A Year in the Near East

I wasn’t sure if it would happen, but it is indeed a white Christmas here in İstanbul. There is a blizzard in Ankara too – the first snow since more than one month ago. I spent a low-key Christmas in İstanbul with a group of friends. Christmas dinner consisted of sea bass at a Russian seafood restaurant that may or may not actually front for a prostitution ring. We’re not really certain about that one, but some signs point to yes. We continued the evening by getting drunk off rakı in our hotel room before going to Taksim to finish off a quiet Monday night in an 80s rock bar. The morning after was rather unpleasant, and I recovered thanks to an emergency dose of McDonalds. Anyway, this won’t be a Christmas I will soon forget.

Tomorrow night I will fly out to Cairo. I hope this works, because the weather in İstanbul is deteriorating quickly. I will spend a week in Egypt before coming back to bland Ankara to write my last Turkish final.