An American Life in Istanbul

Current Mood: Angry & Sad & Sickly

Yesterday Murat and I took our first day of windsurfing classes. It was hot and sunny, with not too much wind. These are arguably excellent conditions for learning to windsurf. We left work at around 1700, and after a quick stop at home we arrived at the club at 1730 to begin our first of a series of ten windsurfing lessons. I am not to enthusiastic about windsurfing. I prefer sports that are intense and exhausting. Things like rock climbing, skiing, soccer, tennis or racket ball. Windsurfing always looked to passive and slow. Sure as you get good, it can be very intense on a windy day, but it always seemed like it was too much effort to get that good since so much balance is needed. But, I decided to try it anyway. I live in Buyukcekmece which has very little to do. One of the few things to do is the windsurfing club, which happens to be Istanbul’s only windsurfing club. So for 300 ytl, I get 10 one-hour lessons, then I will decide how much I like it.

We began by learning about the theory of wind and how sails work. This was review for me because of my sailing experience. Then we hopped on the simulator to run through some scenarios. Here is a picture of us with our instructor.

Next we took to the water. Let me just say now, the water is absolutely disgusting in the bay. There is so much trash. People here just throw trash on the ground or in the sea, so the shore lines that are not regulalry cleaned are attrocious. If I decide not to windsurf anymore after my ten lessons, the cleanliness of the water will be one of the factors leading to that decision. I proposed that the club organize a monthly cleanup with as many of it’s members as will volunteer. A group of 20 people could make the beach spotless in under an hour.

I started off no problem. I stood up and went and was able to turn and control my direction and everything. Murat was a shaky mess. I guess he doesn’t have the balance that I do because he was shaking a lot, and he fell a few times. This picture represents a common site from the shore during yesterday’s lesson:

And here is Murat struggling to keep his balance

Here is me being amazing and posing for the camera while still windsurfing.

And yet another great pose.

At the end of the lesson, they had Murat do some balance exercises. Which was funny to watch, but I didn’t take any pictures because I was hungry and lazy.

As we were leaving, things took a turn for the worst. First of all, this is our sweet ride. When I go into the city I am usually driving this car because it has insurance and the mercedes doesn’t. It is definitely a fun car to drive, although, not my favorite car that the company has.

When we went to the car to leave, we noticed this!

Somebody had smashed our window while we were not more than 100 meters from the car. Yet somehow we didn’t see anybody! So we called the police. They came and began dusting the car for finger prints which I thought was hilarious. The police in Turkey so far have shown themselves to be completely useless. They have harassed me and my friends now three times for bribes, and they do little to control the awful drivers that plague this city. Murat is of the opinion that Istanbul has the worst drivers in the world, I would say second to Cairo, but I haven’t been to enough places to say that with any certainty. As they were dusting the car for finger prints, they stopped and asked each other why they were doing that (the same questions I had as soon as I saw the duster). Instead we simply went to the police station and filled a report.

Now quite late, we went to the company’s usual dinner place, Iskele. One of the main guys in the windsurfing club owns Iskele so he drove us there. Knowing I don’t eat fish, we stopped on the way to buy some meat and we all had a nice meal together. The food was good but the meal was very long and boring. Everyone was speaking Turkish, as usual. I don’t think I will be going out with that group again. I must have sat there for an hour not hearing a word of English. Anyway, here’s the picture from dinner:

On a side note, it has been very hot lately and I haven’t been able to sleep too well. I wake up every morning dehydrated with a headache, dripping with sweat. It sucks. I was going to go buy a fan yesterday, but the car broke. Hopefully we will get AC sometime this week.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!