Düzce: Turkish Tea (Party)

Photo taken at Editor Café

To describe Turkish tea as a pleasant beverage is to lie; it is however an interesting national phenomenon in Turkey. Turkish tea glasses - full, half full, or empty - can be found everywhere, and even on the sidewalks of the streets you can often see some glasses scattered here and there and young boys on bicycles running around you holding plates full of tea which they distribute; tea delivery guys, I call them. Living in Turkey feels like living in a constant tea party, tea for breakfast, tea after lunch, tea with cigarettes, tea during breaks, etc. A colleague told me that the average Turkish person drinks around ten glasses of tea a day. It was also rather interesting to know that the Black Sea region is where most of the black tea is produced. The Black Sea and the black tea: Edgar Allen Poe would have loved this.

A glass of tea randomly found
on the stairs

The Turkish tea pots are rather unique, two pots on top of each other, the first one only contains boiling water, which must remain on an open stove at all times, and another pot for actual tea. So what the Turkish do is, they fill half the tea glass with the actual tea and the other half with the boiling water, this way it is less strong (but strong nonetheless). Something which skipped my attention and I learned about through a colleague is that the tea pots differ in materials. Porcelain is apparently the best to make good tea, but I haven't seen any so far.

The tea glasses are one of the few small things I fell in love with in Turkey, they are tulip-shaped, made of glass of course, and they differ in size from the quite small to the rather big. The tea saucers are much more diverse in terms of colours, shapes, and materials. Sometimes they are made of glass, other times of wood, metal, or ceramic. I want to own all of them (and this is coming from a minimalist xD). Sometimes I order tea for the simple reason of wanting to look at the glass, or, when I'm at a new place, for the hope of discovering something new, a new shape or colour perhaps; and the Turkish always surprise me.

Be careful though, when you are at a tea-shop, WATCH over your glass, the waiter will take it away very quickly if he assumes you've finished; even if you're still drinking it. My Pakistani friend jokingly said, sometimes they even grab it off your hand as you're sipping it xD. And then he told me a trick I didn't know about, if you put your spoon inside the glass, it means you've finished, even if it's half full.

Now, if you are in Düzce, what are the best places for tea, you might ask? I have two favourite places here: Editor, and Erguvan Sosyal Tesisi. If you're looking for a comfy area for a private conversation, to meet some friends, or simply to play chess or other games, then go for Editor. The waiter at Editor also speaks English, which is quite impressive and adds some sort of a charm to the place itself. The other waiter doesn't speak English but she's awfully lovely! Editor would also be a good option for non-smokers. Besides the tea, they make a perfect Dibek coffee, served with one lokum and a smile :). If it's a good day outside and you want a nice place to have a quick glass of tea at the city-centre, then go for the second option, a nice view, some sculptures behind you, and it's the cheapest tea I've found in the city, so far. There are also many, many small tea-shops all around the city, if you're adventurous enough, why not try one of them! If you're reading this and you have other suggestions, hit me!

Düzce: Are dogs invisible or are we invisible in the eyes of dogs?

If you visit Düzce, within a few minutes you'd notice the amount of stray dogs in the city and you'd find them quite incredible. Scattered all around the city, yet harmless, dogs in Düzce are most of the time sleeping, "like Turkish people, always lazy," a Turkish friend said. And then he told me about how the people (or the municipality, I forgot) always take some of the dogs up to the mountains, but they always find their way back to the city. It is as if they have become as much part of the city as the buildings or the trees, as Turkish as the people...

I was particularly excited to hear about a conspiracy theory (#Drama), I've heard some gossip that they are actually trying to poison the dogs through their food; which would explain their general fatigue and excessive sleepiness. Fortunately though, I've been told that there are many activists and animal lovers who are trying to make a change and to help. Unfortunately however, their presence remains mostly limited online. If anyone of you is reading this, show yourself to me, I come in peace!

Due to my fascination with the rather awkward behaviour of dogs here, I started asking everyone about them: why are they here? Why are they always sleepy? Who feeds them? etc. I was quite obsessed, and I started taking photos of the dogs I liked around the city. One of my students advised me, "don’t run if they attack, just stay calm, they're not hostile, don’t worry." It was obvious that they are friendly, when that student (who is usually terribly silent in class) started to speak I was excited and expected him to say something interesting, something I didn't know already.
I had to cover my disappointment with a smile.

"I don't know, I' don't think about it," is what another Turkish told me when I asked him about the dogs. This made me wonder, are dogs invisible? Can people actually see them? The answer I found is Yes and No. Dogs seem to be invisible, fading into the background of the city, sleeping their existence into complete oblivion. They don't seem to care about the passers by. A friend told me that after I started asking him about the dogs, he became conscious and aware about their existence in the city. He said that now he notices them, he sees them. I was also surprised to find out that the whole city doesn't have any veterinary hospital/clinic. May be the dogs are invisible to the municipality as well. May be if I ask them about the dogs they will start seeing them as well and think about opening a small clinic! I am joking! The municipality actually seems to be the only institution/people who can see the dogs. May be at first glance dogs seem invisible in this city, but if you look closer you'd notice the ear tags put by the municipality to watch over the dogs, you'd also see plates of food and water put for them all around the city. Now, let me go back to the conspiracy theory I mentioned. May be the real reason dogs are always sleepy is because, as a friend puts it, "they ain't got anything else to do . . . What would you do if you were a dog [in Düzce]?"

So, may be Düzceans are unconsciously conscious about the existence of dogs, but what if people are invisible in the eyes of dogs? Sometimes, as I stop to take a photo or two of one of them, they look at me, and start moving away in complete indifference, as if I were a mere invisible breeze they try to avoid.

I see this dog on my way to work almost
everyday so I decided to call him Oscar.

I asked a Macedonian friend living here about the dogs and she said that they walk in the streets as if they don't notice people and start bumping into them while people often have to move to let the dogs pass, "just like Turkish people," she said. I approve. Dogs in Düzce are as Turkish as the people themselves. But they are everything but "a problem." Dogs are not a problem, the way society decides to deal with them is problematic. I believe that we must unremittingly talk about dogs because they are part of this city, and we must include them in our daily lives. Bring them out of the shadows.

Pet them, feed them, take photos of/with them, play with them.
I hope this article was both amusing and interesting. :-)
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