Mornings in Turkey

The first morning back in Europe, five years after I’d packed up my bedroom in Vauban, toured Aschaffenburg and Berlin each for a second time, and flown out of Frankfurt back to Michigan for my final year of college.

No fear or apprehension, to be back in Frankfurt Flughafen. I ate a pretzel, messaged Emma (still in Ukraine) on Facebook, wandered to find my gate for the next flight—the flight to Istanbul. I’m not sure how we landed in Frankfurt; it was dark still on arrival, I think, but soon morning gave way to this thick spooky fog out the terminal windows. I alighted in Istanbul at 1pm, waited a long time for my bag, couldn’t find the sign with my name, for the taxi to my hostel in Sultanahmet. Didn’t like it one bit. Once at the hostel, a fog of sleep, a shower (maybe), an unavoidable nap. I ventured out in the evening dark to see the Hagia Sophia and find sustenance, but couldn’t shake the overly friendly young Turkish man who just wanted to practice his English with me over some tea. I went home hungry to the hostel, couldn’t sleep. After that first night, Emma and I had no reservations for anything.

On the second day, I bought us plane tickets to İzmir for that afternoon, reserved the last room at a recommended pansiyon in Selçuk, wandered the gardens of the Sultan’s palace, and took a shuttle back to Atatürk International Airport, in search of meine Emma, arriving from Odessa. When her face finally emerged from the crowd spilling out of the international terminal, I was so happy. She was wearing a striped sweater whose twin I had also packed for the trip. I hadn’t seen her in almost a year and a half.

Morning three in the Old World, morning two in Turkey, we climbed three flights of turning stone stairs to the pansyion's terrace, picked out for ourselves one of the little circle tables that ringed the bench that wrapped around three sides of the terrace, and were presented with a feast.

**
I wanted to write about mornings. Early morning, when the light’s still a little blue and the breeze is so fresh that you always get a twinge of nostalgia for something – first days of school past, the end of hot summers, waking up early in a tent or on a lake or for a peaceful journey through a city still mostly aslumber.

More Than Work

2014 was a year that I really tried to put what I wanted to do ahead of work. That meant giving up my pay to visit friends in Florida and California, requesting long weekends off for my birthday and Labor Day, going Up North for a full week, and taking an unpaid two-week vacation to Turkey and Germany, since I’d only been a permanent employee for two weeks when I got on that transatlantic flight. I got lots of drinks with friends and starting buying myself books again, made a list of summer activities and crossed them off one by one: kayak the Huron, Cinetopia Film Festival, Shakespeare in the Arb, drink lots of sangria (could do better at that one).

It’s a mixed message, because the rest of the time I was working over 50 hours a week—extremely bitter about that fact, as I had not requested that many hours and couldn’t get rid of them. I planned to quit all three pointless jobs to make room for my trip to Turkey. I didn’t have to, though, because I got one real job instead.

2014 was not a year I tried to really work on what I wanted to do. I didn’t submit to the translation contest that spring, or the extra one that summer, although I’d completed a full first draft and liked that text more than any of the others I’d previously attempted; I didn’t keep, or even make, an editorial schedule for my blog like I had intended; I didn’t make any business plans or take any classes or really try to envision my ideal life, beyond fewer work hours, more sunlight and freedom. Instead I read extensively about a lot of successful solopreneurs, creatives, obnoxiously/appealingly/but not too outrageously well-off and hard-working people in the blogosphere, and envied them, and then switched tabs to my money spreadsheet and stared at my savings account’s steady growth, thanks to better wages, controlled lifestyle inflation, and too many hours at those three pointless jobs.

You know what I did at the end of 2014? I cut my monthly contributions to my emergency fund ($16 IS TEMP fund) in half—since my employment was no longer temporary—and started what I named the BIG MONEY fund. Maybe I should call it the Big Dreams fund. Maybe I should stop thinking so hard about my savings, but although the level of my obsession and reveling in these details may be unhealthy, I love it, and I won’t. The Big Dreams fund could help pay to move to another city in a year or two, or buy my own car in a new place (though I'd rather it not). It could help throw a once-in-a-lifetime party and buy a once-in-a-lifetime dress. Maybe it will start a business, or buy a house. Now it’s time to get to dreaming and planning, so when the money’s there, I know what to do with it.

1. The beach at Olympos Valley on Turkey's Mediterranean coast
2. My little desk chez moi
3. Lunch under the citrus trees at Bayram's in Olympos Valley.

The Fortress of Europe

As viewed from a ferry in the Bosphorus. Built across the strait from the older Fortress of Asia. Instrumental in Mehmet II's conquest of Constantinople. I really get a kick out of the name: the Fortress of Europe.

Happy November from a person who is happy to be back on Michigan soil, after a beautiful trip to Turkey and Germany.

(More photos on Instagram, and more to come, here and there.)