We went to Aydin, the capital of Didim's "state" the other day for my Turkish marriage visa, about an hour away. It was less headache than I had anticipated since of course my Turkish speaking husband was with me. We had to go to three different government buildings to get everything completed. I wondered why they couldn't consolidate the steps/buildings, silly me? One building was only for making payments. If we didn't have a car it would have taken a day to complete like it has previous times when I have gone to get visas by myself. Turkish officials love photos, you always need several passport size photos with you and their is also a love of stamps, lots of very official stamping going on.
After a few steps we walked out of one government building and on the corner was a juice man, squeezing fresh pomegranate(nar) and orange(portakal) juice(suyu). Delicious!!!!! He freshly squeezes you the mixture of your choice for 1.5 TL about one dollar and serves it up in little glasses. In Turkey there isn't much of a to-go cup culture which can be great as far as not producing waste. Also Americans really do super size everything...A funny side story is my husband and I went to a Starbucks here in Turkey. I got us two medium coffees because he tries to like my American coffee. I brought it to him and he's all, "whoo baby, that's enough coffee for like 4 Turkish people." In Turkey the Turkish coffee is unfiltered espresso, it is small and since it is full of grounds by the end you flip over the cup onto the saucer and then your friend reads you your fortune by reading the grounds. I don't care for the grounds in style but it tastes good and it is fun to get your fortune read. Also there is a deep love for Nescafe, instant coffee that I am attempting to get used to? But the juice...fresh and delicious!
4 comments:
Haha, all that stamping is certainly a process. When I got my residence permit in Istanbul, it took a month longer than promised for the thing to even be ready for pick-up...and then there was the 4-hour event of finding the right building. They ended up sending the group of students I was with to the refugee division (???) of the main police station to pick up the permits.
The methods were questionable, but at least we acquired them in the end...
finally an update! I love you!
Ooh yum! And yes - the sizes at starbucks are huge! Even in Istanbul I think it is hard to find a really good coffee that isn't really expensive! At the moment I get mine from Caffe Nero but I still can't love the long life milk taste :( Ahh, good coffee, how I miss you.
We were so lucky when I went to get my residency the second time (after not realising you had to get at number at 8am the first time we went). The second time, according to the number we had, we should have had to wait at least a couple of hours to be seen, but then when they called out the 4 people in front of us they were ALL outside having a cigarette. We raced up to the counter - it was great!
Yes everyone has their nightmare visa stories!
Thanks my sister for the enthusiasm! I love you too!
Verity- I agree about the milk even the Gercek sut, the fresh milk tastes so sweet to me and only comes in whole milk! I also miss really good coffee everywhere also!
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