Türkiye
Leaving the cooling Swiss temperatures for the sweltering heat of a late Turkish summer was a drastic, but welcome change. Nadja and I landed in Istanbul and transferred to Adana in the southeast where we were going to be meeting Asli. We planned on it being a different world but what we didn’t plan for was Asli arriving a day later from New York and her family speaking 0% English. Within half an hour we developed an interesting system of bizarre gesticulation and guttural grunting, some of which brought us success, but mostly failure accompanied with laughter. Her family was hospitality personified. Asli arrived and the tour began. The kick off was the first day after Asli arrived and we were guests of honor at her cousin’s wedding. The Turkish sure know how to have a wedding: about a 10 minute ceremony and 4 hours of partying after. Simple and fun. We spent a lot of time in her city, Adana, but also traveled to her parents’ beach condo (they were extremely well off) in Mersin. Wow. After that we took an all night bus to Ankara, which I hope is the worst bus ride I ever have to take because it sucked royally. Ankara was really cool because I got to meet another one of my old Orlando buddies, Arda, from 2002 and a new Orlando buddy, Serdar. They showed us their city with pride & pleasure and we took in the Turkish capital with all our senses. I woke up one morning in my boxers on a couch with absolutely no memory of how I got like that. Asli said, ‘The important thing is that it is over.” I was mortified, but later found out that I had gone to bed without assaulting any ladies and Asli just played a prank on me. I love her. Nicole, my old boss from the teaching internship, had come for vacation with her husband and we rendezvoused with them before heading back to Adana. It was strange being on vacation with a former boss, but she is cool. Anyway, it was a good time. Back in Adana we did more sight seeing, then Nadja headed back to Switzerland, Nicole headed back to the US, and I decided to stay an extra week. Asli and I went back to Mersin to soak up some sun and before I knew it I was sitting in an airplane with the comfortable heat becoming a fading memory. It was a quick 3 weeks.
‘Fall’ had set in by the time a got back and by that I mean its more a Florida winter. I got sick immediately due to the sudden temperature change, but that didn’t take me completely out of commission. I was looking for a job, but I was really half-assing it, so most of time I was out with friends drinking or getting into some other mischief. One weekend Marcel, Jean Claude, and Piatti invited me to climb Säntis, the tallest peak in East Switzerland, in Appenzell with them. It turned out to be an extremely rewarding experience although it was one that I was ill-prepared for. My pups were barking for a few days after that excursion. Around that time OLMA, a 10-day long festival in St. Gallen, started and I had the opportunity of going a few times. It is known as an agricultural festival/conference and it is an excuse for people of all ages to get completely inebriated on the locally brewed ‘Schuzengarten’ beer regardless of whether or not they are farmers. An old Orlando friend, Patrick ‘Patti,’ made the trip from his city of Aarau to St. Gallen for OLMA and we partied together a few nights. Patti is still famous in Florida for his infamous 2003 ‘corn’ incident, which I will recount in a later entry. As OLMA was wrapping up I realized my days were numbered and my time in Switzerland was winding down. The snows had begun and it was a bitter sweet departure from the land I have come to know as my second home. I was again heading back to Florida feeling lost after failing to land a job, but on the other hand, I did have an interview scheduled for a school in Japan. Although Gabriel and Jena had become an even more important part of my life, as had Gabriel’s parents, it was a good feeling being out on my own again. But, it was hard leaving them and not knowing if I would ever see them again. I could feel the last cold, wet breath leaving my lungs as I strolled into Zürich International. It was my last breath of Swiss air. I left for Florida in mid November.
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