Spring

Street picture

Finally spring has arrived to Ankara and you can survive outside during the day without jacket. During the winter I noticed that generally houses are not isolated well to keep the heat inside is in Turkey. In many places you could see heaters plugged into a socket. Also they did not mind keeping doors or windows open during the cold winter and you had always tables available to eat outside  even it was -10 degrees. Seemed like they did mind using energy for heating.

Children working

In Turkey you can see children working in restaurants. Children do not prepare the food but they serve it, clean or take the food to the customers by bike. Usually children are working for their fathers restaurant. Once I was having a dinner at 10 in the evening and there was about 12 years old child working. I decided to ask are going to school tomorrow and he replied "yes".

Ice hockey

Belpa ice hockey hall

There is going to be an Ice hockey tournament between universities in Turkey on May. Therefore Gazi university have started to train for this tournament on Thursday and Friday mornings. I also participated to the trainings. In the team of our university is about 5 players who play in a ice hockey team so they know to play but their level is not that high. Then there are players who still have to learn to skate better and their stick handling is not so good either. I have had to borrow plastic figure skates for the first trainings so playing has been hard but university will borrow me skates next week and later also equipment for the tournament.

Cabbadocia

Castle of Uchisar

Mountains

Last weekend we did a trip to Cabbadocia. In Cabbadocia erosion have shaped mountains and the composition of the stone have made it possible to make houses inside mountains. There is even build entire cities inside to the ground to protect people during the war time. We visited one underground city and we were 30 meters under the ground level. In the underground city had been living a few thousand people. I can definitely recommend Cabbadocia for visiting.

Army

Soldier

Turkey has a obligatory military service like Finland. In Turkey men go to army after graduating from university. If you have completed studies in a university army is only 6 months but if you have not completed university army is 15 months. I have not have had a chance to speak with any young Turkish man who have completed army already. It would be interesting to compare my own army experience to Turkish army experience. I have been told that in Turkey you do not get free weekends from the army like In Finland.

Courses in Gazi University

Business faculty of Gazi University

Gazi University offers mainly courses in Turkish but number of courses offered in English depends on the faculty. Some exchange students had all of their lessons in Turkish but they could do their exams in English. In the first semester there were about 20 exchange students which is very few as there are almost 60 000 students in Gazi University. I have been attending to 4 lessons and 3 of them have been held in Turkish but the studying material has been in English. These lesson were supposed to be in English but the professors have been giving the lesson in Turkish because in their opinion the level of English of the students is not high enough to give them lesson in English. The same courses which are offered in English are actually available also in Turkish.

Football match

Mayis stadium in Ankara

We went to see a football match between Ankaragücü from Ankara and Fenerbahce from Istanbul. The stadium was not full and match was not good but the supporters kept the atmosphere high by singing through the whole match. Most of the people were standing the whole match even there were seats. In the end of the match supporters of Ankaragücü got aggressive and ripped off seats. Interesting thing was that in the stadium there were more supporters of Fenerbahce than Ankaragücü even the match was played in home stadium of Ankaragücü. People in Ankara tend to support one of the Istanbuls big teams (Fenerbahce, Besiktas or Galatasaray) but not the teams of Ankara.

Bomb alert

Police arrived

On Tuesday we were sitting in a restaurant in the center of Ankara. Somebody told that somewhere nearby was a bomb and we could see from the window that the police started to isolate the area. The restaurant where we were sitting was inside the area what police wanted to isolate but nobody come to us to say that we should go out. So we took our time and went out. Everybody was calm and I did not see any panic. Few hours later we passed the area and everything was normal.

Shoes off

Shoes

In Turkey shoes are left to the entrance like in Finland. When you have many guests the entrance is full of shoes. Turkish like to use still slippers at home and not hang out only with socks like Finnish people mostly do. I noticed that also Spanish people started to leave their shoes to the entrance in Turkey even they are not used to take off their shoes at the entrance.

Name

Snowy streets

It seemed that spring is coming to Ankara but then it snowed 24 hours in row and everything is covered with snow again.

This blog post discusses why remembering a persons name is difficult. One given explanation for having difficulties to remember a name is that names are arbitrary and meaningless. Though in Turkey names have always a meaning and I have been asked many times what does my name mean. I was wondering that as Turkish names have a meaning can Turkish people actually remember a name then more easily.