Photo: Turkish flag and picture of Ataturk, father of modern Turkey

We love being in Turkey! We've found the Turks to be very friendly and many times we've had perfect strangers go out of their way to be helpful to us. One example: Upon arriving in Istanbul, we got off the subway in the historic Sultanhamet neighborhood at about midnight, and consulted a map to see whether we could walk to our hotel or should hail a taxi. Within minutes a young man asked us where we were trying to get to, said he knew the hotel, then grabbed my suitcase and walked with us for 6 or 8 blocks to the doorway of our hotel. And, no, he didn't have his hand out for a tip.

The currency here is the Turkish lira (1 TL = 56 cents; $1 = 1.8 TL). Fortunately, about five years ago the "new" Turkish lira was introduced, eliminating 6 zeros! Otherwise, we'd be spending literally millions of lira per day. All the money (bills and coins) have a portrait of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Everywhere we go, we see photos and statutes of this much-esteemed founder and "father" of modern Turkey in the 1920s. The photo (above) was taken at Didim Marina, but it's typical. Also the main boulevard of every town in Turkey seems to be named for him.

Ataturk initiated a wide range of reforms to "westernize" Turkey, including giving voting and other rights to women, creating civil courts of law, adopting western dress (he wore a suit and tie and Western-style hat and discouraged the wearing of fez and turbans), converting the written language from Arab script to a variant of the Latin alphabet (for which we're grateful), and advocating educational reforms, including universal compulsory schooling (he invited John Dewey to Turkey to advise him on how to reform Turkish education to eliminate illiteracy).

Surprising but true--Turks don't drink Turkish coffee! If you order coffee at a restaurant, you normally get -- and I mean this literally -- Nescafe! But that's just for foreigners. What Turks actually drink is Turkish tea (called "chay"), invariably served in small, clear hourglass-shaped glasses. It's offered as a gesture of hospitality everywhere -- at the marine supply store, on the inter-city bus, by the guards at the gate to a shipping port while we were waiting for a taxi they'd called on our behalf, etc. The older men sit around in open-air cafes throughout the livelong day, drinking tea and playing backgammon, cards, or a game called okey (which involves numbered tiles on a rack). Meanwhile, the popular drink for kids is ayran, which is salty yogurt diluted with water.

The fresh produce here is wonderful -- we've been gorging ourselves on tomatoes that taste the way they did before agribusiness turned them into uniformly shaped, tasteless red orbs. And the peaches and nectarines, the figs (which finally got ripe and to the market last week!), peppers of all shapes and colors, melons, cigar-sized cucumbers and zucchini, and eggplant (who knew that the rest of the world calls them "aubergines"?). And all available for a song, especially at the colorful and crowded weekly markets, where we like to be adventurous and buy at least one "mystery" item each time we go.

We hear the muezzin's call to prayer five times daily amplified from the minaret of whatever mosque we're near, but never have I seen anybody respond in any way. Everybody just continues about their business. The call to prayer can be eerily haunting, but is not especially welcome at 4 am! Right now we're in the middle of Ramadan, a month during which observant Muslims don't eat or drink anything between sunrise and sunset. But again, the cafes and eateries seem just as busy as usual during the day. I can only conclude that although Turkey is 99% Muslim, most Turks aren't particularly religious.

We haven't found the Turkish language easy to learn. Apart from basic pleasantries (hello, goodbye, please, and thank you), numbers, a few phrases (such as "how much ...?" "where is ...?), and names of common foods, I can't say we speak it. That said, the words are easy to pronounce since each letter in the Turkish alphabet has a single consistent sound. Their alphabet is similar to ours, with a few differences ("J" is not needed because their "C" is pronounced like our "J"; there's also a C with a little tail that's pronounced like "ch"). In addition, many words are basically the same word as in English, but spelled phonetically: e.g., taksi, otel, pansiyon, ofis, parki, senfoni orkestrasi, and so on.

When we're out shopping and looking for something specific, Art will whip out his pocket-size Turkish-English dictionary. If that doesn't help, and nobody in the shop speaks English, they will often run next door or across the street to find somebody who can translate. Or, on occasion, the clerk will have a computer, in which case Google Translate is a great aid to communication. We also sometimes find Turks who are conversant in German but not in English, which gives Art an opportunity to reprise his college-era German.

We're constantly asked where we're from, and the Turks are always surprised and happy when we say "America." Many will immediately say that they like Obama!