Dispatches

Travel, the unnecessary necessity

October 17, 2011

I wrote a guest post about how we are fascinated by difference, but travel actually ends up opening our eyes to sameness, over at Talking Turkey.

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Shining city on the bay or scar on the face of the earth?

October 13, 2011

I wrote a guest post about my mixed feelings about Istanbul, over at Perking the Pansies.

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Turkish food and sucuk

October 12, 2011

I wrote a guest post on Turkish food and learning to love sucuk, over at Being Koy.

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Swimming west of Sile

September 20, 2011
Swimming in the Black Sea

I could take bus #139 or 139A from Istanbul to Sile, but today I am in a car. In fact, I have always taken a car up to the Black Sea, because in a car I am better able to feel the gentle, wavelike rhythms, the sweeping curves and the swells and dips of this [...]

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Dog paddling to Greece

September 12, 2011
Islands

I am vacationing in a tiny village on Turkey’s Aegean coast. Less than a hundred people live in this town, perched on a narrow shelf at the bottom of a cliff that from the top looks like it drops straight into the sea. The town is so small, its cobblestone streets so narrow, no one [...]

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Europe’s Mexico

September 2, 2011
Mexican baker

Back in 2003, shortly after I arrived in Turkey, I went with some of my Turkish friends to the countryside northeast of Istanbul, up near the Black Sea. We went for a walk along a dirt road, and we passed by a farmer clearing litter from a pathway next to one of his fields. There [...]

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Istiklal’s human river

August 31, 2011
Thumbnail image for Istiklal’s human river

Years ago, for dinner on the evening of my first full day in Turkey, I went to a cafe on Istanbul’s Istiklal Caddesi. Istiklal is the busy outdoor pedestrian mall that anchors the city’s nightlife. I had spent the day touring the city’s headliner tourist sites — the Aya Sofya, the Blue Mosque, the Kapali [...]

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Istanbul’s Ortakoy mosque

August 25, 2011

On a warm summer night the plaza outside the Ortakoy mosque is one of my favorite places to watch Istanbul kick back and relax. The plaza is only 3 miles from Taksim and Istiklal, the stars of Istanbul’s nightlife, but it’s a different kind of place. Taksim and Istiklal easily overwhelm me with their busy [...]

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