A couple more weeks

Right now, the thing that is consuming my work life is planning for our Fourth of July party. It’s killing me because we’re doing it off-site for the first time ever, and that’s given us some new processes/challenges/steps/whatever word you want to use.

Some of those are easy to change but some are unanticipated. A well-meaning person came up to me a few weeks ago totally freaked out because she hadn’t heard much about planning this year. We’d looped in someone in her department, who I guess filled her in, and she was really concerned that we were behind.

We chatted awhile and I explained that it did seem we were behind, but only on paper. Since the place is somewhere different, we legally could not proceed in most aspects (like the visible ones) until we’d signed the contract, which took awhile because a key person went on leave. Two days after the ink was dry, we had the meeting on site – pretty much as fast as we could get there.

I definitely understood my colleague’s concerns, but to that end, we’d done everything we could have done. I pulled out the timeline the people had done the year before, and honestly, we were pretty much on it.

And that was a couple of weeks ago. Now, it’s set in how soon it is. Someone was talking to me last week and said something about three weeks. I’d been thinking it was four. It’s now a bit more realistic and I’m getting worried myself! Especially since Monday and Tuesday next week are holidays, and it’s a big holiday. A lot of people will be taking off that whole week.

Anyway, I’m totally frustrated with this now. One of my biggest pet peeves is “well, we’ve always done it that way.” Exacerbating that is when you ask WHY it’s been done that way and the answer is “well, we’ve always done it that way.” And then you suggest a new method and point out eight ways why it would be easier/faster/more efficient/cheaper and you get a hostile, “well, we’ve always done it that way.”

I’m trying to consult the experts – people who’ve done this year after year – and am running up against that. One of the issues was check-in. I explained the new location’s setup and asked the expert what the best way would be. She said, “well, last year we had two main entrances” and it was like, well, this year, this is what we have to work with, one main entrance, so can you give me a recommendation? And she replied that it had worked very well through the years with two main entrances.

And this went on. You want to be respectful and say yes, you understand it’s worked like that in the past because it was held in a specific place. But by the decision of someone who’s at a higher pay grade than me, we do not have that option, so it’s in a different place. As a result, it’s going to be different. What can you suggest. And you get the same, “well, we’ve always done it this way, so doing it this way would be best.” AARGH!

We also are constantly waiting on the head office to make decisions. We had planned on sending email notices of the party date on June 2. However, for some reason that didn’t apply with Guangzhou-Beijing, Istanbul isn’t allowed to jump without getting an OK on how high with Ankara. We had the question in to them in time to send the notices on June 2, but as of June 19, we still haven’t received the “how high” permission. We did, on about June 15, finally receive permission to jump, so we did. We’ll add the “how high” later, but at least we’ve been able to give some notice we’re having a party.

So we’re down to very little time left, and I’ve a bad feeling I’m going to be spending lots of time in traffic and out of the office the next few weeks.

But not on Monday and Tuesday. Ramadan will end, and it’s the Little Holiday! (I’ve no idea of what the actually holidays are called, but in Morocco, the two post-Ramadan holidays were called Little Holiday and Big Holiday. That’s how I learned them.)

I get a four-day weekend, and although I am a bit worried about getting all the party planning done, I’m headed out of town1 It’s my only trip out of town in June and I have zero plans to leave in July, so I’m psyched. Today I need to secure a ride to the airport. The flight leaves at 6:55 and that’s before public transportation wakes up.

After that, I don’t leave town until August, when I go to Dublin to visit a friend and run a 10k. I’m registered for that one and a 14k in October, although I think my payment for that didn’t go through.

Lately, I’ve been running outside a bid, as opposed to the treadmill. It sure is a lot hotter, but we have a small group of 3-5 people who have been making an 11.5k run weekly to one of the areas in Istanbul. It’s a nice run along the shore, although to be honest I wind up walking a lot of it. The first time, I made it 3.5k before I had to walk but did pretty well overall. The second time, I thought I was going to die and the third time I think a part of me did die. It was SO hot.

I’m just not a runner. Every day, I hope it’s the day I start to love it. It’s been about three years and I still don’t.

Finally, some daylight

 Last weekend, I met a friend in Helsinki. No particular jonesing for that destination; we just picked a spot where we could both fly nonstop. But it turned out to be a great choice.

Enjoyed the port

As it turned out, Helsinki was hosting some kind of international fair. It was located in the city’s giant botanical garden, which was about half a block from our hotel, and it was about a football field-sized area of booths with handicrafts, food and other stuff from practically everywhere. I took it that most of the people running the booths were first-generation Finns, immigrants or businesspeople with roots from everywhere.

It was fantastic. I held off buying a whole lot, but I did get some toiletries from one of the African-ish booths, and ate Filipino. Finland is WAY more expensive than, for example, the Philippines, and I was horrified at paying 3 Euros for spring rolls, but they were pretty darn good. We mostly wandered around, checking out all the booths. The weather was fantastic and it was just nice to be outside in a crowd of people and not stand out.

Movie theater snack.
Not my movie theater snack.

That’s really something I miss, just being able to disappear in a crowd. Both posts I’ve been in, as well as the other two countries in which I’ve lived, I tend to stand out and draw stares. Istanbul isn’t as bad as China or Morocco, but it’s pretty clear I’m not exactly from around here.

But Finland? I could blend in. I like that. I could also drink water straight out of the tap, and I liked that too. There’s just some stuff that’s underrated.

Like going to movies. I really like movies, but right now, I’m not able to. In Istanbul, we’re still told to stay out of malls, and that’s where the movie theaters are, so by default, I can’t go. And I miss that!

So we got the movie listings in Helsinki and set out to see “Pirates of the Caribbean,” but not in 3D, so the timing was off the first day. Instead, we discovered “Beauty and the Beast” still playing. I really didn’t have any intention of seeing the remake, but when I learned Emma Watson was Belle, I changed my mind. I like her, so, since it was playing, I gave it a shot. It was pretty darn good – much better than I figured – even though the “Be Our Guest” scene went *way, way* too long.

 

But if I ever bring home a man with a bow-tied ponytail, shoot me.

The following day, against Rotten Tomatoes’ better judgment, we went to see “Pirates.” It was pretty bad. Even within the confines of the movie, the opening scene was implausible. Hopefully, with the way it ended, it put itself out of the additional misery of another sequel, but that final, final scene – the one after all the credits – hints are more. It’s just done. There were three “surprises” in the movie, and I nailed each. Either it’s done, or I should be in screenwriting. 

The movie was close to a 7 p.m. start, so we let out after 9:30 p.m. And it was still daylight! Now, I am positive that Finland has horribly cold, dark and long winters, but it was so gorgeous and wonderful to be able to walk around in the light of day at 10 p.m.

Teemu!
Found in the casino.

And it’s on the water, so that made it perfect for me, too. I had great time. It’s a port, and our hotel hosted a couple of cruise ships’ worth of guests, and the daily visitors meant that there were a lot of made-in-Finland booths right on the docks. They were there every morning and rolled everything up early in the afternoon, once the ships came in.

I loved the stuff, except that it had “Finland” etched in everything. Reindeer is big, and they had lots of kitchen stuff made with the antlers, which would have perfectly matched my ulu, except my ulu doesn’t have “Finland” etched on it. (And why would it, as it’s Alaskan.) So I wound up getting a magnet.

I also had been looking for a little coin purse-ish bag that I could take with me on international trips and then stash the money from home in it when I have the local currency in my existing FSU coin purse.  There was a neat one at the international market – made with map material, is there anything more appropriate? – but I’ve been burned by zippers and am kind of careful what I get. At the little port shops, I found one made with a fish-printed material – and it was Velcro. How perfect is that? It’s big enough to hold my Turkish lira and my metro pass.

Duty free in Beirut

Back from a long weekend in Beirut. As I am just off one crushing work deadline and leapfrogging right into the fire of the next, it was a welcome relief from work.

I traveled again with a colleague, but this time we had no real plan except eat. Lebanese food is garlicky good, and that’s pretty much all that I ate, save a Dunkin’ Donut on which I splurged. That was quite a find.

Our first find of the trip, though, was in the gate area. Traveling Colleague and I met up in the gate area. She arrived earlier than I did, and when I joined her, the flight just before ours had just shut its doors. There was only one other person in the gate area, and as I walked up, I noticed a bag sitting across from TC.

 

As I sat down, I commented that she’d taken a seat next to a suspicious package, and apparently it hadn’t occurred to her that it could have been something other than trash. She took a look, and it turned out to be a bottle of rum and a bottle of Bailey’s, purchased from the duty-free store.

We figured what the heck and took it, as the owner’s flight had by that time pulled away from the gate. It’s not possible to return the stuff, and what else was going to happen? We were traveling light, so why not?

I don’t drink, but I think TC was happy to have a wind-down drink after all the walking we did. In the end, we gave the booze to the hotel clerk, who, when I told her what was in the bag, happily said, “Oooh! I like Bailey’s.” So we found the stuff a good home.

Beirut was a good choice, I think. And I set a trend. I’d bought my flight a couple months ago and since then I found out at least three others decided to do, plus TC jumped on with me.

We didn’t do anything special – beyond the eating – and walked a ton. We arrived on Friday – a holiday in Istanbul – and wound up walking something like 6k that day. The parts we explored were divided into three sections – east, middle and west – and boy, we hit them all hard.

The civil war ended in 1991, I think it was, and Beirut’s done a phenomenal job of rebuilding, and fast. In some ways, it was a quite a metropolitan city, but in others, you could definitely tell it had a rough past. There were barricades, razor wide and armed guards, but, across the street, there were Tiffany, Ferrari and H&M stores.

I’d read about “the souk” area and figured it would be a bunch of stalls with people hawking their handicrafts, but it was a blocks-long, outdoor high-end mall. The kind with escalators and fountains. It was absolutely beautiful, as was the view from the corniche. Of course, water and boats are always gorgeous.

We tried to find handicrafts, though, and did not really succeed. It wasn’t a colossal failure, but I never figured out what, other than cedar magnets, Lebanon did. I found some rugs, but nothing that I fell in love with, which was good because they were pricey. (Well, that and I’m running out of floor space.)

I came home with a cedar magnet, a couple of rocks, a birthday card for a friend, a little surprise for Riley that was hard to come up with, and – of all things – onion powder. I ran out and I haven’t found any here yet.

Considering I left the book I brought in the room, I think I left with less than I brought.

Oh, I forgot about the bandages. I bought 10, but only came home with two. My Chacos, and I do love them, hurt me so badly the first time I wear them each season. My feet were so bad after the first day. I bought the little bandages, and wore them the next day but it rained.

 

Here’s a lesson: I am stuck on Band-aid brand ‘cause Band-aid’s stuck on me.

Yeah, I know that’s not a lesson but a jingle, but that was going through my head all Saturday because I did NOT buy Band-aid brand. I didn’t think I needed 20 bandages, so I got 10, and the one with 10 was  some cheap Lebanese brand, I guess. In the rain, they didn’t do any good. They were NOT Band-aid brand, and they were definitely, absolutely not stuck on me.

It was a pretty rough. My feel right now look like they have some kind of horrible pox because, two days later, it’s still clear that I have open wounds all over them. They’re pretty symmetrical, though. Little toe, big toe side, big toe front, heel back.

The little piggies that went wee-wee-wee all the way home had it worse. The right one got strangled, as it tends to do – I need to figure out how to adjust the Chacos – but the left one just went numb and bled and bled. Every time I looked down, I had blood streaming. Since it was numb, it didn’t really occur to me that anything was happening, but I’d glance down and horrify myself, especially in a light rain.

Before we went into the rug store, I had to triage myself a bit, not wanting some kind of “you bled on it, you bought it” rule to come into effect. And when we got back to the hotel room on Saturday night – after 19.7k of walking, I stripped off the sandals and went into the bathroom to hose down. It looked like an industrial accident because the sandal straps had soaked with blood.

Sunday, I went with shoes instead. We went for a long, long walk – 6k this time – to the national museum, which was small but nice to see. The best item they had was a sarcophagus called “Drunken cupids.” It was exactly what you’d think – a bunch of cupids drunk, including one holding another’s head as he puked.

Red and blue make cookies

We had a fund raiser this week for the local staff emergency fund, so I made some cookies. There were some random prizes, including one for the “purpleist” entry. I had my eye on that and decided to make sugar cookies and dye them purple.

They're both purple

Well, I didn’t win, but I learned a lot. First is to not give away your game plan. I lost to a friend who did the same thing I did, only with macrons. She dyed them purple and gave them purple Bailey’s frosting. They were good and looked good. Mine were just good.

And it took two tries to place second! This was a busy week and work, and I had to work late every day, which meant I skipped the gym. On Tuesday, I got home maybe half an hour before I would have finished my gym routine and decided I’d take that opportunity to make a batch.

As I have no purple food coloring, I planned on mixing red – of which I have a huge thing – and blue. And here’s what I learned this week: when you want to dye cookies, you shouldn’t do it after you add in the dry ingredients. It was so ugly. The red and blue didn’t mix together at all, and each color didn’t really dissolve, or whatever it is that food coloring does. I mean, it DID color the food, which, technically, is what it’s supposed to do, but it didn’t blend, either the red and blue or the coloring with the dough.

Better looking with icing

As a result, I got a mix that looked a lot like Jimmy Dean sausage before you cook it, which, although fine for JD, is not a good look if you’re going for a cookie that you want to win a beauty contest. I rolled them into balls anyway, foolishly thinking that maybe when the cookies cooked, the colors would blend better. They didn’t, of course. I have no idea what I was thinking on that one. There was no way I was going to take them to work and enter them into a contest.

At that point in the evening, it was getting late and I thought I’d just make the next batch in the morning – I’ve gotten up and made cookies earlier in the week – but realized I still had to ice them, so I decided to give it another shot that same evening. Starting around 9, I started another batch, but this time I put in the food coloring before adding all the dry stuff. And that was success, to a degree.

Only I’m no artist and I figured out that I didn’t know the proportions to make purple. I dumped in some blue and then added red, but once I mixed everything up, it looked kind of like a gray tinted with purple. Telling myself it was lavender, I went with it and made the cookies. When they were finished, they looked even more gray, which is not a good look for a cookie. The line that kept running through my head was from “Steel Magnolias,” where they talk about the groomscake: “It has gray icing. I don’t even wanna know how to make gray icing,” or something like that. Well, I discovered how to make gray cookies: aim for purple.

Ugly but gluten free

During the week, Laurie had been sending me some photos of her latest cake creations, so I took a picture of the lot of cookies and sent her. She is definitely the baking talent in the family. Mine are good, but hers are good and look good. There’s a difference.

The next morning, I made icing – the idea was for two layers of purple – and I swear it looked brown at first, but in the end, it really was purple. I iced both sets and they both looked a lot better. I told Laurie that everything looks better in the morning and with icing on top!

The baking evening hadn’t even been my only treat that week. My boss’ birthday was on Tuesday, and I dispatched the guy who did the commissary run to buy a gluten-free baked good mix, whatever they had. They had Pilsbury Funfetti, which is a white cake with those little edible confetti-looking things. He got two and I made two 13x9 cake pans, thinking I’d ice make a two-layer cake.

The cake part turned out fine, though my 13x9 pans are somehow different sizes. The problem I had was the icing – I did NOT have an entire box of powdered sugar like I thought I had, and I started the cake after my gym routine that night, meaning I’d showered and was wearing PJs. I weighed the options of changing clothes and going to the store that night and decided it wasn’t worth it and would make due.

Well, boy, it was ugly. First, I’d put a thin layer of icing – which I dyed green, because dying batter is fun! – on the bottom layer and then plopped the top layer on it. Well, that’s the point I realized there is more than one size 13x9, although I am not sure how. I wound up hacking a bunch off the bottom layer. It was tasty but I was kicking myself because I’d iced the bottom layer and by this point it was clear I’d be scrimping for the top. I started trying to sponge the trimmed cake section’s icing on the sides of the cake. On top of that (no pun intended), I did not think to shave off the poofy middle part of the cake and therefore had some gaps between layers on some ends.

I coped the best I could with what I had, using butter-flavored Crisco to make the powdered sugar go a little further. Still, it was pretty thin, like some guy doing a comb-over. I decided to distract from the baldness by using red sugar sprinkles all over the thing. Good thing I have lots of red food coloring.

The end result was by no means Laurie’s Ghostbusters cake, but it served its purpose well, as my boss, while not completely surprised to have a birthday cake, was totally stunned that it was gluten-free.

I keep forgetting

It’s been awhile. At one point, I was a prompt, post-every-Saturday person, but that kind of went as by the wayside as my Peace Corps English teaching. You plan and plan, but on the way, something pops up that changes everything.

I’m as swamped as I can be at work. During the summer, we are transitioning to three new computer applications and guess who gets to be point person? And of course there’s the Fourth party, for which I am co-coordinator. It’s being done totally differently this year.

My mantra is to make it to July 15. By then, several obstacles will be history and I should know where I’m going next. Plus, at that point, I’ll have been here over a year, whereas now I’m just under a year. I just need to get to that point and mentally I feel like I’ll  be like in a better mental place.

Right now, I’m just stressed. All these computer applications we’re moving to are not working right and they’re slow. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Last week, I went to a class for one of the replacement applications and hoo boy, it’s not ready for the real world just yet, but it’s coming anyway. But not soon enough. I asked for the training because we were told we had to use it as of March 31, in time to send our Fourth invites and felt lucky to have gotten it. No sooner had I bought the flight ticket than my office decided to stick with the old application through those invites. Which would have been good for me, except I don’t know that one, either.

My last two weeks has been this: fumble around with the old application in order to get my department’s invites ready, then take three days to exclusively study the new, then come back and fumble with the old again. Hopefully, when it comes time to use the new, I won’t have forgotten how to use it.

One thing I keep forgetting is that I have a car now. I bought someone’s 20-year-old Volvo. It’s so weird to think about it that I still refer to it as Jeff’s car. I got it on the threat of being told I couldn’t walk to work anymore; it was pretty cheap. It took awhile for it to clear inspections and really it’s only been in my parking spot for 3-4 weeks.

Two weeks in, I finally decided to take it to work. Honestly, I prefer to walk, so if I can, I’ll do that. But it’s nice to switch up the routine here and there, especially when I have stuff to lug in or back. I drove it last Monday, or maybe it was the Monday before. I think it might have been the Monday before, because I intended to bring it back the following Friday but couldn’t get it out of the work driveway because there was work being done. Anyway, today, a holiday, I finally decided to make a round trip with it and took it to the gas station. I was running on fumes. It cost about $75 to fill the thing up. I’m definitely not going to drive it all around!

Been running around again, though. I did another 10k yesterday, and oh man, I thought they’d get easier, not harder. It was sunny and hot – I felt awful. The upside, though, beside finishing, was that I was allowed to participate in the first place. We’re still on movement restrictions and the path was alone the riverfront and through the old town. But I asked permission and got the OK, so that was cool. And I did finish, no matter how hard it was. And man, my hips hurt so bad at the end.

The next one I have planned is in August, but I’ve been strong-armed into signing up for a 14k this fall. I already bought the plane ticket and I’m already regretting it. I am NOT ready for it. I’m only doing 7-10k a day these days and I don’t intend on adding more. I have no idea how I am going to do 14k. A lot of walking, I would guess. I don’t know my time but I think it was around 1:10, the same as the second one I did. (I’d done three before but didn’t pick up the little toe tag for No. 3.)

This weekend was a long weekend and I did a day trip to Iznik with a little van full of colleagues. Iznik’s a tile city about three hours away and there were some cool ruins. I’m not a big tile person but it’s nice to look.

Guangzhou wasn’t exactly a place where you wanted to buy a bunch of cool stuff, but Turkey is totally different. Leather, lamps, tiles, towels and rugs are just a few of the awesome stuff you can find here. It’s an utterly fantastic tourist place, and it’s hard to lay off when you find something new.

Rugs really are a weak spot for me, and not just Turkish. I’ve picked up three here already, though, and have my eye on a fourth. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I’ve taken two trips so far and picked up rugs on those, too. One was the Pakistani rug that I got in Sarajevo and last weekend I found a little runner – maybe six feet long – from Belgrade.

I really need to stop. Either that or start looking at 2000-square-foot houses with hardwood or tile floors.

Take it easy

Now that we’re on movement restrictions, my weekend options are a bit limited. There probably are lots of places in Istanbul that I can go to, like the Asian side, but this wasn’t the weekend to do it.

I’ve got the duty phone again and I don’t like wandering in public with it because you never know if you’re going to have to deal with some kind of crisis. So far, I have mostly dealt with people being scammed, but it’s better to do that where no one can overhear you. This weekend, I’m fine being homebound.

This past week was pretty miserable overall, and I’ve also had duty calls during the middle of the night, so I was exhausted. And behind at work on a couple of projects. One, in particular, is one I welcome but needed a couple of hours with no interruptions, which is impossible in my position. I’m the problem solver than everyone comes to, and I don’t have a door to close. There’s just no way.

Saturday morning after the gym, I went into work. I had to get there fairly early because there was a planned demonstration and I wanted to miss it; it gave me a good excuse to get up and in. I was there until 3 and really got the project under control, so that was good. (Oh, and bonus brownie points: my boss came in and saw me working.)

Saturday is the veggie market day, and I did both that and the grocery store. I usually do the grocery store on Sunday but I walk right past it on the way to work, so I stopped in.  Pretty darn productive.

Being so efficient on Saturday meant I had nothing left to do on Sunday. My alarm went off at 6:10, like usual, and I started to get up and go to the gym. I hadn’t even made it to a sitting position when the stray thought of “why the heck am I doing this now?” went through my head. I mean, I had absolutely nothing else to do, so what was the point? It’s not like I have to be at the gym at 6:30 on Sunday. It’s not going anywhere.

So I pulled up the covers and went back to sleep. It was fantastic.  I finally got up around 10, made pancakes, did a load of laundry and then hit the gym. I’m trying to change things up a bit and did the elliptical instead of the treadmill, and I did some ab thing and now my stomach is made at me. And I hung out in the steam room for far longer than I should have, but it was nice.

And the only other thing I’ve done today, besides fend off a scam call on the duty phone, is cook the veggies I brought yesterday and watch “Office Space.”

It’s been a great weekend.

Sunday is tour group day in Athens

Obligatory Acropolis

Decided to take another weekend away. My goal was simple: a fairly cheap nonstop flight that would give me enough time in the city to have a day and a half on the ground. I wanted within Turkey, but I couldn’t find one.

Finding flights that fit that criteria is harder than it seems like it would be, because it takes forever to get to the airport sometimes. There are two airports, one on the European side and one on the Asian side. That one is hard to get to, so it’s difficult to plan evening flights from there. It can take around 3-4 hours to get to the airport.

The other airport always has the metro system, but I have to get to the metro, which takes either a cab or a walk to the bus stop and then a bus. Once on the metro, though, it’s a solid but reliable hour to get to the airport.

Anyway, all this means is it’s harder than it should be to find a flight leaving after 8 p.m. from IST or 9 p.m. from SAW. Lots of the flights I found to areas I want to go – Macedonia, Albania – leave around 7 p.m., which would mean having to take an hour or so off work. That wasn’t the plan for this particular weekend. Other flights left at decent enough times, but the return flights were something like 9 a.m. on Sunday morning, not leaving enough time on the ground.

Reminded me of Bootstrap Bill

With those parameters, I couldn’t find a flight to a place I hadn’t been to, so I plunked down $150 and went back to Athens. I went once before but was in Peace Corps at the time, so I didn’t exactly splurge. Of course I went to the Acropolis, then, though, so I didn’t feel the need to go again this time. First of all, you can see it from anywhere in Athens, and second, I went in 2009. The thing dates to 2000 B.C.; I didn’t think it would change enough in eight years to warrant another visit.

Besides, when I came before, the Acropolis museum wasn’t open and it is now. It’s got a lot of the artifacts that had been excavated from the site, and it was pretty phenomenal. They don’t let you take photos, though, so I have no proof I went.

One of the friezes from the side of the Parthenon was in there – a long scene made up of panels carved out of marble. Each of the panels had a scene continuing where the one before it left off – soldiers, chariots, cavalry riders. It was interesting that each of them was in a different pose, angle, emotion or otherwise. All were unique, like the single one out of the whole thing that was facing the “camera.”

Is this a pornstache or what?

Since I can no longer roam museums in Istanbul, it was nice to do it in Athens, and I went to three. One was in the old Parliament building and honestly, I had no idea what it was about except that all the portraits of men featured funky mustaches. The other was the archaeological museum. I hadn’t realized went the previous time until I stepped into a red room with a bronze sculpture of a little boy riding a horse. At that point, I knew I’d been before but there’s so much to take in that it’s like new anyway.

The museums were crawling with people. Not individuals, though. They were seething with tour group, moving in packs and blocking aisles all over all three museums.  I’d hit two museums in mornings and was flabbergasted at the number of tour groups.  Viking itself had to have, oh, about 356. The tour leaders with signs – most of them Viking, it seemed, though I also caught a Gate 1, familiar to me because that’s who I used for my trip in China – led groups with an older average age but there were classes upon classes of youth, too. Soccer teams, uniform wearing, name-tag bearing kids from elementary to high school.

Trying to maneuver amid such a living throng got complicated, as every placard, it seemed, had someone with a little microphone holding court, with lots of earphone-wearing subjects nodding and aahhing. Lots of sheep, following their Viking shepherds, and I was trying to weave around a bunch of them in the pasture, except the pastures in this case were displays wide enough to accommodate 2-4 people back to back, but not 15-30 of them.

But it was nice to see tourists again. Istanbul’s tourism has been hit so hard that I forgot what crowds were like. I got jostled around, stared at and had lots of sad-looking people try to sell me this or that on the street. One man was so decrepit-looking that when I bought my dinner, I bought extra for him, but I couldn’t find him on my way back so I ate it myself. I’m really not a sucker for people who try to sell/beg, but that one got to me, but he disappeared.

So now it’s back to the real world and no more vacations planned until May. We have three holidays in May, but so far I only have plans for one. I’m trying not to rush it. And really, I am kind of relieved to not be going anywhere next weekend. There are a couple projects I need to get a handle on at work and I look forward to settling in.