Clicking again

Anticipatory counting and blog snatchers: birin birin mïŋ bolur

2012-02-17T17:36:00.001+02:00

There is a post in the pipeline about metros, bus tickets and concrete yards, but it is not yet ready for the world. So in anticipation of what maggie calls my great treatise on transport, here's a "the more you know" for today: all you ever wanted to now about Old Turkic counting systems but were afraid to ask, unless you are actually some sort of Turcologist.

After receiving a request (!) for a post about time, counting and calendar systems, I remembered something interesting I had read about Old Turkic anticipatory counting systems. Snatching my great idea for a blog post, Maggie was the first to churn something out on the topic. Although this will therefore not be the FIRST blog post about Old Turkic's anticipating counting system, as of the date of posting I believe it will be the best. Quality over variety, MMR!

The runic Old Turkic alphabet is really the underdog these days in terms of world scripts, but perhaps you may be familiar with its work from the back of Azerbaijan's 5 manat bill:

Perhaps this alphabet was developed from Aramaic (bet that would please the nationalists espousing pan-Turkic brotherhood), perhaps from Chinese forms, but either way it seems to attract the modern interest of those who look for strange places to develop interests. My Turkish teacher at Chicago told me a wonderful story about the time he tried to teach Old Turkic, and the only two people who signed up for the class knew absolutely nothing about any Turkic language but were really into runiform and role-playing games. One was wearing a crystal on a black cord.

So yes, runiform was once a grand script indeed, used in a number of Turkic Khanates as well as the Uygur Empire. Turkophiles pouring over runiform inscriptions and early Uygur writings came across an interesting counting system - also decimal - that anticipates the coming number in the 10s place rather than counting up to it. Example, as given by Marcel Erdal in A Grammar of Old Turkic:

The runiform inscriptions and the earlier Uygur texts form cardinals between the various decades from the second to the ninth one in anticipating fashion: First stated is the digit as starting the count from the lower decade, then the higher decade is mentioned: tört kïrk, literally 'four forty' (MaitrH XV 10r11), e.g., is '34'. In E10,5, the defunct topic of the grave inscription is quoted stating his age as säkiz tokuz on yašïm, which signifies 'I am 88 years old', literally 'eight nine-ten my age': tokuz on '90' is mentioned above. [...] The members of the tenth decade cannot be formed in this manner, as altï yüz, literally 'six hundred', would be '600' and not '96': These are constructed with örki from ör- 'to rise': säkiz yüz altï örki '896'.

A little bit like reading 5:45 as "quarter to six," but with numbers instead of time. Isn't that fun!

Daha bitmedi! Marcel also tells us that the elli (50) of modern Turkish comes from the same root as el (hand), with the two words being identical in Old Turkic - älig. Seksen and doksan come from a bundling of 10s - säkiz on (eight tens) and tokuz on (nine tens) Perhaps you knew that. I did not. Or I did, when I first read this years ago, and then forgot.

And there's more! According to this list of slang from Gallipoli, Anzac soldiers used the phrase "to throw a seven" to mean "to get killed," "probably because with two dice a seven is the most common number to be thrown."

The blog is born again

2012-02-15T09:47:00.002+02:00

Inspired by the two mags in my life (my mom and my bffer) as well as my oldest younger sister, I've started up the blog again (maybe), if only to put something above my last post I wrote nearly a year ago in a UChicago-induced stressball.

writing.

2011-03-31T17:39:00.000+03:00

What I'd like my writing process to be:
Wake up.
Drink water.
Drink coffee.
Write 3 brilliant pages that came to me in a dream.
Eat breakfast while gazing out the window.
Edit those 3 pages of brilliance, then, so inspired, write 5 pages more.
Go about my day smugly satisfied with aforementioned brilliance.

What my writing process apparently is:
Wake up.
Check to see if the grant I applied to months ago has sent out a response yet.
Think about what to do in my near future when I see that it hasn't.
Think about what to do today, and what order to do it in, and how it will all get done.
Drink watercoffeebreakfast.
Sit down with computer, write a paragraph.
Check to see if the grant I applied to months ago has sent out a response yet.
Edit paragraph, feel despair.
Check facebook to see if anyone else is feeling despair.
Do some reading for class, make fun of the writer for the HORRIBLE arguments I see.
Look at edited paragraph.
Write a paragraph in a notebook, because everything will be better if I just write with pen and paper.
Type paragraph from notebook verbatim into Word. Edit in Word.
Move to library, everything will be better at the library...(shuffle and repeat, and also add: make peanut butter and jelly sandwich, look for coffee, drink coffee)

We are such small nations

2011-01-12T07:18:00.002+02:00

Urfa to Mardin

2010-12-01T10:33:00.002+02:00

My guesthouse in Urfa was a newly opened konak evi, and I awoke on my last morning to a quiet mansion. The caretaker/night guard Musfta slowly made me breakfast after I sat down at the long table in the courtyard. First bringing bread, then a plate, then tea. Only then, the rounding-outs of the guest-house Turkish breakfast. The owner of the guesthouse runs "the" LP-approved local travel agency, and I'm glad he's not around for morning chit-chat. Then again, I'm just glad to be alone.

I gathered my things and asked directions to the otogar, with the intention of finding it myself. Yet as I asked the question, I could see immediately that I was about to find myself in one of the sweetest bits of hospitality I constantly find myself caught up in, which I will call the soft-boiled egg treatment, where I am carefully passed from one local to another in my travels like a very precious and delicate soft-boiled egg until I finally arrive wherever it is I first inquired after.

Mustafa locked the guesthouse, lead me through Urfa’s walled maze, through the courtyard of Ulu cami and to the bus stop, where I was carefully handed off to a driver. He was fully informed of my origin, destination, and soft-boiledness, setting off a chain of handoffs until I found myself at the otogar. Before I knew it, I had landed softly in a seat near the bus’s middle door, and the clean-cut attendant scowled at a man who tried to sit next to me, moving him to the back.

Eyeing my warm bottle of water, the attendant snatched it, tossed it, and replaced it with a cold cup of water, which was tehn replaced, without a word, and without a glance at the other (possibly also thirsty) passengers, with a paper cup of hot Nescafe.

After all passengers had settled down and we pulled away from the station, a shy young girl was patte3d off of her mother’s lap and slid onto the seat beside me. The concerned attendant offered me a seat at the front “with a better view,” but as you can’t hope for better in the bus seat neighbor lottery than a shy young girl, I stayed put.

Looking out over the window revealed only lazy sloping hills of dry grass, burnt yellow by the inescapable summer heat. Sloping up and down and up and down, offering no more aesthetic diversity than the occasional brindled cliff, and no more movement than the occasional flick of a gray horse’s tail, or the slight sway of a lone tree.

Between hills we would sometimes pass a small irrigated oasis, surrounded by a bundle of houses and a quiet roadside market, men relaxing in the shade of the awning with the ubiquitous glass of strong tea. Around the houses were fences made of stone, and families worked in the field.

The bus clock is wrong, so incorrect as to not make even the slightest statement as to the current hour. The shy girl is caught between sleep and wakedness, long eyelashs lifting on every rough bump to check our progress through the scratchy countryside. Her parents have purchased a touristic wooden-crafted model ship as an Urfa souvenir, and every time the bus stops her father carefully pulls the ship out of its overheard compartment, examines it, and slides it carefully back inside.

I just go on sitting in the cool AC, taking what comes to me in space and time, with the thin red numbers shining into the daylight that it is 22:35, and the yellow and the green, and the gray horses and the stone fences. I only just learned it was Sunday when I bought a newspaper for the bus ride.

But as we ride towards Mardin, many of the other passengers staring at the same yellow hills know exactly where we stand in space and time; outside our air-conditioned capsule the beginning of Ramadan is approaching . Now it is only a few days away, and for the first time in years during the long days of summer. But on my loose trip itinerary, it starts “in Hasankeyf.”

As we move east, the landscape seems a relief of the previous fields – wide patches of green with the occasional barren strip. The water rerouted from the nearby Euphrates is sprayed in neat squares and rectangles, with very few drops straying from the careful, but fuzzy, border as the green rows fly by and the high cliffs in the distance creepy by almost imperceptibly.

Домой (1/2)

2010-11-14T10:05:00.000+02:00

[Was looking through a notebook I carried around this summer and found this entry]

Sitting in one of the many Heathrow departure lounges, I am yet another in a long line of luckily travellers who pause a moment to realize that, if they really wanted to, they could go nearly anywhere. The high barriers of travel: visas, time, money and responsibility – are easily surmounted by us privileged 20-something Americans (emerging adults?).

"Doha, Helsinki, back to Istanbul" Heathrow’s shiny departure boards offer as I eat my 3 pound Boots meal deal and wait for my gate to open. But I’m not heading off to travel somewhere, now I really do have constraints on my near future, and I’m flying back to Michigan.

Looking at the long list, I realized it is not only for holiday I could go to these places. Having done the expat thing in a string of countries now, I know that as a young, educated American, the only real constraints on where I can hang my hat is a real desire to hang it any place in particular. Of course I couldn’t really make the best living at the destination of each of these flights. But I could do it, if I really wanted to, and this seems a bit crushing actually, like choosing between 23 kinds of toothpaste.

Some subtle reminders that I’m in – and going back to – a different kind of place:

Despite a general conscientiousness about littering in London, my attempt to locate a bin at my gate to throw away the packaging of my new toothpaste was met with suspicion by nearly every employee on duty.

Things found in library books

2010-11-07T20:29:00.000+02:00

What better procrastination study break than to post about studying. Here are my top three favorite finds hidden in library books this quarter.

A snide margin-scribble...

an angry reader with strong language and a pencil...

And a gift from a kindred spirit (who, I am assuming based on the evidence, is also geeked out about both Istanbul and language shift in Austria...is there a missed connections for this sort of thing?):

Obama in Hyde Park

2010-11-02T09:37:00.000+02:00

Midterms this week, so this will be a quick post, but at least it's heavy on the pictures!

Hyde Park is Obama country. Before his current gig, he taught law at the University of Chicago, and his home away from White House is still here in Hyde Park. Local businesses certainly take advantage, to varying degrees of creativity, of this obvious marketing strategy:

Midterms rally this weekend, and Obama was in town. Was my first time hearing him speak live.

Waiting in line

Waiting for Common (yes, he made a guest appearance)

Oğuz waiting for all of the Chicago dems to stop talking. Also funny because you can see the kid in the center wearing a "Where fun comes to die" sweatshirt.

Obama's on stage

Midway's packed

Most prevalent thought while taking this picture: we have a pretty cool president.

Istanbul to Urfa

2010-10-27T09:58:00.002+03:00

Half the price of flying last minute but several times the trip length, I board the bus to Urfa at Istanbul’s main otogar in the early afternoon. I settle into my seat with 19 hours of road ahead of me, and I don’t really know where I’m going.

The woman next to me is large and seems to grow larger with each of my attempts to reclaim lost ground (key on an overnight ride of any sort), as I drift closer and closer to the window. Ignoring the rolling hills and the polite, general announcement to refrain from cellular communication, she complains loudly that she had to take the bus instead of flying to Gaziantep. “So she’s getting out before me,” I think with some consolation, which then begins to melt away as she hangs up and folds her hands on her lap, forming a sharp pointed elbow that seems to interpret my forearm as an armrest.

Before leaving Istanbul, I dismissed the good natured advice of some friends to avoid the long distance bus by telling them the not untruth that I enjoy long-hauls. “I don’t mind them, and if you get too tired of it you can always stop to eat at the tesisler…who can resist running into the tesis with everyone on the bus at 3am to eat sütlaç?”

“Yes,” a friend had replied, “ everyone who ends up on the has that romantic view of those places, but it is only because it is the only damn thing to do. Don’t forget the toilets.” Yet a few hours into the drive, I’m looking forward to our first stop with the excitement of a kid whose been promised a Happy Meal “when we get to Kentucky.”

Nearly everywhere interesting outside of Istanbul is at least an overnight bus ride away, so it seems everyone has an overnight bus story or two. [Yet since most of the bus rides go so smoothly, none of them are usually very good.] This shared Turkish travel experience varies slightly depending on your bus company and destination, but for the most part is wonderfully predictable and comfortably dull.

If you’re my height, there are no complaints in the seating department. In accordance with your ticket price and luck, you’ll be entertained in one of the following ways, in decreasing order of desirability: an interactive screen, a la transcontinental in-flight entertainment, strategically placed televisions with Turkish films, sit-coms or dubbed foreign films you’d never otherwise see (I’m thinking “The Lake” and Lohan’s “Love Bug”); Turkish music blaring from one speaker; Turkish music blaring from speakers above every seat, which you may or may not be able to turn off; a single Turkish CD playing again and again and again.

The bus will also have a flight attendant who keeps everything in order, passing out drinks (coffee and tea, water, Coke and some version of orange soda) and – again, depending on your luck – pre-packaged cakes.

Just when you’ve had more than your fair share of the complementary beverages, and usually in exactly the middle of nowhere, brakes huish huish huish into a parking lot, filled with a handful of other busses, all spilling out passengers to the cafeteria. For breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, or for whatever sort of meal you might feel compelled to eat at 2am, while still others pour over the nuts and sweets in kitschy barrels and islands of boxed Turkish Delight, buying bags of gifts for recipients most likely yet to be determined.

But on the bus to Urfa, I was one of the few passengers who even stepped inside these shiny monuments to modern Turkish consumption and construction. I sit in the AC with my lahmacun, looking through the glass store front at the families eating sandwiches and dolma from old yogurt tubs in the sticky air.

I usually indulge in sütlaç at these stops, but sweets aren't as fun alone.

9:30, and I’ve been on the bus for 9 hours. My two friendly attempts to small talk with my neighbor have failed, but I’ve hardly looked at the clock – particularly impressive as the reading lights don’t work.

Riding along on this route – and indeed many routes in Turkey – you realize how big it is, what a large, growing country it is. Riding a bus, with little else to do than look out the window, you’re bound to reflect on where you are, where you’re coming from, where you’re going. It feels like a timeless slice of life, an empty mind stationary yet rolling, and somehow more profound than being an empty mind anywhere else. As the countryside seems endless, I think about where I am. The tesisler, which we find in fields of nothing and so leave them, are new, unarguably clean with the sad reality of the utilitarian multi-purpose space.

On my last long ride, from Istanbul to Athens, I thought for hours about Greece’s long coast, miles and miles of coast, with every gas station boasting a clean, uninterrupted sea view. But I feel that the quintessential Turkish bus ride – not just this one, but the one I’m nurturing and contemplating on this long ride [and again typing my notes from the trip] – is not one winding along turquoise waters, but one lost in the middle of Anatolia.

Ну, давай же!

2010-10-04T09:09:00.000+03:00

Various fliers around campus advertising the university's Russian language and literature courses.

Gogol. Only if you like non-ironic facial hair.

Ever wonder what this is all about?

Spies like us study Russian.

I should have taken Gogol.

Well, go ahead! Take Russian.

I find the "spies like us" flier particularly perplexing. But all quite entertaining.

expatiations of an former expatriate

2010-10-03T02:13:00.000+03:00

My itinerant lifestyle has slowed down a bit, with a lease and significant academic commitments in Hyde Park. But, oh, dear readers, do not despair! For I have saved for you some photos and journal entries from previous travels, and will be rolling them out over the next few weeks. So stay tuned for some memories of Turkey, Tanzania and Ukraine, with a post here and there about my days in Chicago.

Good morning, Chicago

2010-09-27T00:59:00.000+03:00

I've been in Hyde Park for just over a week and start classes tomorrow.

Classes registered, books ordered, office supply fetish indulged.

It was nice to come a bit early and get to know some of the other students in my program. The Hyde Park Jazz Festival was yesterday, and a great excuse to hang out with my new friends.

Although I've been back in the States for almost a month now, I'm still holding strong to my jetlag-induced early rising. I finally got out with my camera on this morning's bike ride along Lakeshore Trail.

Mackinac Bridge Walk

2010-09-21T17:10:00.000+03:00

I arrived back in Michigan just in time for Labor Day weekend. On that Sunday, my mom and I went to visit my grandmother in St. Ignace, my mom's hometown and the first city you reach in Michigan's Upper Peninsula after croossing the Mackinac Bridge. The plan was to take part in the Mackinac Bridge Walk the following day, but led astray by a false weather report, Sunday night we changed plans and decided to just drive back early in the morning. We went down to the bridge view for some photos that night and shivered, telling ourselves that walking across the bridge the next morning in "scattered t-storms" was a definitely a bad idea.

Grandma and the bridge

I was a bit disappointed, but didn't want to brave both the crowds and the "scattered t-storms." We got up early the next morning to drive back across - the walk takes up two out of four lanes and can cause quite a traffic hassle. After some coffee and oatmeal with cranberries, we were off.

We quickly realized that the weather was perfect for the bridge walk (well, northern-Michigan-September-perfect). And the crowds we had dreaded hadn't arrived either, perhaps also scared off by the possibility of rain. Unfortunately, it was a bit too late to change our minds. Our original plan had been to park the night before in Mackinac City (on the south side of the bridge) so we could drive off immediately after finishing the walk. If we did that in the morning, the parking and lines would have taken a few hours. But, luckily, we approached the south-bound toll booths with hardly any wait.

A good number of northbound vehicles were filled with tourists and locals, ready to walk that bridge!

Some walkers were wearing humorous hats, pins or costumes, but most were just families in windbreakers or raincoats taking part in the 55th year of this Michigan tradition.

The sunrise over Lake Huron made for some beautiful photos. Maybe next year...

Applying for a Fulbright?

2010-09-19T16:22:00.000+03:00

Note: This post, and indeed the entirety of this blog, is written solely by me and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Fulbright committee, IIE or the State Department.

Perhaps you’re graduating from university soon and want to go abroad, but not to teach English. Maybe you’re planning to apply to graduate school and want to make your application more competitive. Or you’ve been out of school for a few years and want the chance to improve a foreign language and research a specific issue in the region.

These are the types of things the Fulbright program was designed for, and if you have a recent Bachelor’s or Master’s degree, are a US citizen with skills or interest in learning a specific foreign language and a research question that interests you, there’s no reason you shouldn’t apply. Find out more about the Fulbright program on its website.

In the meantime, here are a few things to keep in mind during the process.

APPLYING

Start early. You need time to make connections in your host country, get letters and write up a workable project proposal.
Prioritize the letter of affiliation. Even if your host country doesn’t list this document as mandatory, consider it so. It will set you apart from candidates who haven’t done their homework by showing initiative and a genuine desire to get your feet on the ground as quickly as possible. If you're not sure who to contact, spend some time searching for organizations, scholars and universities in your host country.
Complete the language forms. Get these done, even if you have very weak skills in the language. Coupled with evidence of language lessons or future coursework, this will be a big plus in your column.
Be specific in your project statement. Provide a timeline to show you have thought through all steps of your research. Give concrete goals, keeping in mind you can change them once you’re on the ground. Have someone with knowledge of the region or discipline give you feedback, and try to find letters of recommendation from people who know your area enough to comment on your project. They also may have ideas of people for you to get in contact with in country.
Show all you have to offer. If you have ideas on how you might spend your free time in country, write about that too. Maybe you have an interest in opera, boat racing or volunteering at a youth center. Fulbright wants people who will get involved, not just sit in a library.
Beware of sensitive issues. Check with a professor if you think your host country might be offended by your project proposal.
Through your school or At-Large? If you’ve been out of school for a while, you have two options: submitting a proposal through your school, or applying on your own. Check with the Fulbright Director at your university to see if you will be able to apply through the school – it may give you a leg up on applicants applying without the university stamp of approval.

CHOOSING A PROJECT

Keep statistics in mind. Some countries are much more competitive than others. If you speak Russian, consider applying to another Russian-speaking country (but be sensitive to the local language in your application, and begin to study it if at all possible). If you speak German, you'll fare much better in a pool of applicants to Austria than to Germany. Speak French? Why not go to Africa?
Read the web page of your host country's Fulbright Office. They have have hints about the kind of projects they are looking for, or other tips for applicants. You could even get in touch with them with any questions you may have. Perhaps they can connect you with former Fulbright students and scholars or others in your area of interest.
Draw on skills and experiences. Maybe your degree is in political science, but you've spent every summer for the past 4 years volunteering at an orphanage. Rather than a project centered in an archive or library, think about basing your project in an NGO or other institution. The Fulbright program is a cultural exchange program in addition to a research opportunity, so don't be afraid to draw on your life experiences in addition to your education.

AFTER YOU’VE APPLIED

Take a deep breath. You’ll be waiting until winter to hear if you made the first cut, and then until late spring for the final word.
Make a Plan B. Having other options in mind ease your anxiety as you wait to get that email.
Don’t lose momentum. Keep working on language preparation, and read about the host country. You should be interested in the place regardless of whether or not your application makes the cut!
Keep in touch. Inform your contacts that you’ve applied, and let them know about the long decision timeline. They might think you’ve forgotten about them! Also be on the look out for more in-country contacts. Even if you don’t end up a Fulbright Student, you may get the chance to go where you’ve applied on another grant.

IF YOU'RE STARTING A FEW YEARS AHEAD

Work language and area studies courses into your schedule. This will show a long-term commitment to the area.
Follow current events and scholarly work related to your area of interest. When the time comes to write your proposal, you want to make sure you can situate your research interests within the country's past and recent history.
Make connections at your own university. While professors won't want to help you on your application just a week before it's due, many will be impressed if you approach them a year or so ahead of time with your plans. They may even have connections in the country, or know of specific courses available to help you hone your project.

And of course, good luck!

Any more ideas? Let me know in the comments!

Greetings from the bubble

2010-09-18T17:57:00.000+03:00

I’m finally moved in, staying near the University of Chicago (where I’m starting next week) on 51^st. I’m a quick walk from Lake Michigan, a quick bike ride from campus (on biker-friendly roads!), and my bedroom window looks out at some beautiful houses I thought were breathtaking, but soon learned are to be found all over Hyde Park.

View from my bedroom window

With no shortage of cute, precocious toddlers in expensive strollers eating organic yogurt, and 20- and 30-somethings relaxing with books (required or pleasure reading, I wonder?) on the grass, Hyde Park seems a bit like the American dream, slightly oriented to the left.

But as I jogged to the lakefront trail this morning, I passed someone sleeping under a worn blanket beneath the pedestrian overpass, and a middle-aged black man slowly walking down the trail with tired bundles and a tired face.

Hyde Park is a bit of an island, like many university communities, and you don’t need to stray too far to wear away at that satisfying suburb feeling that all is right with the world. The neighborhood is littered with bike frames with stolen wheels and wheels with stolen frames. Even in the locked bike room of my University housing apartment building, I’ve seen a lonely wheel or two.

Ever since I signed up for my U Chicago email address, I’ve been receiving warnings and incident reports from the university; muggings, break –ins, be-smarts, don’t-go-here-or-theres, and lock-the-door-behind-yous. A Chicago graduate I met in Ukraine told me to choose an apartment “as far north as possible,” and I did.

I am not saying I’m not “safe” here – I am. I’m just thinking about the bubble.

Standing on the lakefront trail, to the left is a compact view of the Chicago skyline. In front of you is Lake Michigan for as long as you can see. And to the right is an industrial cluster pumping brown and gray.

Taken from my phone - a not so great photo of downtown from the Lakefront Trail

Is this what it is like to be a suburb dweller? A most likely white, anything but lower-class American, with places to go and things to lose? Living in your own space, with a cute breakfast place down the street, and a great locally owned shop where you can buy organic flour and hear hipsters make jokes about egg brands, secure in your morning coffee and daily newspaper delivery, but not-so-secretly terrified to slip past this street or that, where life is inconceivably different and you do not belong?

Bumper stickers are slapped on stop signs and poles, with the face of a young black child and the words “Don’t shoot, I want to grow up.”

Perhaps I've just gotten used to European crime rates. When I moved to Istanbul I lived for a week in the Tarlabaşi area, a poor neighborhood with a bad reputation. When I told my Boğaziçi friends I was living there, they all made me promise I would move. “It is such a bad area!” they would say. Knowing nothing about the city, and finding a better deal, I did move, especially after walking by a group of sex workers near my door one night on my way home.

In Istanbul terms, this was a bad neighborhood. But not that bad – foreigners are moving in by the day, and the municipality has plans to kick out and clean up. My German roommate stayed in the flat and said the whole year he lived there, he was the victim of only one crime: someone stole his trousers out of his window while they were drying. Maybe for Istanbullus, Tarlabaşi is dangerous. But relatively speaking, Tarlabaşi is pretty tame. Poor, but tame.

But here in Chicago, and in many places throughout the US, a bad neighborhood is, well, bad. David always jokes that he will never come to America because he’s afraid he’ll be shot. In my first weeks back in America after more than 4 years abroad, I can feel what his joke is getting at. I feel perfectly safe in my semi-permeable Hyde Park bubble. But I suppose that is just what it is. Not just in terms of crime, but in everyday life. How much of America lives like this?

As a foreigner and a traveller, you can move through places and communities with a certain degree of fluidity that is hard to find at home. With low crime rates and your well-honed travel smarts, you want to go everywhere, you don’t believe all the stereotypes about lower socioeconomic groups, or racial, ethnic or religious minorities. You can accept the hospitality of a poor family in a village and end up chatting for hours, feeling right at home, but when you tell your city Turk friends about it, they may seem a bit uncomfortable, or jokingly ask how you possibly could understand “that dialect they speak there.”

But now I am “home,” and I realize although I’m new in town, my world is very different. I have a place, and that place is in the bubble.

If you seek a pleasant peninsula

2010-08-31T14:19:00.000+03:00

The Crimea (a country replete with sorrowful remembrances, and stirring associations) appears destined to become the theatre of exciting and important events: a circumstance that may give additional interest to my description of that peninsula, which possess so many attractions for the archeologist, the historian, and the admirer of the sublime, the picturesque, and the beautiful in scenery.

Charles Henry Scott, "The Baltic, The Black Sea, and The Crimea: Comprising travels in Russia, a voyage down the volga to astrachan, and a tour through Crim Tatary."

Today I'm saying goodbye to Crimea on the evening train to Kyiv. In a few days I'll be returning to my own peninsula - Michigan. Farewell, and hope to see you again soon.

The people you meet in trains

2010-08-25T07:54:00.000+03:00

Whose side are you on?

2010-08-19T15:44:00.000+03:00

I recently saw this in Simferopol. Whose side are you on?

On the devil's side: cigarettes, domestic partnerships, gambling. Jesus has got: happiness, peace, and future.

Faces in the rocks at Karadag Nature Reserve

2010-08-09T18:53:00.000+03:00

Can you see the Marx and Engels in the first photo, or the elephant in the second?

Petoskey-esque stones from across the pond

2010-07-20T16:35:00.000+03:00

On a trip to Karadag Nature Reserve, I saw these Petoskey-esque stones in the park's museum. Look especially at the bottom right rocks in each photo. Reminded me of Michigan!

For my non-Michiganders, the Petoskey Stone is Michigan's much loved official state stone.

Boy about town

2010-07-14T14:44:00.000+03:00

I like these two stencils I recently saw in Simferopol, one along the Salgir River and one on the top of Pushkin Street.

Hard selling the hidden gems

2010-07-08T13:00:00.001+03:00

Was using this as a bookmark in a book I apparently gave up on in Lviv last fall:

Apparently I got a bit distracted by the coffee and chocolate and cafes, which is exactly what Lviv's PR guys promised me I would. I don't remember anything from the page I was reading but I do remember this little "free info" advertisement card. It reads:

"FOLK ART MARKET. Would definitely recommend coming here! A lovely market with lots of colorful folk jackets and clothes. Painted Easter eggs were fantastic."

This does indeed leave us with the chicken or the painted egg question. Which came first, this meticulously spell checked ad, or oddly worded recommendation that sounds like it came out of a Japanese-produced English-language guidebook?

It reminded me of something I found in a made-for-tourists Lviv In Your Pocket, a sort of advertment/listing/recommendation that seemed a bit off (emphasis mine):

Jewish Pid Zolotoiu Rozoyu C-4, Staroyevreis‘ka 48, near the Synagogue, tel. (+380) 32 236 75 53. This Jewish restaurant is located downhill from the ruins of the Golden Rose Synagogue, the oldest synagogue in Ukraine. The outdoor seating is exceptional and helps make this a dining hotspot. Here are a few things to know before you go. 1. There are no prices listed on the menu as you are expected to barter. Being a foreigner, they‘re likely to just quote you a reasonable price. 2. For the right price you can secretly arrange to have your waiter smuggle in some pork dishes. How kosher is this place? 3. They offer a fantastic selection of salads, vegetable dishes, Galician desserts and traditional Jewish breads. 4. For a taste of Lviv you‘ll never forget, try the homemade vodka. QOpen 11:00 - 01:00.

As the "In Your Pocket" guides are locally produced, it is not a leap to assume the restaurant itself wrote this listing. Is my gut feeling right, that it is a bit odd to advertise that your restaurant is up for bartering and you can bribe your waiter to "smuggle in some pork dishes," or is this what today's backpacker through Eastern Europe wants to read? I suppose so - I remember having a laugh for several days at Bucharest's "In Your Pocket," which boldly declares something to the effect of: "If you have arrived in Bucharest by bus or coach, then something is seriously wrong with your life and no guidebook can ever remedy it."

Speaking of "bartering," here is the back of the ad for the above market:

"It's worth having a bit of a haggle as the first asking price may be a mischievous roll of the dice from the point of view of the seller." Yes, Lviv, this is what us backpackers deserve for "pottering about" and exoticising eastern Europe, raging on in bars and hostels during our travels bragging about our "authentic experiences," which include moonshine, broken down transport and great bargains - "if you know how to haggle." I just hope Central Asia doesn't start trying to somehow market "mystery meat" before the next time I get there.

Seen around

2010-07-01T10:36:00.000+03:00

I've seen this Black Sea map on beach bags and coffee mugs here in Crimea- Austin said they were around last year as well. You can see that Abkhazia is marked as a separate nation...

Kharkiv #3 - hanging out, metro and street art

2010-06-28T21:00:00.000+03:00

Last Kharkiv post. This is from the early June trip.

Kharkiv is a surprisingly good city to chill in. Daniel and I wandered around, stopping here and there to read a book and chattering on about this or that. We hung out in a few of the city's many parks and a coffee shop called "Coffee Life" that is the closest thing to Starbucks I've seen in Ukraine (btw, there is a Gloria Jean's in Kyiv). Counter service and a non-smoking section (Gloria Jean's doesn't have counter service). It was later confirmed that it is certainly the local Starbucks equivalent when the very cool locals we were hanging out with made fun of us for going there (Gloria Jean's isn't very cool either).

Although nowhere near as good as the art in the Moscow metro (not that I've seen it), the Kharkiv metro has some interesting stuff going on. Even better, it isn't that crowded, and you can take photos, unlike in Moscow. A guy I know apparently went to every metro station in Moscow just to see all the designs, which some people think is weird, but I think is a great Moscow-on-a-shoestring plan, as it seems that for the average backpacker a metro token is about all that is affordable. If you'd like to see a collection of photos from the various Kharkiv metro stations that borders on an obsessive compulsion, click here. And of course there is the post I just made about the Gagarin station if you'd missed it.

Here are some shots from the Kharkiv metro - this station is very "meet George Jetson."

More street art than I had expected. There was an alley of murals sponsored by Caparol which was quite interesting, one of my favorite parts being this photo:

which is a boy playing with this Gazprom building (one of the symbols of Kharkiv, Marina told me) as if it were a lego set:

And here with Lenin, because we can:

Two more from the mural alley:

This next one was near a courtyard with some similar work. Slipping through the gate, we were immediately tracked down by an on-guard babushka. "What are you doing?" "Looking at the paintings." "Look from the other side of the gate." Ok.

"Every window is a door" - it sounds philosophical, but it was on an abandoned building and the only way in was the broken windows. Ta ta!

Kharkiv #2 - Searching for Gagarin

2010-06-26T00:34:00.000+03:00

Any traveller who has ever relied on a Lonely Planet (or any guidebook for that matter) knows the pain of searching out something labeled in the book as a "gem," only to arrive and find it closed, destroyed, or just plain disappointing. My last day in Kharkiv I set out on a mission to find "the stained-glass portraits of Yuri Gagarin [the first man in space] above the stairs to the platforms at the pr Gagarina station." Sounds pretty sweet, right? I was expecting something like this, which I had already seen in another station:

Or even as cool as this - the Creator Art Nouveau style, in a cathedral in Cracow:

Being spoiled by such beautiful "stained-glass portraits," I was sure this one was going to be pretty damn good. Who doesn't love Gagarin? Daniel and I were staying with Marina, a great woman we met on couchsurfing, and I noticed on her wall a printout of Gagarin. "I love him!" she gushed when I asked her about it. So I inquired about the stained-glass portrait. Certainly she must know about it! But she didn't, and we set off to have a look.

We arrived at Prospekt Gagarina metro station, and we couldn't find a thing. We were teased just by his name on the station wall, and these stars decorating the walls

Marina called a few friends but no one knew about it. We didn't have the guidebook on us, and I couldn't' remember exactly where it said the portrait was located. We asked a security guide. "Nu....mojet byt est' takoj.. no ya ne znayo gde eta nahoditsya..." He had no idea, and wasn't even prepared to tell us with a remote degree of confidence if it did or didn't exist.

Marina got an idea and brought me to a nearby children's store. Here a somewhat awkward statue of Gagarin was walking down the stairs in his spacesuit.

Call me naive, but I have faith in the Lonely Planet. I insisted that this wasn't what it was talking about. Another phone call to a friend of Marina. No one knew what I was on about. As we were closeby, Marina brought me to an old factory with murals painted on the walls by various artists. One was Gagarin, waving and smiling and he was being shot up into space. Also cool, but I am stubborn, and really wanted to see that "stained-glass portrait."

I convinced Marina to take one more try in the metro. This time, walking down the stairs to the platform (yes, those were the guidebooks original instructions, but we didn't have the guidebook on us), we looked up, and there we saw it. That is we thought we saw it; you need to squint a bit and use your imagination. By using the flash, you can actually see more in the picture than you can at the station:

Here's the other side (he's flying, if you can't tell):

I was pretty excited and decided to go tell the security guard that the whole time the stained-glass (stained with dirt, I suppose) was staring us in the face. He looked at us as if we were something Gagarin had picked up in space and didn't even ask where it was. Marina told me, "It is strange in Ukraine to tell him that we found it." This much I had gathered.

On my overnight train back home that night, I sat across from an older man who wanted to chat about the old days, kak eta byla... I told him my story about the search for Gagarin. His eyes lit up, as he is an amateur astronomer himself. He pointed out a number of stars through the window of our train, and over the next hour or so, slowly folded out his theories on extraterrestrial life. During Soviet times, stories of alien sightings and abductions were suppressed, he told me, but now there are plenty of books in Russian and he reads them non-stop. But he can't find a good book in Russian on black holes and black matter, even in Moscow.

He is retired from the army, but his pension is so little that he frequently rides the overnight train to Kharkiv to pick up new supplies to sell in the bazaar in Sevastopol. "Do you know how much the pension is for a German soldier? Do you know how much! More than a thousand Euros a month, and we get peanuts. And we won the war! They were fascists, fascists! Ponimaesh, da? Nazis!" The next morning he spoke nothing of pensions or extraterrestrials, but gave me some of the treats he had picked up in Kharkiv. Moscow chocolate-coated nuts and biscuits. When we arrived in Simferopol, he gathered his bundles and rushed to catch his two-hour train to Sevastopol. If you are under the mis-impression that Russian and Ukrainians are unfriendly, cold people, ride around on trains for a few days.

After all this, I finally decided on my next cross-stitch pattern (yes, I've picked up cross-stitch, a subject for another post), which I created on Photoshop from the photo on Marina's wall:

Will the Simferopol Airport be named after Amethan Sultan?

2010-06-23T09:27:00.002+03:00

Portrait of Amethan Sultan. Image source: Wikipedia

According to an article in May 28th's Poluostrov, the Ukrainian minister of transportation is "not against" naming the Simferopol Airport after Amethan Sultan (1920-1971), a famous Crimean Tatar Soviet fighter pilot who twice received the award "Hero of the Soviet Union." Kia news published the internal document last week.

Amethan Sultan's story exposes the hypocrisy of Stalin's deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Claiming the Crimean Tatar population had collaborated with the Nazis, Stalin deported every last Crimean Tatar to Central Asia. Yet thousands of Crimean Tatars fought in WWII. According to the Poluostrov article, 60,000 Crimean Tatars participated in the Great Patriotic War, with 36,000 deaths. Some 40,000 more were actively involved, participating on the home front.

Memorial to Amethan Sultan in his home city of Alupka, Crimea. Image source: Wikipedia

Amethan Sultan is nothing less than a national hero. On Victory Day, Milli Firka, a Crimean Tatar political party, sponsored billboards in Crimea reminding residents of his awards and service. A few Crimean Tatars have proudly told me of his skills as a fighter pilot. "When Amethan Sultan was flying, the Nazis would get nervous, and yell on their radios, 'Amethan Sultan is in the air! Amethan Sultan is in the air!'"

Other Crimean Tatars who received Soviet awards for their service in the Great Patriotic War include Nasibulla Velilyaev, Seit Nebi Abduramanov, Uzeir Abdramanov, Abdul' Tejfuk, Seitnafe Seitveliev and Abduraim Reshidov. Here are plaques in their memory in the play yard of Simferopol's 42nd school, the only school with Crimean Tatar language instruction in Simferopol, located in the mikrorayon Kamenka. Amethan Sultan's plaque is the first on the left.

On a peninsula where history is so contentious and many place names have been changed or even lost, and in a culture that still celebrates with passion year after year the Soviet Victory in the Great Patriotic War, naming the Simferopol Airport after Amethan Sultan would be a large step to recognizing not only the large achievements of the Crimean Tatar people, but the injustice of their merciless deportation and 50 year exile. The first historical name every new visitor to Crimea would come across would not be Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at Livadia Palace, but instead the name of the Soviet and Crimean Tatar hero Amethan Sultan, before even leaving the airport.

Kharkiv #1 - Fun in the city

2010-06-18T19:29:00.000+03:00

Daniel, a friend I studied Russian with in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan last year, was coming through Ukraine last week and came through Crimea. He convinced me to accompany him on a short trip to the East of Ukraine, which began in our minds as few days hitting all the highlights of the area, but in the end became a few days in Kharkiv.

Kharkiv's Shevchenko statue. While searching Google for the Wikipedia link, I was surprised to find that Ukraine's famous footballer, Andriy Shevchenko, comes out on top of poor Taras...they have too much power I tell you...too much power.

We stayed with Marina, a really awesome woman we met on couchsurfing. Although she worked during the day, she made sure that both nights of our stay we had a good time. We met with her friends and went on late night walks around the city. She had so much to show us that it wasn't until right before we left that we had a chance to take her out to dinner, which we attempted to do from the first night.

Of course, the best thing to do in any city is walk around and get to know it with a local. But other than that? Here's my list for Kharkiv:

1. The Kanatnaya Doroga - The winged road! You'd think it spelled "Soviet Death Trap" as my aunt Grace once called this contraption, but that's what made it so cool. It is actually not just for entertainment, but a real mode of transportation, taking you over forests and wetlands to another district of Kharkiv. Click on the video for the sound effects.

2. Take a look at the Blahoveshchensky Cathedral, which has some pretty cool looking red and cream stripes

3. Walk around looking at the city's architecture, which is pretty sweet, with quite a few pre-Soviet buildings.

4. A walk around the central market, but that's a given in any town.

Next up - the Kharkiv Metro, Gagarin fever and street art

Something's missing in Beyoğlu

2010-06-17T18:39:00.000+03:00

I wasn't too happy to read this Istanbul Eats post. Inci Pastanesi, a veritable Istanbul institution and a perfect stop on a weekend stroll down Istiklal, is getting the chop, or rather the wrecking ball. In the same building as the now defunct (*tear*) Emek Sinemasi, it looks like everyone is losing the fight against whatever ridiculous shopping center is going up on this block.

Inci Pastanesi is famous for their tasty profiterole, which goes down perfectly with a glass of their tasty lemonade. The interior really gives you a feeling for what Istiklal used to feel like, and they can wrap up all their treats in candy boxes that haven't changed fashion for decades. They are often so busy you can't find a chair, and have to down your chocolate-smeared cream puff standing at the counter. Maybe you can tell from the picture in the Istanbul Easts post that the guys who run the place have a very specific character...a sign in the window proudly proclaims "Başka şübemiz yoktur" - We have no other branches. They've held out against the developers until now, but it sounds futile.

Emek Sinemasi was a beautiful old theatre, which just closed in April of this year. They didn't play the best films, but going there was never really about the film playing. The usher was always wearing his near ancient uniform, jingling coins in his hand when he showed you a seat. You had to pay for the toilets, which was always good for a laugh when some cinema goers thought themselves too good for this and started an argument with the bathroom attendant. And even better, the sound quality was so bad that your eyes can't leave the Turkish subtitles because even YOU can't understand what's being said in English. But it was all worth it as the heavy red curtains opened and closed across the screen.

İnci Pastanesi BİZİM! :(

Thinking about Osh

2010-06-15T21:43:00.003+03:00

Someone recently asked me if I felt any foreshadowings of the uprising/violence in Kyrgyzstan when I was in Bishkek (in Feb-May 2009). My language skills were very basic at the time, but I remember one day my homestay family was buzzing with the rumors of revolution in the coming days. My homestay mother warned me not to go to class. I asked at the school, and the ever diplomatic Nargiza told me it is no problem to come to school, but "maybe you won't go to the center." I did as I was told, going straight to school and straight home. But the next day nothing had changed, and some other (more mischevious!) students said they had wandered down to the center to see what was going on but saw nothing.

Both my first home stay and the Kyrgyz students I lived with told me how the Kyrgyz didn't really like the Uzbeks, but I never heard anything forshadowing the horrors now raging in the south.

I suppose it is easy to disregard places such as Kyrgyzstan when violence and ethnic clashes flare. I don't mean disregard the news, or the conflict, but the places themselves. When we hear of a faraway place in crisis, if we don't know anything else about it, it seems natural to assume it is already a sort of wasteland, waiting for such a conflict. Or maybe this is just me. When I first saw a picture of a Rwandan landscape, lush and green, I was so amazed at how beautiful it was. Hearing about the genocide as a child, I had pictured a hot, dry African desert, not fertile valleys.

But maybe I'm not the only one, maybe this is part of a larger problem.

When a crisis occurs in a place we know, or even just in a place where we have loved ones, it becomes so much more real. It becomes a tragedy, perhaps a national one, perhaps a personal one...how do planes crashing into skyscrapers become all that 9/11 means today? In our minds, certain images become the disaster. Fire fighters and the New York City skyline, those who worked in the WTC...who doesn't' know someone in - or at least something about - New York City? But if we don't have any associations for these faraway places, who can blame us (I think by "us" maybe I mean Americans, but I'm not sure) for being apathetic, ignoring the story and retreating to our own worlds?

As I read through the latest about Kyrgyzstan, and the violence in the south, I feel so attached to this story, and to this place. There are plenty of things about media coverage of the conflict that bother me - headlining "ethnic conflict" without describing the complicated history of ethnicity in the region (although the New York Times takes the smallest of stabs at that today), and announcing that aid is arriving without mentioning reports that those distributing aid may be purposely withholding it from Uzbeks.

But the thing that bothers me most isn't rational, and an attempt to rectify it would never pass the editing desk of a major newspaper.

In short: I want these reports to make people feel the way I do - I want them to impart what is special about this place, so it is not just another news story but a tragedy. Osh is not some hot, dusty backwater that was waiting for this, it is not something "south of Borat." It's not Paris, it's not Samarkand, but it's got its own thing and I'd like to think that everyone that's been there has known it.

I wrote this post after visiting in May 2009. In the post I quote from Kapuscinski's Imperium, where I think he sums up the feeling I had of Osh, even though he was writing about Uzbekistan:

They have sat for generations in this chaykhana, which is old, perhaps older than the
fortress and the mosque. Many things are different now - many, but not all. One
can say that the world is changing, but it is not changing completely; in any
case it is not changing to the degree that an Uzbek cannot sit in a chaykhana
and drink tea even during working hours.

Sitting in a chaykhane along one of Osh's main streets:

On Soloman's Throne, a UNESCO World Heritage Site which used to be a sacred pilgrimage point for Muslims and is now a great lookout point for the city, crowded with locals on the weekends:

I think of the village of Arslanbob a few hours from Osh, and I wonder what is happening in the remote, mostly Uzbek village. Unfortunately, I can't find any news in English or Russian about the town. [Edit 18/06/10: I received a reply from the Community Based Tourism Director, Hayat, in Arslanbob, and he said that, like always, Arslanbob is peaceful and quiet.]

By no means am I attempting the holier than thou road - I will readily admit that there are plenty of world headlines I skim because I have no attachment to the places in which they occur. But something like Osh really forces me to think about the grand scale of human tragedy occurring every day, and the millions of people - including myself - who know nothing about it.

Kyrgyzstan

2010-06-14T23:36:00.000+03:00

I've had a few emails from friends and family who knew of my plans to travel to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan this summer expressing their concern. Please don't worry as I have cancelled the trip.

I read this today on Eternal Remont, from from Turkmen Initiative of Human Rights, just one of the heartbreaking stories arising out of this conflict:
About 30 women together with their children were forcedly deported to Uzbekistan from the Sakar etrap of the Lebap velayat in Turkmenistan. All these women are natives of the Bukhara velayat in Uzbekistan, who married Turkmen citizens, lived as married couples for several years and whose children were born here.

neweurasia.net and registan.net are both good sources to follow the latest for those interested.

Lycian Way #5 - Around Kaş

2010-06-14T22:49:00.001+03:00

Next up, the beautiful port town of Kaş. Remember this is all from my April trip.

Arriving in the late afternoon, we relaxed on a terrace making friends with our waiter - a bit bored as the season was just starting up - took way too many versions of this shot:

Sitting at the very same restaurant, you would not believe, was none other than the Big Lebowski and his white Russian. Kid you not. Bet you didn't know that the Big Lebowski is actually a German Turk who frequently holidays in Turkey.

Next day, up early for a walk from the city to Liman Ağazı, managing not to get lost this time.

I liked these colors -but you can tell from the empty beach chairs it was a little too chilly to swim.

Liman Ağazı is a bit out of the way - there is a 15-minute boat from Kaş, but as we descended from our hike we weren't thinking about that. We were thinking about our very own quite, private, remote and peaceful beach we had just come across. But who sunbathing on the rocky shore other than the BIG LEBOWSKI and his travel companion. Hmm...

Then a boat back to Kаş.

Interesting?

Next on the itinerary was a boat trip to "the Sunken City." I had read an article about this in the Turkish Airlines in-flight magazine a few years ago and was looking forward to it the whole trip. In the end, this was the only "sunken" part of the city you could see:

Not surprisingly, this is also the exact photo from the article (minus some attractive snorkelers). I asked our guide (yes, broke my heart but we did have to have a guide to go there) if this was it and he laughed and shrugged. Oh well. As their town has sunk I suppose the locals deserve hoards of tourists to sell their Chinese fezes to.

A cute girl David snapped a photo of:

Back in Kaş we ended the day at a cafe by the port and a game of football. And who should walk by? None other than the BIG LEBOWSKI. That man was everywhere. Perhaps he came to Turkey to purchase a new rug. Unfortunately, we took off early the next morning to head back to Istanbul, so we may never know.

If you're interested in faking the Lycian Way as we did, only staying in pensions and not doing any camping, check out this site.

Lycian Way #4 - Patara to Kalkan

2010-06-13T00:51:00.000+03:00

If I had to nominate just one contestant for Turkey Top Chef, it would have to be the amazing woman at the Aspendos Restaurant in Patara. Yes, we probably spent a little bit more there than we should have over our time in Patara. but how she deserved it! nothing can describe the relief of coming back from a long day of hiking and knowing you have the Aspendos woman already working hard on your dinner. Below, David drinking her homemade ayran (5 stars) out of an Efes glass.

Patara (or Gelemiş, as it is known today) was a cute little village, a bit more touristy than our outdated guidebook suggested and probably swarming by now with Australians and Brits (we heard many shopkeepers in the village speak English with colloquial British accents they'd no doubt picked up in the busy summers). As a base for hiking, however, you really couldn't ask for more, and in late April it was still peaceful and even genuine. One day I went to post a letter from the Post Office but didn't have the right change. The postman slapped a stamp on it, tossed it in the box and told me to come back tomorrow to pay. Walking down the main street I dropped my hat without noticing and lamented its loss all day. Sitting at Aspendos that evening, a man we had chatted with earlier came up and set the hat on the table. "Bu şapka sizin değil miydi?" he asked me with a smile and a touch of reprimand.

Oh! Forgot to mention that Patara is also an ancient Lycian city with some pretty sweet ruins, but what city around here isn't?

Even the stray dogs were friendly, and like the residents, had learned how to make the most out of the neverending cycle of tourists. Our first day this little dog followed us around everywhere, even napping next to us on the beach, a 30 minute walk from town. He followed us to Aspendos, but when we didn't get him any food, we immediately started following the Turkish man and Russian woman who had just arrived in town.

It was a long day. A very long day. The hike was only 13k, but we had a little bit of trouble...finding the trail head. We did find this Turkish evil eye pinned on the front of a truck grill:

After walking around 3 hours in the sun,

we finally found the trail ("no thanks to you, Kate Clow!" we sandwiched in between empty threats and curses). We probably would have just turned around and called it a day, but we had told the Aspendos woman we were going to walk to Kalkan, and goddammit we were going to earn that dinner! She would have been disappointed in us. Of course after we found our way, we felt bad about all the horrible things we sad about Kate Clow, as there wouldn't even be such a trail for us to get lost on if it weren't for her. The nice views cheered us up as well.

We weren't able to make it all the way to Kalkan, but instead called it quits a few kilometers before the end when we saw a main road with CARS. Great invention, the car.

Do you see this mushroom soup? It was the most delicious, mushroomy soup I have ever eaten. The Aspendos woman kept telling us she made it from scratch. "Fabrıkadan değil, ben yaptım!" God have mercy on the poor soul that blames this amazing cook of making this soup out of a powder. Tastes even better after walking around half the day lost.

This was the beach at sunset. It is very religious-inspired greeting card, don't you think?

Lycian Way #3 - Saklikent and Tlos

2010-06-12T22:50:00.001+03:00

More excursions from Fethiye:

We took a bus to the Saklikent Gorge - you can walk around the river quite deep into the gorge. This isn't actually on the Lycian Way.

Cool and peaceful. I was a bit chicken to tread the cold water, which had shallowly flooded the gorge, so we just sat and read awhile.

Then stopped off at the intersection to Tlos and walked up to the ruins on the hill.

Even better was that some locals are still living in the old city, and hopefully make a good living selling snacks and beverages to the likes of us. We were relaxing at a cafe overlooking an Ottoman fortress near the ruins enjoying some Turkish coffee and complaining about the long walk down to the main road when I saw a British couple walk over to their car. We got a ride with them all the way back to Fethiye, where they retired a few years ago. What a life! For the first time ever I started to dream about retirement.

The Lycian Way #2 Fethiye to Kaya Koyu

2010-06-11T17:51:00.001+03:00

Another installment from my April trip to southern Turkey.

The walk from Fethiye to Ölüdeniz was the first hike on our trip, and by far my favorite - climbing up above Fethiye with great views of the harbor, then through the woods, winding up and around to the deserted village of Kaya Köyü (UNESCO World Heritage site...and for good reason), and then a slow descent to the beautiful beaches of Ölüdeniz, a rest on the beach and a ride back to Fethiye after sundown.

Kaya Köyü was a largely Greek/Christian populated village until the population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923. It is worth a visit even if you aren't hiking the Lycian Way - it is reached easily by buses from Fethiye.

It is said that the village was the inspiration for Louis de Bernieres' beautiful novel Birds Without Wings, and in the opening pages of the novel, you can feel the village in his description:

When the town was alive, the walls of the houses were rendered with mortar and painted jauntily in the dark shades of pink. Its streets were so narrow as to be more like alleyways, but there was no oppressive sense of enclosure, since the buildings were stacked up one slope of a valley, so that every dwelling received light and air. In truth, the town seemed to have been marvellously designed by some ancient genius whose name was been lost, and there was probably no other place like it in all of Lydia, Caria or Lycia.

Breathtaking village, breathtaking read.

This following picture is nothing great, but it does document the near-sacred event wherein we consumed perhaps the best gözleme/sac böreği ever, washed down with homemade ayran. And that is not a claim one should make lightly! On offer were meat, potato, spinach and cheese varieties, as one would expect, and a desert version with lemon juice and sugar. It was so good we even entertaining hiking up again the next day just for one more taste of that limonlu şekerli goodness.

Hiking up the valley, through and then away from Kaya Köyü, we came to this ridge with beautiful views of the Mediterranean.

Now this next part is a bit embarrassing. David and I are usually such cool travelers. Seriously. We don't get all bent out of shape just because we see a blue sky or a picturesque bay. Irreverent and jaded, and proud! But standing on the ridge, we just stood there looking at the gorgeous view and repeating...it is so beautiful. This just hours after we made fun of the Turks for never varying their postitive adjectives when describing amazement. Everythign is always çok güzel...çok güzel. But here, seriously. Başka söyleyecek bir şey yok ki. Was the Lycian Way ruining us for other travel? Every hike is filled with amazing views and, I kept joking, "we don't even appreciate it!" But now sitting here in my Crimean living room thinking about our week in Lycia (with this photo as my desktop image), I know that of course we did.

We made it to Ölüdeniz just in time for a sunset on the beach before a dolmuş back to Fethiye.

a nation of readers?

2010-06-09T23:47:00.000+03:00

I'm always on the lookout for a good map to send to Strange Maps, and this one (a map of Ukraine made from a picture of a bookcase) has been on the side of tent book markets throughout the city for a few weeks now. Probably not strange enough for Strange Maps, but certainly cool enough to bother my readers with.

Along the Lycian Way - City escape in Fethiye

2010-06-03T13:30:00.001+03:00

Here is a secret - we didn't actually trek the entire Lycian Way (that would take weeks...of hard work!), and we didn't even actually carry our stuff. We just based ourselves in towns along the way and made day trips, finding a bus or a kind local to take us back to our accommodation at the end of the day.

We started out in Fethiye,which is far from the road less travelled, but nice nonetheless. Especially in April, before the tourist season heats up too much, it makes a good base for day trips.

My advice in case you ever make it there, and I hope you do

1. If you ever see this in a pension in Fethiye (or anywhere for that matter), run away. Fast. Yes, that is dust on cobwebs on nudity.

2. For dinner, stop by the Fish Market. They've got a great system going that really is a win-win for everyone involved. You buy a fish from market, which is really just an island of fish sellers surrounded by cute restaurants outflowing into the square. Take your bag o' fish to any of the restaurants in the circle (preferably one that already looks full of rakı-soaked locals) and hand it to your server. For 5 TL (about 3 dollars), they'll prepare your fish and also bring you salad and bread. Of course rakı and mezeler aren't included in the price, but certainly necessary for the experience.

David choosing fish

Aforementioned rakı-soaked locals (David took this shot, I was too shy!)

But I got this one, after waiting for 20 minutes for him to finish off his drink and letting my fish get cold.

3. For breakfast, don't be tempted by the cacophony of establishments screaming "TURKISH BREAKFAST." Yes, Turkish breakfasts are good, but chances are you'll get your fill of them by the time you leave Turkey anyway. So wander around town and look for a nice small place serving menemen or almost any type of börek.

This börek place had a small but delicious variety: spinach, cheese, meat, spinach and cheese. An order came with tomato and cucumber on the side and some spicy little peppers.

At least I found them spicy.

David did not.

4. If you get a chance - especially if you can't make it out here - watch the 2006 Turkish film Dondurmam Gaymak. It is available with English subtitles and the international title is "Ice Cream, I Scream." But the Turkish title - Dondurmam Gaymak - means "My ice cream is creamy," and is a poke at how a village ice cream seller might call out for customers...over and over again.

Sidetracked - I love the unique ways sellers call out with their goods. Dondurmam gaymaaaak!! It reminds me of the old second hand buyer that used to wander around my neighborhood and wail "eskiciiiiiiiiiiiiiii," not sounding much unlike a goat. When I was travelling with Kelly to Ephesus, there was an old man selling figs to tourists. He yelled out in English: "Freeeiissshhhh Fiieeeegs!!" My heart melted.

Back to the point - Why watch this film? It is a great picture of village life in this part of Turkey. I love the scene with the shepherd grazing his sheep in a ruined amphitheater. There are so many layers of history throughout Turkey, but here especially its reminders pop up everywhere and weave their way into daily life.

Amphitheater by the Fethiye port, near the pension with the statue of the horrible spiderweb Medusa. Seemed quite the teenage hangout as well.

And if you go to the right place, damn, the dondurma might as well be kaymak.

Baklava, sakızlı dondurma and tea

Next post - some actual tourist attractions, so you don't think all I did on this vacation was eat...

The Lycian Way

2010-06-03T13:25:00.001+03:00

I'm a bit behind on my posts from my trip to Turkey in April, and with the weather so beautiful in Crimea and my research time quickly coming to a close, I doubt I'll be able to post everything I'd like.

Ever since my first year in Turkey, I've wanted to hike the Lycian Way. Natalya came to visit me in Istanbul in 2006 and ended up getting a job working at Reflections Camp in Kabak. I went to visit her for a long weekend and fell in love with the valley. What's not to love - a secluded beach, just a swim away from some hidden caves in the cliff and a hike over some fallen rocks to to next cove with a quiet beach with no road access. Great food cooked at the camp, mostly from village produce and food supplies, and a perfect location on the Lycian Way, with day hikes to a cool waterfall and amazing views. Even in the hottest part of summer, the Mediterranean light, smell and heat are intoxicating. I traveled back for a few days when Kelly came to visit me in the summer of 2008. What sorry, jaded soul wouldn't fall in love with this part of the world?

This lovely photo of me, courtesy of David, was taken after approximately 3 hours of wandering around in the hot sun looking for...the trail.

Knowing that soon I'm heading back to that big ol' island called America, I wanted to travel back and finally explore more of the trail. Not that going back to graduate school is the end of my travelling days, but, as they say, better safe than sorry. David planned us a beautiful route, that while not going to Kabak, brought us in a few days to some of the most beautiful parts of the Lycian Way. I'll be posting about them over the next days (weeks?). In the mean time, you can find out more about the trail on its official website, TimeOut Istanbul, and the Guardian.

Теория относительности

2010-06-02T18:36:00.000+03:00

Heard today while jogging:

Пошла, пошла, пошла!!

Very loose translation: Despite being somebody's grandpa and 45 years your senior, I'm leaving you in the dust on the home stretch of your evening run! Hop, hop!

Девушка спортсменка!!

Very loose translation: I've only got 10 years on you, but the most I can do this evening is sit by the river with this bottle of beer. Way to go!

good skies for stone statues

2010-05-25T15:44:00.000+03:00

I was in Kyiv this weekend with my grandparents, and for the most part we were quite lucky - warm weather, not to hot, and sunny, blue skies. Before this weekend, I hadn't really been struck with the desire to photograph the myriad clunky statues that grace the city, but with the skies so blue I ended up snapping a few.

Statue of Mykola Lysenko (1842-1912), a Ukrainian pianist and composer, near the Opera House in downtown Kyiv.

The controversial Lenin Statue in downtown Kyiv. His nose was broken off this summer, and a tent from the Communist Party have been keeping guard on the square ever since.

Yaroslav the Wise (988-1054, Grand Prince of Rus and known as the founder of Kyiv, near the Golden Gate. I posted about this statue earlier this year, it's the one some call "the dude with the cake." But the cake is really the St. Sofia, in case you're wondering.

Statue of Soviet soldiers near the World War II museum and Lavra.

Rodina Mat (Mother Motherland) near the World War II Museum. The Lonely Planet mocks her (quote: "what the hell, indeed"), but I think she bears a striking resemblance to Lady Liberty:

(hard to track down the photo credits to this, so I'll just say I stole it from someone who did the same)

My grandparents near the World War II Museum. How can you not take photos next to this tunnel of gigantic soldiers?

May 18th - A day a morning

2010-05-21T23:26:00.000+03:00

photo credit (not mine!): RFE/RL

May 18th of this year marked the 66th anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. Every year thousands march to the center of Simferopol, many walking for miles or travelling from far corners of Crimea and Ukraine, and even countries such as Romania, Turkey, and the United States. Due to the extremely high level of casualties during and immediately after the deportation, every family has someone for whom to mourn. The photo above (taken from here) was taken in Simferopol's Lenin square on Tuesday.

This day follows two other important days in Ukraine: Victory Day, which is celebrated on May 9th with much fanfare, and the commemoration of the victims of the communist regime. In a recent column, Mariana Karapinka writes these days and what it means for national identity in today's Ukraine:

The beginning of May is a challenge for Ukrainians: during this time the conflict of memories, which is always at stake in Ukrainian history and thus projected onto the present, becomes the most harsh and painful. May 9 and May 16 – two important dates of commemoration – present two myths of Ukraine and two visions of its future. May 9 is a holiday of Soviet legacy – the day of the Great Victory in the Great Patriotic War (commonly known as World War II) and May 16 is day of commemoration of the victims of the communist regime. The fact that these two opposite holidays are so close in the Ukrainian calendar is rather symbolic than accidental. We live like this.

Since Ukraine gained independence 19 years ago, Ukrainian intellectuals as well as ordinary people have been trying to understand their history. Which facts were glorious and which were shameful? Who are our heroes and who are inglorious bastards? What was victory and what was defeat? The dichotomy (this is a simplification because there are more than two general opinions) in the perception of historical facts and thus in building a national identity is the sign of modern Ukrainian times.

Adding May 18th to the 9th and 16th gives us even more to think about this month.

Who are Ukrainians

2010-05-21T23:07:00.000+03:00

I had high hopes when I saw the cover of this free copy of Kyiv Weekly in a hotel lobby in Odessa this week:

The cover asks What does the world know about us? What do we know about ourselves? Is that true? Who are Ukrainians?

Must say I was a bit disappointed with the rest of the issue. The most relevant article is "Myth of a country of 130 nationalities", which, as you can see by the first line, doesn't say much: Ukraine is slightly behind the majority of European countries in terms of the level of multi-ethnicity, but at the same time it appears to be a fully nationally homogenous country. Is this why you've dressed a black child in traditional Ukrainian costume?

In exploring these pressing questions, we learn the following:

"Labor productivity in Ukraine is among the lowest in the world"
"Housing conditions in Ukraine do not differ much from our former Gulag inmates
Ukrainians engage in sexual intercourse 108 times a year, on average
"Every 5th child born out of wedlock"

Ukrainians are also compared to their neighbors. Observe:

"More mobile than Belarusians"
"Borrow like Serbians"
"24 liters of milk behind Europe"
"Russians 5 liters ahead [in average yearly vodka consumption]"

Still not the deep probe into ethnicity, history and cultural identity I was hoping for.

One of the most illustrative answers to these questions of Ukrainian identity vs. the world, at least for the writers and audience of Kyiv Weekly? Sushi Ya's advertisement calls out to customers on the last page by advertising itself as Modern Japanese Cuisine with "Western Management."

Crimean Khans in art

2010-05-21T22:42:00.000+03:00

I learned about these beautiful portraits of the Crimean Khans from a Crimean Tatar list-serv I subscribe to. The artist, Yuri Nikitin, has painted the Crimean Khans to a great degree of historical accuracy on stretched leather.

A daytrip to Yevpatoria

2010-05-19T23:30:00.000+03:00

I recently daytripped to Yevpatoria with Adrianne and Meghan, two Peace Corps volunteers here in Ukraine. Here are some pictures from the day.

Adrianne and Meghan with the newly purchased Frisbee. Our best guess was "спортивный диск" but apparently that's actually Russian for hubcap.

Anyone know what is going on in this here toilet sign?

Obligatory shots of old and young in a cathedral

Particularly photographic couples along the seaside:

And one more

A few thoughts about passport holders

2010-05-10T18:53:00.000+03:00

Out for some shopping this weekend and I picked myself up a new passport holder. Your run-of-the-mill passport holders were 3 grivna (with purple and glitter marbling), but I shelled out 10 for this one. Was it for the leather-like imprint on the plastic giving an impression of higher quality that won me over? No, instead (amateur geographer as I am) it was the map of Ukraine impressed onto the book's cover. I'd like to Strange Maps this one - apparently the only city of note in Crimea is Yalta and it is situated in present day Djankoy.

I heard a rumor that one can get into some sort of vague trouble for carrying around a passport in a passport holder not in correspondence with one's own country of origin. Seems it could hardly be a problem as long as you took it out before handing it over to someone in a uniform. Readers in the know - any truth in this?

While I was working as an elections observer this winter I saw quite a few voters with Ukrainian passports dressed in Russian or Soviet passport holders. I thought about them yesterday at Victory Day while watching marchers in the parade - both young and old - chant about unity with Russia and the Soviet Union.

65 лет победы

2010-05-10T01:22:00.000+03:00

Today marks the 65th anniversary of Soviet victory in World War II, or the Great Patriotic War as it is called in Russian. I've previously attempted to scratch the surface of the rich topic of historical memory in Ukraine, and Victory Day is another example of how quite a few emotions, perspectives and versions of history can collide, this time on one of Ukraine's most important holidays. For a great introduction, listen to this short (six minute) piece broadcasted on NPR today, with Myron Stachiw, the Director of Fulbright in Ukraine, featured in the second half : "World War II Holiday Brings Ukrainian Nightmares."

My weekend began in Sovietskii, a town where I am conducting research for my project and have also made some great friends. After attending an event at a local school on Saturday, a friend of mine invited me over to her mother's and grandfather's house for tea before I headed back for Simferopol. They were preparing for her grandfather's 86th birthday party, which happens to occur on Victory Day. He himself is a veteran of the war. Like all Crimean Tatars who fought during the war, he was deported to Central Asia despite his service. Ironically, Victory Day comes little more than a week before May 18th, the anniversary of this deportation which is solemnly remembered every year.

He showed me a medal he had been sent this year. It read "65 лет победы!" 65 years of victory! He treated it like a joke and said they gave it to him for his old age. "They gave me a medal after the war, too," he told me. "But I told them I didn't want it, I didn't care about it. My children were young then. I told them to give me a cow so I would have some way to feed my children." The family told me they weren't very interested in Victory Day.

He talked about his time in the army and the places he had been. My friend took my camera and told him, you've been in France, you've been in Germany, now in this picture you'll be in America as well!

As I was leaving Sovietskii, I purchased a phone card from the kiosk by the bus station. The woman asked me where I was from and what I thought of Ukraine. I give the wide-eyed American answer I always give - "It is a beautiful country." (I always give this answer because regardless of where I am, it is always true. At the risk of being corn-ball, this is a beautiful planet we live on.)

"You think it is beautiful?!" she asked?

"Yes," I said, continuing my wide-eyed American role, which is easier than engaging in an in depth conversation through a tiny kiosk window, "It is a very beautiful country and the people are very kind..."

"You mean the people have a lot of patience, and they put up with a lot" she said sadly with a slight smile, giving me the standard Russian wish of happiness as I headed for my bus. Crimea is perhaps one of the few places I've travelled where simply stating that the country is beautiful and the people are nice is not a sure ticket to a smile and a knowing nod. I am beginning to think that Crimeans want visitors to understand and acknowledge what they have seen and lived through. Or perhaps that is true everywhere, and the people I've met were simply unimpressed by my heavily accented platitudes.

I've been thinking about the patience and endured hardships of Ukrainians all week as I've seen the city prepare for the Victory Day celebrations. This morning I attended the Simferopol parade my friend Adrianne, a Peace Corps volunteer based here. Many people I know travelled to Sevastopol to see the parade there with the recent renewal of the Black Sea Fleet, it certainly must have been an interesting atmosphere. Yet I don't regret staying in Simferopol - it was nice to be able to walk around the city streets I'm now comfortable with, and even spot a few friends and acquaintances throughout the day. Feeling the mood of the city, I had that wish to see the celebrations here throughout the years. When the streets were cleaner, the city greener. The first years when those deported were allowed to resettle in Crimea. In the first years of an independent Ukraine.

Before the parade started, I met up with a young friend of mine, let's call him Sergei, who was marching with the Party of Regions, the party of President Yanukovich. Although Sergei didn't vote in the previous elections and is completely disillusioned with politics, he decided to march in the parade because a friend of his works for the party, and was paid for the number of marchers he was able to organize. I found Sergei absorbed in his mp3 player holding one of the giant Party of Regions blue flags by the tank near Parliament, and took some pictures of him. "Don't post these on Facebook, please!" he asked, as I tried to get him to smile. I said goodbye to meet with with a friend, and he waved as he put his headphones back on.

A few months ago I had a Russian language test over the telephone as part of my grant requirements, and it took me awhile to convince the Russian speaker calling from the U.S. that yes, it is indeed possible that I am living in Crimea but yet have never been to Russia. Some other foreigners I know living in Ukraine, but not Crimea, sometimes ask me what Crimea is like. They want to know if it is true that it is really just a "beached" part of Russia, Russian-speaking, leaning and yearning. There is certainly no shortage of graffiti boldly declaring "Крым - это Россия!" Crimea is Russia! This is more of a topic for a dissertation than a blog post, so I'll keep it short. I believe that this pro-Russian identity is one strong influence on the peninsula, but certainly not the only one. That being said, many of those marching in the parade held up signs or repeated chants asserting a Russian or Soviet identity.

This woman was chanting "RUSS-I-A! RUSS-I-A!" Many in the crowd were cheering. Behind her group came were representatives from the Democratic Party of Ukraine. As they passed by, many of the onlookers began to boo.

Here is my Picasa album of pictures from the day. This is one of my favorite pictures:

Remembering Ataturk

2010-05-04T09:44:00.000+03:00

After my post about Lenin statues, Austin posted his version, which really is a good bit cooler:

On my recent trip to Turkey, I spent a lot of time thinking about the differences between Turkey and Ukraine. It takes only an hour and twenty minutes to fly over the Black Sea to Istanbul from Simferopol, but quite a bit longer to adjust to the differences between the two spaces. Here are some children playing around the Ataturk statue in Fethiye.

chaos in kyiv

2010-05-03T22:18:00.000+03:00

A bit late on this, but wanted to share this great photo from the Ukrainian parliamentary chaos of last week, credited as Sergei Supinsky/AFP in the Wall Street Journal's weekly photo round-up.

Remembering Lenin, again and again

2010-04-19T09:47:00.000+03:00

If you've ever visited a post-Soviet country, depending on which one I suppose, you've probably seen a proud statue of Lenin in the center of town. For many tourists not from this part of the world it is most likely near impossible not to take a photo of a town's Lenin statue in contrast with today's surroundings. In Bishkek, Lenin was stretching his hand to the American University in Central Asia, which the guidebooks love to point out. During Ramadan, I saw a photograph of Simferopol's Lenin Square filled with praying Muslims. And what kitsch-loving tourist can resist taking a photograph with Lenin?

These images seem so ironic at first glance, as you twist your mind back and forth to come up with the perfect explanation of how THIS IMAGE is the perfect image of the post-Soviet space. Yet with time, even these images become commonplace. It becomes second nature to "meet near Lenin," or give directions in relation to his memorial statue.

Alright, so that was my attempt to deconstruction my "western obsession" with Lenin photos... Now I can show you mine... Every time I walk past these young skate boarders hanging out at Lenin's feet, I just really wish one of them would pull some great skateboarding stunt so I could get a shot of them flying past this statue...

I mentioned this to a friend of mine here. He looked at them and then commented, "Yes, unfortunately they aren't very good."

How I learned to stop worrying and love the shashlik

2010-04-19T09:33:00.000+03:00

Until recently, I had a good run of vegetarianism that had begun before university, including a bout of veganism that ended in a mad fit in which I consumed an entire roll of frozen chocolate-chip cookie dough in one sitting (no offense to any of my friends who remain or became vegan, but that is the problem I believe with veganism - - it requires such a degree of self-sacrifice it leaves you prone to mad rages!). The answer to the common question, "Why are you vegetarian" was always a bit difficult for me. I must say that Propaghandi's graphic website had some part to do with it, but also I never really was a great fan of meat. Beans! Tofu! Cheese! These were the things I was crazy about.

Fast forward through 7 years of vegetarianism in a paragraph: Bower co-op, bower pot-lucks, bean burritos, learning to cook, mercimek corbasi, mezeler, and Turkey is a heaven for vegetarians, unless you are at a cafeteria designed for overnight buses.

Summer 2008, I travelled to Ukraine for the first time. Denwood and I travelled from Odessa to Crimea and back in 9 days. Let me say, Ukraine has some great food and food traditions, but the good stuff isgn't readily available for the short term tourist. After endless bus station chow and 3 days of eating nothing but potato puree, I was about to suffer a mad fit.

In Crimea, Crimean Tatar cusine brought chiboreki, which are delicious but also a heart attack in a soaked napkin. Finally, in Bakchisarayi I broke down and ordered "gelin ash", a delicious ravioli soup that a woman traditionally would make after her wedding. With the meat hidden in the ravioli, I was actually able to eat it. Soo much better than potato puree...

So, as vegetarians so love to do, and then broadcast to anyone who would like to hear, I altered my "food identity." I was a defensive meat eater! I would eat meat in a pinch, as a guest, on a trip, etc. I even tried a bite of steak and was quite proud of myself.

My new skill (defensive meat eating!) was quite helpful in Kyrgyzstan, where about the only thing you can find without meat is vodka. But at the times of greatest need (when I was served besh barmak, a dish of homemade noodles, mutton and lots and lots of grease, for breakfast I almost cried, and instead spooned half of mine on my friends' plates).

Fast forward to Crimea. All the best Crimean Tatar dishes (that I know of anyway) have meat in them. At first it was a matter of ordering lagman and picking around the meat, and when I realized how ridiculous that looked I started eating it. Eating a bit of meat here, and there, eating a hot dog when served it for breakfast. That is some great defense!

Then, one day, I was walking by one of my favorite restaurants here in Simferopol, Divan. I could smell the kebabs cooking inside. It smelled ridiculously good like no meat has ever smelled before. I had a MEAT CRAVING. But this didn't sync with my "food identity. I was a defensive meat eater who doesn't order dishes where meat is the main ingredient. Tack on: but apparently suffers from meat cravings!

Next time the craving struck, I broke down, ran down into Divan and ordered myself (a half portion of) some Lulia kebab. SO GOOD. Unbelievably good. And no guilt.

Today walking around in the central market with a friend we ate at a place called МЯСО (meat). Can you believe it? I don't actually know if that is the name of it or it just happened to be a sign indicating that meat was available. (I should also mention that for the both of us, everything (two portions of plov, two salads, two peices of bread, one shashlik and a teapot) was only 30 grivna, which is less than 4 dollars, for all of you who are visiting this summer and want the Crimea on a shoestring tour)

I think I am out of food identities for the moment - perhaps I'll have to become a Christian Scientist to fill the void.

Thinking about Bishkek

2010-04-14T17:42:00.000+03:00

Aika and Daniel hanging out at the Bishkek train station last spring

I wanted to write something about Kyrgyzstan and what has been happening this past week or so but I don't really know what to say. As far as I know, everyone at the school I studied at is fine, but I haven't heard back from my old roommates yet. I am sure they are all fine. I am sure they will write back eventually, laughing like I used to when my mother would worry about me after a bomb went off in some remote neighborhood of Istanbul.

Memories of Stalin

2010-04-03T08:29:00.001+03:00

This morning I've read two stories about memories of Stalin in today's Ukraine, and I thought I would share.

The first is about Zaporizhia, Ukraine, where the local communist party is planning to build a statue of Stalin. According to this article, and the embedded video showing an interview with Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Semynozhenko, many members of Ukrainian government are not against this statue, and many of the same support a union of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

The second is from a beautiful photo essay about the repatriation of the Crimean Tatars called "No Other Home,"with photographs by Alison Cartwright and text by Maria Sonevytsky. Take a look at the entire essay if you have the time. Among those interviewed by the pair for the essay was Mustafa Jenilev, Chairman of the Crimean Tatar Parliament. Here is the translation of the interview that appears on the site, in which he remembers the day Stalin died.

Of course, as children we didn’t see Crimea, but every family conversation always turned to the subject of Crimea. As a child, I remember that we had boundaries. We were not allowed to leave our settlements. So the biggest pleasure for Crimean Tatars was visiting one another in our homes. And when guests came over, no matter what topic you started to discuss, eventually everything turned to the subject of Crimea: how’s it’s going in Crimea, who we used to visit, about the natureland there. And we, as children, obviously heard all of this.

And with our guests, in our homes, we had very discreet conversations about the Soviet authorities and Stalin. For that reason, the Soviet propaganda did not encompass our thinking. For example, when Stalin died—I was still in school then—everyone was crying, and I noticed that the Crimean Tatars were the only ones who weren’t crying.

When we found out about his death, the first thing my father said was, “The dog has finally died.” And here, everybody’s crying like it’s the end of the world. I even watched our school administrator and thought that he was pretending, because my father said one thing and this guy was crying like it was the end of the world. I thought he was pretending, and I followed him. He made a speech in front of the children, saying the great leader of all the people has perished, and then he stopped talking, started crying, and left. I thought he was pretending, and I followed him into an empty classroom, where he beat his head against the wall and continued to cry.

But none of us cried. So one guy—Reshat Bekmanbetov—ran up to us and said, “Listen, everybody’s crying. Only our people aren’t crying. We can be imprisoned for this. So I brought an onion to rub under our eyes so we’ll cry a little, too, otherwise we’re not able to cry.” And after this, we had a period of mourning, and the only good thing that Stalin did, was that, thanks to him, we didn’t go to school for three days.

Because of the layout of the site, there is no way to give a direct link, but when you go to the site and flip through the pages you can see the accompanying photographs and also listen to the original interviews in Russian.

What does a woman want?

2010-04-02T20:48:00.000+03:00

A few readers found Crazy Corn for Boys to be both delicious and nutritious, so I thought in the line of "gendered junk food" as one called it, I'd share this box of chocolates, which asks the age old question, "What does a woman want?" (Чего хочет женщина?)

Apparently, the answer is an airbrushed Chippendale with suspenders and a chocolate caramel cream puff.

Spring hikes

2010-04-02T20:32:00.000+03:00

Two of the past few weekends I've gone out to visit Barb, a Peace Corps volunteer who lives on the outskirts of Simferopol. The weather has been getting quite nice, and we've been taking advantage of it by exploring.

Charshafs in Mersin

2010-03-30T09:30:00.000+03:00

Following a recent post about hijabs in Ukraine, I thought I would share this news from Turkey. Earlier this month in the Turkish city of Mersin, in honor of the 86th anniversary of the removal of the Caliphate, nearly 100 women from one of Turkey's leading political parties (CHP) gathered. And then they ripped up some black charshafs.

Photos from Radikal

Aside from the photos, what I found most interesting about this article was the debate in the comments by the site's users.

user "rightous" says:

Bravo to the bright women of the CHP...contemporary women...modern women...women after Ataturk...what can I say to you...I see you and I'm with you...if you weren't here, we'd be like Iran! I'm sure if Ataturk saw this in the year 2010 he'd smile at you. Or maybe it would depress him...actually should you laugh or cry at this situation...

user cankan says:

No to the charshaf! Because the charsaf means the end of the the value of the Republic and Ataturk. The Charshaf means a dark future. Let's leave our children not to the darkness of the charshaf, but to a bright future.

But user Nihat Erkan says:

Is Kemalism like this? When you insensitively go and rip up a çarşaf in order to thought our thoughts and opinions in a sack in order to advance some far away quarrel, the most valued principles of society are on the individual citizen, like the sword of Damocles it swings and weakens our position. [Nihat said a bit more but I had difficulty translating the entirety of his comments]

user "shakanozdemir" says:

But going this far is shameful (ayıp). What have you ripped up? Even if you haven't liked it, one part of the whole is valuable. What you have stamped upon is not just a peice of cloth, but at the same time the potential of the CHP. Take this photograph, look at is carefully and then ask - why don't we come to our potential? You've found the answer, haven't you?

Haylemdeman:

Everything for a vote...remember that during elections every citizen is a [voting] citizen.

User mustafam1:

The charshaf isn't like the turban! Didn't CHP just last year hold a "charshaf opening" and with a ceremony make women in charshafs from the suburbs members of the party? This means it isn't the charshaf that's bothering the CHP. They came out against the turban for because it was used for a "political" reason. By this reasoning do they believe that the charshaf is also being used for a "political" reason? If tomorrow women wearing charshafs (çarşafılılar) go out onto the street as a reaction to the actions of these "progressive" women and begin to cut up skirts, women's suits and pants, what will happen? In my opinion, they didn't get caught up with turbans because they are small, but they can get caught up in the charshaf and they still haven't gotten out of it, god willing (inşallah) the people will be freed from this!

I hate to be too second wave-y, but after seeing these images I had the urge to google "bra-burning 1960s," and found this image from 1968. Do you think women of CHP took some inspiration from that strategy?

Crazy corn for boys

2010-03-22T10:14:00.000+02:00

This is the best thing ever, picked up at a kiosk in Sovietskii. It is called "Crazy Corn," and it is "for boys." It also says "Ken" on the left and "cool guys" on the right. See that at the bottom right hand side? That is some Ukrainian cash money. These taste like condensed milk flavored Cheetos but are strangely addictive. What sealed the deal? There is a prize inside, and they are "ecologically pure." Mmm.

С ноорузом!

2010-03-21T22:09:00.000+02:00

It has been a year since my first Nevruz celebration, and I must say I'm feeling a little nostalgic about that weekend trip to Kochkor I wrote about last spring. Here is a quick description of the holiday from today's Turkish Daily News.

March 21 is a celebration of the arrival of spring in many parts of the Middle East and is the official New Year in Iran. It is also celebrated in Central Asian Turkic republics and in Afghanistan. It represents the time in the rotation of the Earth when day and night are exactly equal or, as some call it, the Spring Equinox...

Fire is one of the key components of the New Year’s celebrations that are called Nevruz in Turkish and Newroz in Kurdish... Some 20 countries acknowledge the day, as do a number of communities that are no longer living in their native lands, including the Bahais and the Zoroastrians...

The original words mean “New Day” (Nev-ruz) in Iranian, and it is in that country where the custom of celebrating the Spring Equinox apparently had its start – although there are some who favor a Central Asian origin. The story told is a tale of a tyrannical king and a hero who rallied the people to defeat him, a story with a similar feeling to that of David and Goliath in the Bible. The celebration has also been attributed to the Zoroastrians, who were in Iran long before the Iranians, and to their beliefs.

All the pictures below are from Radikal. Unfortunately the photos aren't listed by city, so there's no way to be sure where each of these was taken.

Photo from Radikal

Celebrations of Nevruz in Turkey can also take on a political meaning. The above article continues...

In Turkey, the holiday was marked for decades with protests as Kurds who followed the Iranian custom of celebrating the Spring Equinox turned it into a protest against what they perceived as oppression. A key element in celebrating the day is the lighting of a large bonfire; since the Turkish government had outlawed the celebration, the bonfire took on greater significance. Leaping over the bonfire was a way in which young Kurds could show off their athletic prowess and courage. Police, on the other hand, would break up what they saw as an illegal activity – actions that sometimes resulted in violence and even death.

A young man jumps through the Nevruz fire.

Photo from Radikal

Three young girls at a Nevruz celebration, two in the Kurdish colors of green, yellow and red

Photo from Radikal

Some celebrating the holiday in Turkey held up photographs of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan

Photo from Radikal

Do you know what Yalta is at night?

2010-03-18T21:38:00.000+02:00

I'm reading through the short stories in The Wall in my Head: words and images from the fall of the Iron Curtain, a wonderful anthology published last year. Whenever I now find references to Crimea, I can't help but dally over them and think about them. I found this in Dmitri Savitski's Waltz for K. You can find the full text here.

In Tsvetnoy market the Georgians were selling tomatoes for exorbitant prices, someone had brought some plump gladioli into town, and the Prime Minister of Australia was due to arrive on an official visit, and an aphorism by the mayor of the city made the rounds of Moscow, to the effect that if anyone flew during the visit, heads would fly too—in a word, a pal! of ennui and desolation had descended, and Katenka and I finally got two plane tickets to Simferopol; from there we would make our way by road to Yalta, rest a while, take a look round. and, going out to sea one night on a plea sure boat, leave the country for ever.

Kolenka's warning—not to fly over large expanses of water—naturally made us a bit apprehensive, but we had no choice. The Western frontiers were now being patrolled in earnest.

Do you know what Yalta is at night? No, not Soviet Yalta, full of drunks and street brawls, reeking of cheap perfume and suntan oil! A different Yalta. Mute, dwindling, sprawled on its side like a dis tant dying campfire. A city from which so many have fled. ... A last memory, spiced with cheap jokes.. ..

It was a close, moonless night. I had a child's compass, bought at the last minute. I was so afraid the pointer would come off the needle-----

Word of the day: biblioclasm

2010-03-17T14:04:00.000+02:00

Kyiv Scoop describes a collective burning of Ukrainian history books that took place on Sunday here in the center of Simferopol. Click through for photos.

On March 14, activists from the PSPU and the Proryv youth movement (name means 'Breakthrough!') gathered in Simferopolto barbecue Ukrainian history books written since the country declared independence from the Soviet Union nineteen years ago. Marching through the Crimean capital, they carried banners that read “Give our native Russian language state status” and “Yanukovych – Don’t sell out our goal: Union with Russia.” The photos show some of the demonstrators extending their right hands upwards and to the right – just like the Nazis used to. The history texts were brought in by wheelbarrow and burned with the statue of Lenin looking on in approval.

For those who are curious: no, I wasn't around.

Super Alisa

2010-03-14T09:56:00.000+02:00

This weekend my friend Inge, who studies Russian in Kyiv, came to visit Crimea with a few friends. While she was here, she gave me some music by Super Alisa, a singer from Tatarstan who has apparently already won over the hearts of hipsters worldwide regardless of their Russian or Tatar speaking abilities.

Note for my readers: Super Alisa is from Tatarstan in Russia - she is not a Crimean Tatar. Many understandably confuse Crimean Tatars with other Tatar groups, especially Volga Tatars. While Tatars have a shared history and all speak a Turkic language, their languages and recent histories are quite different.

This song - Tatarstan super good - is incredibly catchy and fun...

I thought I'd translate the lyrics of this second one because it was pretty simple, but of course it was difficult to make it come out right - give it a listen if you read the lyrics.

I'm Super Alica, a Tatar singer

Dance if you're not sitting down

I'm going to sing you some useful advice

Don't drink alcohol or eat pork

Remember while you are dancing to always think of the great god

Look, don't avoid the correct road

Think all the time about the one and only god

The only thing not cool about this video is that she seems to be playing air guitar on an actual guitar

And the best for last...how could I not include "Aquatic Robot," sung in Russian and Tatar:

Here is Google's translation of a review on Obshestvennoe Mnenie

The most joyous release of the last time. And with a completely unexpected side. Kazan girl Alice about 18 recorded an album at home and distribute it via the Internet. "Electroclash", adapted to the conditions of the Tatars. Funny and cheerful Muzychka in these still-trendy nostalgic style with Russian-Tatar texts. In music, as it should be, reflection on the theme of dance hits of the 80's - early 90's, wrapped in modern electronic wrapper. Texts, again, as expected, about space, robots and genetics. But that adds a sizeable color, about God and about the fact that you can not eat pork. And all this with a thin girlish voice. Plus some places male rap in the Tatar language. There are, of course, and several remixes. Head hit album - No Limit from the repertoire of 2 Unlimited, referred to here as "Cosmos". Sound quality, though quite average, but the atmosphere is compensated.

What exactly is her deal? That is a question You Tube users seem to be battling out in the comments. Under one video, a user asked if she was "for real" or a sort of joke. Another user responded by asking of Verka Serduchka - the popular cross-dressing, surzhyk (a mix of Russian and Ukrainian) speaking famous and singer - was "for real." See her in this video - "Jump, Jump!" - dancing around in traditional Ukrainian clothes at a traditional Ukrainian dinner.

Both of there performers are quite interesting - they both incorporate and challenge the traditions and images of their cultures in their music. Any readers reminded of other boundary-crossing performers form the former Soviet Union? I'd love to hear about them!

Simferopol Blues

2010-03-10T09:42:00.000+02:00

My muse has been a bit preoccupied lately, so I haven't been writing as much as I want to. So here is a quick post before I run off for the day.

A friend and I have decided to give each other weekly assignments to work on our photography skills. This week the assignment is "blue."

Walking around Simferopol looking for blue, I've been reminded of some of my first impressions of the city. Color seems to be at the same time in scarce supply and popping out brightly from every corner. Graffiti, windows, doors and clothing jump out from the background of the city.

Yes, that's snow.

Passport photos and official hijabs

2010-03-01T23:56:00.001+02:00

During my time in Turkey, headscarves were always in the news, and it seemed that all of my friends outside of Turkey wanted to talk about them. Can you wear them in public buildings? Can you wear them in universities? Turkish newspapers were always finding new ways to talk about headscarves. Which universities are allowing students to wear headscarves? Who is wearing headscarves? Headscarf dedikodu: Who's wives are wearing headscarves? Who wears a headscarf now who (gasp) didn't used to? How much are women paid to wear headscarves? Which businesses pay women to wear headscarves? Much like the minaret in Switzerland, the headscarf in Turkey became shorthand for the country's culture wars, and fodder for hastily written essays and opinion pieces of many an Erasmus student and foreign journalist.

The issue has now opened for discussion in Ukraine. The Ukrainian constitution guarantees its citizens freedom of religion, but Muslim women are not allowed to be photographed for official identification with hijabs, or headscarves. This January, a young woman, 25 year old Susanna Ismailova of Bakhchisaray, Crimea, applied for a new passport photo. When she was unable to be photographed with her hijab, she opened a suit in Kyiv. It is said that nearly 1,000 Muslim women from throughout Ukraine (not only Crimean Tatar women) have signed a petition for the right to wear a hijab in official photos.

I was unable to find much on this issue in English - the story seems to have been picked up mostly by news organizations focusing on Muslim issues (see here). Seems to be a bit of a hotter news item in the Turkish press (here, here, here). Some related videos (RUS):

A news report on the issue, including a brief interview with Susanna Ismailova:

A discussion among a group of Crimean Muslim women on the issue, including Susanna Ismailova (very long).

Is this lawsuit now a main focus among Crimean Tatars? Crimean Tatar Muslims, like many post-Soviet Muslims, are often considered not very strict. While I couldn't make a guess about percentages, I rarely see Crimean Tatar women wearing a hijab. This is not to say that none do, it is just a comment for my readers outside Ukraine who aren't familiar with the issue. While researching this news item, I came across this paper (which happens to be written by an acquaintance of mine here in Crimea who is going to the US next year on a Fulbright grant). She explains Crimean Muslims as follows:

Crimean Muslims are unique – there are very strict believers who do not eat pork and moderate Muslims, who eat pork and joke that they asked God for forgiveness before eating it. There are Muslims who wear headscarves and those who openly state that they hate people in headscarves, and argue that it is an Arabic custom that is inappropriate for Crimean Tatars who are secular. There are those who pray daily and those who do not understand what praying is for. You can find those who fast only for several days and then give up, and those who fast during Ramadan plus additionally several times a month. For some Muslims Islamic traditions are alive only at weddings and funerals, for others Islam is a daily routine. Nevertheless, all described above types of people consider themselves Muslims, they call themselves proudly Muslims, and those who are still single, want to get married only to Muslims.

Sometimes one single family can consist of strict believers and moderate Muslims.

So although there are Crimean Tatars at the front of this fight, and the issue is being characterized in the news as a Crimean Tatar issue, it seems safe to say it is not a cause all Ukrainian Muslims would prioritize. Here is an excerpt (my translation) of an interview with Safinar Cemileva, founder of the League of Crimean Tatar Women and wife of Mustafa Cemiloglu, the leader of the Mejlis, or Crimean Tatar Parliament. The entire interview can be found in Russian from the Ukrainian newsource Day (RUS).

By the way, now there is a movement unfolding arguing not only that Muslim women always wore the hijab, but that they should be allowed to be photographed for their passports in a hijab. Is there such a problem?

This is not typical, this is a sect. Look at the jewelery Crimean Tatar women wear - gold, silver, filigree! Who would close all that splender in a hijab so no none could see it? On the contrary, Crimean Tatar women proudly display their collection of earrings, rings, bracelets. We are proud of our seamstresses, jewelers and goldsmiths. Our girls and women have always worn small fezes, hats, small scarves and shawls. Simply our women don't dress provocatively, like sometimes happens in some cultures, and this shows our adherence to the Koran. Our government and our people have always been secular, and not religiously fanatic. When we arrived in Uzbekistan, we were struck by the custom of wearing the veil, and the passivity of Uzbek women and how they are closed from society. For us it was wild. Crimean Islam has never been like that. I remember my grandmother. She had a small kerchief, she prayed, she read the Koran, and she would take it off and fold it neatly. She never dressed with her body exposed, but she also was not too closed. Everything was very neat, without excess.

While I don't think either of the two authors above would advocate such a statement, I suppose some will point to this case as an example of "Islamic fundamentalism" in Crimea. There are so many perspectives on this story - like many issues in Ukraine. This is why I've so enjoyed learning more about this country. No news item is as straightforward as you might first imagine. Writing this post also makes me even more excited to read Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia, which Nicholas just brought back for me from his trip to New York. Also would like to read Why the French don't like headscarves: Islam, the State, and public space.

Crimean Tatar embroidery, and family memories

2010-02-28T21:06:00.000+02:00

Earlier this month I visited a Crimean Tatar school in Sari Bash, a small village of about 1,000 people in north-central Crimea. My Crimean Tatar teacher had taken me to the village with her family, as her husband grew up there. As they hadn't had a chance to visit the village in a while, everyone was quite glad to see them. This was quite lucky for me - after the school visit we were all invited to dinner at the home of one of the school's senior teachers.

After dinner, the teacher showed me her collection of family heirlooms- Korans, weavings and traditional embroidery. They were so beautiful and precious, and it is still difficult to think about the long life of these items - she told me that they had belonged to her grandmother and possibly her great-grandmother. While I didn't ask her, I imagine that these were among the few things her family took with them on the day they were deported in 1944. Almost half of the population did not survive the deportation, but these items travelled to Central Asia and back again. The family encouraged me to take pictures, and said they wanted me to share these relics of Crimean Tatar culture with my friends and family in America. And of course I am honored to share them with you. If you email me, I can send you a few more.

Traditional Crimean Tatar embroidery

From left to right - the family's Koran, a small prayer pouch, a newer Koran brought from Turkey, a second prayer pouch, a traditional pouch for tobacco.

I wish I had taken more pictures to show the detail of the gold stitching of the pouches and the designs of the embroidery.

If you'd like to see more, The International Committee for Crimea, an American Crimean Tatar diaspora group, recently posted a beautiful collection of embroidery on Flickr, which can be found here.

Photo from "A Study in Crimean Tatar Embroidery: The Asiye-Zeynep Collection"

Aside from the unique designs and colors, Crimean Tatar embroidery is well-known for being double-sided. Yes, those meticulous designs are just as beautiful on either side.

After the visit, I sent some of these pictures to a few friends and family members, along with some thoughts I had that day. It was quite moving to see such family heirlooms, and I doubted if anything of the sort had survived in my family. My grandfather (DeLuca) responded:

As to the handcraft you show in the pictures, they reminded me of my mother. When I was a kid we would sit in the darken living room and listen the radio. My mother would knit and crochet doilies, bed spreads, sweaters, socks. I recall asking her why and how did she manage to do them in the dark, only with an occasional turning on of the light?

She told me when she was a young girl back in Italy on the farm, at night, only with the light of the fireplace, she, her sisters and her mother would all knit or crochet by the fireplace.

She had a chest full of bedspreads plus other handicrafts. I just asked your grandmother if there are any bedspreads around. She doesn't think so but said there are some bureau scarfs.

I had notice in some of your earlier photos, the lace work and scarfs. Brought back memories of my youth.

My grandmother then found these crocheted works he was writing about, and sent me a picture:

I look forward to telling the family in Sari Bash that by learning about their family heirlooms, I also learned a bit more about my own.

Simferopol patterns

2010-02-28T14:31:00.000+02:00

Dad - I shot this one for you - the stencil says "Caution - mean dog!"

Bahar geldi!

2010-02-21T21:20:00.000+02:00

This weekend the weather in Simferopol was beautiful and I had a great time walking around and hanging out with some new friends.

On Saturday morning I set out to the outdoor book market. On the way there I passed these adorable little strays waiting outside of a shop.

It didn't take me too long to figure out what they were waiting for. Looks like these fellas have a long time friend in the neighbourhood.

Must post this picture as well so you can see the honey stand.

And she's a cat person too.

At the market, I picked up some great finds, including old travel guides of Simferopol, Karaim cookbooks, a great present for Heidi that is also a secret, a collection of short stories by Babel since Melissa is always raving about him, and a few atlases.

Don't be fooled by everyone in coats and hats - the weather was beautiful...

...as you can see from this woman hanging out in her window.

Latin or Cyrillic?

2010-02-19T22:39:00.002+02:00

Just this week, a group of linguists in Simferopol recommended that Crimean Tatar formally switch to the Latin alphabet, and that the Crimean Tatar World Congress approve the switch. The meeting was called by the Secretary General of the Union of Black Sea Universities, who lives in Romania. The news item has popped up on a few sources, with some declaring that Crimean Tatar has indeed changed to the Latin script. I don't think that is the case, although this does seem to be another step in this direction of Latinization. But it does raise a question many have asked me - what alphabet does Crimean Tatar use? For today, the answer is Cyrillic. And Latin.

Unity in thought, language and action! I. Gasprinkski

Qırımtatar dili - political, cultural and linguistic changes

Like many of the languages in this area of the world, Crimean Tatar has undergone many changes over the past hundred years. A relationship with a variety of powers and trends is one major factor in these changes: Islamisation, the Crimean Khanate, the relationship with the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, Soviet rule, and post-independence Ukraine. The deportation and 50 year exile in Central Asia was another major influence on the language - at the same time that families and communities were tragically separated, Crimean Tatar became a language of the home and lost the functions of a literary and official language. Compounding this is the fact that many Crimean Tatars speak dialects differing to varying degrees from the literary Crimean Tatar language. Since Crimean Tatars began to return to the Crimean Peninsula in the late '80s, there has been a strong desire to revive the Crimean Tatar language, and linguists, writers, academics, schools, communities and families have made a concerted effort to develop Crimean Tatar not only as an official language of Crimea, a status it now holds, but a living and developing language with a strong presence on the continent.

Writing about all of these changes is too difficult and grand a task for me, but in this post I would like to talk about one of the most obvious changes: the alphabet used to write the language.

Three scripts in less than 30 years

From Islamization until the beginning of the 20th century, Crimean Tatar was written in the Arabic script. After the revolution, the language was changed to use the Latin alphabet, or the Uniform Turkic Alphabet - no language in the Soviet Union remained written in Arabic script. Here is an example of both side by side, taken from this newspaper article (RUS):

A short time later, from the late 30s to the early 40s depending on who is counting, Crimean Tatar became a language written with the Cyrillic alphabet. This means that during this time there were Crimean Tatars who had to learn how to read their language three times. Can you imagine?

A cover of a 1986 trilingual children's book in Crimean Tatar, Uzbek and Russian. In Russian the title is : "Animals, birds and insects." The Crimean Tatar title is "What animals say."

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, many former Soviet states have begun switching their alphabets from the Cyrillic to Latin script. One example here is Uzbek. As I've been waiting for an excuse to post this, as an example here is a picture of two bilingual Uzbek-Russian signs I saw in a marshrutka in Simferopol. The Uzbek is above the Russian and is written with the Latin alphabet.

Crimean Tatar schools and educational materials

Language is a hot issue on many fronts in Ukraine. Much like the infamous Ukrainian/Russian/Surzhuk question, I can't help but ask people their opinion about the script of the Crimean Tatar language. Do you think it should be in Cyrillic or in Latin script? Do you think it will change to Latin script in the future? When? How? By whom? Most people I ask tell me they think a switch to the Latin alphabet is inevitable. Moving away from Cyrililc could be interpreted as a part of this post-Soviet trend towards independence and nationalization, but also a way to unite with other Turkic-speaking nations.

In one of the 16 Crimean Tatar schools in Crimea, I found that some of their signs were already written in the Latin script. Just the change of the script here somehow elicited in me an emotional reaction - as the sayings are so very close to Turkish, I felt myself back in a Turkish elementary school with Ataturk's words and portraits.

We come and we go, but national education lives on. I. Gasprinski

School #42, Simferopol

There is a Crimean Tatar Wikipedia, with over 1,000 entries. It uses the Latin script.

The Latin script used for Crimean Tatar is based on the Turkish alphabet with two additional letters: q and ñ. These letters represent two sounds that don't exist in Turkish - the hard k (in Cyrillic: къ) and hard n (нъ). (Interesting side note: the hard n has a bit of a g sound in it. On the off chance that you were wondering why the the lake Song in Kyrgyzstan is sometimes transliterated as Son and sometimes as Song, I think this this letter, common to the two languages, is the reason.)

The vast majority of the Crimean Tatar teaching materials I have seen have used Cyrillic. I wonder how difficult it will be to replace all of the books, signs and teaching materials if and when the switch takes place. Here is one lesson book that uses the Latin alphabet, which I purchased from the woman who sells books and music at КИПУ. There is also a Cyrillic version.

Лернинг ту рйд агаин

Changes from one alphabet to another are difficult even if you know both alphabets. To explain it in a way I am not qualified to do, when you "learn to read" you are not only learning the process of how letters come together to make sounds, you are training your brain to recognize words and patterns so you don't have to look at each individual letter one by one. So even a bilingual Russian and English speaker would have a difficult time reading an English text transliterated in Cyrillic. I somehow "knew" that this was true before, but now I can really understand why. When I first started studying Crimean Tatar, I was surprised to find that I would often read words that were exactly the same or very close to the same in Turkish but not be able to understand them until I sounded them out. It is much easier for me to read Crimean Tatar texts in Latin letters because my brain is familiar with many of the words and patterns from Turkish. And indeed an ability of the Turkic speakers and the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Turkey to be able to easily read Crimean Tatar publications is one large influence in this discussion.

So what is the future of the Crimean Tatar alphabet? To close this post with an easy cliché, only time will tell.

Bakhchisaray Lesson plan, take two

2010-02-19T21:13:00.001+02:00

There was recently a misunderstanding about a post I wrote regarding a Russian lesson in which my teacher had me find and re-read some sentences of a Russian language version of a Crimean Tatar legend. While I did not explicitly state it in the post at the time, I considered the information she gave me in that lesson to be quite a narrow and one-sided view of history, and did not personally agree with it. In the post, I wanted to talk about different views of history and how they retain importance in today's Crimea. Unfortunately I didn't do a particularly good job of articulating this. But the reason I said the lesson was interesting was because I learned something about my teacher and her perspectives, not because I was persuaded by that particular reading of history. I am glad to have a dialogue about this and other posts, and encourage readers to discuss my posts in the comments whether they be in agreement, disagreement, or indifference!

Yes, we have no bananas

2010-02-17T19:34:00.001+02:00

Yesterday I was walking through the market and I saw the following sign:

"Russian Blini - You just can't find tastier"

A sucker for good advertising, I was struck with hunger and a very strong blini craving. I ducked inside the cafe, sat down, and ordered blini. Yum...

Imagine my disappointment when I heard the response: "We don't have any blini."

Mapping Crimean Tatar national schools

2010-02-15T21:46:00.001+02:00

Thanks, Wikipedia!

In spite of my self-professed love of maps, I only recently mapped out all of the 16 Crimean Tatar national schools on the peninsula. The map shows something quite interesting - these schools are truly spread throughout the Crimean Peninsula. Not a single city or village - even Simferopol itself, has more than one of these schools. Some of them are quite remote, and only a few of them are in larger towns and cities. On the map below they are highlighted in blue and outlined in black.

There are 16 schools in all, with anywhere from 33 to 403 students.

A few of the schools are in cities (100,000-500,000):
Simferopol, Evpatoria
Larger towns (10,000 - 50,000):
Bakhchisarayi, Sudak, Stari Krim
Smaller towns (2,000+) :
Zuya, Sovietskii, Oktyabrskaye
and villages (less than 2,000):
Viktorovka, Annovka, Vikino, Sari Su, Maiskaye, Zarechnaye, Kolchugino, and Sari Bash.

Two of these villages - Sari-Su and Sari-Bash, were not on either of my maps.

Clicking again

Anticipatory counting and blog snatchers: birin birin mïŋ bolur

The blog is born again

writing.

We are such small nations

Urfa to Mardin

Домой (1/2)

Things found in library books

Obama in Hyde Park

Istanbul to Urfa

Ну, давай же!

expatiations of an former expatriate

Good morning, Chicago

Mackinac Bridge Walk

Applying for a Fulbright?

Greetings from the bubble

Top non-Ukraine Travel Posts

If you seek a pleasant peninsula

The people you meet in trains

Whose side are you on?

Top posts about Ukraine

Faces in the rocks at Karadag Nature Reserve

Petoskey-esque stones from across the pond

Boy about town

Hard selling the hidden gems

Seen around

Kharkiv #3 - hanging out, metro and street art

Kharkiv #2 - Searching for Gagarin

Will the Simferopol Airport be named after Amethan Sultan?

Kharkiv #1 - Fun in the city

Something's missing in Beyoğlu

Thinking about Osh

Kyrgyzstan

Lycian Way #5 - Around Kaş

Lycian Way #4 - Patara to Kalkan

Lycian Way #3 - Saklikent and Tlos

The Lycian Way #2 Fethiye to Kaya Koyu

a nation of readers?

Along the Lycian Way - City escape in Fethiye

The Lycian Way

Теория относительности

good skies for stone statues

May 18th - A day a morning

Who are Ukrainians

Crimean Khans in art

A daytrip to Yevpatoria

A few thoughts about passport holders

65 лет победы

Remembering Ataturk

chaos in kyiv

Remembering Lenin, again and again

How I learned to stop worrying and love the shashlik

Thinking about Bishkek

Memories of Stalin

What does a woman want?

Spring hikes

Charshafs in Mersin

Crazy corn for boys

С ноорузом!

Do you know what Yalta is at night?

Word of the day: biblioclasm

Super Alisa

Simferopol Blues

Passport photos and official hijabs

Crimean Tatar embroidery, and family memories

Simferopol patterns

Bahar geldi!

Latin or Cyrillic?

Bakhchisaray Lesson plan, take two

Yes, we have no bananas

Mapping Crimean Tatar national schools