In no particular order, these are the stories that I found most interesting, funny, thought-provoking, and forward/Twitter/Facebook/Google+/conversation-worthy:

TRAVEL/TURKEY
The Art of the Deal: I’m still rather delighted by the fact that former heartthrob Andrew McCarthy has turned out to be such a formidable travel writer, among other things. This Moroccan essay was funny, relateable, inspiring, and transportive: all the things a good travel piece should be.
VICE guide to Russia Every Russian I know confirms this list, which makes me admire and fear Russia, and gives me a bit of insight into my husband’s Soviet-born soul. Also, I really need to stop saying blyad.
The long life of Homo sovieticus See above.
7 Ways to Ruin Your Travel Writing I’ve adored Mike’s writing ever since poring over his wonderful list of 50 Amazingly Acheiveable Things to Do Before you Die (sample item: use a leaf as a bookmark), and continue to love his “fevered mutterings.” While I would enjoy him writing about a trip to the mailbox, I especially loved his what NOT to write, and in fact, found each example of “bad” writing to be clever and captivating.
The art of airplane safety cards Fascinating “review” of airline safety cards from an art criticism perspective, makes me nostalgic for a time well before my own. Also must add the author’s book on his time as a prison librarian to my must-read list.
The Chinese Grand Tour This article kept me company through a very long test for gestational diabetes (I passed) where I couldn’t eat or drink for hours, no mean feat for a 6-months-pregnant lady. Now every time I see a Chinese tour group, I wonder where they are going for lunch.
The Bosphorus trash can There are infinite stories in this inventory of trash found in Istanbul’s water ways. How did a police cart get down there? Or a park bench? None of it shocks me at all, really, but some fascinating finds.
The new Young Turks  Some of the Turkish youths in here can be dismissed as poor little rich kids, but still interesting to learn of the tough job market in a so-called booming economy. Curious about this Occupy Istanbul event, did they camp outside a TechnoSA?
What happened to Osmanbey? Osmanbey was our original neighborhood here in Istanbul (we’ve since moved down the hill a few blocks to posher Nisantasi, where we have a Prada store rather than a fabric wholesaler close by), this details the past cache of the area and how it’s changed.
The great Italian can opener conundrum Technically, I read this in 2010, but I’ve returned to it often in 2011 as an example of how great writing can elevate even the most mundane subject. Like McCarthy’s piece, I found myself nodding along frequently, wishing I was in Italy, yet feeling I’d been there just by reading about Farley’s quest.
Condiments from around the world (and why they matter) Jodi is perhaps an even better connoisseur and curator than I, regularly posting wonderful finds on Twitter, Google+ and through a Google group that many of these here links have come from. Jodi regularly writes great posts with gorgeous photos, but I particularly liked this one for the research (and eating!) that went into it, I learned a lot!

POP CULTURE
America’s Next Great Restaurant recap I enjoy reading TV reviews and recaps, and stumbled upon this one by the brilliant David Rees on the recommendation of a friend. I even started watching this silly reality show in order to maximize the enjoyment of these recaps, which made me laugh embarrassingly loud on the metro. You don’t need to have seen the show to read this first post, which he wrote at a dinner party. One of my favorite bits: ‘May I suggest a motto for POT BELLY? Here it is: “Hello Jesus, I’m glad I believed in you all my life, because I am obviously now in heaven, because I am eating a potpie made out of a cheeseburger.”’
Glee “Hold on to Sixteen” recap I’m an on-and-off again fan of Glee, which can be in turns as fun as a musical to watch and as annoying as musical theater nerds. Instead of a traditional recap, this review takes a surreal form of narrative, inside the mind of a supporting character’s father. If you’ve watched the show for better or for worse for three years, you’ll enjoy this. Also, saying CHORD OVERSTREET! never stops being funny.
Once upon a time in Anatolia review: My friend Ali Arikan here in Istanbul reviews films and has a grasp of pop culture, humor, and swearing in multiple languages that puts most of us to shame. I loved this review really for the personal details of his military service in Turkey, something that’s wholly foreign to me and deeply fascinating.  Here’s another excellent/bordering on TMI review and essay of Ali’s on summer movies and evolution.
The Hunt for the Worst Movie Ever: Eat, Pray, Love I have lost hours reading through the Video Gum archives, especially this series which reviews the worst movies ever. While I abhorred the book Eat, Pray, Love, I thought the movie was kinda okay, perfect for an airplane. Still, it totally deserves every horrible thing this writer slings at it, including the screen grabs of Julia Roberts thinking about herself.
Charles Grodin’s affair with Miss Piggy Through my mother, I’ve always known that actor Charles Grodin is a gifted writer, and I’ve enjoyed several of his books (It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here deserves a read just for the title). This essay about his role in the 30-year-old Great Muppet Caper, is particularly inspired, and makes me want to re-watch the movie.
Generation Catalano I was born in 1980, which makes me a tetch too young for Generation X, but too old for Generation Y. I like to call my generation Gen Saved By the Bell, in honor of the great show which unites us (at least Americans), but I can get behind this essay’s arguments as well.

Here’s a quick round-up of my travel-with-baby stories so far:

-The baby-friendly difference: How Turkey is one of the most baby-crazy places in the world and why it makes every day easier.

-Applying for a baby’s passport: The comedy of errors we went through getting Vera’s passport and that silly picture that will serve as her primary ID for the first five years.

-Planning travel with a baby: Choosing and researching a destination, packing light, scheduling around baby, and the merits of an apartment rental.

-Flying with a baby: Going stroller-less, making friends and getting help on the plane and at the airport, and ensuring baby doesn’t cry (much).

-International travel with baby: On-the-ground advice about attitude, planning and then letting go of your itinerary, conversions, and other lessons learned.

-The young family gift guide: The (mostly) Vera-tested, Meg-approved guide to gear and gadgets that make baby travel easier.

Next week, I’ll get into specific destinations like Istanbul, Venice, and London, and how to tackle them with a baby.

This week, Vera and I came back from a few days in London to see friends and get a little dose of Christmas (it turns out, 3 days of pre-holiday shoppers and relentless Christmas music is plenty). The UK is country #6 for my baby who is not yet five months of age, and I’m already itching to plan another trip. On each flight, a fellow passenger or flight attendant will ask, “Is this her first flight?” and I respond proudly that it’s her 12th and counting. When I talk to people about traveling with the baby, I’m often met with reactions that indicate I must be insane, reckless, or just selfish. These are all valid points, but so far Vera is a very healthy and happy baby, and I hope to keep traveling as long as she remains so. I’m paranoid about ever being the mother-with-the-crying-baby on a plane so I watch her like a hawk for signs of distress and I’ve been lucky so far to have a nearly perfectly-behaved baby (it helps that all I can really do with her is feed and hold her, which are her favorite activities) on each flight. Occasionally, I doubt my own sanity and decision-making when I’m walking around a foreign city late at night with a crying baby, taking a cross-border bus with no adult help, or trying to  juggle a stroller and a suitcase while nursing and walking, but I have no real regrets.

So, in case you wondered, why the hell am I dragging my baby around the world?

1. It’s just going to get harder. For now, Vera is a pretty portable and self-contained unit. She’s starting to sit up on her own and prefers to be vertical most of the day to see the world, but she’s not yet crawling or walking. Though I bemoan the fact that she hates bottles, exclusively breastfeeding means I can feed her at any time or place without any special equipment or food. She’s not speaking (or talking back) yet, and I can often entertain her with just the reflection in a mirror, the rattle of a matchbox (babies shouldn’t play with matches, of course), or some silly faces. It will be a few years before I need to worry about kids’ menus, an arsenal of toys, or toddler tantrums. The hardest part is carrying her all the time (strollers and carriers are great, but can be bulky or back-breaking at the worst times), finding places to change her (though I’m adept at doing it in the tightest and oddest of places), and figuring out how to appease someone whose only form of communication is crying.

2. It gets her into the habit of traveling. Some children whose parents keep them inside all the time have a hard time adjusting to a world of new people, noise, and crowds, whereas Vera thrives on them since she’s experienced them almost daily since birth. The same goes for planes and new places, and I try to talk to her on each flight about how special it is to be on a plane so she eventually learns about proper plane etiquette and what a privilege it is to be a traveler. At the rate she’s going, I’ve thought about playing the Turkish Airlines theme song as a lullaby and wonder if she’ll recite airport codes before the alphabet.

3. I have the time and opportunity. For over a year now, we’ve lived in the only city in the world on two continents, and I can fly to many destinations in Europe and Asia in a fraction of the time it would take me from the US. Since we’re here for Husband’s job and I’m taking care of the baby full-time, I’m not going to work every day and don’t have to worry about vacation days. I just learned of a deal to Budapest next month for about $200 and a two-hour flight. Even if I were at home with Vera in New York, that fare wouldn’t even get me to Chicago. We went to Slovenia and Italy last month due to a friend in Trieste with a spare bed and a cheap fare into Ljubljana (which is fabulous, by the way). In a few months, I could be back to working 9-to-5 and paying hundreds to fly long-haul on crappy US carriers, so why not take advantage now?

4. It’s easier than being at home. In the time it’s taken me to write this, I’ve had to stop several dozen times to feed and change the baby, walk her around the apartment to figure out which babies in the mirrors are her friend, sing a hundred verses of “Oh my Verushka” (to the tune of “Camptown Races”), make her stuffed moose Lamont dance, rescue her from the bouncy chair when she decides she HATES the rainforest music (me too), and find a position for her on the couch so she can sit up without falling on her head. This is to say nothing of the myriad distractions on the internet, and the fact that I’ve showered, dressed, and eaten something by mid-afternoon is something of an accomplishment. When we are traveling, every day is full of distractions, interactions, and explorations. The baby still needs to be fed and changed frequently, but she is constantly engaged, taking in new information, and often doted upon by friends or random strangers (this is a thing in Istanbul too, no one loves babies like the Turks!) when I need a quick break. Sure, I’m still not able to get to the everyday stuff of making proper meals, writing blog posts, returning emails, and anything else that requires two hands, but it’s a lot more fun.

5. It’s a perfect college essay subject. Okay, I’m being a bit facetious, but I think all this early travel is a great gift I can give my daughter, even if she doesn’t remember it. Thanks to the magic of social media, I have tons of photos, notes, and stories to share with her about the many Turkish boyfriends she made or the time she ended up topless in a Slovenian wine bar (note: always carry a backup outfit). I hope one day she might want to re-visit all of these places as an adult, either with me or on her own. Due to our semi-nomadic expat lifestyle, I may not be able to give her a real nursery, celebrate holidays the way I remember them, or surround her with family, but I can help fill up her passport.

ETA: A round-up of my travel with baby stories for Gadling here.

Labor in Turkey must be cheap, because I’m constantly amazed at how many people are employed to do various jobs. Our trash is collected every single day by a truckload of men, and I’m told some neighborhoods have pick-up TWICE a day! There isn’t official recycling in most of the city, but if you see the various men, women, and children carrying large carts around, you’ll see that the unofficial system works quite efficiently. Many cafes have more waiters than customers, and most shops have enough staffers to hover around you continuously (a subject for another post and a major pet peeve of mine). The other day at the supermarket, I was greeted by a guy whose sole job was to help me select and bag my produce. Granted it was a fancy Macrocenter supermarket, but a very Turkish job. My street isn’t very busy, but there are always dozens of tea-drinking fabric store “salesmen” (I use quotes as they don’t seem to do much selling), half a dozen or so police guarding the synagogue, and at least three valets to service the one parking garage and one private bar you have to ring to enter. I’m sure many are paid under the table and healthcare is provided by the state, but I’m still amazed at the myriad of employment opportunities here. And that doesn’t even cover the thousands of eskici guys who collect junk, the horse-drawn carts selling fruit, brooms, popcorn and various other items, the shoe-shine guys and the flower ladies, etc, etc.

Back in December, we wanted to take a trip over Christmas and New Year out of Turkey. H wanted a beach vacation, I wanted something quaint and European, so somehow we settled on Russia. As I wrote about on Gadling, it made sense as a newly-pregnant lady: the flights were short, there was no chance of getting malaria or food poisoning from food spoiled in the sun, and I had my very own Russian translator to help out. As American citizens with Turkish residency, we still needed to apply for visas (H being Russian-born doesn’t help us as he’s a naturalized American), and didn’t fancy the idea of sending our precious passports overseas. I asked around on the expat forums and discovered there were several agencies off Istiklal near the Russian consulate who could help facilitate.

A week before our theoretical trip (we waited to buy tickets until we knew we could get visas), I visited one of the agencies to ask about the visa process. He didn’t speak English. My Turkish is poor. I offered to have H call, but he didn’t speak Russian either. Eventually I was able to gather this: for $350 USD each, most of it for taxes, he could procure 15-day tourist visas in a few days. The fees might seem steep, but it’s similar to what you’d pay in the US for help with visas, and you might still have to go wait in line at the consulate. I went and withdrew the required dollars and left the guy with both of our passports, residence permits, and a few hundred dollars. My “receipt” was scribbled on the back of a business card. While I slightly feared I’d end up trying to get asylum at the US embassy with no papers, I’ve learned to trust the Turks. A day or two before, I used a 100 TL note to pay for two drinks at a bar (juice for me) but they had no change. No worries, said the Turks. One of their friends was going out to the store to buy a few supplies, and he would get me change. Sure enough, he came back a few minutes later with more juice and every last kuru of my change.

The day after leaving all of my identification with the visa guy, he called me and told me to come back in, where I filled out the forms provided by the US. I had many questions: there wasn’t enough space to list the countries I’d visited in 6 months let alone 6 years, I had no invitation letter, did they really need the phone number of my husband’s boss two jobs ago? All of them were waived away with atamam, just write what I wanted. I returned again the next day to pick up our visas, just 48 hours after I first visited the agency. It was a Monday when I applied, we left for Russia on Friday. We later realized the day the visas were ready was a day the consulate isn’t even open, and still have no idea how the process works. Now, anytime I hear of someone wondering how to get a visa to another country while in Istanbul, I tell them there is inevitably a guy who can sort it out.

If you’ve been following me on any sort of medium that I update regularly, you’ll know that I’m expecting a baby here in July (just under 7 weeks away now!). H and I haven’t quite decided on what to call this baby girl yet, referring to her as Rasputina or the Young Turkess (though she’ll be as Turkish as I am, which is to say, not at all). I’ve been documenting the pregnancy on Gadling on a series of posts called “Knocked Up Abroad,” a name inspired by our favorite documentary series ever and conceived long before the actual baby. Here’s a recap of the posts so far:

• Taking the “POZITIF” test and meeting my doctor, the intro post. Note many insane comments from AOL readers, who made me completely hysterical for a day or two.
• More on prenatal care and Turkish advice on pregnancy.
• Travel in the first trimester and why I went to Russia in winter at 10 weeks.
• The deadly draft and other Turkish superstitions.
• The Natasha problem and other name debates.
• Second-trimester travel from my trips to NYC, Malaysia and Singapore.

As I head into the home stretch and don’t have any further travel on the horizon, I’m debating on what to post next. I’ll have plenty to share about childbirth and traveling with a young baby (we are already planning trips when she’s 6 and 10 weeks) but not for another few months. My third-trimester travel consists mostly of subway rides to the grocery store, though the Southeast Asia trip was right on the cusp of seven months. I’ve yet to do any actual baby shopping as I haven’t decided on what we need and it’s baffling enough for a first-timer, let alone in a foreign language, but that might come up. Also have been thinking about attitudes toward pregnant women and babies in various countries (Turks LOVE the babies, New Yorkers can’t be bothered to give you a subway seat and sigh loudly at the sight of a stroller), though I’m reluctant to start any debate after reading all the hateful comments on my first post. Anything you’d like to read about being pregnant abroad?

If you are ever considering something paperwork-intensive while in a foreign country, just stop. Save yourself the aggravation, the language barriers, the dropped Skype calls, and the stress; nothing is worth it. While many things can be done via email these days, financial and bank business still use things called “fax machines” and ask for files they call “original documents.” As I don’t have a scanner or printer at home in Istanbul (a fact I regret daily and may soon rectify) and H. is mostly at a client office where it’s hard for him to print out a large bank document, completing the refi process has involved a lot of trips to copy shops, online PDF editing to fill out forms, and my sister generously scanning documents that come in the mail back in the US. By the end of November, I had much of the work done but needed to fax a signed agreement to the bank.

The day before Thanksgiving, I took the form and made the rounds to find a place to fax it: copy shops, stationery stores, and anywhere with a “fotokopi” or “faks” sign, but none would send my four pages to America. Finally I saw a random shop that sold ink toner, printers, and either fax machines or sent faxes. I poked my head in and found an old man and a teenager involved in some photocopying. I expected the old man inside to refuse me again, but he said sure. His shop is something that would not exist in America: a hodge-podge of dusty and outmoded machines that seems to service few customers and yet occupies some fairly prime real estate. He offered me a seat and a glass of tea (natch) and took my pages with shaking hands to one of his old machines. After a few minutes of trying, it did not go through and we hunched over the fax, trying to hear its message. Finally he tried to explain to me, via pantomime and very slow Turkish, that the recipient’s machine was out of paper and that I should call them to tell them. I explained in turn via pantomime and broken Turkish that I was pretty sure a major bank’s primary fax was NOT out of paper but anyway, it was very early in America so I would try again later.

The next day I returned to the toner shop but we again heard the angry dings of the fax machine refusing us. I then had the idea to scan the pages so I could then email them and began another pantomime-and-broken-Turkish request, putting my pages flat against the scanner of one of the many (functional?) machines. He soon got the message but had no idea which scanner thingie was connected to his computer or how we would accomplish this task. We tried various machines and I even got onto his ancient desktop to try to figure it out to no avail. Finally the old man got out his cell phone and called someone (presumably the teenager from the prior day, as I heard him say something about “the American again”) who routed remotely into the computer and managed to help us scan and save the documents onto my USB stick. The whole process took about a half hour and cost me about 2 TL (a little more than a dollar) and when we finished it, I shook his hand and used the full “tessekur ederim” instead of just “sagol” or “tessekurler,” the equivalent of a formal “thank you very much” rather than just “thanks.”

While I’ve had a half-dozen more printing and scanning emergencies since then, I’ve opted not to bother the nice man and have found other options less time- and embarrassment-intensive. So I guess the real lesson here is to just invest in a cheap scanner/copier machine (perhaps from the nice man!), but I’m glad to know that if I need printing or scanning help, it’s only a random toner shop away.

Google Custom Search

My life has literally been changed thanks to a tip in Budget Travel from travel writer, friend, and all-around charming guy Adam Graham. I often find travel tip articles to be a lot of the same-old, same-old, but there were a number of smart ideas in this article including Adam’s idea to set up a Google Custom Search to look at only your tried-and-true resources. I set one up using my favorite travel websites and blogs and now can come up with articles and information without all the faff of hotel booking engines and irrelevant blogs. Searching for info on Kosovo, I found several great articles from Boston Globe and UK Guardian in a few seconds rather than paging through dozens of Google search results. Check out my custom search here.

In Your Pocket Guides

I’d found only limited information on Pristina online, Kosovo being a relatively undiscovered tourist destination, despite the fact it is cheap, friendly, and well-recommended by those who have been. Finding hotels in Pristina has been a difficult search, as there are no chain hotels, a dearth of hotels on the usual booking engines (even Kayak has nothing), and a total absence of online booking capabilities. One source kept popping up as I researched a few possibilities: In Your Pocket guides, a free series of city guides that can be read online, downloaded as a PDF or iBook, or purchased as a print edition. In addition to Pristina, they have dozens of other cities in Eastern and Western Europe that aren’t typically found in the usual guidebooks, and the info is all useful, succinct, and frequently updated by locals. What else can you ask for? They have more content on Facebook and Twitter too. I also found free downloadable guides from Arrival Guides, which have more destinations more generic content.

Austrian Airlines 48h guides

Another series of free PDF guides from Austrian Airlines to dozens of cities around the world served by the airline. 48h is a foldable weekend guide with a few suggestions for hotels, restaurants, sights, bars, shopping and basic facts. Nice format, unusual locations, free. http://www.skylines.at/index_en.php

Send Me Your List

Limited but popular locations (Capri, Istanbul, London, Paris, Rome, Venice) blog with short and sweet lists for where to stay, eat, and what to do. Nicely chosen recommendations, I saw a few places I’ve already discovered to be great in Istanbul, plus a few new places to try.

InterNations.org

A forum for expats and “global minds,” you have to request an invite by email but I found it easy to join and full of good resources. When you sign up, your profile shows the flags of any countries you’ve lived in, so you can see that I’m an American in Turkey. While I find the Istanbul forums helpful for finding recommendations on anything from real estate agents to where to watch the World Cup, you can also view and access forums anywhere in the world, so I can ask the Rome forum for a restaurant tip or the Baku forum for hotels. There are many expat forums online that are either specific to a country (I’m a new member of Istanbul’s Sublime Portal, which is really amazing but geared towards expats in Turkey only) or global, but I found this to be fairly active and extensive.

Kindle content

Have I mentioned how much I love my Kindle?! So glad I bought it to have a cheap source of English content, I rather like the reading experience as well. It’s a good beach/poolside gadget since you can read it in sunlight and it is light enough to hold up when you’re lying down. I also like having travel guides on it, while the map-reading isn’t ideal and it’s harder to browse the way you can with a paper book, it’s great to be able to quickly look up a neighborhood name or fact quickly and easily (I looked up “tulip” in the Lonely Planet Turkey guide to learn how the Turks actually introduced the flower to Holland), and its lower profile than a guidebook.  Since I carry it with me almost everywhere, I’ve also started adding documents to read on it rather than printing. I’ve saved magazine articles, Wikitravel.org entries, and all the above mentioned PDF guides to my Kindle for easy reference.

Now to get packing!

After two weeks in Istanbul and a weekend in Milan, one morning I tried to use my debit card at the grocery store but it was declined. I paid cash and didn’t give it much thought, sometimes machines are fickle. Later I used the same card at an ATM in Taksim, where it was taken by the machine for security purposes. You may ask if I had informed by bank of my travels before I left Brooklyn and no, I didn’t. I’ve held the account for at least six years, traveled overseas many times and never had an issue before, including the three months H was in Japan last year. Naturally, this was the same week our building’s internet was on the fritz, making online time precious and each session like defusing a bomb: tense, calculated, and could go off at any moment. I managed to get onto Skype later and call my bank, who requested that I send a request via fax with my signature at least five times. This presented further errands: convincing H to remember to print the letter, an embarassing episode at the post office where I was laughed at for asking something to be faxed to the US, and finally a trip to H’s company office to pick up the new card. Fortunately, I had other cards to use and other sources of cash to sustain me in the two weeks it took to get a new card, but from now on, I’ll call the bank in advance every time I go abroad.

The same week my card was eaten, we had to pay the rent on our new apartment. H’s company said we could do it via bank transfer to their bank in Istanbul and I figured it would be simple, a few keystrokes and a big green TRANSFER button like in caper movies with Swiss bank accounts. Turns out, not so much. My main bank (TD, formerly Commerce, of aforementioned debit card debacle) said they’d be happy to do it, provided I come in to a branch in person to make the transfer, of course they are only located on the East Coast of the US. Second fail was from ING, where I was informed that my ING Direct account is not really the same thing as the bricks and mortar ING Banks here in Turkey. Finally, I went to HSBC (the world’s “local bank”) where I have a savings account in the US. Again I was told they couldn’t transfer internationally, even HSBC-to-HSBC. In the end, I had to withdraw cash over several days and hand over a fat envelope to my (very happy) landlord. Lesson learned: don’t look to Jason Bourne movies for reality. And know your maximum daily withdrawal limit.

Today I went to book flights for a weekend trip to Bodrum on Onur Air, a Turkish carrier. They only take Visa and Mastercard through a secure system. I tried us my American Airlines card (may as well get miles somehow on a random airline with no frequent flyer program) and after I entered in the info, I had to enter in some security information to confirm my identity, yet I was still declined. A few minutes later, I got an email from my credit card asking me to call them about a fraud alert. I called them over Skype and approved the transaction, yet minutes later, I was declined again. I ended up using another card but will be checking both statements to make sure I wasn’t double charged.

While these problems could have all been solved with a Turkish bank account, it’s near impossible to open one without a residence permit and a tax number or some such thing. Plus, having a US account and billing address is quite handy for buying TV shows on iTunes.

Last week, I went to my local tekel (the Istanbul version of a bodega, a corner shop for your snack, sundry, and drink needs) which I frequent nearly every day and went through my usual transaction. This time, as I went to pay, one of the shopkeepers began pointing to my shoulder and telling me something in Turkish. We went through a long pantomime (does he want me to put the bag in my purse? Take something out of my purse? I had no idea) until finally the other man indicated that his friend wanted me to zip my purse shut. He called him “the policeman,” though I’m not sure if that was a real title, and once I closed my bag, everyone was happy. Since then, every time I go in, we have to go through the ritual of him warning me of potential street dangers and me elaborately closing my purse to thieves.

Later that day, after a failed look at an apartment, I was walking up Tarlabasi Boulevard to catch the metro home. Tarlabasi is a long street that stretches north from Taksim Square, parallel to Istiklal (previously mentioned shopping street) and very close to many great Beyoglu restaurants and bars. Every guidebook will warn you to stay away from this “pre-gentrified” (Frommers) neighborhood, especially at night, as it tends to be on the seedy side. I’ve been there a few times in the daytime, as there is nothing Husband likes more than an atmospheric neighborhood with crumbling buildings, laundry hanging above the streets, and graffiti galore (in fact, he thinks we should buy property there). I wouldn’t call it scary, but I’ve heard at night you can find a brisk drug and sex trade happening (see this NPR story). At any rate, the main boulevard is busy and perfectly safe during the day and I was a straight shot to Taksim. As I was walking along, a Turkish man came up next to me and asked me something about if I was lost. I said no thanks and kept going, but he continued to walk beside me and ask me questions while I shrugged and apologized for my lack of Turkish. He ended up walking me all the way to the metro station, standing in traffic to let me cross streets, and chattering on about who knows what. When we did get to Taksim, I said I was fine now and thanked him, and he finally walked on, looking over his shoulder to make sure I was alright. I’m sure he had the best of intentions, but it was all a little awkward.

When I arrived at the metro station, I went in through an entrance that only has elevator access, with one entrance door at the front and the opposite door for exit on the platform level. As it was crowded, I moved to the rear of the elevator, but ended up with my back to the door, as I could only turn around by rubbing up again several of my fellow passengers. As I stood facing the other people, who were clearly concerned that my back was to the door which would soon open, I heard some murmuring and someone indicated to me in Turkish that there was a door behind me. I nodded and said tamam, it’s okay, but they continued to look bothered. Finally a man mustered up in English, “Sorry…the door…Will open…Behind you.” Exasperated with the concern of Turks, I yelled, “I know!” quickly followed by a softer teşekkür ederim, and quickly swiveled around when the doors opened and got off the elevator.

I may be a foreigner, but I’m not a complete idiot. Unsolicited advice is just part of the Turkish friendliness but if I need help, I’ll ask in butchered Turkish, çok merci.