Street animals

Tomas with street cats

In the streets of Istanbul and Ankara I saw many street animals. There are many more cats than dogs. I suppose that the cats and dogs I saw have been abandoned to the streets.  In the evening you can see cats digging up food from trash piles thrown to the streets.  My flatmate Jordi got attacked by a street dog when he was walking on the streets. He does not know why the dog attacked and he had to go to take vaccination even thought the dog did not bite a deep wound.

Christmas

Christmas section

We do not have any Christmas holidays in Turkey. Today all the supermarkets and restaurants are open like normally. Tomorrow on Monday lessons are held like on every Monday. There are no Christmas lights in the windows of the houses and only few restaurants have put some Christmas decoration. In supermarket you could find some Christmas decoration products but everything is not decorated to Christmas atmosphere like in Finland.

Greeting

Genclik park

Turkish greet differently than Spanish and Finnish. When you meet for the first time in Turkey you shake hands with men and women. After you are closer friends you greet different way. Men greet each other with handshake and by lightly hitting both sides of forehead together or giving two kisses. Some men also chuck their lips when giving two kisses but everybody does not do that. Men also give two kisses to women when they are closer friends but men giving kisses to women in Turkey is less common than in Spain. Women greet each other normally by giving two kisses

Ilgaz

Top of the mountain

This weekend we went to ski in Ilgaz. Skiing center of Ilgaz is not very big place. There are only few slopes and only one of them was open because there was not yet much snow. The trip was organized by skiing club of Hacettepe university. In our group were many beginners and we taught them to ski. Skiing was fun and later I will hopefully join to another skiing trip in better place.

Cap collection

Caps

In the streets of Ankara you can find big plastic bottles hanging in trees. These bottles are used for collecting plastic caps from the bottles. I heard that the reason why caps are collected is that some company in Turkey have promised to donate wheelchairs for collecting these caps. In Finland there is a similar story that if you collect enough clips from cans and somebody will donate a wheelchair.

Speaking Turkish

I have been going to Turkish lessons for two months almost 30 hours every week. Today I was speaking in Turkish with one person at least three hours. I am very happy that I was able to have conversation that long time without using any English. I had pocket dictionary helping me sometimes. I feel like that my speaking level of  Turkish is in the same level as my Spanish when I arrived to Spain. This gives me confidence that I can learn to speak Turkish fluently.

Entering

Shopping mall entrance

In Turkey securities are supervising people who enters to the university campus and in my first day I could not enter because security insisted a official document from me. Even there are securities looking who enters they do not always ask you to show a document. To enter a shopping mall you have to walk through detectors like in airport and also when entering to metro security sometimes checks out your bag with some detecting stick. In Turkey security workers are even more present than in Spain

Smoking

No smoking

In Turkey you can see smoking is forbidden signs in the most of the places. Generally people do not smoke inside but this rule is not followed as carefully as in Finland. You can see some single persons smoking inside even generally nobody smokes inside. There are few ways how smoking rule is twisted. As in Finland you cannot smoke there were you provide service in Turkey you can still smoke in the terrace where you can get service from waitresses. In the winter time these terraces would be cold but in Turkey they set up a tent on the terrace and heaters so the terrace is warm. Even the smoking would be forbidden inside after nine or ten o'clock in the evening waitresses bring ashtrays to the table because after these hours officials are not controlling smoking inside. Smoking is very popular and it seems to me that most of the people are smokers. At least in Turkey smoking is much more popular than in Finland.

Trash

Recycling cart

In the center of Ankara there are no trash containers. That means that in the evening there are trash piles on the streets. Naturally these trash piles do not look nice and makes also walking in the pedestrian street difficult. Recyclable stuff like carton, plastic bottles and paper are also thrown in the same pile but there are people who collect the recyclable stuff with the carts which you can see in the picture.

Charge your mobile

Chargers

In Turkey there are many places where you can charge you mobile for 40 cents. There are many cables so you can find one that fits to your mobile phone. I have never seen this service available in Finland. I never imagined that somebody would stand in the street and wait for mobile to get charged. Of course sometimes you might need just some power to make an important call.