First Days

It's like Wall Street on a Sunday morning. A schoolyard in July. The mall once Labor Day sales are over. The Bayram holiday in the Muslim world marks the end of Ramazan, the month where people fast from sunrise to sunset and practice deeds of general good. Bayram then becomes the Grand Finale where people visit friends and family, kids get sweets, gifts are given to the poor. It also seems to be the time when everyone in Ankara goes somewhere else. There have got to be towns in Turkey that are bulging at the seams with the influx of holiday visitors from Ankara because this place is pretty much empty.

So what is a stranger to the city to do without a car, telephone or Internet connection or a door of a friend on which she can knock? In the past couple of days I have found new ways to walk to familiar places, roamed the aisles of every supermarket within a 2km radius of my flat taking opportunities to practice my lame Turkish whenever I can. I've cooked a few meals in my “new” kitchen, read, watched a bit of BBC news and then I bought a phone card so I can phone the one person I know in Ankara.

Crisp, cool, partly cloudy fall weather has replaced the scorching heat of just over a year ago when I was in Turkey surrounding the days of Bayram. The south coast was a picture of Mediterranean blue waters inviting me for a refreshing swim. This year, in this city, a few coffee shops are open in the trendy parts of town with just a fraction of their normal young crowds. In my residential neighborhood the only places open are the flower shops, chocolate shops and bakeries so guests can arrive to family celebrations bearing holiday gifts.

As I sit on my second floor balcony, I am very aware of the view that is NOT the panorama I had at my fifth floor flat in Prishtina. I might not be enjoying sunrises and scenery so much here, but I am seeing something else that I will be enjoying. I look down and realize that I have a birds-eye view of people in Ankara. This weekend there is barely a flicker of light in the flats around me, but every few minutes an elderly woman gets dropped off by a taxi in front of the home of some family carrying a bouquet and box of treats or young couples walk hand in hand on their way to a holiday party. Once the sun has set, kids and their parents are heading back to their homes after a party whose celebratory mood still shows on the child. Makes me think of myself on Christmas Eve leaving Grandma and Grandpa's place excited for the arrival of St. Nick.

Ankara is big and modern and could be a capital city anywhere, really. The upside of living and working in a place like this is that it lessens culture shock a bit. I mean, I can find soymilk in any number of super markets and can pretty much blend myself into the people here. It makes the move a bit easier, but it can also take away from the experience of really living in a foreign country. I hope that when I begin to travel around Turkey for work, I will be offered opportunities to partake in traditional celebrations and rituals. Maybe be invited into a Turkish home and meet the family, be put in unfamiliar surroundings and situations. Then, once I've experience the unfamiliar and even uncomfortable, I will come back to my flat in Ankara, break open a carton of soymilk and watch BBC.