BasBasBas.com

My first batch of Istanbul pictures is now online. Go check it out at Picasa.

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A few years ago I was walking through my hometown Utrecht in The Netherlands quite bored, but I had to kill some time. For some reason while I was walking I looked up and suddenly found myself marvelling at a beauty I had never noticed before. I believe a lot of things in our surrounding [...]

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Ramadan, Islam’s month of fasting, is set to start tomorrow. Since Turkey’s population is said to be 98 to 99% Islamic, I expect the Ramadan to be rather noticeable. Hence my decision to start an article about it and introducing the topic, since I’m sure it will be a returning topic over the next month or [...]

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Yesterday night we met up with a ‘bunch’ of Erasmus students (30) in the Taksim district of Istanbul for a night out on the town. My roommate and I headed from our dorms to the park, where we went into a cable lift over the park towards Taksim. Once there, I was amazed with how [...]

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Merhaba! Benim adım Bas. Nasılsınız?
After just two days in Istanbul, I realized why so few Turkish people speak English. If it’s anywhere near as hard for them to learn English, as it is for me to learn Turkish, I can imagine most don’t even want to bother with it if they don’t need it.
When I [...]

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Excuse the Turkish symbols in this post. I have a lot to tell but lıttle tıme and I wıll revısıt thıs post later.
It has been 30 hours sınce I woke up thıs mornıng. Last nıght I hopped on a bus to Turkey. Some observatıons:

As you’re nearing the border, Bulgaria gets more and more Turkish. You [...]

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I’m off to Istanbul today. It’s only been 6 months since I came back to Holland from Bulgaria where I lived for half a year. Now it’s time to get myself over to Istanbul for half a year of studying abroad. Since my girlfriend’s been in Holland with me for the last weeks and she’s [...]

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Since I’m going to study at a university in Istanbul through the EU’s Erasmus program, I was allowed to sign up for a (free) Turkish language course under the Erasmus Intensive Language Course (EILC) program. I immediately jumped on it, since it had many other advantages, such as free accommodation at the Istanbul University campus.
Then [...]

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There we go. Last thing I definitely needed to arrange before going to Istanbul for half a year. Looks like it’s a single entry visa though, meaning I can only visit the country once during these 6 months. I wonder if that means that if I leave the country, I have to get a new [...]

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I’ve been officially accepted to Yeditepe! Time to sit back and relax, right? Not.
Last week: 2 final exams. This week: 1 final exam, 1 deadline for a website, some work assignments. So at this point I was already busy. Anyway, I decided to figure out how I would get my ERASMUS grant. I went to [...]

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