Enjoying Istanbul Waffles

Every city has its famous street food. Istanbul is no different. I don't know how I made it three years without ever tasting one of Istanbul's famous waffles, but somehow I had. It was time to rectify that.

My friend Barb and I had met Internations friends for an afternoon exploring Istanbul's haunted mansion and first art museum in a working office.  After we finished, it was time for a treat. We adjourned to Barb's neighborhood, Bebek, and got in line for waffles (except the girl who was fasting for Ramazan - what discipline!).

There is always a line.

Waffles are beloved in Istanbul.

I admired this Turkish Dad

out making a memory

with his kids.

 We were right behind them

in line.

A waffle maker has to be

even more patient than

a Subway sandwich artist,

because there are even more toppings!

 

First goes on the base cream.

Here are some of your choices:

Nutella, Hazelnut, Dark Chocolate,

Milk Chocolate, White Chocolate,

Caramel, Strawberry, Pistachio,

Banana, and Coconut.

 

I chose Pistachio and White Chocolate.

 Then there is all the fruit.

I chose bananas, cherries,

strawberries, and kiwi.

That was pretty tame

given all of the

candied and fresh options.

 

 

 One last sprinkling

of chopped pistachios.

What I didn't expect

was how warm it would be.

I thought it would have lost its warmth

by the time he assembled it all, but no.

 

One delicious warm, gooey bite after another.

I am not waiting three more years to have another.

An Afternoon of Art and Beauty at the Borusan Contemporary, Part Three

After enjoying a beautiful meal in the Borusan Contemporary museum café, and going up to the 10th floor to see the beautiful view of the Bosphorus from the very top turret in Istanbul's haunted mansion, it was time to explore the art in Turkey's very first office art museum.

This was 1/4 of a Jim Dine painting

with four similar panels.

The color was fantastic.

Every office was full of the most spectacular

coffee table art books.

I could lose myself for hours

just in the books.

These binoculars were in the corner office

so I assume the office belonged to the chairman.

Below, his minimalistic desk.

Someone correct me, if I have this misidentified.

 Color of all hues

uplifted my spirit.

Do they do the same to you?

 

I thought the collection focus

of color repetition

was brilliant.

 The beautiful salon or living room

off of the corner office

had a whimsical, jazzy artwork on the ceiling.

An endearing personal touch.

How could kids resist

even the beauty of this elevator shaft?

What memories this place would create

in the minds of the staff's children.

 

One of the most fun videos in the collection

was in the stairwell.

It showed the furniture and dishes

of a home living room

sliding back and forth on the floor

as a house

was slowly rocked back and forth.

 

I could imagine a child

standing in front of it for hours

and giggling nonstop at the fun of it.

 

To access videos from the collection, click here.

"Eyeballs" inspired by George Orwell.

 Love it!

One of the few Istanbul-specific photography pieces.

The Hagia Sophia in snow.

The wishing tree
Staff and the public
left their wishes.

I didn't even notice the white "profile"

when I saw this neon art up close.

It was only when I got home and

saw this photo taken from across the room

that I saw it was more than abstract.

 "21 Books"

by a Korean artist

 The quality of building materials

was an unending delight.

I marveled at the precise heft of this door.

Love this blue.

How children must want to run their hands

continually over this piece

just to explore the symmetry, color, and sound of it.

All this art makes one feel like a child!

 We waved goodbye to the museum guides
through the "haunted" grillwork.

Perili Köşk at dusk.
"Goodbye Haunted Mansion!
You were an absolute delight."

Imagine opening up your work office to random people every weekend. I found this to be a very generous act by Borusan Holding Co.

Thank you for sharing your gorgeous art with the public. To the folks at Borusan Contemporary, I say, "your generosity is yet another example of why Turkish hospitality is the best in the world."

You might also enjoy:

An Afternoon of Art and Beauty at the Borusan Contemporary, Part One

An Afternoon of Art and Beauty at the Borusan Contemporary, Part Two

Empty Nest Expat is on Facebook. You can "like" my page. I hope to see you there!

An Afternoon of Art and Natural Beauty at Borusan Contemporary, Part Two

Isn't discovery exciting? One of my rules of life is - there must be some element of discovery in every single day. The "haunted mansion" Barb and I and our Internations friends had come to explore was actually Turkey's very first office art museum.

During the week, people who worked there were making decisions about a portfolio of companies collected into Borusan Holding Company. On weekends, from 10 a.m. - 8 p.m. the whole building gets opened up to the public to explore and enjoy.

The entrance to the haunted mansion

did not feature cobwebs.

Instead, it hinted at the art collection focus:

many contemporary,

and especially,

video installations.

This particular piece of art

created by a German artist

used solar energy to power propellers
and

musical instruments

that emitted pleasing tones

This temporary exhibit was entitled Datascapes.

On the surface,

these may look like black and white photographs

of extraordinary mountain vistas.

 

What you see, is not what you get.

Each photo had been manipulated to represent

a set of financial data.

 

I'll let you guess,

which vista goes with which financial data set:

Nasdaq '80-'09 ,

and HangSeng '80-'09,

and Lehman Brothers '92-'08.

 

What great fun!

And what a clever way for an investor

to internalize the pattern.

 

This data visualization fascinated me

as it was the first time I had seen it used

for an art museum application.

 

A blue dot represented a certain collector.

A black dot represented a certain artist;

and a green dot represented a prediction

for an artist or a collector.

 

I found it to be a very cool

marketing, pricing, and strategy tool.

 Wow!

The breathtaking conference room

near the very top of the building.

Our museum guide shared that it illustrated

one of the focuses of the collection:

color repetition.

 

It made me wonder if there were any works of art

by Turkish artist Setenay Özbek
in the collection.

Her work would fit right in.

A view to the right

featured the ancient Rumeli Hisari fortress

on the Bosphorus

and closer in,

a minaret complete with an

emblematic crescent

at the top.

From the center end of the conference room,

I think it would be impossible to be bored

waiting for a meeting to start, don't you?

Instead of looking right or center,

 let's now look left,

 where there are doors

leading out to the terrace.

 

Don't you want to see the view

of the Bosphorus

from out there?

I do.

Wow! Wow! Wow!

Who doesn't love container ships?

And that glorious mansion or palace!

I wonder what it is.

That's the Black Sea beyond the ship.

The view closer in of the neighborhood.

A constant thought I had

during my visit is how

every aspect of the building

would delight any child

who comes to visit.

 

Yes, this is seating,

but how would a five-year-old use this?

It doesn't roll.

I checked.

 

So what's at the very top

of the haunted mansion?

In the very top turret?

Let's go look.

A perfect little spot for

two to four people

to close a deal.

Notice the color repetition

of coffee.

Magnificent.

 

 

Come back tomorrow to explore the offices of Borusan Contemporary in my third post on Istanbul's haunted mansion or Perili Köşk. Now you have discovery in your day too!

 

 

In case you missed it, here's my first post

on Turkey's first office art museum,

Borusan Contemporary:

 

An Afternoon of Art and Natural Beauty at Borusan Contemporary, Part One

 

 

Some additional posts about art you might enjoy:

 

"CuriousSouls" Gather in Istanbul for Discussion

What's there to do in Wichita, Kansas? Why not see breathtaking art?

Welcome to Capitalism!

Celebrating 90 Years of Artist Zenděk Sýkora

 

Yes, Empty Nest Expat is on Facebook. Follow my blog there with a "like."

 

 

 

 

An Afternoon of Art and Natural Beauty at Borusan Contemporary, Part One

Our quest:

to explore this "haunted mansion"

My friend Barbara proposed an afternoon outing yesterday. I was deep into a good book so I took much convincing.

"It's too beautiful to stay indoors!" she said. It was beautiful too. This summer temperatures in Istanbul this year have been wonderfully temperate. "O-k-a-y," I said reluctantly. Sometimes you just have to trust your friend and go with her.

This was our quest: to explore this magnificent old building from 1910. It's called the Perili Köşk, or Haunted Mansion. For years, it had an outer shell only. The entire building had never been fully finished as war had interrupted construction. While it sat in that state, the building would make noises that spooked the neighborhood as materials shifted around. Hence, its reputation as haunted.

 We walked from Barbara's place

in the Bebek neighborhood

along the captivating Bosphorus corniche

to Perili Köşk Istanbul,

about a 15-minute walk.

The renovation of the building

 by architect Hakan Kıran

had been done perfectly;

all the new materials enhanced

the magnificence of the 10-story building.

 

Our lunchtime view:

an Istanbul ferry under the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge

The Haunted Mansion had been renovated and updated with spectacular attention to detail. The inside was light, airy, and modern - not in a way that fought with the historic nature of the house, but in a way that uplifted the spirit and sharpened the senses.

 

The historic building has been leased to Borusan Contemporary Holding Company on a long-term lease. During the week, over 70 people worked there managing a portfolio of companies. On weekends, the building is opened up to the public to explore and enjoy. Not only is it a workplace, but an office art museum.

 

Our first stop was the second floor, where we were having lunch with Internations friends in the museum café.

This young Turkish woman

 had been fasting for Ramadan

since sunrise.

She sat with us at lunch,

 and as you can see,

she still had her humor.

This Polish woman

was such a firecracker.

She had come from practicing dressage

all morning

for a competition in Bulgaria

next month.

Serdar, the organizer for our outing,

had just been to Ecuador

for a homeopathy convention

where he was the lone Turk in attendance.

He had enjoyed serving as the

"flagbearer for his country."

Every spot in the café had an amazing view

of the Bosphorus

and the bridge and shipping traffic.

 

It was time to go in and explore the rest of the building. Our museum guide had arrived to show us around. I had no idea what to expect because I had not even heard of the building before that day. Come back for my next post on the Borusan Contemporary to see what we discovered:

An Afternoon of Art and Natural Beauty at Borusan Contemporary, Part Two

An Afternoon of Art and Natural Beaty at Borusan Contemporary, Part Three

 

 

You might enjoy a few other posts about architecture:

 

The Days of Wine and Roses and Tulips: Wine Tasting at the Four Seasons Sultanahmet

 

Come and Join Us for Coffee

 

Art Deco Elegance in Old Town Prague

 

I Needed Some Cash in My New Neighborhood

 

Pavel's Prague, Part Two: Grand Café Orient

 

 

 

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Three years of conversations in a Muslim country distilled down to 13 minutes and 49 seconds

Moving to a Muslim country is a chance for an expat to confront one's own Islamophobia directly. It works too. I love living without fear. Instead of learning through American media what Muslim people are like, I'm learning from them directly and listening to them share with me how they see things.

If you want to know what it feels like to be an expat, this man's talk has distilled the kind of conversations I've had with my Muslim friends over the last three years down to 13 minutes and 49 seconds. I ask you to listen to Mehdi Hasan, speaking at the Oxford Union, with an open mind and heart, as otherwise there really isn't any point in listening. You would miss the whole experience of what it actually is like to be an expat.

To all my Muslim friends as you begin your celebration of Ramazan during what will be a very hot month, I say: "Ramazan Mubarak!"

Turkey's Ethnic Diversity

Turk, Kurd, Bosnian

Circassian, Nomad, Immigrant

Laz, Albanian, Georgian

Alevi, Sunni, Şafii (what is that?)

One of the things I love about Turkey is something it has in common with America: ethnic diversity! I always say Turkey is as diverse a vegetable stew as America - it just has different vegetables. And all of those vegetables are new to me. I met a Turk or two before I came here, Bosnians too (often new immigrants to America), but I am sure I never met a Kurd, or an Alevi (hadn't even heard of them before I cam here). I only knew the word Circassian from reading Mark Twain, they are now a diaspora people for the most part. I met a Laz woman once during spontaneous outdoor dancing in Turkey, but to see their culture I would need to go up to the Northern Black Sea coast. Albanians, Georgians, Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks help make up the Levantine culture that is so wonderfully fun to experience because it is so different than what I am used to at home.

Once you've experienced diversity, do you find going back to a homogeneous society kind of boring? I do. It's all the differences that make life interesting.

Polarization is a Choice

 A photo of the Beşiktaş Forum,

a nightly neighborhood discussion

happening in my neighborhood park

and twenty other parks throughout Istanbul

where citizens discuss the future of the protests

and the future of their country.

I feel deeply lucky to have experienced the Turkish protests and to watch citizen engagement on a level never before experienced in Turkey. I plan to write about the experience, but frankly, it has been so interesting, I couldn't even tear myself away from watching it long enough to write about it. It makes me appreciate that real journalists get that done and do it on deadline too.

As an expat, I am constantly reflecting on how events in the country I am living in are related to the events from my country of origin. One of the most astounding experiences of the whole Gezi Park protests has been the level of polarization (which I wrote about here in my last post).

How polarized has it been? So polarized that the Turkish government talks about bringing in the military to restore order. Citizens discuss the possibility that there could be a civil war. I thought that I had experienced polarization in America during George W. Bush's Presidency, but this makes the Bush Presidency look like child's play. Even the clothes are different, as if each team has a uniform.

Shockingly, it wasn't until I watched this play out among the Turks that it occurred to me that polarization is a choice. When the American people were polarized, we allowed ourselves to be manipulated into doing that. We didn't have to buy that, but we did. We chose to respond to manipulative language and to allow ourselves to demonize our fellow citizens, even though we know in our hearts that what makes our country great is the range of contributions from everyone.

How boring and "trailing edge" Americans must have been during that period. One constant verbal or online sledgehammer to each other for eight years. It's so unproductive and dehumanizing. As we, the American people, beat up on each other by choosing polarized news sources and polarized web sites, other countries have gotten on with business while we spent our billions indulging in a war in Iraq America wishes it could forget. In a globalized world, the country that chooses to be divided, falls behind.

If I could offer advice to my Turkish friends based on my eight years of living through the George W. Bush presidency it would be to understand that polarizing language is manipulative language. If you buy into it, you're allowing yourself to be manipulated. Take care of your personal relationships, invite your most opposite philosophically-different friend over for dinner and break bread together. Just because dialogue doesn't occur at your highest level, doesn't mean dialogue can't occur at the citizen level.

Iftar Dinner at the White House

(the meal where Muslims break their fast

after a day of no food or water)

Official White House Photo

by Chuck Kennedy

Breaking bread together is such a fundamental practice. That's why it means so much to me to see my President celebrate Ramadan or Diwali or Passover. During that meal time, my President is contemplating and learning from someone who is different than him. He is respecting and celebrating their traditions. He is honoring them. Is there any reason we, the people who live all over the world, can't do that too?

I read recently that members of the American Congress are so polarized, and there is so much money at stake in each decision, that they no longer undertake this practice of breaking bread with their opposite. It shows. Congressional approval ratings hover around 10% and they famously work to keep the status quo rather than move the country forward.

Polarization is a choice. I'm no longer going to buy it. How about you?


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Gezi Park Turkish Protests: Where is a "Range of Opinion?"

Protesters doing yoga in Gezi Park

What a fascinating week in Turkey as my friends have risen up and demanded their Turkish democracy be inclusive of their lifestyles and opinions too. I say "my friends" because, like most expats, I have a few friends who support the AKP and hundreds who don't. Most of my Istanbullian friends are broadly secular, supportive of the ideas of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and are internationally-oriented global citizens. So they are completely unrepresentative of the average Turk, and especially, the average Turk who voted in the AKP-majority government.

A Turkish friend who protests

In story after story about the protests, the range of opinions reported has been very narrow. It is very easy for Westerners in Istanbul to identify with the protesters, because they are asking for things that Westerners consider foundational for a democracy: respect for minority opinion, respect for diversity of lifestyle, respect for the variety of religious expression, and respect for freedom of the press. The protests started with concern about the pace of urban transformation and sense of loss for vital green spaces within one of the world's largest cities. All of these ideas that the protesters are demanding have been ably, bravely, and amply reported. The protesters' voices are heard in story upon story in the English-language press. But you'll notice, there isn't a big range of opinion there. The protesters seem unified around these thoughts.

The views of government supporters and of the government has been very hard to find. I've been trying to find those opinions, because as a library professional, my job and my joy and my mission in life is to share information on all sides of issues. While the protesters are organized in both Turkish and English on social media and are also available in the park for easy interviewing, AKP folks must be talking to themselves on Twitter and Facebook almost exclusively in Turkish. Journalists are flying in from all over the World to cover this story, but with today's news budgets, having a translator is an extra expense some news organizations may not have. I have read hardly anything reflecting the AKP view.

Six Turkish Newspapers

All With the Same Headline

Where is a "range" of opinion

(on either side)?

The Turkish media had six front pages all with the same headline in Turkish to reflect to Turkish people the 'official' government opinion when Prime Minister Erdogan came back from North Africa; this shows there is not much deviation in the AKP opinion either. Even worse for the AKP and its supporters, their opinions aren't being expressed in English.

Even at the friendship level we expats rarely hear these AKP opinions, simply because many AKP people have not taken the time to learn a global language so they can express themselves to the world.

Protest banner decrying police brutality



These narrow bands of opinion seem to be a Venn diagram of two circles, one labeled "protesters" and one labeled "AKP." The circles seem not to have overlapping parts. Because each side seems mostly to talk to like-minded friends there is also the danger of online filter bubbles.

I remember this kind of polarization in the Bush years in America. It's the kind of opportunity Obama walked into, rallying everyone around the center. I don't know if there is a center in Turkey, but it is unoccupied at the moment - unlike Gezi Park.