An American Life in Istanbul

As I have already said, I had a short trip to the UK and to Spain last week. The trip was exhausting, but very successful and fulfilling. Except for missing a flight, everything went brilliantly well. In the madness of my travels, I picked up on a few things that stood out in sharp contrast to life in Turkey.

Lines/Queuing: British people are really good at forming lines, or as they say ‘queuing’ or ‘queuing up.’ When I first went to Switzerland, I quickly noticed that people had no mob etiquette. I know, mob etiquette sounds like an oxymoron - especially to Europeans - but there is actually something to it. Let’s an easy example from my life and the life of my parents: Ski-lift lines.

How a line should look.

How lines in Europe (minus the UK) look.

You will notice a few things here. First of all, the people in the poorly organized line are far more. This is actually an illusion. The ordered line and the unorganized line both spill out of the picture which therefore make it impossible to judge how many people there are. I will tell you that regardless of how people line up, the person processing the line cannot go any faster.

The second thing, and this is a bit misleading in the picture, is that the unorganized line seems to be completely chaotic except that they are facing to the left, with parallel lines of sight. This is misleading. Typically, people orient themselves radially, with everyone facing towards the processing point of the line. People typically try to form a semi-circle surrounding the processing point of the line. While the processing point is very narrow, the diameter of the circle is quite large. In fact the shape that the line forms is not quite a semicircle. It is actually a shape similar to the three-point arc. The arch method of lining up is a very Darwinian approach as I discovered. By becoming the outermost edge of the arch, I realized that my size and strength allowed me to get to the front of the life-line very quickly. Is that fair? Of course not. I got so annoyed though that I decided I would throw away civility and beat them at their own game.

While in London, I noticed that the English are the kings of queuing. At one point during my travels, I was trying to get to the Underground, from the inside of a train station. The train station was very crowded and there were more people trying to get down to the underground than the sole staircase could handle. There was therefore a backup. The crowd formed a nice, neat line that curled around the outer edge of the train station. Several people commented that they had never had to queue up for a staircase, but they did it anyways. This was of course quite a change from the free for all mentality of Turkey and the rest of Europe.

Riding the Escalator: Perhaps an excellent compliment to the English’s queue etiquette was how they rode the escalator. I always understood that you are meant to stand on the right while riding an escalator. If you are walking, you can go on the left. This is the general rule for all things: driving, cycling, escalators, stairs. Slower movers stick to the right, faster movers stick to the right. If you aren’t moving, you start moving as soon as you get off the escalator so that the flow of people continues successfully.

Well I have never seen such devotion to this rule as I have in London. People kind of stuck to it, and would move to the side in the US, and in general, you can pass the non-movers in most countries if it’s not too crowded. In London, literally everyone immediately moves to the right. It was unbelievable. A very crowded subway station, you are waiting to get on the escalator. You turn the corner and see that the people on the escalator have occupied every other step and are all standing on the left. Even my friend who live in London have readily adopted this bit culture - they scolded me for standing on the wrong side.

I give a second tip of my hat to the English because they are all driving on the wrong side of the road, but the stand on the right side of the escalator. I was very impressed.

Team Thinking: My last little anecdote does not worship the English as the previous two did. Instead, it is a tip of the hat to my own country men.

I typically avoid Americans, but cannot help but notice them when I am traveling. Clothes, accent, the way they walk, many things give them away. Regardless of what it is, I can pick them out. This time it was in Heathrow airport in London that I picked out a group with American accents. I was at the border control filling out my landing card when I heard them the first time. As they picked up their landing cards, the group of about 15 quickly organized themselves. One girl in the group asked the others to all get a pen and a landing card and to inform of when they were ready. She then proceeded to read the address, flight number and other common information on the card to each of the other people in the group.

This is what I miss about the US I thought. The sense of teamwork, and the forward thinking approach to things. This girl had quickly realized that everyone would be writing the same information and created a plan to expedite the process as much as possible. The plan worked without fault. Based on my experience so far in Turkey, this would NEVER happen. A loosely associated group of students traveling together would not have the foresight to work together on something as simple as this. The group would have already have already been divided into sub-groups of students who were friends before the trip had started and mixing between the groups would be limited. Despite the benefits of acting together, each group would remain separate from the others, and would act independently.

On a whole, they would not take longer to get through customs. After all, the customs officer can only process people at a certain rate. That’s not the point though. It’s about the mentality. I see this mentality in other Americans, but not so much in other cultures. I find this extremely ironic, and I am sometimes nearly convinced I must be interpreting things in the wrong way. The US is considered a very individualist society. The socialist democracies (whom I praise) do a great job of taking care of their people. The less developed third world countries form very close bounds with the people around them, and use this network to support each other and to survive. In general, it has been my experience that Americans are heavily focused on ourselves and our wealth. I have found that people from other cultures usually make better friends than Americans. However, Americans do seem to think and behave very successfully as a group.

I know that Americans you see abroad are a different breed than the majority. I also know that while abroad many Americans are a bit on the defensive. With US popularity at it’s lowest point ever (is that accurate?), we Americans need to stick together and look out for each other right? Regardless of the factors involved, seeing this behavior at the airport made me smile. I was annoyed by how loud they were, but it was somehow comforting to see them coordinate so well together. If only I could create this kind of mindset at work.

Americans in the airport, the address

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