So after making my decision to come to Turkey I decided to try and learn a few words to get by with in my new city of Ankara. I can exchange pleasantries but anything beyond this is not within my capabilities.
So after receiving a wasp sting on my way to work, I faced my first trip to the Eczane (pharmacy) for some medication. Armed with my dictionary I found the word sting, of which there were many options, so I showed the lady behind the counter the dictionary and pointed to my hand where the sting was swelling up nicely. I was met with a blank stare. So this resulted in myself and my flatmate doing impressions of a wasp attacking my hand. Result!! She understood and packed me off with a couple of tubes of cream.
Today was another interesting trip out. We decided it was time to venture away from Ankara and as it's Bayram next week (woohoo no work!!) a day trip to Eskisehir would be on the cards. Just 90 minutes on a high speed train. So today's challenge was to book a train ticket. We headed off into Ankara with our trusty post it note, with the information we needed and tried to locate the train station. Easier said than done, so we stopped a gummy local and asked for directions, only to be met with that blank stare we have come to recognise. So we started to fire off words we knew, and still no luck. OK this called for drastic action, in the middle of a busy park, I looked at him seriously and did my best 'choo choo' impression! He just looked at me as if I was crazy. Eventually he grasped what we were trying to say and told us to follow him. He took us to an unmanned station onto the platform. We tried to explain that we wanted to buy tickets for Tuesday, and then came a garbled reply pointing down the train tracks. He then grabbed another local to help. So we eventually worked out we need to be in the main station for tickets. Both men got on the train with us, and as we arrived in Ankara station, the first guy pointed at the other guy, so we bid out farewells and followed the second guy who took us part of the way through the station, and pointed the way for us to go, but by which time we were adopted by a third gent who took us the rest of the way. Feeling like a pair of batons in a relay we arrived at the station at which point buying tickets was such an easy task!!
Buying fruit and vegetables at the local market is always fun and I think the stallholders probably look forward to the entertainment of the English speakers trying to communicate. They chatter away to us in Turkish even after we tell them we can't understand them, but generally with pointing and hand signals we can generally buy what we need for the week ahead.
Students always make me laugh with some of the things they say. We were given a Turkish dessert the other day and was told it was sugar with spaghetti!?!? I think there may have been some confusion with pasta which is the Turkish word for cake. I was disappointed as I was looking forward to a sweet spaghetti kind of thing....
The students are very keen to tell us where to visit and where not to visit, and we are working through the list but they seem to expect us to have visited all the places by now.
I am sure there will be plenty of other challenges with the Turkish language and I will be sure to let you know......
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