Aisha from Istanbul

Tell us about yourself.
My name is Ayse. I am married with a 3 month old son who was also born in at the Kizilay Hospital in Kartal, Istanbul. I live in Istanbul where my husband works.

What made you come to Turkey?
My maternal grandmother is from Turkey and I still have relatives in Ankara. My mother speaks almost fluent Turkish and I have always been fascinated with the country as I had made some very dear chat friends there. I also fell in love and met and married my husband in Istanbul so the country gave me my love. While I was having my baby boy, I was away from my mom and brother and sister and Turkey gave me a family away from home with all the help my husband and I were given. This makes me come back to Turkey again and again.

What do you do in your daily life?
Besides taking care of my husband and my son I am a journalist and a freelance translator for a firm in Dubai.

Family?
Besides my husband and my son I have parents, a brother and a sister, a sister-in-law and a wonderful mother-in-law and father-in law.

Can you compare your first days here with today?
My first days in Turkey were spent with dragging my husband for translations everywhere because I knew scant Turkish; getting myself lost in Istanbul and calling my husband to come and get me quite often and getting familiar with the many zeroes in the Lira because I am bad at mathematics as it is and "can never learn to count properly" as my husband says. I had a lot of trouble distinguishing between the 1 million and the 10 million currency notes. Now I find
myself more at home with both the language and the currency.

Has living in Turkey influenced your approach to life?
Most certainly, yes. I have learnt to be courteous to people a lot more than I did before. While I was pregnant and when I was traveling with my son in the buses people would give me their place to sit and often the bus driver would stop the bus to help me carry my son's carry cot down the bus.

Turkish language?
I have a penchant for languages so I have been able to pick up the language very easy and my husband has been a great help.

Let's talk about the region you are living in?
Istanbul is frightfully cold and hot and it has an awful lot of history in it which I love to explore. I come from a big city in my own country but Istanbul is a huge and sometimes frightening place. It also has a lot more people than I have ever seen in any city. However, I hate the traffic jams on the Bosphorus bridge in the middle of the afternoon in a dolmus. You
can literally melt with the awful way you perspire.

Have you traveled in Turkey? Tell us your discoveries.
I have been to Edirne and Kocaeli. Both are small and towns where people are more loving than in Istanbul but that is common for a situation in any country. People in smaller cities always tend to be more closely knit than in big cities. These cities are also a lot safer than Istanbul.

What is your preferred characteristic trait of Turks?
They are extremely hospitable and very very courteous and also very honest. Being pretty forgetful I often left my purse with quite a bit of foreign currency at shops and always got it back with nothing missing from it.

What was the annoying one?
Turkish taxi drivers are probably the worst in the world.

Turkish Cuisine?
I simply love Turkish food more because it is delicious and is not spicy. I can buy and at anything from a food stand on the road which I cannot do in my own country as the food there is very spicy.

Any suggestion to new comers to Turkey?
Make sure you learn Turkish or have somebody you trust to translate it for you. Also familiarize yourself with the zeros in the Lira.

Any suggestion to people planning to visit your region?
Pack your bags and come here as soon as you can and always beware of the taxi drivers and pick pockets in trains.

Latest comments about this article

 By usenerta  30.4.2007

hi Anna I think u are having trouble with drivers.first mostly thet dont speak english.second you need to show them you know where are you going other wise they can take u long trip :)

 By aysethornton  8.12.2006

hi hanna, ever so sorry for not replying earlier but i´m in canada now. migrated here in may 2006 :) haven´t been checking up on the website. about taxi drivers, you must be sure to know exactly where you´re going else the driver will take you all around the city and then charge you a fortune. my husband and i weren´t familiar with istanbul and we had to get to the airport in a hurry from besiktas. the driver took us all over the city and we almost missed our flight. he also charged us $200 for the ride. my husband said some not so nice things to him in colorful turkish that wud leave your ears ringing. the taxi driver was quite surprised and i stood by giggling. we walked away leaving the driver stunned. :) always make sure u have a friend with u, turk or otherwise who knows exactly where u´re going or you know the way exactly. never rely on a taxi driver to show u the way, else u´ll end up with empty pockets :)

 By Hanna  23.8.2006

Hello Aisha, what´s the problem with the taxi drivers? Tell me, pls, more. Do not have any idea:)

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