Still learning

This past weekend, I learned I am not a skier. I didn’t know this before because I’ve never tried. Always meant to, though. AAA in Michigan had a deal where you could pay $40 for a half day of lessons and then an unlimited lift pass for the rest of the day. It was only good certain Saturdays in March or something, but it never lined up that I could do it.

A colleague in Ankara tried to plan a last-minute ski trip to some city near Armenia that starts with an E, but since it was a school holiday the flights were pricey and we decided it would be too crowded. (Aside: Turkey sure borders a lot of other countries.)

Another colleague, one here, wanted to do something this past weekend so when I mentioned that I’d been considering going skiing, I guess she asked around because the next thing I know, she’d found yet another colleague (we have lots of colleagues and in general, there’s someone who wants to do something every weekend) who was going skiing in Bursa, which is only three hours from here.

Istanbul has a new bridge that cuts off a long drive around water that has chopped down the time to get to so some cities, but it’s an expensive bridge – like $30 – to cross. This means that at 7 a.m., you have it to yourself. It also means that the driver of the car is really happy to have someone to split bills with.

Bursa is in the Mount Olympus area, though no one we met could point to a specific mountain and say yes, that’s where Zeus hung out. The elevation of the national park there, Uludag (the “g” is the one you don’t pronounce, so it sounds like “Ulu-dah” is about 2500 meters and there was snow on  the ground, so getting up the twisty windy mountain in the car was a little dicey, but really not too bad.

The place was packed but it was a great way to spend a day. Also, it was fairly cheap as far as skiing goes. I mean, the meal was incredibly overpriced (I think I paid $10 for a Coke, white rice and lentil soup) but the skis and boots cost $10 to rent and then a 4-hour lift pass was maybe $25. The “all day” one was maybe $45.

My two colleagues did well on that. Since I needed a lesson, I spent a bit more, but it was a private lesson. However, since I speak no Turkish and the instructor spoke no English, it was a fairly useless lesson. Once in a while, I was clear he was trying to convey something to me, but I couldn’t ask why I needed to do such a thing, like hold the “batons” this way, jump or shift my weight one way or another. (It wouldn’t have been to turn – we didn’t make it that far in the lesson.)

What I learned in that hour amounted to this: as much as I can see the draw of skiing for some people, it’s not something that thrills my soul. I think I would like snowshoeing or cross-country skiing, but I didn’t like the idea of barreling down a hill.

Not that I made it that far. I never even got the lift ticket. After the hour lesson, I kept going back up the little slope to try to practice slow and stop. (Not to mention starting.) I’d trudge up the little slope maybe 20 yards, look down at the little paths between the scores of fellow skiers and think, “Wait, this isn’t even fun. Why am I trying to do this?”

Honestly, it freaked me out quite a bit. Maybe that’s normal, but even beyond that, I just didn’t get it. I’m not a speed thrills kind of person. I like seeing the sights: diving is awesome, I hiked Tiger’s Nest, and my favorite part of skydiving was looking around God’s creation after the chute opened. Just didn’t get skiing, though I am glad I tried it. I would be interested in cross-country skiing, though, and wonder if there’s a place around here where I could try it.

This week is already awful at work, but Friday evening I head off for the first leave I’ll have taken since I arrived at post. In 2016, I used a whopping two days of leave so I need to start burning time so I don’t go into “use or lose.” I’m more of a long weekend type of person than a weeks-long vacationer, and I like it that way – quick getaways to recharge.

But this is a full week, so of course I’m staying on the go and not just sitting in one place all week. I leave Friday night and arrive in Muscat at 2 a.m. Supposed to meet up with a friend at 8 a.m. (I won’t even have checked into the hotel) to hike that day then go to dinner, and the following day I’m scheduled to dive. I figure by Monday I’ll be ready to chill at the beach or see a movie, then Tuesday I head over to Dubai. Haven’t planned that far ahead to know what I’ll do, but on Saturday – or maybe it’s Friday --- I have to go to Abu Dhabi because that’s where my flight leaves from.

There’s still some planning to do – like everything after Muscat – but I have my hotels booked and paid for already. It’s an expensive area of the world, so I tried to pay some off in advance so I could be free to actually, you know, be able to afford to eat while I am there.

Taking stock

Looks like I need to start baking. I did another run to the base commissary in Ankara and bought a cake mix and a blueberry muffin mix. Putting them up, I realized I have a whole bunch of baking supplies that I brought with me from the U.S.

It’s not the only stuff. I bought some cooking oil, onion soup mix, alfredo sauce, cream of chicken soup and all kinds of toiletries, among other things. You never know when a post is not going to have something really important, like dental floss. As it turns out, Turkey has plenty of stuff, even Listerine fluoride mouthwash, but that’s OK.

What I need to get a grip on, though, is how quickly or slowly I am using the stuff so that I can make sure I run dry at the end of two years. This is sometimes tough, because (especially food-wise), it’s easy to go on kicks. I drained an alfredo jar in a month once already, but pulled back when I realized I have 18 months left and only five more jars.  Fortunately, the commissary has more of that, as well as other important stuff like peanut butter and grits.

I’m not really worried about running out of stuff. I’m more concerned that I am not using up some of what I brought quickly enough. Case in point: laundry detergent. I brought two large things of laundry detergent with me, plus leftovers from Guangzhou. I’ve realized that I’m now six months into my post. That means, in a perfectly planned world, I would have used up a quarter of the stuff I brought. Not even close.

That, though, doesn’t spoil and can be drug along to the next post. What cannot be salvaged for another assignment is food. And boy, I’m going to have to start cooking (and baking) to make a dent in some of what I have on my shelves.

My mental dilemma, of course, is, that while I have had the bag of chocolate chip sitting there for six months, if I use it, I no longer have any chocolate chips. Do I want to be in that situation? Of course not. Everyone needs a bag of chocolate chips around, just in case.

Ditto with the cream of chicken soup. I love to cook with it. I brought six cans. I’ve used one in six months, so I should be OK to use another, right? Mentally, it’s just not that easy. What happens if, in February 2018, I really need three cans? If I keep up this pace, I won’t have three cans left.

It’s so much harder than it should be.

Powdered sugar is hard to come by. I brought a bag. Powdered sugar makes wonderful icing. Honestly, I don’t know what else you do with it. I made a cake recently for the Marines and couldn’t bring myself to use my powdered sugar. It would have taken ALL I had, leaving me with none. And I do use powdered sugar. I’ve made sugar cookies three times so far. You can’t ice them with anything else, and of course sugar cookies need icing. So how could I possibly use the rest of the entire bag in one shot? I solved this problem by buying a can of icing at the commissary last month and using half of it instead, which is why I just bought another cake mix.

I just discovered that I have two 10-pound bags of flour. For some reason, I thought these were grits. I’d put them, along with the grits, into the fridge to stave off any bugs. They were in the bottom drawer and all wrapped up in plastic bags from Target, so I basically stuffed them in there as soon as my shipment arrived and forgot about them. All this time I thought there were a bunch of those round containers of grits, but when I opened the drawer to get a new canister of grits, turns out, the bulk of the drawer is flour.

There’s no valid reason for me to have 20 pounds of flour. They sell flour in Turkey just fine. Lord knows I know, because, not realizing I had so much already, I’ve bought it here twice. Flour’s the main ingredient for my weekend pancakes, so I keep it in stock. I just don’t know how many cups of flour (how much I use in a week), there are in 20 pounds of the powdered stuff.

The best option seems to be to start baking, especially since I also have a bunch of Crisco and brown sugar. The commissary also had some Christmas chocolate chips on sale (red and green, I guess they’re chocolate of some sort) as well as Nestle Crunch baking bits. I’m going to separate the red chips from the green ones and then use each pile with the Nestle bits with each and make cookies for Valentines’ Day and St. Patrick’s Day.

The Marines will love me.  

Not exactly a tourist hotspot, but a lot of fun anyway

Just got back, albeit a bit late, from a little getaway to Moldova.

My favorite gravestone

Yeah, it’s not exactly a place that most have heard of. But like a huge number of other places, it’s less than a two-hour, $200 flight from here. The hotel and flight combo came to $229, and then the only money I spent while there was the $90 I had in cash from my Marine Corps ball refund. In change at the airport, I had the equivalent of $1.50 remaining after my cab ride, and I spent all but .50 on a Coke and five cookies. And believe it or not, I made a big splurge while there: a $24 bracelet. I also nailed a super bargain when I happened upon a secondhand store: a cool shirt, just my color, for about $1.25, marked down from $2.50.

Normally, in Istanbul, I don’t eat out very often, but when I travel, I tend to go for Turkish food. My hotel had a nice breakfast so I really only ate out one meal a day, but on day One I had a kebab at a Turkish place and the following evening I happened upon this fantastic market and got something at a stall. It only cost something like .40, but you could offer me $400 to definitively identify it and I wouldn’t be able to do it. It was in a roll-ish type shell and the woman heated it up. I don’t think it was meat. That’s all I got, but it was tasty.

Cheap tourism is fairly easy when your plan is to essentially walk around and take photos. Well, at least in some destinations.  My upcoming travel – my first actual leave since June – is down for a place that’s way more pricey than I’m used to. The plan there is to pay hotel rooms, etc., in advance.

But that’s not til February 3. For the weekend before MLK day, I opted for Chisinau, which is the place I tried to go to in October but got canceled. It was a fun trip, but I can’t imagine spending two years there.

Arch of Triumph, Christmas tree, National Cathedral

That’s my thought with a lot of places I visit, but I’m sure with transportation options and knowledge of the places, they’d be fine for two years. So far, I’ve been extremely lucky in getting two posts that not only have a whole bunch to see and do, but are also easy to escape from so that I can see and do so much more.

But Chisinau was perfect – if a bit chilly – for a three-day weekend. I hoofed it, which is my preference, putting up 19.8 kilometers the first day and 15.8 the second. The third was mostly spent at the airport. I was due on a 9:45 a.m. flight back, with the thought of being back home by 2 p.m., but we wound up leaving at 2:30 p.m., which necessitated the Coke and five cookies.

Looks like a beach

Tourism is not a big thing in Moldova, at least at this point in time and definitely not in the winter. I saw a sum total of one tourist store, but it did have several booths in it. There was also a little street fair kind of thing, making up about half a city block, that had handicrafts and stuff aimed at tourists. That’s where I got the bracelet.

English is also not a big thing in Moldova, and in the same street market where I got the bracelet, there was a lady selling wooden 3D puzzles that came in the shapes of animals and Christmas stuff. I was trying to convey my interest and asking how much the stuff was. The lady, who was really nice, was able to tell me numbers but nothing else. I managed to figure out that the little street market would be open the following day, and when I got back, cash in hand, I could not find one of the specific designs I’d decided on.

Not knowing how to convey “seahorse” in any language other than English, or pantomime it, I just went through them as she kept pointing out the cool designs. All I could do was shake my head. She didn’t even try that much – she just grunted.

I never unearthed the seahorse, but the grunting happened later, too, when I was trying to communicate. It seemed really weird (as well as primal), but I guess really, when you have absolutely no clue what someone is trying to say, grunts work just as well as broken English or what have you.

But it's not

There were some people who spoke English fairly well, though, like the lady with the bracelets. She asked where I was from and I told her, and she said she had some American friends who lived there. They were, she told me, former Peace Corps volunteers. She was thrilled when I told her I’d served, but in Morocco. (We  grunted some there, too, but mostly made clicking noises.)

When I came back the next day to buy the bracelet, another lady, upon hearing me speak, immediately asked if I was Peace Corps. I got a kick out of that, really. There are a lot of RPCVs floating around in their countries of service. But I just float around everywhere.

Cathedrals were the thing to see in Moldova. The religion there is Orthodox, although I always thought that was an adjective, not a noun. I’m really not sure what “Orthodox,” as a standalone, means as a religion. Judging from the interior of the churches, my guess is some kind of strain of Catholicism. The interiors are very ornate, with everything painted gold and these really formal paintings and gorgeous stained glass windows. But the exteriors are very basic and functional, with the exception of the shiny domes. I guess that’s a Russian-ish thing. I had to cover my head when I went into the cathedrals, which was fine with me because I was wearing a knit hat all day long anyway.

Functional on the outside, gorgeous on the inside

The weather itself wasn’t frightful, exactly, but walking the streets was. Of the two days I wandered around, one was in the lower 40s and drizzly and the second was 33 or so and sunny. Honestly, this weather is OK by me unless there was old snow on the ground, which there was. I was absolutely terrified that I’d fall and break something but I got lucky.

There’s a big park in Chisinau – lots of them, really; it’s very green when it’s not snow-covered – and I enjoyed walking about a mile around this one lake, which was frozen. It was kind of like being at the beach, only not. Very much not. There was a little dock with a sign on the end. It was in Cyrillic, but I felt pretty sure it said something like “no diving,” which was funny because the water around it was frozen solid.

In the main square area, there was some kind of Christmas market/festival going on. (The holiday is celebrated later in the former Soviet states; I really don’t know when Christmas was, but there were a lot of lights, trees and nativity scenes around.) It wasn’t near as big as the markets in Kyiv or Frankfurt, but it was interesting to wander. They had some kids’ fair-type rides with some scary-looking Disney knockoffs.  I happened to be there right when they turned on the lights of the Christmas tree and landmark arch, so that was nice.

Really, it was a fairly fun getaway in a place that’s just not known as being a happening place. My hotel was in a fantastic location with great service, the city was walkable, affordable and gave me some really cool pictures. That’s all I ask in a destination. 

Do you want to build a snowman?

It’s a snow day in Istanbul. This “Girl Raised in the South” had no idea what a snow day really meant. I thought it was restricted to kids in school, but when you work on a very steep hill, it makes it very unsafe to get to work so we didn’t have to go today.

The snow’s been phenomenal. There’s been something like a meter and a half, and it broke a record set in 1987. And it’s still snowing. The airport has pretty much closed down (much to the chagrin of a colleague trying to get to Sri Lanka) and not much is going on.

The mall, however, was open as usual, so a couple colleagues and I went to see “La La Land,” which cleaned house yesterday at the Golden Globes. It wasn’t quite what I expected – I was thinking it would be almost nonstop music like “Chicago” or “Grease,” but I liked it.

Moroccan

After we got back, I played in the snow with a colleague, a neighbor and two dogs. Had so much fun. I’d mentioned to my colleague that I’d never built a snowman, so she set out to show me how it was done. We wound up putting together a little guy about a meter tall. My fingers were completely numb but it was so much fun.

We grabbed some cardboard and tried to fashion sledding, but our driveway, while too steep to drive, wasn’t really steep enough to help us accelerate downhill. Plus the dogs kept jumping on us. There were a couple other neighbors wandering around and I’m sure they were completely amused by the three foreign adult women playing around in the snow.

LL Bean

The pups loved it. Britta, the Doberman, loves fetching snowballs. Somehow, she managed to nail me with one. I’m still figuring that one out.

After building my first snowman, I tried to do a snow angel. My first attempt turned out well but them Britta pounced on me, ruining it before I could get a picture. So we moved on to another area of the apartment complex and I fell backwards with a thwomp – and then realized not only was my butt super cold, but the snow was way too deep to move anything to make an angel. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t coordinate with my extremities anyway. Too bad the phone totally froze up – I’m sure the video could have made me famous.

Since the snow hasn’t stopped, we’re having another snow day tomorrow, although I will probably go in at some point. Since I walk to work, I figure I might as well try, and there’s some stuff I’d like to do at work. There are no other movies showing that interest me (Hidden Figures isn’t here yet) so I need to come up with something to do.

Pakistani, from Sarajevo

Next weekend, I’m supposed to leave town again and I am just hoping that it works out. It’ll be the second time I’ve tried to get to this destination and if something happens I’m going to call it off. Fate might not want me to go to Moldova.

Even though I went last weekend, I might be adding Sarajevo on the “go to” list again. It was that cool of a place, and it’d be worth going again in the spring or summer.

I bought a rug there totally on the spur of the moment. It’s a small Pakistani rug, about a meter square. And I swear, the cost of the flight, the hotel and the rug probably cost less than the same rug would have cost in Istanbul. So I figure I go back and get a bigger rug and therefore save even more money.

Funky Turkish, from Cappadocia

When I got home with the rug – handmade rugs fold right up and I put it in my carryon – I put it in a little hall where three rooms meet and kind of stepped back and looked at my rugs collectively. I realized they pretty much all look alike. I like the Aztec-ish diamond prints. Very tribal. I have a Moroccan blanket and it’s also got Berber tribe markings.

At some point, I am going to have to buy a house, and hardwood, laminate or tile floors is going to be a requirement. Almost every square inch of the floor will be covered with some rug that I’ve bought somewhere. I really like textiles. I could buy rugs and blankets all day long.

I have a big light rug that I bought in Morocco, used, for about $20. I love this hall rug I got from LL Bean, too. I have two little rugs that I guess I bought at some secondhand store, probably in Detroit, and now the little hall one, plus the 4x6 Turkish one I bought, only it’s unlike any Turkish one I’ve seen so far. It’s stripes, not flowers. And I really like stripes!

Close the book on it

 Almost done with 2016. Granted, it’s been a rough year for pop and music icons, but I feel pretty blessed. After all, I started in Guangzhou, then got to go to America for awhile before wrapping up the year in Istanbul. Tough to complain about.

Technically, though, I’m not wrapping it up in Istanbul. Given the OK to travel again, I promptly bought several plane tickets and am currently sitting in a room in Guesthouse Ciru in Sarajevo. Last week, I spent Christmas with a friend in Kiev, and I’ve made plans for MLK and Presidents’ weekends plus have asked off a week in February. I’ve also signed up for two different 10ks – one in Antalya in March and the other in Dublin in August. All flights for the above have been booked, and I’ve also penciled in weekend away in March. I’ve got plans for that but nothing inked.

The laptop made this trip with me because my Slingbox talks to it and lets me watch FSU football, even though I tend to have the most awful connections. Still, it’s the best I could do from Bosnia and Herzegovina, so I embraced it.

Despite a nasty wintry mix in Istanbul, I made it to the airport in plenty of time and my flight went off flawlessly, even if I was pretty much famished. I’d spent the workday at someone else’s desk until lunchtime, when I grabbed my PD sandwich and ate it over the course of doing an inventory that took three hours. When I finished that, I grabbed a bag of Cheetoes and went back to the other office to finish work and then grab a cab to the airport.

The flight was only an hour and a half. Since Istanbul isn’t on daylight savings time (or whatever it is), we’re an added time zone away from wherever it is we’re going. In this case, Sarajevo is normally one time zone away but now it’s two. So my flight, which left at 7:35 p.m., was scheduled to land at 7:30 p.m. I just love that. And I got to watch “Hoot” again.

I did not book a car from the airport, figuring I’d either take a cab and insist on using the meter (there are bad stories of people getting ripped off) or take the bus. So I changed some Euros I had to whatever “KM” stands for, then went to take out more money from my bank account – and completely blanked on the PIN. I have three bank accounts and two have the same PIN. This was the other one, and I totally, absolutely blanked. I could remember one number for sure and I thought I had another. I tried 2-3 combinations and then stopped, not wanting my card to get swallowed in a foreign country.

Since I’d planned on paying cash for the hotel (even though I carry both a Visa and AmEx), I was a little concerned about cash flow, so I opted for the bus. It was pretty easy; I was the only one getting on at the airport and I showed the driver the guesthouse address so he’d let me know where to get off. So that was no problem, but once I got off, I was completely backwards. I had the GPS and knew I was 600 meters from the place, but trying to figure out which left turn the stupid thing meant drove me crazy.

I wound up taking about half an hour to make a “9 minute” trek, the last part of which was incredibly dicey. I’d taken the “1 minute longer” route, mostly because I could find it, and it turned out to be uphill. Normally, this is not a problem, but it’s cold in Bosnia and Herzegovina and it snows. There wasn’t any coming down, but the roads were covered in snow, and then re-freezing for the night. So I was trying to climb an icy road in the dark, cell phone in one hand and struggling to remain balanced due to the duffel bag slung across the other arm.

All I could think about was slipping and snapping my leg in two, but God is kind to morons who take the “1 minute longer” road and I got to the place frozen, but just fine. I took a hot shower and crashed, but only for about three hours because I had to wake up and watch the game.

THAT was terrifying. Holy cow. I had bad feelings about the game beforehand and my stomach was in knots the whole time. Thank God the Noles won!

And about five minutes after FSU won 33-32, my alarm went off. I shushed it (it’s barking dogs) and went to bed, pulling myself out around 9:30 or so. At that point and really well before, I was pretty famished and I hit the town for food and sightseeing. I turned the other way out of the guesthouse and it’s much easier. Still a hill but not one that made me feel like I needed crampons and an ice pick.

Food had to wait, though, because I am easily distracted by shiny things, and they had a ton. Most of it was copper, I think. I went to the downtown area, which is full of little shops of handmade stuff. (Most swear it’s done locally, but I have my doubts on some of it.) Lots of jewelry, crocheted stuff, the copper tea things and such – just all kinds of stuff to wander through, booth after booth.

Then I hit upon a Christmas market-ish kind of thing and went for hot chocolate. What I did not remember from last week’s Kiev trip is that there are two kinds of “hot chocolate.” When we say hot chocolate, we really mean hot cocoa – powdered or liquid chocolate flavored something mixed with milk or water. But it can also mean melted chocolate, which, although I am a chocolate lover, what I want when I see a sign proclaiming “hot chocolate” and my hands are freezing. I got a Dixie cup’s worth of this thick chocolate that required a spoon to drink. It was good, but not what I wanted.

So I went for doner, schwarma, whatever you want to call it. Slices off the hunk of meat that sits on a spindle and gets shaved off as you order. Oh, it was fabulous, but not a Sarajevo meal. It’s Turkish. And I love it. So much, in fact, that I also had it for dinner later in the day. Chicken for brunch and beef for dinner. Maybe I’ll eat Sarajevo food tomorrow. I’d like to; I’ve heard about the meat/cheese pies, but I can’t read the menus!

Dinner was kind of brutal, not because of the food. I sort of got waved into this place. Although I wasn’t that hungry, I really was done for the day and figured why not. They sat me at what must have been the misfit table, right next to some guy who was eating soup. Well, he decided to strike up a conversation, and I just did not want that tonight.

I never want to answer the “where are you from?” questions and I REALLY don’t want to go with “where do you work?” I also don’t like being rude, so I try to be nice about it. Unfortunately, this guy just … geez, I don’t even know. He asked both of the above, then wanted me to go over visa information with him (I need to lie, but I’m a terrible liar.) He even wanted to show me the stamps in his passport. (I think he’d been denied a visa and he wanted me to tell him why.) I tried to be polite and ask reciprocating questions to show that I didn’t hate him or anything but I just wanted to eat.

He asked if I was married. (I said “Not now.” I have no idea why.) He asked how old I was, and when I said, “Older than you,” he said no, then tried to guess. I had to give him hints until he got it. Then he wanted me to guess how old he was and I refused. He told me – 31. I really wanted to stab my ears out. He said multiple times that he was “all alone” and “lonely” in Sarajevo and that he’d been there multiple times. I was just wolfing down my food. He gave me his card and then asked for mine, which I could honestly tell him that not only did I not have one but I’d never had a job that required one.

Dude was just annoying and I wanted to smack him. Oh, he was also a smoker, and that’s allowed indoors, so he was smoking as I was scarfing down my beef. He wanted to know where I was staying, because he was staying around there. I said not around there. He asked if I’d taken a cab. I tried to calculate the odds that he was staying in the exact same guesthouse I was, not 500 meters from the restaurant and gambled and said yes, I’d taken a cab. As I was getting up, he asked for my number. I was like, I’m on vacation and I don’t even have a phone. I have no idea if he believed me, but I am a terrible liar and as I was sprinting off, I realized I had tried to check my phone before my food had come. Oh well. I am not interested in some horny, lonely Bengali 31-year-old.

Maybe I’ll run into him tomorrow. That’d be my luck. There are a bunch more tourists here than I would have thought. I mean, I am cold! My plan tomorrow is to go to breakfast – I saw a place on my way back this evening – and then see if I can find the right pair or crocheted slippers for me. They are pretty cool and I want some.  Maybe I’ll wise up before tomorrow, but I did get my pin number verified and have taken out money, so I can spend it.

Meanwhile, the party is starting here in Sarajevo. Luckily, I can hear it from my room and I don’t need to go out. I’m going to ring 2017 old people-style: with a hot shower and a book.

Happy New Year! Happy Orange Bowl victory!

Kid in a candy store

Yesterday, I got tapped to do the monthly store run to Ankara, which has a commissary. Oh, man, it was fabulous.

We have a little association that runs a store of American foods, like mint Oreos, Tabasco sauce, Hidden Valley salad dressing and so on. There’s cereal, bacon, wine and stuff, too. Honestly, I don’t go into it because for the most part, I’m fine with the local economy. I can get Oreos (though not mint) I brought Tabasco with me and I am a naked salad person anyway. The prices in our little store in Istanbul are incredibly marked up, too, so to me, an Oreo is an Oreo. I can go local. (Actually, I haven’t bought Oreos here because here exists this fabulous Turkish cookie that is basically a round Twix bar, which is the bomb. But I digress.)

Once a month, our little store restocks from the commissary that’s on the military base in Ankara. As an employee in Mission Turkey, I have the right to go down there at any time, but it’s five hours away. That’s a long way to go for a few items if you’re just you. If you’re shopping for the store, though, it’s a great time to do your own.

I had no idea what it was like, but it was basically your regular American grocery store. Our store manager put in the bulk order before, so it was already crated but I have a few orders for other people I needed to track down, so I got to do my own shopping while I was at it.

In Istanbul, I don’t buy many groceries at the store. I basically get chips, cookies, milk (in a box) and juice, then, when I need to reload on rice, pasta, sugar or flour, that. But the veggies come from the street market and I have a ton of spices already. Essentially, I don’t dwell in the grocery stores.

But I dwelled in this one. They had stuff I can’t get in Istanbul, like Breyer’s mint chocolate chip ice cream. That is the absolute best ice cream ever and I was so happy for it. I got a half-gallon, or liter, or whatever it is they come in. I got root beer, something that is truly American. I’ve had A&W in Jakarta and that’s the real thing, but something I had called “root beer” in Jerusalem was awful. American root beer is the real deal and I got a 12-pack of it, plus a single one for the road home.

Someone gifted me a cake mix awhile ago and I was going to make it for the Marines, so I bought some Betty Crocker icing. (I love my Marines, but I’m not using my powdered sugar for their icing!) Also got some Nestle Quik, which I realize now I can get locally but whatever, and some hot chocolate mix. And Cheetoes, which are fabulous. There are also Cheetoes in Istanbul, but there were also Cheetoes in Guangzhou and those were not only not the same but were awful, therefore I have been scared to try the Istanbul ones. And WintOGreen Lifesavers and Whoppers! (Both those were kind of stale, but an awesome kind of stale.)

They also had some good-to-know stuff: alfredo sauce, moon pies, grits. I don’t need any of that now, but knowing I can get some in the future is good.

And there will be a future. I now on the board of the association that runs the store, and I’m the one in charge of the monthly runs. I don’t necessarily have to go, but I have to find someone to do it. The runner and the driver get $150 each for the day, so it’s not bad, really. It is a 12-hour day, though. We left at 5 a.m., a crime in itself, and it was wet and snowy. Quite a long day, but when you’re throwing back Barq’s root beer and eating WintOgreen LifeSavers on the ride home, it’s not bad. 

Because Leanne asked what a Christmas market was ...

This week, I’ve been taking a class in Frankfurt. It’s cold in Frankfurt, although according to Weather.com, not really much colder than Istanbul. The difference is my walk to work has escalated from 15 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes. It seems colder because I’m in it more.

Dana would love his place.

Yeah, I know, that’s my option – Frankfurt has a bunch of public transport options, but I decided since I spend two hours in the gym anyway, I might as well spend that two hours walking to and from work. And oh, my, when you leave at 6:50 a.m.  and walk back starting at 5 p.m., it’s dark. And with darkness comes cold!

So here’s a hint, my Florida friends: always bring gloves! I brought my hat and a scarf but deliberately looked at the gloves and thought, nah. Well, I didn’t realize the Marriott I’d selected was so far from the building. For some reason, I was thinking it was maybe a 20-minute walk. That was wrong. I am cold.

I’m still happy with the Marriott, but if I had another opportunity to take another class, I’d opt for the much-closer Best Western. Or heavier gloves and more clothes.

Store of beeswax Christmas stuff.

The class was cool. It was HR-oriented, which is something that I’ve found that fascinates me. I also like learning, so it was up my alley. And it’s been a nice break from being in Istanbul. I love the city and my job, but this status we’re on is definitely grinding. Of course, even though I was away, I was still monitoring emails and trying to make small dents in the stuff I’ll have to do when I get back.

That starts tomorrow, too. It’ll be the sixth consecutive weekend I’ve worked since this status started. It’s kind of too bad I’m pretty low-maintenance as far as “stuff” goes, because I’m racking in the OT right now. It’s nice overall, but at some point, I’d just like a nap.

Frankfurt itself has been nice to visit. Despite working, I have gotten out and about, if just during the daily walks. I also saw a movie, and by my count, Germany is country N0. 10 or 11 in which I’ve seen a movie. I can’t remember if I ever saw one in Malaysia – I do know I tried.

Cute little standalone, temporary stores.

The thing to do in Frankfurt about now is hit the Christmas market, and I saved that for the final evening in town. By sheer coincidence, a friend who was posted here before came this weekend and we overlapped for a day and picked the same hotel to stay in, so she took me to the Christmas market.

Having spent two years in China, my definition of “market” is an area that’s blocks long crammed full of different people selling versions of the same thing. I envision lots of storefronts, one after another brimming with fun junk, whether it be tea, glasses frames, flowers or whatever.

Christmas!

And although I lived in Michigan for 11 years and had access to the Frankenmuth Christmas market thing, I never went, so I didn’t have anything other than China on which to base my expectations.

Frankfurt Christmas markets –and maybe all Christmas markets – are way different than I expected.  First, it’s not just people selling stuff. It’s more food, and A LOT more food. Well, more drink than food, but essentially, China markets have a restaurant-ish place here and there, but in this particular Christmas market, food and drink – mostly drink – were the things to do, and shopping came after that. There was a lot of shopping, but there was way more eating and drinking, and apparently, all German Christmas markets have their own mugs every year. Collecting is a thing. I saw lots of that, including from my traveling companion. (There are also several versions every year. She didn’t like her first one and traded for another, then traded back for the original again. So many options!)

I was imagining this left and right. 

Since we’d just eaten some massive schnitzel, I wasn’t hungry at all. (I hadn’t held back at dinner; the two people I was with knew what was coming so I think they paced themselves accordingly.) I was, however, deeply chilled because, although warmer than some days in the week, it’d been that damp overcasty type day – the kind I hate because it gets to my bones. But I soldiered on as much as possible because it was so cool.

There were crowds, but not Hong Kong-like crowds. Some of the crowdedness was what you can’t get from SE Asia – people walking like penguins because they’re wearing so many clothes! Fewer people, more clothes, I guess.

Sunset in Frankfurt

The area was a normal shopping area with temporary booths set up. Kind of like if you put Mule Day downtown, except the booths were pretty much free-standing buildings that had been brought in, with walls, roofs and all. They did have a few aisles of booths like Mule Day, but they were still walled and covered, though those were window-shopping ones – you didn’t walk into them.

Lots of decorations everywhere, from the design of the little freestanding shops to the trees and such. There was a life-size (but not live) Nativity scene, but it was up a little and behind sort of a picket fence; I couldn’t get a picture of the whole thing, just the holy parents’ and shepherds’ heads.

I bought a little wooden nativity set that is kind of a nesting one. It starts from baby Jesus, a tiny little piece, and the pieces stack together until they’re all in the stable-like setting, the largest piece, but then there is a star on top.

My newest nativity set.

And even though I know the stable scene is basically a pop culture myth – it was a cave, people! – I really like it. They had all sizes but I went with the little one. I’m a sucker for nativity sets and I’ve bought two since I arrived in Istanbul, plus I am pretty sure I already have 2-3 others.

I think that’s all I bought there, but I had already bought a Christmas ornament at the mall near my hotel. I was getting close to caving and going for hot chocolate, but I held out for that at the hotel. I’d paid for the executive lounge and wanted my money’s worth of tea and hot chocolate.

What I was really hoping to find was a tree topper – either a star or an angel – but I didn’t see anything that passed my test. I did see a snowflake that I liked, but it was a giant ornament and I’ve have to tie it to the top somehow. Figured I’d keep looking.

Reindeer in the vortex

So now I head on back. I’m currently sitting in the airport – but will post this when I get home; no fee wifi – and hope that I’m home before 10 p.m. tonight. I went ahead and checked my bag, which I rarely do but did since I had my huge class binder with me. I’m still planning on taking the metro but we’ll see how long it takes to get my bag. I cabbed it on the way in because the traffic was lighter and it was amazingly quick. I’m going to have to think about that, because I really would love to be home as early as possible. I’m working tomorrow so any down time will be welcome.

My next out-of-town trip is scheduled for Christmas weekend – no time off. I really am due for some time off, but I haven’t decided where and when. There are just way too many options.