Turkish Customs and Food

Yacht Marine Marina in Marmaris, Turkey. This is where Aspen is!

The cave-temple on Paradise Island, Marmaris, Turkey. This cave has had human habitation since 10,000 BC and is believed to be a religious site, based on the artifacts that were found inside. These artifacts included 2 carved sandstone idols and cremation remains (sacrifices?). It is a very eerie place!

Yes there is another totally different world out here.

It is time for another Captain Steve haircut story. From the Caribbean to French Polynesia, Australia, Thailand and even Oman, no 2 of my haircuts are ever the same. Turkey was no exception either.

Barbers are very plentiful in towns and villages wherever we travel here. So I picked one place that was clean and had 2 barbers inside. First we agreed on a price - it always makes me nervous bartering for a service like this because if I pay too little will the barber only cut a little and not do a good job? Anyway, the haircut went pretty well, a little too short but still very nice. It was afterward that was scary.

Turks don't like body hair we found out. As soon as the barber lit a flaming wad of something at the end of a short stick I knew I was in trouble. Maybe I did negotiate too low a price?

They use a flaming wand here to burn the hair off your ears. The wand burns everything it touches of course and the barber is very good not to burn your skin with the huge flame. The smell of burning hair soon ended. The nose hair was next but not with a flaming wand - that was a relief. Then the sideburns with trimmed with an incredibly sharp razor. "Did I want a full shave", the barber asked? "No thank you", I replied. I'm glad I wasn't wearing shorts for this haircut!

All of this cost about $7 so I think I negotiated ok. Maria doesn't think she wants to have her hair done here.

Grocery shopping is a fun time too. Turkish is not our second language (or third or fourth or anything) so we use a Google translator to figure out what a food label says. We ordered what we thought was ground beef but the label said veal. Now we think we know what beef is and even though it said veal it was beef. So they tend to even call things different names than what we are used to!

The spices were really a challenge for Maria. Oregano is not sold in Turkey. This really upset Maria since that spice is used in most of her Italian cooking. Ok, so we found a substitute called Italian spices. You just have to be flexible!

There are also no western products in the grocery stores. Usually there is a section someplace in the store, usually hidden in some corner in the back, where the imported foods are kept. Things like cereal, canned meats, canned vegetables or even M&M's. But not here, nothing except what is made in Turkey! And we have tried half a dozen grocery stores looking for anything from America.

But at least we can shop in a nice grocery store and they accept our credit card to pay for everything. And we have a little card from the grocery store that gives us a discount or maybe cash back, that we use when we check out. But we are not sure what the little card is really for but the cashier really likes when we give it to them when they ask. At least I think they are asking for the little card but that conversation is in Turkish too and like I said, we don't speak Turkish!

Sail on, sail on and sail safe Aspen…