Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesse44
Interesting. Are you Turkish? Marothisu kind of sounds like it to me.
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A little bit, but not a lot. I have some friends who grew up in Istanbul and others who lived there, as well as other acquaintances who grew up in other parts of Turkey. I've been there 3 times too.
So it's interesting because they can be forward thinking with some things, but others not so much. There's actually kind of like a family honor thing - like if you own a restaurant, you expect your sons to do that too. I know of people, and I know
of a few people, who literally got their PhD in math, only to return to Turkey to work at their family restaurant. Some of them in the more conservative regions have literally had a hit put on them if they don't. This isn't everyone of course - there's a lot of families who don't care, but there are some parents (fathers mainly) who care a lot and expect you to come back and do whatever menial job they do no matter what degree you got. It's kind of sad.
Anyway, Istanbul can be a magnificent city. People especially in the US don't really realize how big the city is and how much stuff is there. The official numbers say 13.5 million people, but it's actually 16-20 million people. It served as the capitol of 4 major empires in history and tons of other people have passed through it. It's really hard to walk in most areas and not run into something historical. The food, when you get deep into Turkish food past the Kebap ****, is pretty diverse too and reflects a lot of cultures who have made their way through. As a tourist though, it's easy to just stay and only eat kebap stuff because that's what you'll find the most of in the big tourist areas, but if you get out of there you can easily find other stuff.
If you haven't seen Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations on Istanbul, then do it - it's fairly good.
Turkish Foods & Kitchen Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations @ istanbul, Turkey. - YouTube
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