Pachalafaka

Hadi bye bye Istanbul

2011-07-17T18:26:00.002+03:00

A minha história acaba de dar mais uma volta com uma nova mudança de país, 7 anos depois de me ter mudado para Istanbul, mudo-me agora para Londres.

A principal razão da mudança prende-se com a minha carreira, após 10 anos de em software development já tenho uma ideia mais ou menos definida do tipo que trabalho e empresa onde quero trabalhar, e na Turquia não consegui encontrar oportunidades tão boas como esta que encontrei em Londres.

Isto para não falar do eterno problema da licença de trabalho que é tão complicada em algumas carreiras na Turquia. Quanto a isso o melhor é mesmo obter a nacionalidade (sendo casado com uma pessoa de nacionalidade turca).

Durante este tempo na Turquia, estudei 5 meses de língua turca full time, trabalhei em 2 empresas, e passeei pelo norte, sul, oeste e centro da Turquia. Ficou muito por conhecer, mas foram 7 anos de aprendizagem, e saio agora da Turquia com um sentimento de quem sai do seu país. Uma das primeiras coisas que fiz ao vir para Inglaterra foi estabelecer contacto com alguns turcos que cá vivem.

Londres tem a vantagem de ter gente que vem de todo o lado, e facilmente encontrarei portugueses (coisa pouco vista em Istanbul) e turcos. Tem também a vantagem de ter uma língua conhecida, para quem viveu na Turquia agora Inglaterra é um "piece of cake".

Türkiye Allahaısmarladık! Yine görüşürüz! (Fica com Deus Turquia! Até breve!)

Turkish Citizenship

2011-05-04T13:18:00.002+03:00

Lately I have been investigating the option of becoming a Turkish citizen, with double citizenship Turkish and Portuguese. This brings advantages if you plan on working in Turkey, because of the current difficulties in getting a working permit in Turkey, bringing efforts and expenses both for you and the company you work for.

If you are married with a Turkish citizen for more than 3 years than you can apply for the citizenship, the process can be started in Turkey or outside Turkey in a Turkish consulate and it takes between 6 and 18 months.

During this period a visit will be made to your house to ensure that you are living together with your spouse.

One of the questions that comes up, for male foreigners is the obligatory army attendance for Turkish citizens. About this I was never able to get a definitive answer from anyone I talked to. What I figure is that it is possible that you will be called by the army, but in most cases this won't happen, and even if you are called you may be able to opt for a minimum time (1 month) with extra payment involved. I also understand that if you served the military service in another country you won't be called.

Here is the place to go in Istanbul: İstanbul İl Nüfüs ve Vatandaşlık Müdürlüğü

And on the map

Extending the Residence permit in Turkey (5)

2011-02-19T13:06:00.001+02:00

Another year, and back to the Residence Permit extension, once again the process has changed. For the better!

They decentralized the offices for the Foreign papers and now you can take care of everything on the local Police Station.

The starting point for people in Istanbul is the same: https://e-randevu.iem.gov.tr/yabancilar , but now you have to chose the local police station, I guess you should chose the one for your registered address.

Then you chose the kind of work you want to get done, in my case "SPOUSES OF TURKISH CITIZENS".

I took an appointment at 9:00AM and everything was very fast and eficient! I guess that in the area where I live there not that many foreigners, so I was first in line.

Everything is done in less than 30 minutes, and after 3 or 4 days I had the new Residence Permit in my hands!

Portugueses pelo Mundo (Istambul)

2010-11-14T12:16:00.000+02:00

Um video com os compatriotas a viver em Istambul:

Portugueses pelo Mundo (Istambul):

Registering a foreign phone in turkey

2010-08-13T19:38:00.007+03:00

Turkey controls the mobile phones that are allowed to be used in the country. If you buy a phone inside the country you shouldn't need to worry, but if you bring a phone from outside the country, after 2 weeks you should receive the following SMS:

"****** IMEI nolu cihaz kayit disi listensinde oldugundan dd-mm-yyyy tarihinde kullanim disi birakilacaktir. Hattiniz acik kalacaktir. Bilgi icin4440532" (turkish characters are not sent through SMS)

So I just brought my most recent phone (HTC Desire) and got the message after a few days. I knew what to do since I had done it before, go to Türkcell with:

* The phone with the turkish SIM card

* The passport with a stamp of entry in the last 30 days

* The residence permit (you need a subscription instead of prepaid if you don't have the residence permit)

* 10 TL

The problem is that my entry stamp at the passport was not visible enough... I have about 50 stamps by now and very few look as bad as this last one! The month is not clear at all, so they didn't accept it...

I then had to go to the Police Station to request a declaration of my last entry date. For this you need to go to a local Emniyet, fill up a request, stamp it (kaşe yaptırmak), photocopy the first page of the passport, and the next day you can pick up the declaration.

Not that bad after all, but pretty frustrating if you think that all you needed was the border cop to stamp it in a visible way...

Famous couple of turkish and portuguese

2010-07-30T00:35:00.003+03:00

Since my move to istanbul 6 years ago, and mostly through this blog I met a few couples of Portuguese+Turkish, which is a rare thing in this world!

The most famous one I've met (I should say "heard of") is Miguel and Pinar.

They won a contest from a turkish travel agency to travel for 1 year for free, actually getting paid around 2500 eur per month, and go the best hotels in Turkey and around the world. All they have to do is to publish videos of the places they go.

Now, you may think they are lucky, but they had to prove their skills in order to win the contest and the fact is that their videos are really good. I've watched a lot of small productions at Youtube, and I can say they do a great job, the 2 of them, recording and editing these videos!

Take a look at them at http://www.istebenimtatilim.com/

Extending the Residence permit in Turkey (4)

2010-03-10T23:29:00.002+02:00

Another year later and I'm back to extend the Residence Permit.

And once again I can see things have improved!

They have cut down on the amount of paper needed and they improved the whole procedure.

Everything now starts at https://e-randevu.iem.gov.tr/yabancilar where you request the visit and fill up the form with the necessary information, you can do it in English!

I chose the reason "LONG-TERM RESIDENCE PERMIT" and got the appointment for a thursday at 12:45.

Then I filled the form with my information, and printed all the pages they gave me (you must have a color printer), these pages include the list of necessary documents and fotocopies to bring.

On the time I was there, together with my wife (as requested), first you get into a line where they check your paper and give you a ticket with a number.

In theory this number would show up on the numbering call system they have there, but on that day that system is down, so I did have to wait (too much time standing) on a line next to the "banko".

Once it was my turn, all papers were correct so things went preety smooth. He handed all the papers back to me and told me to pay on the "Vezne".

The Vezne unfortunately is open only until 14:00, so I had to come back the next day for it... My tip is, try to get an appointment early in the dsay so you don't need to come back.

The next day I payed up (700 liras is the price for a portuguese) and got the papers in. He told me to pick it up the next weekday at 15:00.

The next weekday was a monday, I headed to the police woman who has this new technique for delivering the "Ikamet", you drop the pick up paper with her and sit down and wait to hear her shout your country and name. Obviously this is very funny because she is shouting these foreign names that nobody understands, not event the name owner!

Except for the 1 hour standing by the "banko" I was preety happy with how things went, and I hope next year I won't have to go through this again (I'm thinking of applying for turkish citizenship), or if I do, that things will be even better!

NOTE: The english on the site still has numerous errors, the best one for me was how they spell Portugal on the country list, it's "PORTUGAY"! Wonderfull!

Learning languages online

2009-04-18T12:32:00.004+03:00

I recently found this website for learning languages, actually it was my wife, who is learning italian that found it. Livemocha is a social networking site focused on language learning. For me the great functionality is that it allows people to submit exercises in writing or audio, and then other people can rate it and correct them! You can find friends that speak the language you want to learn and are interested in learning a language you know, so you help each other get better at it. They also offer chat written and with audio, courses for free, and payed tutoring.

The idea is great and it works preety good, except for some technical issues like some pages coming up late or a bit broken. Also, I expect it to have more content and functionality support for other languages, unfortunately portuguese (Portugal) and turkish are still not as functional as english and italian.

I found there are other sites in the same market like Babbel and busuu but I think they are more limitted. Let me know if you know differently.

Extending the Residence permit in Turkey (3)

2009-02-10T11:30:00.005+02:00

One year later and I'm back to extend the Residence Permit.
Things are a bit diferent, for the better.
They added a ticket number system. So the first thing you need to do is get a ticket from the machine.
I picked up number 301 around 10:30AM, which is called around 15:00. Fortunately I found someone giving up their number 256, so I could get my turn around 14:30.
In the morning they were calling 4 numbers per every 10 mins, after lunch it was faster (probably because many people quit their numbers) with 10 numbers per 10 mins.
I had all papers correct, thanks to my notes from the previous time.
They want 2 pictures from the foreigner and 1 picture from the turkish spouse.
I payed around 610TL for 1 year extension.
They give the permit back 24h after the papers are turned in.

Another note, since you have the numbers now you don't need to stay in the police station to mark a place. no need to eat the $+!;/ food of the polis canteen, my advice is to get out and go down the main street to Vefa Lokantası (close to the roundabout, across Migros) where you can get a nice meal for good price.

A minha vida na Turquia

2008-10-22T01:01:00.004+03:00

Nos ultimos tempos tenho recebido alguns contactos de portugueses e brasileiros que estão a pensar viver na Turquia e perguntam-me pela minha experiência.

Resolvi postar aqui um resumo da minha experiência na Turquia. Como não sou mais de ciências do que de literaturas vou organizar a história em bullets:

Dez/2003 - A minha primeira visita à Turquia por 1 semana, motivo - ver a Pelin que na altura era uma aiga turca, depois desta visita passsou a ser namorada.
Mar/2004 - Segunda visita à TR por 10 dias, nesta visita cheguei à conclusão que para bem da minha saúde mental e emocional tinha de arranjar maneira de me mudar para a TR.
Jun/2004 - Terceira visita
19 Ago/2004 - Mudança para Istanbul, foi uma decisão complicada, mas valeu o facto de a empresa onde trabalhava em PT ter mantido a minha posição quando eu decidisse voltar. O plano era, aprender turco e arranjar um emprego num prazo de 6 meses.
Set, Out, Nov 2004 - Curso de língua turca em full-time, foi uma excelente base para todos os progressos que fiz com a língua até hoje, apesar de passados estes 3 meses estar ainda a um nível muuuuito básico na oralidade. Foram uns meses excelentes, os primeiros tempos de namoro misturados com o facto de ser um turista/estudante, enfim um regresso aos tempos de Erasmus!
Dez,Jan 2005 - Procura de emprego, foi um período difícil, a língua foi uma barreira enorme começando pelo facto de levar imenso tempo a perceber o que os anúncios e sites de emprego diziam. Com alguma perseverança consegui finalmente encontrar um site que parecia mais virado para o tipo de oportunidades que eu procurava. Fiz umas 5 entrevistas e consegui receber no final de Janeiro 2 propostas.
Fev-Ago 2005 - Empregado numa pequena empresa turca, começei com um salário ridiculamente baixo mas que subiu rapidamente para valores aceitáveis. A adaptação não foi fácil, especialmente nos primeiros 2 ou 3 meses. Foi uma mudança drástica para um novo mundo, "crise de identidade" foi a melhor expressão que arranjei para definir aquilo que passei, acho que tenho alguns posts neste blogue que falam sobre isto, lembro-me que a internet e a blogosfera foram preciosos nessa altura para me ajudar a passar essa fase.
Set,Out 2005 - Mais 2 meses de curso de turco em full-time, para isto interrompi o trabalho na empresa onde estava, foi muito bom ter interrompido o curso após os primeiros 3 meses porque os 7 meses de emprego elevaram a oralidade e puseram-me no nível necessário para fazer o 4º e 5º nível de turco.
Nov-Fev 2006 - Mais 4 meses na empresa, nesta altura o trabalho corria bem, mas as minhas expectativas em termos de salário faziam-me pensar em mudar.
Mar-Ago 2006 - Aceitei um cargo na minha antiga empresa Portuguesa para trabalhar deslocado na Polónia, mudei-me para Varsóvia e mudei novamente de mundo, este foi um período interessante para perceber a diferença entre um emigrante (mal pago a trabalhar numa condição semelhante aos locais) e um expatriate (mto bem pago a trabalhar em melhores condições que os locais).
18 Ago 2006 - Casamento com Pelin, uma bela festa (ajudou o facto de ter subido à condição de expatriate). Esta celebração e pré-celebração envolveu também uma série de adaptações à cultura turca que tem algumas diferenças substanciais da portuguesa.
Ago-Fev 2007 - Estive mais 2 meses em Varsóvia e 4 meses em Portugal, foi a altura da Pelin emigrar e estudar uma língua diferente.
Mar 2007 - Hoje - Decidimos voltar para Istanbul e eu procurei um novo emprego, desta vez uma procura bem mais eficaz: 15 entrevistas e 7 propostas. Começei em Abril numa média empresa com contactos na Holanda. Até agora tem sido um trabalho aliciante e com bastantes sucessos, as condições salariais não sao as melhores e um pouco longe do que poderia estar a ganhar em PT, mas tenho a noção que estou a evoluir na aculturação e na profissão. Os próximos planos são: solidificar a língua e fazer o exame nacional de turco para estrangeiros que dá um certificado; obter cidadania turca; solidificar um emprego e as condições de trabalho.

Espero que esta pequena história apanhe eventuais tugas (e outros) que estejam a googlar e a pensar vir para a Turquia, e que os ajude a decidir mudar de vida.
A nível pessoal, mudar para a Turquia foi uma decisão da qual nunca me arrependi, nem nos dias difíceis. A cultura turca é muito rica e com uma grande virtude, a hospitalidade, tneho feito muitos amigos que rapidamente me chamam de "Döst". Para além disso tudo que tenho vivido e continuo a viver tem proporcionado uma aprendizagem constante, e com o tempo tenho valorizado cada vez mais o acto de aprender.
Deixo aqui o contacto para quem quiser entrar em falar comigo ou com outros lusos em terras turcas, ~~é um Public Chat no Skype, o link é http://tinyurl.com/5oyh8m~~

EDIT: Os Public Chats já não são suportados no Skype, mas o canal continua a existir, quem quiser entrar no canal que me contacte no Skype através do username: pauloya

Olimpiadas da Lingua Turca

2008-05-24T21:21:00.002+03:00

Noticia interessante na RTP sobre as Olimpiadas da Lingua Turca.
Fico sempre curioso em saber de mais portugueses que falam turco, ou vice-versa. Mais curioso ainda foi saber que tenho uma homonima (Paula Santos) que fala e canta turco!

Paulo Santos

via

Extending the Residence permit in Turkey (2)

2008-02-27T17:31:00.003+02:00

Just went back today to the Emniyet Mudurluğu (see place in map) to receive Ikamet Tezkeri (Residence Permit).

You should remember to bring your passport or you'll have problems passing the gates. By the way I can add that it's a good ideia not to bring a camera with you, it is orbidden to get in with one so if they see it on the x-ray control they will keep it for you while you go inside.

To receive the permit you go up to the first floor, enter the left door, turn left, walk the corridor, and in the first door on the right, inside the room you turn right and get in a smaller room. You hand him the small paper they gave you before and the police man should hand you your refreshed permit!

Another piece of information that I should add here is that the balcons are open from 8:30 to 17:00, while the Vezne is open from 8:00 to 12:00 and from 12:30 to 15:00.

Again, I keep adding info here with the hope I'll compile it all ina nice "how to" post.

Update: more info here

Extending the Residence permit in Turkey

2008-02-19T16:36:00.005+02:00

I just came from the Polis Foreign Office in Istanbul to extend my residence permit.
I want to post some information here about the process while I remember it.
In my case I am married with a turkish citizen so that's what I will write about.
I believe there's not such a big difference between doing it for the first time or extending it, except that you need to bring your current permit book when you extend it, but I may be wrong here, I kinda forgot the details of the the first time.

http://yabancilar.iem.gov.tr/ikamet.html "Evlilik Amaçlı İkamet Tezkeresi İçin İstenilen Belgeler" - In here you have the information they give you
On the bottom of the page they have a link to the form you need to fill, you can download a PDF or an Excel. You can have this form there printed there for you if you pay 4YTL

You must print it in color
Notice that there are 2 pages, front tand back, you should print them on the same paper

You need a picture of the turkish spouse. They don't have this on the list.
You can buy the "Dileçke" over there for the "small" ammount of 4YTL. But it is actually quite easy to do it at home. I'll try to add the text here later.

The process over there is quites simple:

You need to bring your spouse, so probably he/she will be doing most of the work
If you need to make the form or dilekçe go to the ground floor to the guys on the left kiosk, they'll be happy to help you and get a lot of money from it
When you have all the necessary papers you go to the 1st floor, stair hall to "Danışma" and ask for a ticket that indicates the "gişet" number.
On the gişet you give it all to the nice police girl, she will find what is wrong or missing, 10 points if you got it all right the first time. If you don't you can leave the papers pending with her while you take care of the missing stuff.
When everything is passed, she asks how many years of residence you want to create, that will be around 500YTL per year. She gives you the bill
You take the bill to the ground floor to the "Maliye Veznesi" and give him the bill and the money, only to receive a small paper.
You bring back the paper to the "gişet" and she will give all forms with pictures attatched ready to enter the system.
You take all these forms and give it to the woman on the "Deliver gişet"(or something similar) which is just in front of the "Danışma" after you enter the main door.
They will take every paper and your current Residence Permit and give you a paper to pick up the new Permit after 1 week(Update: it's actually 1week for a new permit and 1 day for an extension). In the meantime you can use this paper as a Permit.

Ok, I dumped most of it here. I'll probably make some corrections later when I have more time.

Update: more info here

Residence permit in Turkey

2008-02-14T09:55:00.004+02:00

It's that time again to extend the residence permit and as usual I get lost with the procedures and what is needed.
Fortunately a friend has just passed through the ordeal and has the info:

Needed papers
Wife must come along (that's what the text moving from right to left on that link means)
You'll need to return one week after to pick up the permit

This is related to foreigners married to turkish citizens.
It seems to be the same process weather you do it for the first time or if you extend it.
I'll try to update this page with more information once I go through the process.

Update: more info here

Back in Turkey

2007-08-02T11:00:00.000+03:00

After spending 1 year outside Turkey in Poland and Portugal, I've been back in İstanbul since April 2007.

I think I'll be posting back in Pachalafaka.

For the moment the news are that me and some other portuguese living in Turkey are opening a public chat on Skype for portuguese that live in Turkey.

If you want to join, just click here

Moved out to Msn Spaces

2005-10-25T15:29:00.000+03:00

I decided to stop posting here and start a new blog with a different concept for posting. I'll still blog about Turkey, and in different languages, but I want to write about different stuff too.
I'm not sure if Msn Spaces is the best place to go, but until now I'm preety happy with it.
Also, I will stop posting anonymously. I'm feeling more confident about the blogosphere nowadays. It's not such a dangerous place after all!
Check it out at Pauloya. And here is the Rss feed.

Decidi deixar de escrever aqui e começar um novo blog com um conceito de differente para os textos. Continuarei a escrever sobre a Turquia e em diferenes linguas, mas quero escrever tambem sobre outros assuntos.
Ainda nao sei bem se o Msn Spaces eh o melhor sitio mas pelo que vi ateh agora parece ok.
Ah, e vou deixar de escrever como anonimo! Ja me sinto suficientemente confiante na blogosphera!
O site eh em Pauloya. E eis o Rss feed.

Burada yazmamaya karar verdim, yeni bir blog açtım. Orada Türkye'ye hakkında yazmaya devam edeceğim, ve farklı dil kullanacağım ama başka kunu hakkında da yazacağım.
Şimdi Msn Spaces'te kontrol ediyorum, ama şimdiye kadar sevdim.
Orada gerçek işimi kullanacağım, blogosphere tehlikli değil, yüzümü göstereceğim!
Site Pauloya'dadır. Ve Rss feed de var.

A multi language blog

2005-10-10T22:13:00.000+03:00

Bev trayner asked me if I blog the same thing in the 3 languages or do I change it according to the people that would read it in the different contexts.
I usually write in and then translate into the other 2 languages. Between EN and PT things are preetty much the same although I don't worry about doing the exact tranlation. With TR the text is limited by my knowledge of the language, not by what I think I should write for a turkish reader. Actually reading my turkish is usually a comic experience for those who know the language!
I started this bog 1 year ago in EN, later I decided to write in TR mainly to force myself to practice the language, and since I would spend 20 mins translating to TR (that's how long it takes), I decided I could also spend 2 minutes translating to PT.
This being said, I should also say that I'm thinking now about what I can change with my blog because writing it is a heavy task, I feel that I need to find an easier format where I can write more and faster.

A Bev Trayner perguntou-me se eu "blogo" as mesma coisas nas 3 línguas ou se mudo o texto de acordo com o contexto de quem me lê.
Normalmente escrevo o texto original em EN e traduzo para as outras 2 línguas. Entre EN e PT as coisas não mudam muito, apesar de eu não me esforçar muito em fazer uma tradução exacta. Com o TR as coisas são limitadas pelo meu conhecimento da língua, e não pelo que eu acho que devo escrever para o leitor turco. Na verdade quem lê o que escrevo em turco cai da cadeira de rir com as minhas calinadas!
Comecei por escrever este blog há 1 ano atrás em EN e depois decidi começar a escrever em TR principalmente para me foçar a praticar a língua, e já que tava numa de traduções decidi também escrever em PT. Se perco 20 minutos a traduzir pa turco (ya, 20 minutos!) também posso perder 2 minutos a escrever em PT ( ok, esta tradução já vai em 3... )
Também tenho de acrescentar que ultimamente tenho andado a pensar no que posso alterar no blog para aliviar um bocado as coisas, sinto que tenho de encontrar um formato onde consiga escrever mais e mais rápido.

Bev Trainer "blog'unde 3 dille aynı şeyi yazıyor musun" bana sordu.
Genelikle orijinal tekst EN ile yazıyorum ve sonra tercüme yapıyorum. EN ve PT aynı şey yazıyorum, ama türkçe farklı oluyor çünkü ben dilden az biliyorum. Bence bir türk için bu blog komik oluyor!
1 yıl önce EN'le bu blog'u yazmaya başladım, sonra TR pratik etmek için TR kullanmaya karar verdim. TR tercüme yapmak için 20 dak sürüyor (evet, bu kadar!). Pt tercüme çok daha kolay oluyor (tabi canım), 2 dak sürüyor, o yuzdan PT de yazmaya karar verdim.
Son zamanlarda blog'umda ne değiştirebilirim diye düsünüyorum. Yeni format bulmam lazım, daha çok yazmak ve daha hızlı yazmak istiyorum.

PS: More about blogging with multi language

Reflexoes

2005-10-04T23:36:00.000+03:00

Lately I have been really off from this blog. I want to keep writing and sharing my day to day thoughts, but I think I haven't yet found the best way to do it in a good sistematic way that I can easily integrate with day to day life.

I think this is a common problem for bloggers, during the day I find myself thinking "Wow! this is interesting I must blog it!" But in the end of the day when I get home I've got many other things on my ming and a tired body and mind that don't feel like doing it.

Also, the whole translation thing has become another reason tiring task makin it 3 times harder to put the post out. Here's an interesting read on the multi-language blog problem

So I'm thinking about restructuring a few things to make it easier on me and keep doing the sharing. If you have any suggestions, feel free to post them.

While I don't restructure, let me add a few things worst blogging in this post:
I ran again the Euro-Asia marathon, or I should say I walked the 8 km mini-marathon that starts in the Asian continent, crosses the Bosphorus and finishes on the European continent. The weather didn't help much, so there weren't as many people as last year, but it was preety fun.

And also the Ramadan, tomorrow is the first day of the Ramadan, people that fast will start doing it for about 30 days, it will be interesting to see how people at work deal with it, I think more posts will come on this subject.

A bacorada do dia

2005-09-13T23:45:00.000+03:00

No meu emprego falo tipicamente em inglês com os meus colegas.
E hoje estava a entar explicar que devíamos usar um E Comercial (&) num determinado sítio, e foi assim que expliquei
"We should use an E Comercial!"
Ele não percebeu o que é que eu queria e eu demorei algum tempo até perceber a bacorada que estava a mandar, felizmente ele não sabe português e não apanha o alcance da coisa!

A turquia em camadas

2005-08-20T11:55:00.000+03:00

Ao viver na Turquia deparei-me com uma noção diferente a que no estava habituado. A forma como as pessoas se relacionam umas com as outras é diferente do que estou habituado. Para mim é comparável com os colégios militares, ou escuteiros, onde cada um pertence a um nivel que é sobreposto por outros níveis superiores a que outros pertencem. Isto é notório no respeito que todos têm pelos mais velhos,por palavra irmão e irmã em turco é diferente consoante seja irmão mais velho ou mais novo. Um velho que ande pelos transportes públicos ou que tenha de esperar em filas no banco, etc é tratado com um respeito que não vejo noutros países.
Mas não só a idade é importante, a profissão também define esta hirarquia os pelos garçons que atendem peddos e servem, sobrepostos pelos chefes de zona que controlam pagamentos, sobrepostos pelo dono do restaurante que se senta na caixa a tratar da ma$$a.
A Turquia é também um país onde conhecer as pessoas certas é considerado importante para conseguir vingar, e por aqui também vamos dar ao conceito de hierarquia onde os que têm mais poder protegem e apoiam aqueles que querem subir. E isto faz-me lembrar um filme que vi recentemente "Uzak", mas isto fica para outro post.
Para mim, conviver com os turcos tem sido também encaixar-me nesta hierarquia em que para uns sou um aprendiz e para outros um mestre! Tem sido interessante encontrar certas pessoas que têm de facto conhecimento e experiência de vida e que facilmente se colocam na posição de professores dispostos a partilhar o conhecimento com os aprendizes à sua volta, com eles tenho aprendido muito!

1 year in Turkey

2005-08-20T10:31:00.000+03:00

Yesterday it was 1 year since I landed in Turkey to live here.
In the first 4 months I was dedicated into learning the language, I had a great time, I met people ftom Turkey and from many different countries, it reminded me the days of Erasmus that I had in Italy.
Then I had another 3 month of job search, I had a bad time, I was worried about not finding a job and I really didn't do much more than that. When I think about it now I wish I had spent those months doing other stuff like practicing more the language or travelling inside Turkey. In the end finding a job turned out to be not that hard, you just need to know where to look.
The last 5 months I have been working, I work with fine turkish people and 1 other foreigner. I didn't have a hard time integrating in the company and working there has been a learning experience since the begining, not only in a professional way but also I've been learning about Turkey in many other dimensions that I couldn't know before working.
In short living here has been a lot about learning, and while thinking about this post I wrote a complete new post, I'll put it up too.

2005-08-09T21:57:00.000+03:00

This image is not about giant bread, that's just an optical ilusion. It is about the engenious way that bread makers in the south of Turkey use to keep themselves from dying with the extreme hot, just spend some time inside the coke fridge!

Strange foreigner / Estranho estrangeiro / Garip yabancı

2005-07-31T15:32:00.000+03:00

I've been reading Beverly Trayner with interest. She is a foreigner living in Portugal, Setubal that writes about many things including what it is to live inside a different culture and all the small (or big) disturbances this raises.
This is something I don't blog much about, but something I live everyday. In a generic contemplation about this I write the following cliché:
I believe all changes (in life) bring problems: you have to deal with the fears, learn the new rules, etc. The good side of it is that the process of solving these problems makes you grow as you never would if things were allways the same.

Estive a ler com interesse o blog de Beverly Trayner. Ela é uma estangeira que vive que vive em Portugal, Setubal que escreve sobre muita coisa incluindo o que é viver dentro de uma cultura diferente e todas os pequenos (ou grandes) distúrbios que isso traz.
Eu nunca escrevo muito sobre este tipo de coisas, mas é algo que vivo diariamente. Numa reflexão genérica sobre o assunto, escrevo o seguinte cliché:
Acredito que todas as mudanças (na vida) trazem problemas: temos de lidar com os medos, aprender as novas regras, etc. O lado positivo de tudo isto é que o processo de resolver estes problemas faz-nos crescer como nunca cresceríamos caso as coisas permanecessem sempre iguais.

Beverly Trayner okudum ve çok sevdim. Portekiz'de yaşan yabancı bir kadın. Farklı bir kültürde yaşmak hakkında yazıyor.
Bunu hakkında çok yazmam, ama her gün böyle yaşıyorum. Bu hakkında, böyle yazıyorum:
Butün (hayadın) deyişiklikler(in)den problemleri geliyor: korkluklar, yeni kurallar, falan filan. Ama problemleri çözürken biz çok büyüyoruz.

Interlingua

2005-07-24T00:49:00.000+03:00

I was browsing the wikipedia and I found this language: Interlingua. I read this text and it was a strange feeling, I could understand everything without knowing what language it was!

Navegando pela wikipedia encontrei esta língua: Interlingua. Ler este texto foi realmente estranho, consegui perceber tudo sem saber que língua estava a ler!

Vikipedi'de bu dili buldum: İnterlingua. Bu sayfayı okurken çok garip hissettim, dili bilmeden her şeyyi anlattım!

Dulce Pontes

2005-07-23T10:02:00.000+03:00

Dulce Pontes, the portuguese singer, has a concert tomorrow in Istanbul.

Dulce Pontes canta amanhã em Istanbul

Portekiz şarkıcı Dulce Pontes İstanbul'da yarın söyleyecek.

Female taxi driver / Taxista mulher / Kadın taksici

2005-07-20T22:22:00.000+03:00

I saw a female taxi driver for the first time in Turkey. And she was wearing a scarf!

Hoje vi pela primeira vez, na Turquia, uma mulher taxista. E usava lenço!

İlk defa bir kadın taksicini gördüm. Ve kapalıydı!

Time passes / O tempo passa / Zaman geçiyor

2005-07-19T22:33:00.000+03:00

10 months ago I came to Istanbul!
39 years ago (in hexadecimal) daddy was born! Happy Birthday!!!

Vim para Istanbul há 10 mses atrás.
Há 39 anos atrás (em hexadecimal) o meu pai nasceu! Muitos parabens!!!

10 ay önce İstanbul'a geldim.
39 yıl önce (hexadecimalda) babam doğmuş! İyi ki doğdun!!!

Katzeweis (PT)

2005-07-18T13:34:00.000+03:00

A weiss é uma artista!

Euromilions / Euromılhões / Avrupa Miliards

2005-07-17T00:54:00.000+03:00

Finally Euromilions can be played online. This luck game is a big success in Portugal (and around europe), the first prize is incredibly high. It seems that next week it?s round 96 million euros!

I placed my bet!

Finalmente o Euromilhões pode ser jogado online. Esta semana o primeiro prémio é incrivelmente alto, 96 milhões de euros!

Eu já apostei!

Euromilions , bir şans oyun internette oynanabilir. İnanılmaz birinci ödülü var, çok buyuk. Bu hafta 96.000.000 Euro!

Ben oynadım!

Vacations 1 / Férias 1 / Tatil 1

2005-07-09T19:52:00.000+03:00

At Antalya.
On this picture you would see A1, A2 and P1. I'm P2 and I'm taking the picture. A2's car was the perfect vacation car, we put all our stuff inside and travelled around on the south.
We were on the way to Olympos and decided to stop to eat and drink.

Em Antalia.
Nesta foto poderiam ver a A1, o A2 e a P1. Eu sou o P2 e sou o fotógrafo. O carro do A2 foi excelente para as férias, enchemos a traseira com as mochilas, comida, tendas e viajámos pelo sul!
Quando íamos a caminho de Olimpos decidimos para tomar o pequeno-almoço.

Antalya'da.
Fotoğrafta A1, A2 ve P1 görebilecektiniz. Ben P2, fotoğrafı çektim. Tatil için A2'nin arabası harika oldu, güney gezerken butün şeyimizi taşınabildi!
Olympos giderken durup kahvaltı aldık.

Back from trips / De volta / Döndüm

2005-06-29T20:43:00.000+03:00

3 weeks ago I went to Greece for a weekend, and I spent last week on vacations in Antalya, the sunny south of Turkey. I intent to give more details about my experience in the South. I saw had a really good time and I saw great places!

3 semanas atras fui à Grécia, e passei a última semana de férias em Antalya, no sul da Turquia. Espero escrever em breve mais detalhes sobre as férias no sul. Foram umas férias muito boas em sítios espetaculares!

3 hafta önce Yunıstan'a gittim, ve geçen haftada Antalya'da gittim. Antalya hakında yazmak istiyorum. Orada çok eğlendim ve güzel yerleri gördüm!

Dictionary / Dicionário / Sözlük

2005-06-09T23:44:00.000+03:00

If you want a dictionary Turkish / English, English / Turkish for your PC, get the Moonstar!
You can insert any turkish word without being in the basic form and he will translate it, for example "bekliyorum" (I'm waiting) based on "beklemek" or "köpeğimiz" (our dog) based on "köpek".
And the best news, it's for free! :O
P.S: Press "Programı innDir" to download.

Para quem precisa de um dicionário Turco / Inglês, Inglês / Turco para o PC a resposta é Moonstar!
É possível inserir qualquer palavra em turco sem utilizar a forma básica da palavra, por exemplo "bekliyorum" (estou à espera) baseada em "beklemek" ou "köpeğimiz" (o nosso cão) baseada em "köpek".
E a cereja no topo do bolo: É completamente grátis! :O
P.S: Para sacar o ficheiro primam "Programı innDir".

En iyi bilgisayarın Türkçe / İngilizce , İngilizce / Türkçe sözlüğü Moonstar!
Türkçe kelimerin basit formu girmek lazım değil, mesela "bekliyorum" veya "köpeğimiz" girilebilir.
Ve en iyi haber: bedava! :O

Foreigner finds job in Istanbul / Estrangeiro encontra trabalho em Istanbul / Yabancı Istanbul'da iş buldu

2005-06-05T17:34:00.000+03:00

Some people ask me how did I find a job in Istanbul.
I tryed several methods:

googling for companies in my area and sending CV's - sent about 40 mails and got about 0 answers
Joined turkish career sites - received about 0 propositions
Answered Adds from newspaper - about 0 answers
Tryed to join Human Resources companies in Istanbul - about 0 companies were interested in helping me

One method prooved to be the most eficient of them all:

I joined the mailing list HumanResourcesTurkey and I filtered it daily to find adds that I could apply to. The adds are mainly in turkish so I needed help with the filtering - in 3 weeks i sent about 20 emails, received 5 answers for more info, and 2 of them made job propositions.

I'm a software engineer and I found that the added value I can give to a company in Turkey, if compared with a turkish software engineer, is my better english. Companies that have foreign clients give value to this.
The problem with most of the job searching methods is that you need to fill in web forms or follow some procedure that doesn't allow you to show the fact that you're a foreigner. And if you studied and worked outside Turkey nobody here is going to give value to your CV since they don't know the schools and companies.
Also I think having skill certificates gives the company more confidence to hire. For example in the software development area Microsoft and Java certifications.

P.S: Tipically I sent emails written in english, describing in short my professional skills and it's recognition in my country. I attatched my CV in English and in Turkish (U. was fundamental helping me with the translation of the CV into turkish).

Algumas pessoas têm-me perguntado como encontrei emprego em Istambul.
Eu tentei vários métodos:

googlei empresas na minha área e enviei CV's - enviei cerca de 40 mails e recebi cerca de 0 respostas
Inscrevi-me em sites de emprego turcos - recebi cerca de 0 propostas
Respondi a anuncios de jornal - cerca de 0 respostas
Tentei inscrever-me com empresas de Recursos Humanos em Istambul - cerca de 0 empresas mostraram-se interessadas em ajudar-me

Um método provou ser o mais eficaz:

Juntei-me à mailing list HumanResourcesTurkey e filtrei diariamente os anuncios que me interessavam. Os anúncios são na sua maioria em turco portanto precisei de ajuda para a filtragem - em 3 semanas enviei cerca de 20 mails, recebi 5 respostas pedir mais informação e 2 destas empresas fizeram proposta.

Eu sou um engenheiro de software, desobri que o valor acrescentado que posso oferecer a uma empresa turca, quando comparado com um engenheiro de software turco, é o facto de falar bem inglês. Empresas com clientes estrangeiros dão valor a isto.
O problema com a maioria dos outros métodos de pesquisa de trabalho é que é preciso preencher um form na web ou seguir um qualquer procedimento que não permite mostrar que és estrangeiro. E se estudaste e trabalhaste fora da turquia ninguém vai dar valor ao teu CV porque não conhecem as escolas e as empresas.
Para além disto, acho que ter certificados de formação dá bastante mais confiança aos empregadores. Por exemplo na área de software existem as certificações Microsoft ou Java.

P.S: Tipicamente enviei emails em inglês, resumindo as minhas caracteristicas profissionais e o seu reconhecimento no meu país. Junto enviei o meu CV and inglês e em turco (O U. foi precioso ao ajudar-me a traduzir o CV).

Bazı kişiler, Istanbul'un işini nasıl buldun, bana soruyor:

software şirketi Gooledum ve özgeçmişim gönderdim - 40 email falan gönderdim ve 0 mıfır cevap aldım
Kareer web siteye girdim - 0 mıfır cevap
Gazetede aradım ve özgeçmişim gönderdim - 0 mıfır cevap
İş bulan şirketelere girmeye denedim - 0 mıfır şirketler bana yardım ettiğini istedi

İşte en iyi yol:

HumanResourcesTurkey mailing listeye girdim ve her gün softwar'in emailleri aradım, yardım etmem lazımdı çünkü emailler türkçe ile yazmış - 3 haftalık 20 falan email gönderim, daha bilgiler istemek için 5 cevap aldım ve 2 şirketler beni istedi.
Ben software mühendisim, bence benim ingilizce konuşmam şirketler için iyi bir şey, özelikle yabancı müşteri olan şirketler için.

Ilk iş bulmaya 4 yollar çalışmadı çünkü web formlarda benim iyi şeylerim antamadım, web formlar Türk için yaptırmamış. Ben Portekiz'de okudum ve çalıştım ve burada Portekiz okullar şirketler hiç kimse bilmiyor.
Bence de setifikalar ile iş bulmak daha kolay oluyor. Mesela, oftware development için Microsoft ve Java sertifikalar var.

P.S: Genellikle ingilizce emailler gönderdim. İçinde kısa anlatma yazdım ve iki özgeçmişimin versiyonu gönderdim: İngilizce ve Türkçe (tercüme ile U. bana yardim etti, sağol kardeşim!).

NO / NÃO / HAYIR

2005-06-04T21:03:00.000+03:00

Emigra pushed me to talk about the reactions I see to the french and dutch no on the referendum.
I'm really not the person to get into political analysys but, maybe because of this, my general feeling is that people didn't really care about it. Still I sense that in Turkey there is the feeling that rich countries are walking away from poor countries instead of going in the integration path. This includes Europe and USA.
As Nevval Sevindi puts it "The elderly (European) are afraid of foreigners".

O Emigra pediu-me para falar sobre as reacções ao NÃO nos referendums francês e holandês.
Análise política não é comigo mas, talvez por esta falta de interesse, a minha ideia é que isto passa um bocado ao lado do pessoal por cá. De qualquer forma acho que a ideia geral é a de que s pa´ses ricos estão a caminhar mais para longe dos países pobres em vez do caminha da integração. isto inclui a Europa e os EUA.
Como escreve a Nevval Sevindi "Os velhos (da Europa) temem os estrangeiros".

Fransiz ve Olandanın referendusunun HAYIR'ı hakkında yaz, Emigra denden istedi.
Bence Türkeler çok merak etmiyor. Bence, genellikle Türkler böyle düşünüyor: zengin ülkeler (Avrupa ve ABD), fakir ülkelerden uzak yürüyor, entengrayon istemiyorlar.
Neval Svindi "(Avrupa'nın) Yaşlılar emekli yabancılardan korkuyor" yazıyor.

I Decided / Decidi / Karar verdim

2005-06-04T00:47:00.000+03:00

I decided to start writing my posts in three ( 3 ) languages: en / pt / tr. Let's see how many corrections I get from my turkish readers, and portuguese!
Hell, just to show how good I am I'll even write this one in Italian!

Decidi começar a escrever os meus posts em três ( 3 ) línguas: en / pt / tr. Vamos lá ver quantas vezes sou corrigido pelos meus leitores turcos, e pelos portugueses!
Hell, só pa mostrar que eu sou buéda bom até vou escrever este em italiano!

Postlerimi üç ( 3 )dille yazmaya kara verdim: en / pt / tr. Bakalım kaç defa Türk okuyan kişiler bana düzeltiyor, ve da Portekiz okuyan kişiler!
Hell, ne kadar iyim göstermek için bu postum Italiyancı da yazayim!

Ho deciso cominciare a scrivere miei posti in tre ( 3 ) lengue: en / pt / tr. Vedremo quante volte mi coregono i miei lettore turchi, anche i portoghese!
Hell, solo per mostrare quanto sono buono lo faccio anche in italiano! (Eh Zia, no essere troppo cativa con le correzione! ;)

P.S: Thanx to U. for the suggestion! / Obrigado U.! / Sağol kardeşim! / Grazie!

Madredeus

2005-05-29T10:25:00.000+03:00

3 months ago I was told by a friend that Madredeus would come to Istanbul. Their first time in Turkey!
Even though I just heard it 2 days before and Istanbul is such a big city, I tryed to go there. I managed to find the concert house and was there 20 minutes before the start.
I soon found out that this was a concert for the elite. The ticket prices was more than 25 euros and actually by then they were all sold!
I decided to wait, maybe someone would cancel, or sell... But I wasn't the only one with this hope. About some other 10 people did the same, so while waiting and talking with these people I had some very interesting conversations!
There was an italian couple, since I know Italian and they didn't know turkish or english, I was translating what was hapening, I didn't find much about them, the woman told me that she saw a concert of Madredeus in Casablanca and she loved them!
Then there was this group of 4 turkish, one of them was fighting good for our cause "Listen, either we all go in, or no one goes! They have free places inside, I know because a friend of mine is in there!" They talked with theater guys trying by all means to get us in, they even showed their love for Madredeus music by singing part of "A Vaca de Fogo"! I joined in the song :) Every effort was worthless, they would not get moved by our singing talents.
Then I met a man from the brasilian consulate in Istanbul! He happened to be in the lobby waiting for someone. He was very kind and invited me to visit the consuluate and meet brasileans living in Istanbul.
And finally I met a turkish guy that worked in the theater and... be amazed!... spoke portuguese (not brasilean portuguese)! He told me that he used to be a turist guide for portuguese turists. He was working in the theater, and he would try to get 2 tickets for me "It's not every day you meet portuguese living in Istanbul", (until now I found only 1 family living here!) he looked promising, but after waiting for another 30 minutes he didn't come back and all my waiting friends were gone, so... I decided to come back on the next tour...
I didn't get to hear Madredeus live but I got to meet a lot of interesting new people! And there were more to meet while walking around the concert area.

Yet another portuguese emigrant!

2005-05-21T12:11:00.000+03:00

I'm not the only tuga living the dangers of the outer world!
Pensamentos d'Emigra

Holidays

2005-05-19T17:47:00.000+03:00

Today we have a holiday! The Youth and Sports Day.
Television shows 2 big stadiums filled with young people dancing in big coreographies.
It seems that Atatürk established this day together with the Children's day on April 23 to be holidays.
They told me that on the Children's day Turkey invites 1 children from every country in the world to come to the cities of Turkey and celebrate. I'm sorry I missed the party, I could have met the portuguese kid!
Also in the Children's day all the parlamentary people is replaced by children!

Get an RSS Reader

2005-05-19T17:44:00.000+03:00

To all my million of readers out there I have 2 big anouncements:

I have a new blog! Byte Food
It's time for you to get an RSS Reader.

Start packing!

2005-05-14T13:28:00.000+03:00

After writing my last post I checked the Turkish Airlines site better and found out that there is a promotion on the flights from Lisbon to Turkey!
Grab it while you can because it's only during June.

Portugal and Turkey

2005-05-14T13:17:00.000+03:00

Portugal is on the turkish news. The Turkish Prime-Minister visited Lisbon and the Portuguese President spoke in favour of the Turkish EU integration.
Also they mention that Turkish Airlines will start direct flights on Istanbul-Lisbon. This is good news, but I think prices will still make me fly through Central Europe (and spend 10h with the trip...).

IKEA

2005-05-06T07:31:00.000+03:00

IKEA opened it's first store in Turkey!
Cheap furniture? That's good news!
But the rumour says that the prices are higher than Portugal...

2005-04-30T13:23:00.000+03:00

Mmm, künefe...

Künefe

2005-04-30T13:14:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I had the best dessert I ever had in Turkey! Künefe!
What got me first was the smell, it comes warm from the kitchen and smells like toast with melted butter! And then tastes so good! Not exagerated sweetnes like it's usual in the turkish sweets, but just sweet enough!
Man, I couldn't ge enough of it!

2005-04-18T22:22:00.000+03:00

A Fayton in Büyük Ada.

Büyük Ada

2005-04-18T22:13:00.000+03:00

This sunday I went to Büyük Ada, it's an island close by Istanbul. The island belongs to a group of islands known as the Prince islands. It basically has 2 mountains and some beaches, not many because most of the coast seems to be made of rock.
Cars with motor are forbidden on the island, so the biggest transportation there is the Fayton, a wood car pulled by a pair of horses! I felt like I went back a hundred years, the village center is filled with faytons, gotta be carefull with those horses when crossing the road!
Also, many people rent bycicles, and that's what I did, I cycled all around the island! It's not easy because the island is never plain! And watch out for those Faytons riding fast behind you!
I didn't study much information about the island, I forgot to bring my tourist guide. But one thing was obvious, the greek influence in the island. There are many christian crosses around, and I understood that many people there were speaking greek.
When looking for a place to rest from all that cycling I found the Büyükada Resort. I was looking for a cafe inside but the place is closed now, it only opens in May. Still the guy taking care of it was very nice and let me look around. They rent rooms with all meals included for 45€ person/day. The place has the beach, swimming pool and several restaurants, it seemed very nice.
In the end of the day I decided to try one of the fish restaurants. I selected the Dil balık, which seemed like the portuguese "Linguado", the name is similar too because they both mean something like "tongue fish". Unfortunately the fish was fried and not grilled, and it didn't taste that good to me... When the bill came it was painfull, 90YTL for 2 persons, that's way more than I expected.
So, for all that may be searching the net for restaurants in Buyuk Ada and find this page, here is one advice: Don't go to Kapri restorant!

2005-04-16T13:05:00.000+03:00

In Turkey you can allways find someone playing backgammon. In this case it was on the captain's bridge of the boat crossing the bosphorus.

The turkish flag everywhere

2005-03-26T10:40:00.000+02:00

Since 4 days ago the turkish flag seems to be everywhere. First I thought it was because of some celebration date, but no, it's the result of a mass demonstration after an incindent that has been passing on the news every day now. The video shows 3 kids (about 13 yeas old) stepping on the turkish flag and dragging it throught the floor.
This resulted in many demonstrations through the country in order to manifest respect to the flag. I see the flag in many house windows, on mini-bus windows and on the corner of almost every tv channel!

2005-03-26T10:26:00.000+02:00

A bus stop.

2005-03-21T22:42:00.000+02:00

Sultanahmet and the Golden Horn, from the Galata Tower.

Wanderlust top cities

2005-03-09T11:50:00.000+02:00

I found this text at ABIG about an english magazine Wanderlust that ranked the most beautiful cities of the world. Even though the text doesn't seem completely correct (they talk about Lisbon being in Belgium) it seems that Lisbon and Turkey were ex-aequo on the 3rd place. Uau!
Anyway, if any of you has this magazine please carify the ranking for me.

I got a job!

2005-03-04T12:15:00.000+02:00

After 2 months looking for a job I finally got one. I sent 40 CV's, received interest from 4 companies and finally received 2 job offers.
I decided for a company that isn't too far and has an interesting big project starting. I'll work as a software developer in the same business area of my last company in Portugal. I'll start my new working life (from 9h to 18h) during this month.
So the life of student/tourist/borga is finishing........................................................................ snif snif

The Numa Numa dance is cool!

2005-03-02T23:15:00.000+02:00

For those that follow the blogs around the web you probably allready saw this video. It's a big success and all because of blogging.
It's really fun to watch, it's a Romanian music that I've heard many times here in Turkey, every time I watch it I just want to dance along!
They say that the video changed him for the worst but I don't think so, since he seems happy to receive all the visitors in the original site.

Life is easier with Migros!

2005-02-26T23:05:00.000+02:00

With no car in here I got used to walking the 15 minutes until the closer supermarket shopping around and carrying the bags back home. It' good sport, but it's also a lot of time waisted on something really boring (I hate shopping!).
But cry no more! There's this great online shop at Migros! Shop on the site, select delivery time, go for a run in the park for the sport, receive the bags at home door and pay the bill to delivery guys!
The bill is 0,75€ more expensive for the home delivery, nice!
I remember that in Portugal, Continente had this service and asked for 10€ for the delivery! Expensive, hem? Hey, I can ask Migros if they deliver in Portugal! Heh, heh!

Tourism

2005-02-23T14:11:00.000+02:00

Last week I finally did some tourism, after 6 months here I finally visited Topkapı Palace and Aya Sofia. Being so much time here and not visiting these 2 important historic buildings can be considered a sin!

Topkapı Palace was the palace where Ottoman sultan's lived for many centuries, it's huge palace with many rooms and a big area for the Harem.

Aya Sofia was built by the Byzantine's as an Orthodox Church, then converted into a Mosque by the Ottoman's. Today it's no longer used as a religious house and it's possible to see the christian images (recovered behind the paint) together with the muslim decoration .

I also went to Dolambahçe Palace, the sultan's moved into this palace in the 19th century, it has a really big and impressive party room, with small windows hidding on one of the walls where the women from the Harem could check out the party.

Went to the Sunken Cistern, a big underground water storage, they installed colored lights and they play classical music creati a very nice atmosphere!

Went to Galata Tower, great view and great pictures of the city!

Pera Palas Oteli, that's where Agatha Christie wrote "Orient Express"!

Went to the Grand Bazaar, filled with small shops selling carpets, jewellery, handbags, paintings, books, and everything else!

Finally I went to a belly dance show! This show was made for tourists, and actually the artist I liked more was a turkish singer that could sing in 72 different languages! He sang"Coimbra é uma lição"!!!

Warm weather

2005-02-23T14:10:00.000+02:00

Snow is gone, it lasted only one week. Kids in Istanbul had 1 week of school vacations added, they were playing out in the snow while kids in Ankara went to school and were shown on TV saying "It's not fair!".

The weather has been warmer and since yesterday we have sun in Istanbul!

Snow

2005-02-07T20:55:00.000+02:00

It started snowing strongly this saturday! And today we woke up with about 10cm of snow!!
This is something very new for me, I have been on snowy places before, but to see a city change completely in 1 day because of the snow is something different!
Suddenly everything is covered in white!
The traffic was bad without snow, moving around the city took a lot of time, but now it's total caos! I haven't been to the european side, but this morning I was watching an inclined street filled with cars that just couldn't go up! Drivers accelerated desperately their unchained weels on the snowy road! Other cars using chains and big buses passed quickly through this poor guys. Later there were so many cars stuck that the road was blocked! Man, this is fun (not for them)!

Been there

2005-02-02T16:18:00.000+02:00

The world is still small for me...

create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Ayran

2005-01-31T17:54:00.000+02:00

Ayran is a popular drink in Turkey. It's made of yogurt, milk, water and salt!
It's sold everywhere together with coke, 7-up and Fanta, and many people drink it! When I first came to Turkey, after seeing it so much I decided to ive it a try:
Ugh! Terrible! Tastes like Natural yogurt, for me yogurt must have sugar and fruits!
But everyone is drinking it! Some times I try again, for the sake of aculturization!

Ayran

Sacrifice holyday

2005-01-22T16:53:00.000+02:00

We are now in Holydays (for those that have a job) here. It's the Kurban Bayram, a religious muslim holyday. From what I've learned it's based on a story that exists both in the Bible and Kuran where Abraham is told by God to sacrifice his son and when he was ready to do it God comes back and tells him he just needs to sacrifice a ram.
In Turkey with all the families that follow the tradition, the father of the family takes care of going to the place where they kill the animals and getting an animal for the sacrifice, then the family cooks a meal from it and part of the meat is given to charity.
In the old days the sacrifices were made on the streets, I can only imagine all the blood running through the streets of Istanbul with all these people killing the animals, and the noise! But now this is ilegal and there are places to do it all around the cities.
Unfortunatly I was partying the night before and didn't wake up in time to go watch it...
At the supermarkets charity organizations distribute leaflets asking people to give the skin of the animal to them.

Pachalafaka Online Gaming Event

2005-01-16T16:00:00.000+02:00

We play at Social Lounge 4, come everyone!

Pachalafaka Online Gaming Event

2005-01-13T15:59:00.000+02:00

Game: Spades
When: 16 January 2005, Sunday, 14:00(PT); 15:00(Central Europe); 16:00(TR)
Invited: All Pachalafaka readers!
Where: Yahoo Games
How:
The meeting place is at MSN Messenger; ICQ; Yahoo messenger or jut send email. If you don't have my contact post a comment on the blog and I'll find you.

To play you need a Yahoo login, if you have one for YahooMail or any Yahoo site, use it.
If you need to create one go to http://games.yahoo.com/ and click on "Sign up" on top.
When you have a login, go to http://games.yahoo.com/sp, I will inform everyone in which room we play.

Don't miss the big event! The best player wins a free tour around Istanbul*!!!!!

* transports not included, meals not included.

New Turkish Lira

2005-01-10T16:35:00.000+02:00

2005 started with a brand new coin for Turkey. The Yeni Türk Lirası (YTL).
1 YTL = 1 000 000 TL (1 million turkish liras)
So basically they take 6 zeros out of the prices. It's a good thing because prices were very confusing to read, for example a candy bar costed 1000000TL and now costs 1YTL.
The new money takes time to replace, after 10 days I get 20YTL notes from the ATM but when I pay I allways receive old money for change, except in the big supermarket.
Also I don't see people very excited about the change, everyone still talks in millions and thousands of Liras instead of YTL and kuruş (1 YTL has 100 kuruş). I guess people here got used to see new money come in since there the inflation was very high during the 80's and 90's and new money had to be made with more and more zeros.

...and

2004-12-30T03:02:00.000+02:00

Happy New Year!!!
Countdown in Portugal and Turkey.

Merry Christmas!

2004-12-23T14:46:00.000+02:00

Merry Christmas to everyone!
Check out Lisbon.

Back in PT

2004-12-16T14:01:00.000+02:00

Im back in Portugal for christmas. Since I arrived I've been meeting all the family and friends and sharing the news from the last 4 months.Things are more or less the same with small exceptions like, the country government went into pieces and a train tunel in Lisbon is almost collapsing.
I hope I can see everyone before I go back to Istanbul before the end of the year.

Gelinim Olur musun?

2004-12-09T19:34:00.000+02:00

Those who know me better know that I'm a big fan of reality shows like Big Brother! Just recently I discovered the best show in Turkish TV "Gelinim Olur musun" (Would you be my bride?), I have been watching as much as I can even though it's so hard for me to understand.
So here's how it works: In a closed house, watched by cameras there were in the begining 5 bachelors, their mothers and 10 eligible bachelorettes. They socialize among theirselves, there is a system of elimination and by now there are 3 guys with mums and 4 girls.
First I didn't get what was the point of having the guy's mum around but now I understood. In Turkey a mother can have a very important part in deciding who the son marries!
So here's what I saw: Ata (a guy) and Sinem (a girl) are in love with each other, they decided they would marry, so they called for the rings and the cake that the production offers to make the engagement party. But Semra (the mother) disagreed! When Ata went to a room with his mother to tell her about his decision she went mad! From what I understood she first threatned to break his 32 teeth and then said that he had to choose betwen this girl and his mother! You should see this woman screaming and threatning! She looks like the devil in person! Also from what I understood the reason for the mother's dislike is an episode that hapened before in the house where Sinem (the girl) made the comment "Crazy Semra" in front of Semra (the mother).
As a result of this dislike by the mother the young couple decided to unmake the decision of engagement.
Every morning the same channel has this 2 hours show about what's happening in the house, they invite the old guests of the house, the remaining parents of the guys and girls and the audience is welcomed to comment. It's crazy! Women shouting at each other defending the mother or defending the girl!! I loooove it!

Backup

2004-12-07T19:48:00.000+02:00

2 Weeks ago disaster happened, my portable pc disk crashed! This was really bad, because I depended on this laptop for so many things! And worse of all... I didn't backup my files!!!
Fortunately I was able to find a representant of Acer in Istanbul! They were really helpfull, they replaced the bad disk and recovered as much as they could from the old one, and all this for free since the laptop is still in the guarantee period! I was impressed!
I had planned to spend this last 2 weeks before going to Portugal sending CV's and searching job but I ended up spending most of the time finding a way to get the laptop back to work... Now the worse thing is I lost all the fotos I took in this 4 months in Istanbul!!! :( I think I had about 300 fotos! All the places and people I met here... no pictures to remember them...
So I take this oportunity to send a message to you all: Backup your files!

Transports in Istanbul

2004-12-02T15:08:00.000+02:00

Transports in Istanbul are very dıfferent from whatever I saw before.
First the otobüs'es. There are the public ones (red and blue) and the private ones (green). Many times the buses compete for clients and for space. In the important squares there are so many in so little room! You can see them doing the most incredible manouvers to go through the small space and start their journey. There are bus stops, but you can actually hop in and hop off wherever you want, just make the signal to the driver.
Then taxi's. They are everywhere! I think it must be really easy to be a taxi driver here because there are so many! When you walk by the road they are honking at you all the time to get you in their cab, but this is a generic thing for all transports, everyone honks for clients, even buses! Taxis are cheap here and people use them to go short ways when there is no other transport or they are in a big hurry!
Then dolmuş'es. They are yellow like the taxi's but not normal cars, they are vans that can take 8 people inside. They do pre-defined paths, they wait in the departure point until they have 8 clients and then they start they way. When it starts you tell the driver where you are going and pay the repective ammount which is well known depending on the area you go to. You can get out whenever you want, just tell the driver and he stops and opens the automatic door for you. You can also get in the dolmuş anywhere in between their path, but you must find a dolmuş that has an empty sit. He will never take more than 8 people inside. I think in the old days this rule didn't exist, because dolmuş means 'filled'!
Then minibus'es. They are my favourites! If you want to have some fun, hop in a dolmuş! These are usually the 'filled' ones'! I suggest the one that goes from Kadıköy to Pendik through the minibus caddesi! It's a trip filled with excitment, friendship and... people! Ok, here's how it works. A minibus has about 13 sitting places, the driver waits in the departure point until all the sits are occupied, then the journey starts! As in dolmuş'es when you get in you say where you're going and pay the driver, since a minibus is a crowded place you usually don' pay directly to the driver, you must pass the money and the destination to someone in front of you, who will pass to someone else until it gets to driver, then the change comes back through the same path. For a foreigner this can be really confusing because in the begining everyone is paying and there's money and destinations flowing all around the bus! Also you'll probably be part of this chain so you will be passing money and destination of someone else (in the begining I was just passing the money because I could never understand where they were going!). I think there' no limit on how many people a minibus can have, no matter how full the truck is the driver will allways stop to get another client! I really admire minibuses drivers, I think they have superpowers because they can do 5 things at the same time: They honk at everyone on the side walk and stop anywhere to let them in, they stop anywhere to let clients out, they receive the money and give change to new clients, they smoke cigarets and answer mobile phones anytime and finally they drive in Istanbul streets! And they drive like crazy! If there is still any rule that normal cars obbey in these roads, the minibuses will ignore all of them, they change lanes any time just to be faster or to get/drop clients on the side and they rarely stop on red signs.

İlginç ve komik şeyler Türkiye'de

2004-11-24T18:05:00.000+02:00

I'm finishing the 3rd month of turkish school this week. I won't be continuing the next levels for now. One of the last homeworks at school was writing a composition about Interesting and comik things in Turkey. So for the great honnor of you all I'll share my writings with the world through this blog:

Benim için Türkiye'de çok farklı ve ilginç şeyler var.
Mesela Kolonya, her yerde var ve herkes kullanır! Her lokanta, kahve, bar , otobüste, yemek varsa, kolonya peçetesi var. Ve restoranda hesapla garson bir kolonya şişesini getirip herkesin eline döker. Kolonya hem güzel kokar hem de eli temizler, çok iyi!
Ve terlikler, her eve normal ayakkabımla girmemeliyim, evin kapısında ayakkabılarımı çıkarmam lazim ve varsa terlik kullanabilirim. Bu da hijyenik bir şey!
Ve tuvaletler. İki tip var: alafranga ve alaturka hela. Alaturka tuvalet kullanamam ama alafrangasında ilginç bir özellik var, bir musluğu açınca su geliyor, suyla "her şeyi" temizleyebilirim. Burada tuvalet kağıdı temizlemez, o sadece kurutur! Her şey tertemiz!

For me Turkey has very different and comik things.
For example cologne, you can find it anywhere and everyone uses it! All restorants, cafes, bars, buses, if there is food there are cologne napkins. And at the restorant, with the check the garson brings a cologne bottle and pours it on everyone's hands. Cologne smells good and cleans your hands, very good!
And slippers, I can't get in any house with my normal shoes on, at the house door I need to take my shoes off and if there are slippers I can use them. This is also an higyenik thing!
And toilets. There are two types: Alafranga and alaturka toilets. I can't use the alaturka but there is an interesting functionality wıth the alafranga toilet, when you open this tap water comes out, with the water you can clean "everything". In here toilet paper is not for cleaning, it's only used for drying! Everything oh so clean!

Ok, for writing this masterpiece I had 14 grammar errors, which is ok... I specially had some prblems explaining how toilets work!

What a boat ride!

2004-11-21T18:37:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I had a very different boat ride on the Marmara sea! Everyday I cross the Bosphurus by boat but never I had a trip like that one!
The wind was strong and the sea had big waves, I was on the fast ferry with N. who isn't used to go on the boat. After 2 minutes I could see we were in for a good ride! the boat was jumping up and down, left and right, really high! For me it was fun in the begining "Wow! Better than anything you get in the amusement fairs!" but after 20 minutes of this, it started to become annoying. N. was scared and feeling bad from her stomach all the way, and she was not the only one, I think I heard about 10 people vomiting in the boat... Also there was a lot of scared faces, you cannot believe how much that boat was jumping!
The boat inside is similar to a plane, with many rows of seats, about 200 people inside. It has closed doors not supposed to be opened during the trip. But it was really hot inside and it was getting hard to breath, so this guy got up (he is considered a hero by N.) and walked the corridor which was not easy at all and opened the door and standed there keeping the door open, I could see the water outside jumping high and getting in through the door!
I also decided to get up and get some bags from the garbage boxes in the corridor to distribute through the people near me that were not so sure they could keep the lunch in...
After 45 minutes we arrived our destiny, a trip that usually takes 25 minutes and is oh so fast and smooth! N. was still shaking, but after a hot tea recovered well, I was feeling sick in my stomach and couldn't think about eating for about 1 hour. We were planing to visit the Prince Islands in the Marmara sea this weekend, but after this we decided to make it some other time...

Cologne

2004-11-21T17:48:00.000+02:00

Lemon cologne is a very popular thing in Turkey. A strong lemon and alcohol liquid, they use it in bottles and in those closed packs with a wet napkin inside.

It's very common to find cologne napkin packs in cafes, restaurants, bars, buses with food service, everywhere you can eat! And it's very common for people to carry these napkins around with them, specially girls in their purses.

The garson in the restaurant usually brings the bottle fo cologne with the check and fills everyone's hands with it. In turkish houses it's considered good manners for the house owners to offer cologne in their guests hands.

Smells good, and desinfects at the same time! You have to love it!

Understanding Ankara

2004-11-15T17:19:00.000+02:00

We're on holydays now, ramazan finished and there is 4 days vacation. People eat a lot of chocolats and sweets, they travel to visit family around the country, they finally can drink alcohol, it's party time!

I don't have family to visit but on these vacations I came to Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. I have been here before but I didn't know any turkish, now it feels completely different! It's interesting to walk around the streets and think about how it was before, I couldn't read anything on the shops, when I was alone I went to some shops allways made a big effort to buy food and other things, in Istanbul it's common to find someone that speaks some english, but in Ankara it's really hard! Now I go back to the shops and have big conversations with them: "Hi, remember me? now what did you want to tell me 6 months ago?" :) It's a different city!

Atatürk

2004-11-11T19:24:00.000+02:00

Yesterday I woke up at 7:00 like everyday, caught the train and the boat to the european side, like everyday, and caught the bus to the school, like everyday. In the bus I standed in between the crowd, then the bus stopped, I thought traffik light was red... Feeling unconfortable with the bag on my back and thinking "Why is the #%&/ bus taking so much time to move, I'm late!" I put the bag on the floor and looked through the window, cars weren't moving "Oh no, another accident!", a woman came out of the car and was standing straight looking ahead, then I noticed no one was speaking in the bus! Ah! No one was moving! Then I looked to the watch, 9:05. Hmm, That's the time of Atatürk death, I remembered that when I visited Dolma Bahçe Palace they told us clocks in the palace were stopped in the 9:05 position because he died in that minute.

So, for 1 minute Turkey stops (except ignorant foreigners who think they got in the twilight zone), they tell me that even cars on the highways stop at this time! Atatürk is probably the most important person in this country. If you ever come to Turkey it's impossible not notice him. In every office, shops, restaurants, parks, hotels, schools you see either a picture or statue of him. From him I hear only good things "he saved our country", "Turkey could be just like Iran!", I think I only heard bad comments about him when I went to Greece! He's not a popular guy over there.

So, I guess I owe to him the fact that I can be here and feel so much at home. Long live Atatürk!

Alexandroupolis - Αλεξανδρούπολης

2004-10-31T01:26:00.000+03:00

I'm in Greece! So here is how it works, you go to Turkey and they give you a 3 month tourist visa. If you want to stay more than 3 months you need to get out of the country and in again, so I decided to visit Alexandropolis for the weekend.
It's easy to see I'm in a different country. The first thing I noticed is that it's impossible for me to read one single thing, everywhere I just see the symbols I was using in college when studying Math and Physicks! I go like "Ok where is the street gama alfa tau epsylon niu?" Then everything looks more organized and clean, unlike Turkey, there are garbage boxes on the sidewalks. Women wear skirts and not one scarf in sight! People here look dressy, specially on saturday night, unlike Turkey I don't see lower class people, no beggers, garbage searchers, street children... But the biggest difference was presented when I crossed the street, the car stopped and let me pass! This is something that never happens in Turkey, not even on the zebras.
Alexandropolis reminds me a lot Ancona, the Italian city where I studied for 6 months. It's a nice little town by the sea, there are a lot of motor-bikes, a lot of teenagers with Vespas. It's hard to believe that I'm just 50 Km from Turkey because I find so litle in common. I had a talk with a man from Alexandroupolis who told me his father story, in 1920 his father was living in a small city that now belongs to Turkey, he had a good house and properties there, when the turkish troops came he had to run away and he lost all this. His father is now dead and this man is about 60 years old, all his life he never went to Turkey and he has no plans to do it.
When I want to speak with anyone here I go like "Speak english? Français? Italiano? Turkçe?" Usually they speak at least one of these languages :) Many of them seem to understand Turkish and some speak it, but it seems that they don't want to talk it. The greek man next to me on the bus spoke greek, good turkish and basic english, all the time he was trying to speak english even though I could understand him better in turkish.
Ah, and I have to talk about the commerce timetables here, can you believe that the tourism agency is closed from 14:30 to 18:00?! And many other places have the same time table: 9:00-14:30 and 18:00-20:30! 3,5h for lunch, hmm it's not bad!
It's a nice place and everyone is quite friendly, but I feel good about going back to Turkey tomorrow! Don't tell the greeks about this!

Daha Türkçe biliyorum!!

2004-10-29T21:01:00.000+03:00

I finished the second level at the turkish language school!
We learned new grammar, so now I know how to say:

Everyday I wash my teeth before I lie down in bed.
If you eat a lot of food with sugar you get fat.
I can't live without eating.

And now you ask "Why would you need to know how to say that?", and I answer "Ödev için".

I start the 3rd level next week. I'm learning all the theory with no problems and I can use it well when writing or reading, but I feel I'm getting behind on the conversation. I need to practice more and more the talking.

Edirne

2004-10-27T14:38:00.000+03:00

Last saturday me and 3 friends went for a 1 day trip to Edirne. It's a small town (well every town is small when you come from Istanbul) with some beautifull mosques. I was impressed by the Selimiye mosque, it's beautifull and grandious! One of the attractions in Edirne is the oil wrestling, where men try to bring their greasy oponent to the floor! Unfortunately these games only takes place in June...
After walking for the whole afternoon we stopped on the local baker shop just in time to see everyone coming to buy the traditional Ramazan bread, they bring their ingredients like cheese, sausages, olives to the baker shop and in 5 minutes the baker cooks the bread mixed with the ingredients. We just bought a simple bread.
One interesting thing happened on the way back to Istanbul. A police operation stop stopped the bus on the highway, the bus waiter went out to ask what they wanted and came back to get a couple of water bottles to them, after this we cantinued trip! I guess they were thirsty!

Ramazan

2004-10-19T18:12:00.000+03:00

The ramazan has started. Many people in Turkey follow this 1 month muslim celebration where you are supposed to: Not eat, not drink, not smoke during sun time and restrain from many other things through the whole Ramazan period - like drinking. During the whole day people are fasting and around 18:30 when the mosque calls for the last prayer of the day, they get their food and drinking. A lot more people than I thought follow the fasting, in Istiklal Caddesi (Main torist street) in a tea house I saw this kid, around 19 years old with a school bag praying and then eating his meal with a very hungry face!
Around 2:00AM the Davulci (man of the drum) starts walking around streets banging on his big drum to wake people up, people get up and eat something since when they get up for work sun is already up.
For me it's incredible, I feel hungry at lunch time and I think I need some food as soon as possible and I imagine how it is for this guy or that woman that don't eat all day! But it seems that smokers have the hardest time, they don't smoke all day! Around 2:00AM it's easy to find people on the house windows smoking cigarets after cigarets!

Eurasia Marathon

2004-10-10T20:10:00.000+03:00

Today, I participated on the Istanbul Marathon that starts in Asia and finishes in Europe! In reality I just walked the 8 Km, since the prize for the 42 Km run was only 20.000$...
It was very good to cross the bridge over the Bosphorus! Weather was perfect, not too hot, but sunny and clear (unlike last wednesday when it was raining so much that I thought Istanbul was going to sink under the bosphurus!). Today, from the bridge we could see all the Yalı (Palaces by the Bosphurus) and all the big and small boats that crowd the sea!
It reminded me the Lisbon Marathon, crossing the Ponte 25 de Abril, actually the bridge is very similar (San Francisco style) and the views over the rivers are similar, the differences being that everything is more crowded here, a lot more people run on this Marathon and a lot more buildings exist in Istanbul!
After the 3 hours walk, I received a medal and a brand new t-shirt to add to my marathon t-shirt collection!

Biraz türkçe biliyorum!

2004-10-04T16:23:00.000+03:00

I finished the first level of the turkish course with top grade!
The exam had the following parts:

Reading a text and answering questions
Listening to a text and answering questions
Grammar test
Composition
Conversation

I'm very happy with the school (DİLMER), they have a fast rythm 5 days/week course, and our teacher was very good in presenting the course and keeping everyone up to date! I made good friends during this month of course, coming from Germany, USA and France.

My turkish is still very basic: some vocabulaire, present, past and future tenses. On daily life I can express myself much better and I start to understand what they tell me. I still can't read the newspaper, and I get maybe 10% of what they say in television :(

Tomorrow I start the second level. The school has 6 levels, so only 5 to go!

Akbil

2004-10-02T14:24:00.000+03:00

I'm really well impressed with Akbil. This is a small gadget people use to pay transports in Istanbul. With Metro, buses, trams and boats you just push akbil to the machine and get in. It works as an electronic pocket money, you charge it on machines around the city with the card or paper money, and the credit is stored inside it, somehow.
It reminds me PMB, this portuguese electronic pocket money card that appeared about 10 years ago and disappeared some time after. I was reading about this (read "Potenciais perdedores com o PMB") project failure and it seems the problem was not security as I thought.
Anyway, this system really works in Istanbul making transport payment a lot faster!

LangMemorize

2004-09-26T13:57:00.000+03:00

Check out my latest webtool for word memorizing!
I'm still working on it, but it's allready good enough to test my memory with the oh so different turkish vocabulary!
I've got a list with 1200 words and I think I memorized about 500! :)

NOTE: An here's a link to online turkish dictionary.

Long time no write

2004-09-22T18:03:00.000+03:00

Yes! My faithful readers cry for more texts on this blog!
My last text was on the 7th of September, the first day of turkish classes. Since then it has been harder to have the time to come to a net cafe. I have 4 hours of classes in the morning. Also, I start to know more and more people here and meeting them in different places in this city takes a lot of time in transports, I spend on average 3h in transports every day!
Our TR:hoş (nice) TR:oğretman (teacher) gives TR:çok (a lot of) homework and I spend on average 2h studying (hmm, or not)!
The teacher is actually really nice! Last friday we had a study trip around the city, new interesting places with superb views! I specially enjoyed the view there where the bosphurus meets the black sea!
Today the teacher took some of us to lunch at Üsküdar and a visit to the KızKulesi. Excelent turkish food and a great place to enjoy a 360 view of the city in the middle of the Bosphurus!

Body language

2004-09-07T19:32:00.000+03:00

One of the things that brings more confusion to my every day life here are the gestures, specially yes and no.
Turns out that in Turkey they lift theır eyebrows when they mean no. This brings confusion because, to me, this seems more like a yes than a no!
Also, my western no (knoding head from side to side) means I don't understand. So they just repeat the question :)
Check out this site for some turkish body language insight (must remember not to use the Gesture that means a person is homosexual , see last picture in the site)

Another thing I found interesting is greeting. So here's the result of my sociologic study:

Occasion	Portugal	Turkey
Man - Man (not close)	Handshake	Handshake
Man - Woman (not close)	2 kisses	Handshake
Woman - Woman (not close)	2 kisses	Handshake
Man – Man (friends)	Handshake	2 kisses
Man – Woman (friends)	2 kisses	2 kisses
Woman – Woman (friends)	2 kisses	2 kisses

PT Rules:

Man never kısses man
Woman never handshakes

TR Rules:

It doesn't matter if it's a man or woman, the only difference is being friend or not.

Man, it's hot in here!

2004-09-02T18:18:00.000+03:00

I was going to write that it's much hotter and humid here than I'm used to, but after comparing Lisbon and Istanbul weather for yesterday I can see the difference is not that big, still humidity here got up to 94%! I guess that, when in Portugal, I spent most of the time surrounded by air contitioned and now it's all au naturell!
Anyway, this is what I see every day: people go in the dolmuş which is a mini-bus for 10 people with 2 small windows and no big refrigeration system and they have a turkish bath there! No wonder they invented this! :-P
It's really good for your body to renew the water, they tell me. And then there's a big market for small water bottles, in big squares you can see water bottle sellers wandering though the crowd selling their product, almost everyone is carrying a water bottle since sometimes it's hard to survive without it!

Victory day

2004-08-30T12:33:00.000+03:00

Today there is a national holiday in Turkey: Victory day is when they celebrate the decisive victory at Dumlupınar of the Turkish Republican armies over the invading Greek army during Turkey's War of Independence in 1922.

Since yesterday I started noticing that in many shops and houses they put out the the national flag. This made me remember the recently big patriotic movement in Portugal with the Euro 2004 (the Greek invaders had the victory there :P) where everybody was displaying the national flag on house windows and cars. This display in turkey isn't as big as that one in Portugal, but I'm sure they use their flag more frequently here then us in Portugal.

I know how to count!!!

2004-08-28T15:00:00.000+03:00

Bir
İki
Üç
Dört
Beş
Altı
Yedi
Sekiz
Dokuz
On

Learning turkish

2004-08-27T16:00:00.000+03:00

Learning Turkish

I finished a few days ago the turkish online course at Distance Turkish Learning Center. It gave me some help expressing myself here and understanding some words they tell me.
The course isn't for tourists though... I still don't know how to ask the dolmuş driver to stop the bus using decent turkish, and I still don't know how to count, so I never understand prices :P That's something I have to learn soon!
I'm always making funny faces to show that I don't understand, I use the expression Turkçe bilmyorum (I don't speak turkish) a lot. Many people here actually know some english if they're writing but they understand and speak very little. I was surprised when I once asked for the bus to Kadıköy to a 60 year old man, he didn't speak but he wrote in my notebook with perfect english The number is 80. Usually I start with Do you speak English? If they answer yes I start my question, they understand what I ask but usually have many problems answering. It seems they have to really concentrate hard to build the sentence in english. It's also common that after 10 minutes talking in english they seem tired from the effort! People tell me that english and turkish are very different languages in grammar and it's difficult making the translation.
So I guess that when (and if) I actually start having conversations in turkish I'll be the one tired... I have been looking up the courses available in Istanbul. It all comes down to 3:

The first 2 are on the european side of Istanbul which means more than 1h of transports to get there and another hour to return, they offer courses of 4h every week day with about 10 students per class. The third one is on the anatolyan side, with 3 students, 3h 3 times per week.
I still haven't decided but I prefer the idea of having more lesson time and also more people to meet, so it seems I'll be crossing the Bosphurus to go to school everyday!

Istanbul nightlife

2004-08-25T13:56:00.000+03:00

Last saturday night U. invited me to meet him in Taksim for some drinks. So I had my first night out in Istanbul. Taksim was filled with people, it seemed every place was packed with people, but U. knows his way around here and he was in a nice quiet place with a group of friends. It was a bar on the 4th or 5th floor of some building with a great view over the Bosphurus!
In these packed areas you can find all sort of places in the various floors of the buildings. They were initially habitational residences, but now they're bars, restaurants, cyber cafes, hairdresses, anything!
After a while we went to place where we could actually drink alcohol (not all places sell alcohol since they need to pay for an expensive license for that). The new place had a nice esplanade that wasn't too full. We were 6 people, so they asked for 2 nargile's. Nargile is a water pipe, they chose apple flavour (you actually choose the flavour you want to smoke) and started smoking from the tube :P. So, following the rule When in Turkey be turkish I tried it. I tried getting enough smoke coming out of my mouth so it would show in the picture, and with this I was quickly coughing the apple smoke :P Once more I confirm that my lungs like fresh air! This place also served food, I tried the Portuguese fried chicken, which was in the menu! And it was actually cooked in a common portuguese way called panado.
The night ended with a walk around this crowded neighbourhood where we ate mexilhoes:pt. Salesmen carry this stuff in buckets around the streets! You pick the mexilhao:pt, open it, put some lemon on top and eat it. It's gooooood!

Skype rules!

2004-08-23T20:41:00.000+03:00

Yesterday I took my laptop to a cybercafe and tested Voice Over Op with great success! I was talking in conference with 2 friends from Portugal. Sound quality is very good and it's just like talking on the phone! Cool!
So, if you're interested in talking with me in a cheap way, grab SKYPE!

All good fellows!

2004-08-22T21:30:00.000+03:00

Renting a place in Istanbul seems to be more difficult than what i thought, people tell me that it's hard to find good prices due to the big demand (more and more people arrive to this city) and it envolves a lot of bureaucracy signing the renting contract, getting electricity, water, gas...
Now I'm thinking things can be easier if I rent a room, but I don't see much market in that area too..
Today I decided to walk around my hotel in search, I tryed to find shop sellers in the area that spoke english and I asked them if they knew of anyone renting anything in the area. I found this (big and strong) grocery man that spoke some english and he told me I could find a pension much cheaper than the hotel I'm currently staying. Then he talked with his friend Ali (big and fat) and turns out that Ali offered to take me to a pension with cheaper prices, so we took the dolmuş all the way to this pension, Ali talked with the clerk and they agreed on a 12 eur/night which is better than the 30 eur/night I was paying.
So, once again I'm surprised with the turkish fellowshipness! Thanks Ali! :)

Walking in Bağdat

2004-08-20T18:40:00.000+03:00

When I was studying this street on the map it seemed like I a good morning walk from my hotel to P.'s work place. But after 1h walking and reaching the middle of the way I found out better. I think I walked about 5Km on this street and I had other 4Km to walk. I was asking for directions in the way using my recent learned and bad turkish "Bostanğı burası? Nerede?".
I asked once more to a guy in a parked car, he spoke excelent english and explained the distance I still had in front of me. He ended up giving me a ride to my destination, since he was going that way, a really nice guy! :) He was in London for 3 years and that's where he got his good english.
Bağdat street is more than 30Km (my guess) and has 1 or 2 lanes on each side. It's chaotic like every other main road in this city. Cars stopping and people crossing everywhere! When you walk on it you're honked every 30 seconds by taxis or dolmuş's (minibuses) that want you to get in them!

I'm here!

2004-08-20T16:30:00.000+03:00

I Took the plane to London where I met this Lithuanian woman that spoke portuguese and lived in Portugal for 3 years.
On the London airport I had the privileged chance of buying a pack of Lemsip the miraculous flu healer!
Then I took the 5h plane to Istanbul, we started with more than 40 mins delay but arrived in time due to good winds blowing on our tail! They were playing the Independence day on the plane, but they had to cut off the end of the movie! So, I ended up not knowing if humans killed every bad allien ship. It was a fun movie but not very believable.
U. came to get me from the Atatürk Airport and take me to my hotel. The distance is about 40Km! Airport is on the european side of Istanbul and the hotel is down on the anatolian side. We even got to see some palaces and big mosques along the the Bosphurus and Marmaran sea!

Almost gone

2004-08-18T14:15:00.000+03:00

It is now departure day minus 1.
Everything seems to be ready, I'm not packing too much stuff since I'll probably be moving from place to place in the begining.
I started learning turkish online and I allready know 120 words! And I know how to make some dialogs like What is this?, Who is this?. It seems like grammar is not that hard and the difficult stuff is memorizing all the vocabulary that is so different from anything I know.
After 2 weeks of farewell lunches and dinners I gained 2Kg! And I wasn't able to see everyone!! Anyway, it's just 4 months, I'll be right back!

I'm in!

2004-08-16T00:10:00.000+03:00

Here starts my first ever blog!
I don't have any kind of experience with blogs, not even as a reader, but I figure this is the best way to keep people posted on what's happening with me.