post weekend post

the weekend was colorful. on friday we headed to Bacirköy (or something like that) and ended up in a large shopping mall. there was an aquarium that we were interested in but i thought it was too expensive (25tl=13e) so we skipped it. instead, we found a small "ice museum", which i think was Norwegian tourism propaganda, but anyhow very nice. we got warm jackets and made a little tour in this ice palace-thing, there were sculptures made of ice and some Viking history etc. -5C and i felt very much like home. it was special to share this with the doctor who was pretty much freezing. but he admitted the cold air was nice and clear to breath, unlike the hot and humid Istanbul summer which is tiring. i got so inspired by this homelike experience that we then went on to buy potatoes and salmon, so i could (attempt) to cook something familiar. i found a recipe online and we did cooked the salmon in the oven. not fancy or anything but we found this tasty;














on saturday i slept until late afternoon but after a superb tortilla/vegetable breakfast i was ready to go again. we headed to Buyukmandira with the car. its a small village where doctors friend, Ildeniz, lives. on the way there we figured that his other phone had ran out of battery and his contact list was saved in the phone memory. okay, so we couldnt inform Ildeniz that we were coming but this is quite common in turkey. u drive a few hours just to see if your friend is home, if not oh well. on the way we stopped at gas stations and they didnt accept my shitty new credit card (which i received like a week ago) so i paid in cash. the next day upon returning, the doctor used the rest of his cash to buy some gas, my credit card didnt work again and i was out of cash by now. we stop over in a little town called Lüleburgaz for a cash machine and it eats my fuckin card. windows XP just decided to crash when i asked for a credit withdrawal. so im in the middle of nowhere, its a 'nice and sunny' 40C day and i loose my credir card AGAIN, have absolutely no money, my phone is almost out of credits, my public transportation 'pass' is out of money and ...what else. the doctors other phone rant out of battery too. i still had a working finnish phone so i called to cancel the visa i just lost. i cant say i was too happy at this point.

of course upon returning to istanbul things started to look brighter again... doctor borrowed me some cash and i remembered that a couple weeks ago when i lost the previous card i ordered myself the PIN code for my Visa Electron. i hadnt been using it but i still carried it around. i havent gone out to test it yet but i am fairly hopeful that i should get money with it from the cash machine. if not, well... im at the mercy of other people for 2 weeks again. provided that the finnish mail service forwards the new card sent to me by the bank (they shouldnt actually).

aaaaanyway, ill live, i know. the water tap in the bathroom is leaking, the shower is unstable with hot and cold water, the electric stove occasionally blows the fuse of my apartment and so on. but, this is what i signed up for i guess. ill live and learn and so on, right?

as for Buyukmandira, it was a coy little village, almost a small town. Ildeniz's family has a bar downstairs of their house. with proper club lights and music, the terrace with peach trees is nice in the evening. u can smell the cow waste from the nearby cowshed, so u cant forget youre in the countryside. Ildeniz was working when we arrived but her family kept us company and we enjoyed ourselves. there was a wedding party nearby square so we went to see it;














when Ildeniz arrived we went to a nigthcub. quite amazingly, this little village had a red carpet style proper nightclub, i couldve been imagined being in a big city while i was in there. i enjoyed dancing with some people there so the night was good. we stayed with Ildeniz that night. after breakfast we hung out with some more people before turning back to Istanbul.

i have a 5 day work week again, but its not much consolation since a working day is only a few hours and these courses are ending next week. still no sight of more work.