everything was perfect – the companionship, the locale, the hosts – and here almost 20 years later I still remember it as one of life’s serendipitous days. We might have talked all night but the feribot wouldn’t wait for us, so reluctantly we made our goodbyes and left.

Jerry loves fish, and one of his favorite fish restaurants was on the Bosphorus. We considered our driver, young Ahmet, as a good friend and asked him to have dinner with us whenever we went out. We did not want him sitting over in a corner eating by himself. I needed him for another reason: at this restaurant a big tank of fish sat just inside the restaurant door. Patrons were to pick out the fish they wanted to eat for dinner. I could not do that. I always asked Ahmet to do it for me. He did, and while I admit to enjoying the freshness of the fish, I couldn’t let myself think about how it got on my plate. I am still an old softie.


I found lots of things to photograph as we nosed around the various waterfronts. I can’t say as they were always “scenic” pictures to help me remember what a particular place looked like, but again, looking at these photos instantly brings back the images and the smells of those places where I took the photograph, a place and a time I'll never forget.

MARCHING TO A DIFFERENT DRUMMER

In Istanbul we lived on the Asian side of the city in an area called Goztepe. Directly across the street from our apartment was a very large park and at the far edge of the park an elementary school. Early each morning the children would gather in the park at the entrance to the school, all decked out in their school uniforms, and sing the Turkish National Anthem.

Our flat was on the 6th floor of the building overlooking the park, and each morning we heard the children sing. They were accompanied by a tape, so it was a very nice rendition of their National Anthem and we could hear it loud and clear. We lived in that apartment for almost two years, and we heard that tune enough that I could at least hum the melody along with them. Jerry, not being very musically inclined, was not particularly interested in the daily event, but I was quite taken with it. The little kids were so cute and so earnest.

Although I cannot now remember what the occasion was, one morning after the singing I could see the children all re-arranging themselves and suddenly the flag bearers stepped out in time to the music and they began marching along the paths in the park as if they were in a parade.


Next came a group of horn players. They didn't have instrumental horns but horns nevertheless that they quietly tooted in concert with the music and their marching. The boys got to play the horns.


Next came the lady drummers. There was not the noise one would expect to hear with that many drums but they certainly were doing quiet little rat-a-tat-tats.

It took several verses of the national anthem to get them around the route that had been selected for them. It was strange to be watching and not really understand what was going on, except that it was as much fun for me to watch them as it was for them to make a big parade! By the time the parade passed in front of our apartment and headed around the bend, all the residents of the apartments were out on their balconies watching the festivities - and you can be sure that we gave those children a standing ovation.

Things like this were one of the serendipities we had during our two years there in Istanbul. We didn't need to understand; it was enough to simply look, enjoy and applaud.

In 1993 we came home. Occasionally I would catch myself humming the Turkish National Anthem, which struck me funny because I don't believe ever in my whole life have I hummed The Star Spangled Banner. But the Turkish National Anthem is a march, and marches are made for humming along. I didn't have the Internet until 1997, so it took me that long to get accompaniment to my humming.

So I've provided you all with a lovely rendition found on YouTube. When I hear it I remember all those darling children in their special little parade. And when you hear it, you can listened for my humming!

DRIPLESS TURKISH BANYOS

When I was writing yesterday about our tiny bathroom and the phantom drip, I couldn’t help thinking back to the very interesting bathrooms we had in our Istanbul apartment. We had two bathrooms and both of them were a surprise to us when we first saw what would be our home away from home.

I need to state first that this blog entry does not intend to be in any way critical of anything Turkish. In fact, we were very careful to keep in mind that while things were different from what we had in the US, we chose not to place a value judgment of “better” or “worse” on anything we saw or experienced. Sometimes we just shook our head at the differences, sometimes laughed at them, but we always knew that we were having the time of our lives.

Our apartment took up the entire sixth floor of an eight-floor apartment in a fairly modern building in an Istanbul suburb named Goztepe. The living room and dining room were side by side at the front of the building. Surrounded by huge windows, we could see the Prince’s Islands off the coast of the Sea of Marmara, a very interesting park directly across the street from our building and further on around, a view of the city. Our flat was modern. We had electricity, phone service, cable TV, western toilets, an elevator to take us up to our flat – and we had no complaints.

But the bathrooms were a surprise.

Directly across from the door that opened into our flat from the landing was bathroom #1. It was comprised of a sink, a commode and a washing machine in a room about the size of our bathroom here. It was an extremely handy bathroom, as you can imagine, but it had no character whatsoever. There was no built-in drain for the washing machine so a long hose attached at the back of the machine had to be hooked over the bowl of the toilet so the water could drain into it. The bathroom was functional; it worked and was certainly better than having to go to a laundromat (if one even existed.). There wasn’t room for a dryer, but there was a back balcony with clotheslines where we hung the clothes to dry. Our Turkish cat Tigger happened to like to sleep in this bathroom’s sink, so for all intents and purposes, this was a bathroom in name only.

The second bathroom, down the hall a ways toward the bedrooms, was our primary bathroom and was spacious enough to accommodate two sinks, two cupboards, and a square dance, if one were so inclined. What was amazing about this bathroom was first, the floor and the countertop around the sinks were of marble. That bespeaks elegance, but it was truly not a very elegant bathroom.

You will see from the picture that there was no unifying element in it that you could kind of decorate around. There was red tile, black and red tile, pink tile, brown tile, white fixtures, except for a black toilet seat. Even the marble was of two colors. The floor marble was a grayish brown and the sink marble of kind of an eggshell and tan. The one thing you could say for sure about this bathroom was that it was really, really cold. In the summer it was wonderful; in the winter it was hard to talk yourself into taking a shower or a bath because all that marble and tile took on the chill of the winter and didn’t give it up, even if the day warmed.

We did try to do a little decorating in the flat. We knew we would be entertaining people while we were there and wanted to have a nice-looking place. But there was just nothing we could do about that main bathroom. It was what it was.

The flat in Goztepe was our home for 19 months. We did have a few minor problems along the way. A new refrigerator we bought upon arrival lasted exactly 2 weeks before it broke down completely and had to be replaced. The first hot summer evening that we experienced made us decide to leave the windows on each side in the living room open all night to get some air circulation (Istanbul is more humid than Palm Beach, Florida and we had neither air conditioner nor screens on the window.) By leaving the windows open we actually experienced a cooler night, but in the morning we were faced with pigeons walking around our living room. And cleaning up after them.

As to water, sometimes we had water full of rust, sometimes we had no hot water, and on several occasions we had no water at all, all of which were problems caused either by the municipality working on the water lines in our section of town, or by the big boiler in the basement tended to by our kapiji (superintendent) who lived in the basement apartment.

But even with all the minor little glitches that we experienced, we never, ever had a drip, phantom or real, in our bathroom plumbing. Hats off to Turkish plumbers and plumbing.