They say a cup of Turkish coffee is worth 40 years of friendship.
Between the seven of us, we barely had seven years of friendship, but we suddenly found ourselves in Istanbul, straddling two mighty continents and our own expectations for Turkey. We laughed, we scowled, we ate a lot of baklava. This is our Turkey Story.
Las chiquillas: Kristen, Allie, Kirstie, Julie, Tilly, me and Katerina
Today was Tax Day in America.
As I sat telling my suegra of W-10s and 29-cent hamburgers, I realized I would have to turn in my borrador de la declaración de la renta before June 30th. I cursed, having never done it before. In 20120′s fiscal year, I worked not four months, therefore disqualifying myself. 2011 was different, and my measly 2% retention rate meant I’d have to pay, I was sure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLmuFcd2Gn4
After a quick tutorial on how to solicit the draft, I signed in using my Número de Identificación del Extranjero (called a NIE, or foreign resident card). Almost immediately, I was identified with my name and address. My mouth dropped as Kike howled with laughter. I had to claim a bank account, and from there, all of my financial information was extracted and laid out before my very eyes. Not counting the two months’ vacation or private lessons or camp, I had made under 20.000€. Sad but true.
My phone buzzed with a new message from the Agencia Tributaria. They have my phone number, too!! There was a long code, which I was asked to introduce into a text box. Within seconds, a PDF containing all of my financial information from the 2011 fiscal year was compressed into an eight-page document full of words like retenciones, porcentajes and plenty more I didn’t understand. Kike checked for errors while I held my breath, waiting for the damage.
Um, it says here you can donate to a charity, Kike said. There were two options: the Catholic Church or “bienes sociales” which was probably for beefing up political salaries. I declined, writing off the for-once efficiency that seems to be lacking in every other buearacratic issue I’d dealt with.
At the end of the seventh page, he announced how much I’d have to pay: a whopping 0€. I hadn’t reached the threshold and have no valuables, like a house or kid. So, I paid my taxes, the government knows a lot about me (but apparently not that I moved 22 months ago), and finally feel like a grown up in Espain.
But, for realz, why do I have to pay taxes if they won’t co-validate my degree or let me have a credit card?! Spain, you wack.
Chhh, chh, chikiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!! Veeeeeh.
Why, WHY do store assistants have to cluck in this country, I sighed, my sinus infection suddenly growing worse as I waited for her to stride over to me.
Ehtá floooh, ¡qué noooo! Plucking the flower the size of a softball out of my hand, she replaced it with a bigger one. This one is right. I gawked at the mirror, laughing at my red, swollen eyes and the coral monstrosity perched atop my head.
I wished Cait was with me to witness yet another cultural mess up on my part. Just a few weeks earlier, I went to have my traje de gitana, or flamenco dress, taken out. My butt suddenly didn’t fit into it any longer, so the shop assistant clucked at me to come out of the dressing room, bare-assed, and stand with my it to the mirror while she adjusted it. This flower is for a ten-year old, much to small for your head.
It’s now sitting in my box of flamenco accessories, called complementos. I am no match for old ladies at the Corte Inglés.
The muezzin’s soft wails over a crackling loudspeaker broke our girlish chatter.
As he strained to reach the top notes, calling to pray at the edge of daylight, we were ducking the seagulls that took flight in front of the New Mosque, Eminönu Yenicam. Crossing the Galata bridge towards our hostel in Taskim, I turned and watch the golden-topped towers glint in the fleeting sunlight, reflecting on the Bosphorous below.
Turkey was just what I needed – to stretch my travel legs after a year of being dormant, to fill my belly with new tastes, to be somewhere without an Easter celebration. It beyond fulfilled my expectation with its incredible food, friendly people and views bordering on fantastical.
The Galata Bridge stretches over the Bosphorus between the European fingers of Turkey’s largest city. The fisherman are there early, displaying their catches in shallow styrofoam pools or old fish tanks, their long poles leaned up against the blue iron of the guard rails, and they stay even as the muezzin wails at the end of the day.
The fisherman on the Galata bridge as day turns to night.
As seagulls soared over the tourism boats, I caught my breath at seeing a mosque somewhere in the distance. Its twin towers and dome looked like a mirage set against pastels as the sun continued to sink below the Earth. I felt like I was in the far East, far from anything occidental and familiar.
I was snapped out of my revery by the smell of pistachio and honey. The rest of the girls had stopped midway across the bridge at a small snack cart that sold a Turkish cousin to the churro. I shelled out about 72 cents for the pistachio dream, finding myself a million miles away from Spain and a million dreams into Turkey.
Never fear, readers. I know I’ve been away a bit, but I’ve got a few things in tow, including an article (that pays me!) for GPSmyCity and a new stint as an expert for The Spain Scoop. But I’ve got five articles half-finished, 800-some pictures to sort through from Turkey and a rainy weekend ahead, so you’ll get your fill!
It’s Viernes de Dolores in the Catholic world, so you know what that means:
My school is full of nazarenos.
Whaaaaat is that
I have oodles of serendipitous moments while traveling through Spain and the world beyond – from sharing a tanjine with a Berber man to rubbing shoulders with Falete (seriously, he literally brushed passed me on the street in a flare of flamboyant nonchalance). Camera in hand, belly full of food and with my dad or Novio, and I’m totally in travel nirvana.
Still, I gotta throw out this disclaimer: I have just as many flubs and mess ups and utterly frustrating moments when I travel. But I wouldn’t keep traveling if those moments didn’t thrill me and push me to see more.
Just last weekend, I hopped on a plane after work to Galicia, the region where I work during the summer. The food, the people and their sing-song language, the endless stretched of rocky beaches – Spain’s northwest corner won me over on my first visit in 2008, and I now spend my summers working in A Coruña. Kike had spent just an ounce of time here, so I was eager to pay the plane fare and join him during his weekend there.
boats in the harbor of A Courña
On Saturday morning, we jumped in his car and drove towards Santiago, windows down. We’d been blessed with a clear sky and warm temperatures and stripped off our jackets as soon as we got parked. I’d been to Santiago four times already, including for the fest of Spain’s patron saint, but coming into the Plaza do Obradoiro was serendipitous: the sun glinted off the stalls selling scallop shells and rosaries, and Camarón was glued to my face as I looked for new ways to capture St. James’s final resting place. From out of nowhere, I heard my name.
While it’s no secret that I love this short-lived season in Seville, we are getting it a bit early. It’s technically winter for a few more days, but we’re already enjoying longer hours of sun, warm tempratures and very little rain – in Galicia, it’s rained 30% less than normal. While I’m all about a rainless winter (I’m a Chicagoan, so the less nasty weather we have in Seville, the more I’m convinced that this is the place for me!), it may all come during Spring’s big festivals, Semana Santa and la Feria de Abril.
Spring is in full-swing here, so I’m set to enjoy. Seville’s hallmarks during primavera are well-known and best enjoyed outdoors. We’re enjoying tempratures in the low 70s, azahar in full bloom and festivals atope. Though April showers may bring more flowers come May, I’m heading out on every sunny day.
On a popular talk show on Andalucía’s Canal Sur called La Semana Más Larga, the host Manu Sánchez recently griped about the recortes going on throughout Spain.
Spring in Seville means incense, solito and pasos.
But Rajoy just wants us to move right into Summer! he spews, citing the recent “frío esteparian” and the subsequent 70º weather. He’s got a point – springtime in Seville is sweet, filled with tipsy afternoons drinking in sunshine and Cruzcampo, fresh breezes and the intoxicating scent of azahar. But Springtime is also the most short lived season, a brief twinkle in the year, and Rajoy’s insistence in cutting the fat off of all that is good and beautiful about life in Seville is just plain loco.
Maybe it’s just my love of Camarón or my quest to see Seville in new ways, but I was crossing my fingers I’d get to do the Seven Super Shots run by hostelbookers.com . Similar to the ABCs of Travel, this virtual game of tag centers around photography, which I am all to willing to admit to loving.
The gimmick is to examine the snaps you’ve taken and choose the best out of several categories. When reading a few others on my Google Reader, I already had mine mentally picked out.
Europe: nearly conquered.
March 10th is National Passport Day in my country. I got my first one minted at age 15 for a three-week trip to Europe. In the nearly 11 years that have followed, I have outgrown the first and nearly filled the second – just two more pages and two trips out of the Euro Zone planned before May. That little blue book of mine has been tucked in a money belt far too many times, shown and photocopied for Spain’s bureaucratic musings, and it has lived to tell the tale of over two dozen countries and seven years of faithfulness.
I love the freedom I have to own it in the first place, the freedom it gives to move around and the freedom its citizenship gives me. I’ve been told I can renounce my American passport for a Spanish one, but wouldn’t dream of it. The pages still smell like the glue that binds two visas to it, and this things has traipsed with me more than any travel gadget, backpack or other companion has.
Where are you planning to take your passport in 2012? Write me about any upcoming trips you have planned for the new year, and I’ll reward one reader with a postcard from each of the destination on my list for this year: England, Galicia, Turkey, Zaragoza, Boston, NYC, Murcia…and wherever else I may head!
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