Yet another (temporary) farewell & Where is my home?

Third-Lieutenant Candidates at Packing
Next week is our Sugar (Ramadan) Fest- the fest we have after the fasting month (Ramadan) is over. That is why I have a 9-day-break to my military life!!. It is weird to stay somewhere else after staying in the same place for 45 days with the same people around.

One of my funs in the military service is to have short visits to the other bedrooms on our floor for short chats (There are 12 on our floor, each with 4 people). I was having one of such visits on thursday night when I saw some of us (ı.e. the third-lieutenant candidates) being busy with packing things to get ready for 9-day-leave: : luggages around in the room, some clothes on beds to be put inside; half-ambiguous looks with some happiness signs on faces.

Well, farewells always make me emotional. Packing is an obvious sign of a farewell (albeit a temporary one in this case). I went outside then, and had a sit in the dark in front of the building. "Why do you look so thoughtful?" asked Egemen, sitting accross with Ihsan. "Well" I said "you may find it weird, but witnessing people packing made me a bit sad"; and I got a big laugh from him in return, implying a "the weirdest-feeling-I-ever-heard" comment.

Where is my home?
Of course, all of us are happy to leave the military complex: we will be with our families/ beloved ones, away from the discipline-rich environment of military service. Everybody looked forward to be home: but it was a bit weird and confusing for me.

For sure, I missed to be away from the military life, I missed my family: but I was confused: living in the Netherlands just before my military adventure; I guess I have more missed to be in Amsterdam, at Funenpark 41 in my place, rather than to be at my home in Istanbul. I missed to have dinners with multi-national friends there, to be at BDA group at the university in Amsterdam or at UMC Utrecht and to chat with colleagues/friends there, to walk in train stations, in the city, to get on Bus 11 at Utrecht, or to take tram 26 to/from Rietlandpark in Amsterdam, to have visits to friends in Delft, in the Hauge; to spend some time in Amsterdam parks with water birds around, and all-in-all to cycle..

Poor me: I could not see Fiona :( :(
I guess those feelings explain why I had that dream in the very morning of that night: a dutch-associated dream.

I heard Suzanne saying something, and she was entering into a room on the other side of a corridor. I guess she was changing Fiona's diapers there. I shouted her "How is Fiona?". And made an attempt to see the little baby.

Poor me :(. I then heard the alarm of my watch: It is 06:15 : time to get up, shave and make your bed/ cupboard tidy, and rush for military gathering.

I was really sad for few minutes to miss the opportunity to see little Fiona in my dream :)

Cyclists: Another Source of Happiness

People always asked me in Holland if there was any cyclists in Turkey during the everyday life. "No, never ever" I said. "Only children in summer time, for fun, in front of their houses".

Well, this was valid for Istanbul, and I thought it was the same all over Turkey.

Luckily, It wasn't. But, this, I have realized only when I came to this small city few weeks ago.

I always appreciated the role of bikes in dutch people. I always envied them. That was why I was very happy- as in the case of seeing a magpie- when I saw cyclists in this small western city of Turkey.

It is not like you see only few. You can see a cyclist passing through in every 10 minutes or so (which may sound very rare compared to Holland :) ). They are not children; they are all adults who even sometimes carry some bags with their bikes: exactly dutch (and danish) style! Moreover, It is not unusual to see bikes parked here and there.

Spotting bikes and cyclists in the city centre makes me smiling since:

• it reminds me of Netherlands; my (Johan's) bike there, my cyclings etc....
• it makes me proud to see that people here are aware of the advantages of using bikes. I guess it only need some municipality-based official encouragement to make it more common here.

A Magpie: A Source of Happiness

I have hardly been in any other turkish city other than Istanbul. And, Istanbul is quite poor in terms of bird 'content'. We only have sparrows, pigeons, crows, and pinkish pigeons, whose english name being laughing dove (Streptopelia senegalensis) -as I have just learned via googling-.

It was the beginning of this week. Morning. I guess I was busy with making my bed/my cupboard/ my desk tidy as you can get strange punishments in the military service otherwise (eg. Your 9 AM- 6 PM weekend breaks are cancelled if they have any trace of untidyness)

I, without any reason, looked at outside at one time. It was there. It was real. It was exactly the same as the ones in Denmark and Netherlands. It was walking there.

Alas, I was alone in our 4-person bedroom, and I did not hear any humanly voice at our floor (probably everybody was already at the breakfast). So, very unfortunate that I could not share my happiness with anybody else :(

It was a magpie. Yes, exactly the same as the ones I tried to photograph in Amsterdam; the exact replica of the ones I saw everyday multiple times in my dutch life. The black-and-white bird from the crow family.

I never imagined to come across a magpie here in the small turkish city, Balikesir. I had seen them during my Denmark stage for the first time. I had realized their similarity to crows, and thought "they must be danish version of crows" , and stopped thinking about them.

In the Netherlands, however, I had an increasing interest to all those birds in nature. It was Maikel who taught me the name of this bird and the other birds from the crow family (jackdaw etc). Seeing a magpie here was like building a path to our chats with Maikel on birds, a path to my very nice moments in the Netherlands, a path to dutch life, dutch weather (especially if the weather is always 30-35-40 degrees here without any rain all month), a path to all dutchy stuff. It was like all the holland was squeezed in the form of a magpie in the front side of our building here..

I found the following magpie (pica pica as Maikel calls it) photograph on the internet. I wish I could photograph the one I saw. But, this is more than impossible as it is not allowed to have a camera within the military complex.

the other stuff

So, my military service is going well; the difficult part is over (training on the field). It is really very nice to meet many more people. Actually, the most attractive part for my for my dutch stage was to have the opportunity to meet new people there. I like meeting new people, new worlds.

I had a quick look to the A Touch of Dutch, Kelly's blog, Tjeerd and Nina's blogs to feel the dutch atmosphere here. I just very much wonder if the people who follow this blog are doing OK, how their life is going etc.

Courgette soup

Maikel was talking about this soup occassionally, and stating how tasty it was. I guess he knew this soup from his mum, albeit a different version.

Then he cooked it for us when we visited him with Alfonso in June.

It was at least as tasty as he described it. I got the recipe from him.

And I had the chance to try it yesterday.

This recipe is for 2-3 people. I used a little bit more water than stated (0.7 liter rather than 0.5). I boiled a tablet of boullion in water. Then, I added two medium-size courgettes in chopped form (or zucchinis; the name in american english) and 2-3 cloves of chopped garlic. I let them boil for 15-20 mins till the courgette pieces get very soft.

Then I have blended the mix using our blender, leading to a very homogenous mixture. Then I added 75 g. plain cream cheese. Normally, Maikel had used a cream cheese with herbs and garlic (Boursin is the brand I guess). But I could not find this type here in Istanbul in the supermarket nearby; and I added garlics externally therefore in the first phase.

After mixing the whole thing and letting them boil for a short while, I added two teaspoons of curry powder (Maikel's recipe was for 1 teaspooon, and I later thought 1 would be more than enough).

Then, I ended up with the following soup.
My mum really liked it.

Only a physical farewell...

Everything has an end.. And my stage in Netherlands had an end too.. And that end was on last Saturday..

I had some other things on my mind:

• We had already started our inter-faith activities; and I would very much wanted to go on with it..
• I like inviting people over dinner or lunch . I was going to invite Andreas Karoly Gombert from Delft with his family for a dinner (or BBQ at our roof); and Yvonne and Eric from Eindhoven, Saadet and Daniel, Tjeerd and his girlfriend, Isabella and her husband, Kelly and S, Johan from WKZ ... I was going to have Olja and Hans meet Defne and Hans, and talk about raising kids with parents from different lands... We were going to have another BBQ at Funenpark roof with all my Amsterdam research group.
• I really wanted to go to some museums, to Artis zoo .... We were going to have a bike tour with Maikel, have a stroll in Pijp area of Amsterdam.. this and that..

I had started my dutchistan dairies not because of the urge to be read by others, but solely for myself. I did not want my good memories in Netherlands to fade away over years. I preferred to write them online and in english, however, so that other people may learn from my experiences; I would be helpful to them somehow; and also to force my english writing skills. And also, I thought it would also be a nice site for people I have spent times together to remember our nicely spent moments together..

And leaving the country does not mean that I won't write anymore. it is only a physical end I would say. Thanks to internet, i will stay in touch with those nice people I had the chance to meet in Amsterdam. I will still read Isabella's, Kelly's and Tjeerd's blogs, which will help me to keep up with the dutch life there. And I still receive DutchNews newsletters, this will make me updated with dutch daily agenda.. And, there are many moments here that make me remember my dutch life. There are recipes I want to get from dutch friends and try.. So, all such things will certainly help me go on writing my dairies here: the ones related to my dutch experiences, my dutch life.....

Thanks God; I had this chance to meet such wonderful people, to experience such wonderful moments in this country.