A Facebook app called YearBookYourself is doing its rounds and going viral because of its high level of awesome. Before I talk more of the bore, here’s what I would’ve looked like had I been 23 in the 80s.
Awesome, I know. Go check out YearBookYourself, upload your pic and see what you would’ve looked like anywhere from the 50s to the 2000s, with a 2 year interval. Share the results! (on your blog or in the comments! :-))
So what did you do for Christmas? Christmas isn’t really celebrated in Istanbul, but our university organised a Christmas dinner for the exchange students (and their families, if they had come over). Free food and free drinks (incl. alcohol) is an easy way to make international students happy, but they also threw in some Turkish folk dancing. There were two groups and the picture above is of the second. Two guys, dressed up as above, danced in a playful way depicting some story. Very cool.
More pictures up soon! For New Year’s Eve we’re renting a boat and throwing a party on the Bosphorus… I’m DJing and my means are quite limited so I have to do some preparing. Speak to you in the new year!
Best wishes to you all!
~ Bas
So what did you do for Christmas? How are you spending your New Year’s Eve?
The other day I got up before dawn because I wanted to take some shots of Istanbul as the sun came up. The set went alright, but the best picture has nothing to do with Istanbul by dawn… It’s this curious cat I came across (you can click the pic for a bigger version). I’ll be posting other pictures from the set regularly soon… The lower quality, unedited versions are already online for a sneak peek. Have a look in my Picasa.
Before I left I took another picture of the cat…
Istanbul has a lot of street cats, which I don’t mind. The dogs can be a nuisance, especially at night, but they are generally clean, healthy and well-behaved, unlike the ones in Sofia, Bulgaria. In my neighbourhood here in Istanbul, people put rests of food outside their window or put special food for cats on the pavement. Every now and then you’ll hear a cat outside your building meowing really loudly. One look out of the window and you’ll find out your upstairs neighbour is throwing food down at the cat – so be careful with sticking your head out of the window. 😉
In Holland, I have not once seen a street dog and I doubt I’ve ever seen a street cat, but it’s hard to tell as most people just let their cats outside during the day.
Do you have a lot of street animals in your country? I see a lot of reactions from different parts of the world, so I’m especially interested in what type of animals? How do they behave? How does the general public feel about them?
BasBasBas.com is about my life as a Dutch student living in Istanbul. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul and travels in the region. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.
A few weeks ago, or was it a month, we (the exchange students) received a special invitation from the rector of our university (or chancellor/president, if you will). A special boatcruise was planned and we would be having dinner with the rector on the Bosphorus in Istanbul. Amazing!
Afterwards we would dance and the rector might teach us some Turkish folkdancing. “Wow”, I thought, “it’s really incredible what this university is willing to do for their exchange students”. Everyone was excited about it, partly because of the promise of free food and drinks ;-), and most of the 100 exchange students at Yeditepe University planned on attending.
On the day of the cruise we arrived and it turned out the boat had already left. Miscommunication. The boat left 2 hours earlier than was announced to us. The university bus took us to another dock where the boat would come to pick us all up. When we got there, the boat was a lot bigger than I anticipated and what surprised me was there were a lot of people on board already…
We were then told that kids from high schools and their parents were already on board and that the rector had ordered the boat to come pick us up. Great! I let the new information sink for a minute and then realized that it had all been a great PR stunt. There were hundreds of people on the boat and this way Yeditepe could show off their international character. The cruise was quite different from what I expected and definitely not as intimate as it was made out to be, but it helped me achieve one of my goals for Istanbul:
To party on the Bosphorus! The Bosphorus is the strait that connects the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea (and thus ultimately to the Mediterranean) and runs between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul.
As we got on we sailed out to the Marmara Sea and saw the Prince’s Islands (I think) and witnessed the beautiful sunset pictured above. Later, as the skies turned dark we sailed through Istanbul. The lights are beautiful and as I’ve said before, the best way to see the glory of Istanbul is from the water. We partied on the deck of the ship with a bit too many high schoolers and very loud Turkish house music. Oh, and free beer (which finished within half an hour) and free wine!
View the pictures of the trip on Picasa! Pictures of the sunset and the sea and of course the party! Sorry, I don’t have the right equipment to catch Istanbul by night. You’ll have to come and see it for yourself. 😉
If you took a ferry or boattrip in Istanbul before, how did you like it? What was your experience? In the past I’ve partied in an empty office building, under a bridge, in an abandoned church (controversiaaaaal), a parking lot and in the forrests on a mountain in the Balkan range. What’s the most spectacular location you’ve partied at?
BasBasBas.com is about a Dutch student living in Istanbul. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul and travels in the region. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.
That’s the title of a 10-15 minute presentation I’m giving soon for my Intercultural Communication classes at Yeditepe University, here in Istanbul. I designed it in such a way that it can also be enjoyed without my vocal explanations and here it is!
The Intercultural Communication course is likely to be the most innovative course I’ve taken during my higher education (sadly — universities should make more use of modern technologies). Every Tuesday, we get into a classroom at 4 o’ clock in the afternoon and have a video conference with a class in Lincoln, Nebraska, US. We present ourselves, our culture, customs, daily lives and our countries to each other. It’s fascinating, because both the Turkish class as well as the American class have students from many different backgrounds.
This part of the Intercultural Communication course, called Global Classroom, has been quite fun so far. We’ve managed to make 2 students from the Nebraskan class dance in front of the camera and they’ve managed to make 2 of our students wrestle in front of the camera (or was it Jiu-Jitsu?).
There’s only a few sessions left, so I hope I actually get to do my presentation, as our lecturer wanted everyone to prepare one, but there will be no time to actually execute all of them.
I hope the presentation has given you an insight into Holland’s liberal policies and if you have any questions please feel free to reply. I love answering questions about these issues.
How about in your countries, how is your government dealing with these issues? What is your personal opinion on these matters? Has the war on drugs failed? Is same-sex marriage morally wrong or is keeping it illegal a form of discrimination? What about prostitution?
A view of the most touristic part of Istanbul. The mosque on the right is the Blue Mosque or Sultanahmet mosque, left of that is the Hagia Sofia which was a cathedral, but was turned into a mosque during the Ottoman empire and left of that is the Sultans’ palace. Quite a nice view, huh? On the left side of the picture, you see some land at the other side of the water… That’s where I live. Literally less than 2 minutes away from a nice sit at the sea with the view of the Hagia Sofia and the beautiful buildings around it.
The picture was taken from Galata tower. If you come to Istanbul and want to come home with some cool pictures, go to Galata tower. If you have many friends who go to Istanbul, all of you will have the same pictures though, as everybody seems to go up the Galata tower. It’s also a nice spot for panorama shots.
click on the photo for alternate version
Just before dawn, Istanbul’s fishermen get in their boats and move onto the Bosphorus or the Marmara sea. If you walk or sit along the coastline, you can hear them talking or listening to music. A great place to visit in Istanbul, if you want to sit along the coast, is Kadıköy, which is also where this picture was taken. Inspired by the work of Michael Kenna.
Tell me, which is better, the above or the alternate version?
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Welcome to the first edition of blog carnival Expat Experience!
Expat Experience is a collection of the web’s best blog posts about life as an expat around the world. What is it like to move abroad? What are the joys and difficulties of emerging yourself in a different culture? What about food, culture shock, language problems, or making friends abroad? How about maintaining contact and relationships with people back home? But let’s not forget the adventures one experiences as an expat… travelling in ones new home country, the social life, going from outsider to insider in a new environment.
Expat Experience is a reflection of all of this and more. We all have different homes and different destinations, but share one thing… We have made the move abroad. Whether you’re a long-term or short-term expat, serial expat or just someone that’s interested in the life of expats… Whether you’re interested in the lives of expats in your home country, an expat that wants to read about the experiences of fellow expats, or you just want to network with other expats and gain some attention for your own blog… Expat Experience offers a fascinating insight into the lives of expats globally.
Enjoy the read, enjoy the adventure! Enjoy the Expat Experience!
Today’s my girlfriend’s birthday. Look what I made for her! Since I live in Istanbul, and she lives in Sofia, Bulgaria, and we couldn’t be together for her birthday, I still wanted to make something special. So I gathered up some friends and acquaintances at my university and made this! 🙂
There’s many nationalities in there also… Italian, Dutch, Romanian, American, Turkish, Canadian, Greek, German and Czech. I thanked them for their help afterwards.
Hope you all like it as much as my girlfriend did. A little bit less is also okay also. 😉
I do, and that’s the reason why I haven’t been blogging so much (and dropping, for the EC readers). It’s a waiter job and on Friday, Saturday and Sunday I make 12 hour days. Never did that before and it’s really tough since you’re standing all the time and since it’s a touristy restaurant it gets extremely busy, guaranteed! Here are some (clickable) pictures of my work:
 
 
The job’s quite fun. I get to speak many different languages. Today I’ve spoken Turkish, English, French, German, Dutch, and a little Bulgarian! 🙂
The pay’s not so great though. It’s 50-80 lira per day (about 30 euros) for 12 hours of work. You can do the math and calculate my hourly wage. It’s very hard work and I don’t think most of the visitors realize how hard the staff actually works for what kind of money. I wouldn’t expect it at least. Now that I know, I’ll be a little bit more considerate when tipping in touristy places. Also, some of the visitors thinks that “service costs” means that the tip’s included. Wrong. I don’t get an hourly wage, I get a “commission”, which comes from the service costs (10% of the total check). So next time you see “service” on your bill, TIP!
It’s great to be working in a bar/restaurant again and it’s a nice experience for now. Hard work, but it makes you sleep well at night… and wake up with an aching body the next day. 😉
Off to bed. Gotta get up early tomorrow for another 12 hour day.
