Entries Tagged 'Turkey' ↓

I just got home from watching the first half of the Euro 2008 semi-final in the center of Istanbul where there are thousands of people already lighting flares and going nuts (my wife claimed the TV tonight for the season finale of hugely popular Turkish series, so that’s why I went out). It was a [...]

Today was a national holiday - Atatürk Commemoration & Youth and Sport Day. It seems like that’s enough to squeeze into one day, but I’m happy to say this year also marked the beginning of a comprehensive smoking ban in public places.
An article in the English-language Zaman newspaper lays out the details, including the myriad [...]

The NYT home page currently has a link to an article about live music venues in Istanbul that made me smile and reminisce.
My first taste of Istanbul night life was a concert by jazz trombonist Ray Anderson in 1999 at a club called Babylon, which is pictured in the article. I met a bartender there, [...]

The ban on Wordpress blogs in Turkey is over. I realized this when I saw my feedreader automatically updating the Wordpress blogs I read. For the last seven months I’ve had to connect to Princeton servers first in order to get around the ban, all because the nutty creationist Adnan Oktar convinced a civil court [...]

I don’t mean to engage in bus line one-upsmanship, but I’m coming back from another trip to Ankara with the same company as last week and this time the bus has two floors and there’s a “bistro” on the first floor! It seats about 20 and I’m in the corner where they have electrical outlets. [...]

On Friday, for the first time in my life, I bought a copy of an English-language daily called Today’s Zaman. What did I find on the back page? A story about a ghost hunt at a former asylum in my hometown! (Well, a cancelled ghost hunt anyway.)
Amazing coincidence.
The story was on the AP wire and [...]

I don’t remember where I saw it, but I recently read that any blogger who finds free Internet access at the airport just has to blog about it. Well, here’s a new take on that - I’m on a bus traveling to Ankara right now, checking my email, surfing the web, and writing this post.
I [...]