Oma's Wise Words of Wisdom: The Turkish Version
25. September 2006 | en
If mothers are always right, than grandmothers may just as well be psychic. Even if they are not actually your grandmother. Just someone else’s you’ve decided to adopt… with or without her consent. (Because Oma Helga is one of the coolest women I have ever met, and I hope at 83 I still go to the gym every week, tell my grandchildren off for not buying enough cake fast enough, and then ditch the annual family vacation because it conflicts with my social calender and I run off instead to hang out with my own friends. But I digress.) Anyway as soon as I arrived in Stuttgart I was treated to cake and coffee and general yummy happiness. With the cake finished and my guard down I have a paper slapped in front of me and I’m commanded to read.12. There is no need to go to Turkey she tells me, they are being blown up there. And the men stare too much. Sometimes they even lock you in kitchens. (this was said with some German in there, I may have been confused. Oma suspects correctly I know more German then I let on. But I don’t understand a word when its in a torrent of anger). When the financial offerings are explained she re contemplates, and says ok, you can go (please note she gave me permission), but if its bad you can always come back to Germany.
The reason why I never posted this straight away was because I needed to temper it a little. The original one I wrote had a large rant about the men in Istanbul. Now I change that to the men in Sultanhamet where I was staying. When I went to other areas of Istanbul I met the occasional jackass, but no more than any other city. However after speaking with Hans Ive decided not to temper anything at all. Rather you get the Turkish and Greek versions of how my first week went down. (Thank you Hans). And I will post this one with the disclaimer that I did actually calm down and stop hating. (That is possible even for one who once the earned the nickname hates a lot the anti care bear. Lest we forget the zen like state I acquired after all my belongings were robbed in Vietnam. No longer am I the girl who makes my brothers quake between fear and laughter as I tear a room apart screaming at my iguana for taking a poo poo in her freshly cleaned cage.)
And in fairness there was the lovely bus driver at the airport.
1 Pish to my inability to actually read anything beyond the Steiffle the cats comics.
2 But now I’m a translator DOUBLE PISH. Is that how you even spell pish?
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N 41° 00.892
E 29° 00.939
