Carpetblogger

We Watch Sports

As many of you know, Carpetblog is an American-run operation. A female American-run operation. That means that our interest in almost all kinds of sport is surpassed only by our interest in, say, derivatives. Our interest in football is even more intense.

We've heard the arguments in favor of football and none are very compelling. Some have compared football to religion, which, while accurate, does nothing to enhance our appreciation for it. Lots of things are wildly popular while at the same time being screamingly boring.

Under intense pressure, and having not one better option on a Wednesday night, we succumbed and went to a bar, and not just to do what we normally do at bars. We went with the specific intent of watching Turkey play Germany in the 2008 Euro cup. If you want to understand how Turkey got there and what the achievement represents, there are plenty of other blogs that can explain it for you.

Because Americans view soccer/football as a game played by no one older than age 11, this is something of a watershed. Not that we've never watched a soccer game before -- alert readers will remember our monumental photographic achievements following in some aspect of the 2006 World Cup which involved Ukraine. We watched at least seven minutes of that game and joined the crowd celebrating on Maidan afterwards. We kept our shirt on, however.

 
It's true that there weren't as many boobies on display afterwards this time, and not just because the Turks lost. Unlike Ukies, Turkish women rarely take their clothes off in public.

We're not sure we can accurately characterize nature of the Turkey/Germany rivalry for Americans. It's sort of as if America played Mexico in some sport that we can't think of, with all the racism and divided loyalties it would inspire. As happens in a lot of countries, football exacerbates a particularly virulent strain of testosterone-driven nationalism here that needs little encouragement, even on ordinary days. People --particularly those with penises -- were pretty much out of their heads. Walking down Istiklal was like entering Magandalarstan!

The bar scene was grim. There were a lot of people actually watching the game, which we did not anticipate. No one wanted to chat. And they all devoted a lot of energy getting very excited about things that almost happened during the game, which is apparently very common when people watch football matches.

Don't misinterpret. We totally were rooting for the Turks. Anytime Turks want to wreak havoc in Vienna, Carpetblog is behind them. But really, our primary motivation for watching was seeing Turkey win, and hoping Russia would win, so they would play each other and we could root against Russia.

The Streets of Cihangir Ran Red Today!

With fake blood.

Does anyone know why the Istanbul riot police fill their water cannons with red water? If they were doing it to mark their targets, they pretty much failed since 85% of the people who were not police at today's Cihangir May Day Riots were, like me and Awesome Mossman, underemployed gawkers. If it was supposed to look like blood, there was too much of it to be believable. There's usually only that much blood in the streets during Bayram.

But excess was really the theme of the day. I really don't feel like explaining May Day in Istanbul, but 31 years ago, 37 people were killed by police during May Day protests near Taksim. The incident was never resolved, no one was punished and ever since then, the government tightly controls all May Day commemorations and forbids large gatherings on the square. So, anti-government forces use May Day as an excuse to challenge the authorities and air a variety of poorly articulated grievances. To be clear, May Day protests have nothing to do with workers.

Since a gathering of more than a couple of people having tea on Istiklal attracts bus loads of riot police on a normal day, May Day really cleans out all the barracks and riot gear warehouses in anticipation. Cops started blocking access to Taksim early in the morning which wreaked havoc with traffic all day. Since those with rock throwing on their minds couldn't reach Taksim, they spilled into the surrounding neighborhoods. Last year, it was Beşıktaş and Dolmabaçe. This year it was Cihangir (among others).

If I need to remind you, we refer to Cihangir as "Yabancı Köy," or "Foreigner Village," because its gentrified streets, overpriced cafes and fine views attract scores of idle expats. Rioters throwing rocks at police in front of the tea garden where Cihangir's substantial leisure class wastes its days is so outrageous, it is simply not to be missed. That's the only reason I bothered to check things out today.

My guess is there were 3000 fully-geared riot police and an armored water cannon. If I were very generous, I'd say there were 100 rioters. The non-rioting, non-police contingent were split between gas-mask wearing journalists and people like me with cameras and flip-flops, numbering probably 300 or 400.

My sense is that most Turks don't really care all that much about the May Day incident anymore. Communists and Socialists are marginal and probably couldn't kick up much of a fuss on their own, so that leaves plenty of space for anarchists, anti-government rock throwers and assorted aggrieved dirty hippies to provoke the cops.

And I have to say, they managed some quality provocation. Rioters (look, I'm not calling them protesters, OK?) barricaded the Cihangir's main street with planters and parking barriers. They turned over dumpsters and started trash fires. Bottles and rocks and paving stones flew through the air when the cops moved in to confront the small pack of young men, but seriously, Cihangir=not Gaza. They dispersed into the side streets when the police advanced waving rubber batons and popping off tear gas cannisters. I did enjoy my first tear-gassing, but it wears off quickly and you can get back out in the mix pretty quickly.

I had forgotten how much fun things like this are (when neither side is taking it terribly seriously). It reminded me of the hot summer of 2005 in Baku, when every weekend we trekked to downtown Baku to run from the police as they beat the shit out of old women and threw guys into black windowed vans when the opposition parties tried to hold gatherings.  A high profile ambassador in Baku removed his lips from the Azeri government's ass long enough to chew me out once for "marching at the head of the opposition rallies." One of many regrets from that period is not posting what I saw or the photos I took at those events, but I didn't want to, you know, get myself in hot water. That all worked out pretty well for me, in the end.

The critical difference between today's riots and the ones in Baku was that the latter were generally peaceful. I take a dim view of protests as a political tool in general, but violent, message-free protests like today's are counterproductive and pointless.

Unless you like tear gas with your adrenaline, which I sort do.

Carpetblogger Celebrates Fertility

Carpetblogger confidantes are already aware of our views on traditional forms of reproduction. Breeding has always been one of those things we know people do but would never conceive of doing ourselves. This policy chagrins various ancestors.

That's not to say we have no biological clock. In fact, sometimes it ticks so loud, all other sounds are drowned out. It only happens in early spring, though.

Unlike the women (and male -- you know who you are) who got all flushed at the sight of baby jumpsuits at the Awesome Mossman Baby Shower last weekend, our ovaries start to hurt when we see seed packet plumage and  green hoses coiled up outside garden shops.  Spending time with most (there are exceptions) children reminds us to double up on the birth control, but the garden department of Bauhaus (the Turkish Home Depot), with its sprouting bedding plants and neat stacks of potting soil, looks like the nursery of our dreams.

It's been five long years since we've been able to plant anything, but an ill-advised February vegetable garden back in Portland taught us long ago suppress the urge to start digging in dirt too early. Istanbul's spring has arrived in fits and starts, with a few 70 degree days followed by a week of cold and gray, but the need to grow something has become overwhelming.  It's time to sow!

The street-facing Carpetblog residence has rows of window boxes on the first and second floors. In fact, it was the potential of the window boxes that drew us to the house in the first place (its carpet-friendliness was a close second). The boxes sat barren last summer, because truthfully, our urge to grow things evaporates entirely once it's hotter than 80 degrees.

Our first stop was the Eminönü Beleyedesi flower market in the lovely Gülhane Park.
There, the municipality sells hundreds of pink and purple tulips in bloom. If creeping Islamization means millions of tulips in April, I'll get my headscarf out. Along with flats of begonias, geraniums and daisies. They also sell big pots of hydrangeas and rhododendrons, which in Turkish are called "ormanı  çiçek" or "forest flowers." That's exactly what they are! I don't get homesick very often but the forest flowers made me think of the Columbia Gorge where the rhodies at lower elevations are probably starting to bloom. We would like to be hiking among them right now.

The garden market next to the Spice Bazaar has an even greater plant selection, plus a lot of grass seeds, baby chicks, buckets of dog and cat kibble and leeches. There are plenty of vegetable seedlings too, which made me nostalgic for my south-facing tomato garden in Portland. I grew so many tomatoes I would bag them up and leave them on the neighbors' porches at night. No one in Portland needs extra tomatoes or zuchinnis in summer time.

We rounded up ten bags of soil and three flats of begonias, impatiens, geraniums and little filler flowers as well as assorted herbs to hang in boxes on the sunny back side of the house. As I poured bags of soil into the window boxes, the Kurdish ladies in the building across the alley leaned out their windows, watching and encouraging me. "Çıçekler çok güzel!" "The flowers are beautiful!" they said. And indeed, they are.

It was probably the first time I had done anything they recognized as normal female behavior.

Carpetblog Exposes Corruption!

Instead of being victimized by official corruption, or more likely, taking advantage of it, Carpetblogger seems to have exposed it! 

Almost certainly as a result of this post, the Bulgarian government is  shutting down the skeezy border "duty free" shops, that the Chiplomat and I concluded are best source of mobbed-up Moscowskaya vodka within three hours drive of Istanbul. Apparently the EU says such places are "a focal point" for corruption and organized crime. While this may be the case, I suggest the EU drive a little farther into Bulgaria and they might find one or two other focal points.

This is bad news for people who think Bulgaria is a good source of cheap vodka. It's good news, however, for people who want to think Bulgaria is anything other than the only ex-Soviet Republic that managed to join the EU.

Save Acrassicauda!

From Villa Luna:

HELP SAVE OUR HEAVY METAL FRIENDS FROM AN UNCERTAIN FATE IN BAGHDAD

In November 2007, the Iraqi metal band Acrassicauda  was able to get to Turkey through the help of friends who donated money for them to leave Syria. Their visas in Syria were expiring and the government of Syria was threatening to force all Iraqis to return to Iraq.

Now they are in Turkey and their money and options are running out. Life in Turkey is very expensive and very difficult for people waiting to find out if they can officially be resettled by the UNHCR in another country (Turkey does not accept refugees from anywhere other than the West). As it stands now, they may have to return to Baghdad, simply because they can't afford to stay in Turkey much longer. It's impossible to stress just how dangerous this will be for them. It could very likely be a death sentence, and the time in which we can help them is quickly running out.

You can help by making a donation to assist Acrassicauda in surviving while they are stuck waiting in Istanbul. The band has no bank accounts, and Paypal doesn't function in Turkey so the makers of the documentary about them (HEAVY METAL IN BAGHDAD) setup a Paypal account on their behalf. No donation is too small. By giving as little as ten dollars, you can be a part of keeping the heavy metal dreams of four young Iraqi men alive.

Donate Here!

Born out of a basement rehearsal space in Baghdad, Acrassicauda (Latin for "black scorpion") is Iraq's only heavy metal band. Inspired by western bands like Metallica, Slayer and Slipknot, they began writing and playing metal in 2001. Their dream of performing live in Iraq soon became the struggle of their lives.

Due to increased security precautions throughout Iraq, it became difficult to practice-much less get through a show-without literally risking their lives. As the situation worsened in Baghdad they began receiving death threats from insurgents and religious fundamentalists accusing them of Satanism.

The war has now all but destroyed their dream of living in peace, growing their hair long, banging their heads and shredding as loud as they want. The members of Acrassicauda are currently seeking asylum in Istanbul, Turkey.  All of their visa applications to foreign countries have been denied.

In November 2007, the Iraqi metal band Acrassicauda  was able to get to Turkey through the help of friends who donated money for them to leave Syria. Their visas in Syria were expiring and the government of Syria was threatening to force all Iraqis to return to Iraq.

Now they are in Turkey and their money and options are running out. Life in Turkey is very expensive and very difficult for people waiting to find out if they can officially be resettled by the UNHCR in another country (Turkey does not accept refugees from anywhere other than the West). As it stands now, they may have to return to Baghdad, simply because they can't afford to stay in Turkey much longer. It's impossible to stress just how dangerous this will be for them. It could very likely be a death sentence, and the time in which we can help them is quickly running out.

You can help by making a donation to assist Acrassicauda in surviving while they are stuck waiting in Istanbul. The band has no bank accounts, and Paypal doesn't function in Turkey so the makers of the documentary about them (HEAVY METAL IN BAGHDAD) setup a Paypal account on their behalf. No donation is too small. By giving as little as ten dollars, you can be a part of keeping the heavy metal dreams of four young Iraqi men alive.

Donate Here!

Born out of a basement rehearsal space in Baghdad, Acrassicauda (Latin for "black scorpion") is Iraq's only heavy metal band. Inspired by western bands like Metallica, Slayer and Slipknot, they began writing and playing metal in 2001. Their dream of performing live in Iraq soon became the struggle of their lives.

Due to increased security precautions throughout Iraq, it became difficult to practice-much less get through a show-without literally risking their lives. As the situation worsened in Baghdad they began receiving death threats from insurgents and religious fundamentalists accusing them of Satanism.

The war has now all but destroyed their dream of living in peace, growing their hair long, banging their heads and shredding as loud as they want. The members of Acrassicauda are currently seeking asylum in Istanbul, Turkey.  All of their visa applications to foreign countries have been denied.

Night Slugs

Regular readers know that, over the past four years, members of my household and I have gone to war with various kinds of vermin: Cockroaches in a computer, rats in a washing machine, feral cats attached to a carpetdog's head, and of course, primates.

But lately, I have been struggling with a mysterious force that has challenged me in new and troubling ways. This adversary is particularly vexing because I have never once seen it, only wiped its slime off my shoes and the entry carpet in the mornings.

The Night Slugs.

Our ground floor is more or less below ground, at about street sewer level. This has a lot more cons than pros. The house is poorly ventilated so at best, it smells musty fusty in the guest quarters. At worst, it smells like raw sewage, and not just when it rains. This doesn't deter as many guests as you might expect. We have issued a lot of frequent stayer cards with the caveat "management ignores complaints about the sewage."

Well, there's also the Night Slugs.

They come every night. Evidence of them is abundant -- every morning there are slivery trails of slime along the edge of the walls and cursive loops on the carpet. Now I can keep odd hours --coming home late, leaving for the airport early, arriving home early from the airport. I have never seen a Night Slug.

As a native of the Pacific Northwest, I know from slugs. Banana slugs. The great grey garden slug. The spotted leopard slug. I once saw a banana slug the length of my forearm in front of an outhouse (that outhouse was at Sammamish Bible Camp where I accepted Jesus into my heart in an unrelated incident, not in our backyard, k?). But even in my ancestral home, which far too often sheltered undomesticated animals, slugs were not allowed.

Because slugs were more common in my childhood than dogs and cats and sheep, I learned how to massacre them early -- cups of beer, a squirt of ammonia and best of all, salt. You have not LIVED until you've salted a slug and watched it instantly dehydrate like a living raisin.

I figured Turkish slugs would be no match for a native Slug Master like me. I placed salt all around the baseboards. Imagine my horror when there was no noticeable decrease in slug activity. Apparently Turkish slugs are immune to salt. 

This frightens me. What kind of invisible mutant slug is immune to salt? But you know what? It doesn't frighten me half as much as some of these helpful slug hints that I found while searching for slug pictures. (It says it's a quiz, but they're all true. Proceed with caution. Highlight: Slugs produce mucus so strong that they can hang from it in midair to copulate, which they do, at the ends of stretchy mucus strings more than a foot long.) In fact, that list -- which could only be published in a Seattle paper -- derailed this whole post.

So memo to guests: watch out for copulating slugs when you get up in the middle of the night. Management does not accept complaints about those, either.

Carpetblogger Returns to Istanbul

...To find the Producer, Breed and the Beirut Correspondent huddled like filthy refugees in a freezing cold house.

The kombi (gas heater that runs the heat and hot water) broke and no one could call the master to get it fixed.

Within an hour of setting down my bags, the kombi was fixed.

Sigh.

Bayram Questions Answered!

Reader Bulent, who always answers questions we didn't know we had, fills in some of the blanks on the Kurban charity option:

Here's another fun bit for you. You probably have noticed by now the deep mistrust Turks hold for organized charities asking for donations. Turkish Red Crescent has a solution for that this year. You pay them for your 'kurban,' they slaughter it in front of a notary public, film it, make a VCD of the slaughter, and send you the 'evidence' along with 1/2 kg of the meat ('kavurma', not the spoilable fresh version). The rest goes to the poor. They figure this scheme will give them an edge over the other charities who don't provide such high-tech evidence of the good deed actually getting done. Here's the link: Haber 7.

On the other hand, when I mentioned this to a local shopkeeper he immediately theorized that they probably have three or four films of various animals getting slaughtered and a VCD duplication machine. Just has to be so, y'know, because, 'they' are always out to con us.

Carpetblog is service journalism at its best!

Theme of the Week: Things That Come in a Box

Thanks to Bentonator and the Chiplomat, we have a Christmas tree for the first time in five years!

It came in a box.

The Producer came from an artificial tree home, so he finds nothing unusual about removing a plastic tree from a box, sticking the stem in a base and putting it in the corner, ready to decorate and easy to take down. For me, putting up a plastic tree is sort of like voting for a Republican for President -- something you know other people do but would never conceive of doing yourself. Fresh Christmas trees were so important in the Carpetblog household that they often stayed around until Valentine's Day.

So, this morning I took the tree, which makes the Charley Brown Christmas tree look like a coastal redwood, out of the box, stuck the branches together and put the ornament on it. Fortunately, I had bought an old glass Snegoruchka ornament at the flea market in Tbilisi so the last step actually went pretty quickly.

Trying to convince me of its heritage, the lady I bought it from said it was from the "Nikolai" time, by which I think she meant "Nikolai Brezhnev." Still, I really liked the carp Snegoruchka is holding. At the time, I questioned the wisdom of buying a single glass ornament for a tree I didn't plan to get, but now, all my regrets have disappeared. It's exactly what the tree needs.

So now, with the now-dead spray of greenery I bought from the German Christmas bazaar hanging on the door and our luxurious Christmas tree in the corner by the window, the house just screams "infidels live here!" Not very creative or holiday spirit-infused infidels, but infidels nonetheless.

If you have an interest in a Kyiv Christmas, try this, or perhaps a Baku Christmas is more to your liking.

Meanwhile, I wait to see if the tree relaxes or retains the shape of the box in which it came.

An Article about Istanbul that Doesn't Suck!

In today's NYT travel section, Matt Gross writes about the restaurant scene, and mentions my current favorite Istanbul restaurant, Çiya (pronounced like the pet).  The cold mezzes are absolutely to die for and the special Çiya kebab -- ground meat with melted cheese in a fresh pide -- is one thousand different kinds of awesome. I tried a green mezze there that was so unlike anything I had ever tasted before, I can't even describe its taste. The menu has been different every time I've been. Seriously, there's no excuse not to make the easy ferry trip to Kadiköy to try this place out if you're in Istanbul.

Also, I need to talk about brunch for a moment. It is becoming my favorite day of the week. There are two kinds of brunch. The first is the kind with bacon and pancakes and scrambled eggs and lots of coffee. You can call it American or you can call it English, the goal is the same: repair one's system after a night of drinking.

Right now, our fave place for this is Kahvedan, in Cihangir. It is not perfect. Asking for substitutions like "no eggs, extra bacon" can be risky, but they're getting better all the time. We know the owner and the cook and most of the waiters all of which is important. Kahvedan's minor sins of commission and omission are usually forgiven because it serves real bacon.

The other kind of brunch is Turkish breakfast. As a rule, Turkish breakfast is the best basic breakfast, even if it's served in the cheapest, most touristy hotel in Sultanahmet: fresh crusty bread, white cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, jams and a boiled egg. It's simple, to the point and hard to fuck up. However, its simplicity suggests it's not the kind of meal over which one might linger to discuss the issues of the day with one's contemporaries.

When some actual effort is put into it, Turkish breakfast is actually extremely well-suited to lengthy brunch with your pals. It doesn't get cold. It can sit untouched while you consider your next move or expound at length about Istanbul's Arabic death metal scene. Its components are easily shared. The cons are that it generally doesn't come with filter coffee (Turkish coffee: not the same) and there's very little grease. It's not a hangover cure by any stretch.

New favorite breakfast place: Van Kahvalti Evi. Van is a largely Kurdish city in far eastern Turkey, near the border with Iran, known for its breakfast culture. Van Kahvalti Evi is a very good example of the evolving food scene in Istanbul scene that the NYT article mentions: fresh ingredients typical of and unique to this huge country's ecologically diverse regions. I wonder if it's coincidental that both Van Kahvalti and Çiya specialize in food from the east, where there are a lot of, uh, Mountain Turks?

Van Kahvalti Evi recently opened in my 'hood and we approached its bright yellow exterior and IKEA-lite interior with some trepidation (it needs to be substantially gay'ed up). It's got a slave* lady who makes fresh gözleme (flat pancakes stuffed with cheese or potatoes) on a convex black griddle in the window and a rather limited menu. A window case holds mounds of fresh cheeses and honey.

May I recommend Van's Luks Kahvalti plate? Sure, it's got the usual boiled egg and some cukes, tomatoes and olives, but the real stars are the sides. Have you ever had fresh kaymak? It's a clotted cream and, when mixed with honey, it may be the food of all gods, monotheist and polytheist alike.  Van's is as fresh as the day and the honey has little chunks of comb in it. There's a guy in my neighborhood who sells it from his car from time to time, but it's not the sort of thing you should eat every day. Go find some for yourself.

There's also a thick cacik (yogurt with herbs) with fresh butter, and at least three different kinds of fresh cheeses. My approach to Turkish cheese is pretty much "there's all kinds of cheese here as long as its white," but Van serves on that's sort of like a Georgian sulguni and a famous "grassy cheese," because, well, it's got greenery in it. The most unusual side is murtuğa, a heavy wheat flour porridge that I find appealing in neither taste nor texture, even when it's mixed with fresh honey or eggs. It, too, is a specialty of the region. And they've got the various types of egg dishes (menemen), but I recommend the Luks plate. It'll keep you going all day.

Like Fasuli (a local place that serves Black Sea specialties), you'll never see Van Kahvalti in the New York Times. It's just a low-key neighborhood joint with increasingly long lines on the sidewalk on Sunday mornings.

*I have no idea if this woman is a slave or not. We refer to all the ladies who cook gözleme in restaurant windows as slave ladies. I am sure she is very well-compensated. Regardless, her cheese gözleme are outstanding and she deserves a merit raise on those grounds alone.