A trip to the baths

I don't really have an issue with the touching.

Like most Americans,  I think, I am fine being touched: hugged, embraced, massaged ... listen, I've been known to enjoy the occasional grope.  But I'm not so sure how we feel about being scrubbed.  I'm particularly not so sure how we feel about being scrubbed with woolly mitts by large men wearing loincloths.

So let me tell you about the hamam.  The hamam, or "Turkish bath" as you might know it, is a tradition that apparently goes way, way back.  Like Roman Empire back.  After the empire fell and most of Europe chose to wallow around in the mud for a few centuries, the Ottomans decided they actually preferred being clean, and for that reason the hamam was something worth keeping around.  The hamams are still around, all over Istanbul and (I'm told) the rest of Turkey as well.

But being neither a Turk, Ottoman, nor ancient Roman, I knew nothing of this.  In America, we don't have communal baths.  We're not too crazy about the showers at the Y, to be honest.  Our basic national attitude seems to be, if you insist on being naked and wet, for God's sake please do it in the privacy of your own home.

Not really a good attitude if you are headed into the hamam. 

There are dozens of hamams of all kinds in Istanbul, from the swankiest at places like the Ritz and the Four Seasons, to little back-alley hamams where they hang the towels outside the entrance on collapsible laundry racks.   I decide to choose a hamam in the same discriminating way I choose a barber or a grocery store: whatever I walk by on the way home is probably fine. (Granted, this has led to several bad haircuts and a lot of suspect produce, but we'll leave that for another entry).   The hamam on the way home to my flat in Istanbul, it turns out, is no fly-by-night bath house.  It has been there since before Columbus aimed for India, and mistakenly stumbled across the Bahamas.

You heard me.  The "Historical Galatasaray Hamam" (Tarihi Galatasaray Hamamı) was opened in -- are you ready? --  1481.  In other words, people have been soaped, lathered, and rinsed at this very spot, continuously, for 531 years. 

I can only imagine the hair clog in the drain.

The first thing you need to know about the Turkish bath is that it's not really a bath, in the sense that Americans know a bath.  There is no tub, and you are not immersed in water.  Here, let me have the fine folks at the Tarihi Galatasaray Hamamı explain.  This is taken word for word from the English language version of the hamam's promotional pamphlet:

Hamam User's Guide:

The visitor of Hamam is welcomed in Hamam Square.

The visitor [is] welcomed by the Yanasma (room keeper) and shown his room.

[The] yanasma gives the visitor takunya (wooden sabots-pattens) and pestemal (loincloth).

The visitor, after tying up his loincloths [sic], and wearing his pattens in his room, comes to the hamam square.

Here, the massager (keseci) meets him.

The visitor entering the hamam, lies on the heated marble platform (gobektasi), covered with a thin cloth (serme). Before taking the bath, he lies on the marble platform for minimum [of] 20 minutes, to sweat and prepare his body for kese (rubbing with a bath glove).

Later, [the] visitor is taken to the kurna (marble basin under the tap), and rubbed and given a bubble bath and later lies on the marble platform again for massage.

After the massage, a shocking shower may be taken as wished.

Our guests, with their services completed, is [sic] free from now on, he may take a shower again or lay on the marble platform to rest.

Our guest wishing to leave, takes his bathing and hair towel in the warm section and leads to hamam square.

The visitor reaches to his normal body temperature again, during his time spend [sic] in hamam square for 15-20 minutes. At this time, he relaxes [and] eith[er] the hot or cold beverages serviced [sic].

The visitor, after dressing in his room,  makes payment when leaving.

According to the level of satisfaction, a 10% tip is ethical for the staff.

In other words, you are disrobed, steamed, baked, broiled, seared, seasoned with lemon pepper (OK, I made that up), soaped, scrubbed, contorted, rinsed, soaped and scrubbed some more, thrust into a cold shower (and it is "shocking"; they aren't lying about that), wrapped in towels, and handed a glass of tea. But no bath, in the conventional sense.  Despite the "bubble bath" reference, I assure you Mr. Bubble plays absolutely no part in the ritual.

The interior decor of the Galatasaray Hamam itself is a bit of time-machine whiplash. The inner rooms of the hamam may have changed little since it opened in the late 15th Century. The main outer room, however, was for some unknown reason "remodeled" in the mid 1960s, when they apparently installed laminated faux-wood dressing rooms, a white-railing spiral staircase, and snack bar. The contrast between the two areas is something like entering the Aya Sofia after stepping directly off the set of "My Three Sons" or "The Lucy Show."

But, as promised in the brochure, upon arrival I am given slippers and led up the spiral staircase to my little laminated wood dressing room, that includes a narrow cot-like bed for any post-scrubbing nap I might want to take.  And yet when I see this, the words that come to my mind are not "mmm, nap," but rather "yikes, hospital psych ward."  To sleep here, I'd have to be really tired.  Or heavily sedated.

My clothes are off, and I've done my best at "tying up my loincloths."  But emerging from my dressing room I see that tucking it in on the side like a bath towel clearly is not going to work, as it is impossible to walk five steps before the tuck comes loose.  Sadly I have to be shown by the yanasma how to tie a loincloth.  I'd be more embarrassed by this, but I am honestly not ashamed to admit that to date I have limited loincloth-tying experience.

Downstairs in the main room, slippers are now traded for wooden clogs.  I have to say, the loincloth/wooden clog combo is quite an international fashion statement.  I suspect I look like a half-naked Little Dutch Boy, off to put his finger in the dyke somewhere in French Polynesia.

Walking through the Douglas' family living room past Ernie and Chip and Uncle Charley (oh, I'm kidding; it was just a couple of guys at the snack bar),  I am greeted by the keseci, also wearing clogs and a loincloth, but with an enormous belly to hold it up.  He leads me into the inner part of the hamam known as "the hot room."  The name is self-explanatory.  Everything is marble, and everything is really, really hot (hence the need for wooden clogs to walk on the hot marble floor).  The keseci puts a thin sheet and a little pillow on a big marble slab, and leaves the room.  Like an obedient and reasonably intelligent Labrador retriever, I figure out this probably is the command to "lie down." I do as I'm told.

I admit, lying on my back on the hot marble slab is kind of nice, at first.  The room has a high-ceilinged dome, with 531-year-old star-shaped skylights.  Water is dripping somewhere, and there is an echo in the room.  I can begin to see why people would find this relaxing, even meditative.

But after a few minutes, I realize that I am repeatedly lifting my back and shoulder blades off the slab, because holy crap this marble is hot! The sweat glands have been called into action, and within minutes I'm completely drenched.  Thanks to the hamam, I finally understand what it must feel like to try to take a midday nap on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, in the middle of August.

I don't have a watch on, obviously, but it seems like I've been lying here more than 20 minutes.  What happened to the fat man in the loincloth?  Have they forgotten about me?  Am I supposed to signal somehow that I am sufficiently broiled? Should I flip myself over so that I will be evenly cooked?  How many times in the past 531 years has someone accidentally roasted to death in the hot room?

Finally, the large loin-clothed man does return.  He appears to be carrying a bucket and a sponge mitt, like he's headed from the garage out to the driveway on a Sunday afternoon to wash the Nissan Sentra.

This can't be good.

Before I tell you about the actual scrubbing, let me just pause here for a moment to comment on the veracity of  Turkish bath promotional pamphlets.  The Tarihi Galatasaray Hamamı pamphlet has numerous photos of beautiful, half-naked men and women together in the hamam, pouring water on each other, drinking wine and feeding each other grapes, as if an orgy is just about to break out, or has just recently concluded. 

Based on my admittedly limited experience, I suspect these photos might be a little misleading.  To begin with, men and woman do not bathe together in the hamam, and they haven't for, oh I don't know, a good 531 years? (A separate hamam for women, with a completely separate entrance, is located on the other side of the building).   Second, in one photo the models appear to be drinking hot coffee in the 4,000-degree hot room, meaning that they are either: a) insane; b) suicidal, or c) greased up and posing in front of a fake hamam background, in an air-conditioned photographer's studio somewhere in South America.

I can assure you, there are no models in the hot room.  Nor do they offer wine, grapes, coffee, or erotic sexual encounters.  Instead, the experience is more realistically depicted like this:

I really don't know the last time I was actually scrubbed.  Perhaps at the age of 5, but if so, up to now I have been able to successfully repress the memory.  Whenever it was, I'm pretty sure it was not done by a 300-pound man wearing a checkered tablecloth.  That I would have remembered.

The brochure tells you that the purpose of being soaped up and rubbed down with a woolen "bath glove" is to remove the dead skin.  I have no doubt this is correct.  Of course it also removes the live skin as well, but let's not quibble about collateral damage.  If this is a war against dirt, then this is the bathing version of shock and awe.  Stuff happens.

Once I am fully soaped and scrubbed, the keseci then begins to lean on me, pressing and pushing and pulling and contorting my limbs.  I am assuming this is the "message" portion of the program.  My shoulder may have been separated during the process, but I decide to ignore it.  Honestly I am just happy to be keeping my loincloth on.

Eventually as promised I am "taken to the kurna (marble basin under the tap)," and rinsed off like the loyal Labrador I have become.  Fortunately this is done with bowls of warm water, and not the garden hose.  More soaping is done, more scrubbing, then more rinsing.  You just can't get clean enough at the hamam, apparently.

Soaped and scrubbed and rinsed and soaped and rinsed again, I put my clogs back on and move from the hot room to the "warm room."  Which would be great, except that the "warm room" also contains the "shocking" cold shower mentioned in the brochure.  So on balance, it's not really a "warm room" at all, is it?   I guess "potential heart attack room," while certainly more accurate, probably was rejected by the guys down in marketing.

After being sufficiently shocked in the shower, I am wrapped in towels, including one that goes over my head and behind the ears, Egyptian pharaoh style.  I am then led back into the remodeled exterior room ("Hamam Square"), where I'm half-expecting Eva Gabor to show up in a white pantsuit to serve drinks.  Sadly, it's only the yanasma.  No hots cakes, but he does have my slippers and the keys to my nap room. 

I understand the appeal of the hamam, and really, I'm in no position to knock a practice that has outlasted a couple of empires.  As individual concepts, I have nothing against sweat, saunas, slippers, clogs, ancient Egyptian after-bath head wear, or large Turkish men with bath mitts and buckets of soap. 

But I think I'll stick with Do-It-Yourself bathing, thanks.  True, I may not be quite as clean as I could be.  But so far the self-scrub has limited the complaints of others, and for the most part, kept me out of trouble.

As an added bonus, it's also mostly kept me out of loincloths.


















 

Smoking apple and drinking licorice

I don't think anyone is going to accuse the average Turk of being a health nut.  True, Turks may not drink Big Gulps and eat giant bags of Oreos while driving their SUVs down to the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Cracker Barrel (I'm looking at you, America).  But they do maintain their share of vices.  I, of course, saw no reason not to take a few of those vices out for a test run. 

The strong tea and baklava (God help me, I do love it so)  I can probably survive.  Rakı and nargile, on the other hand, could take me out in short order.

For those of you who don't know - and why would you, really? - rakı (pronounced rock-ah, not rock-ee)  is the national drink of Turkey.  The books tell me rakı is distilled from grapes, mixed with ethanol, and laced with anise.  It runs about 90 proof, i.e., 45 percent pure alcohol.  In addition to serving as a beverage, I'm guessing rakı also can be used as a paint thinner, and possibly as fuel for the internal combustion engine.

Rakı is so strong, in fact, that no one just sits in a bar drinking rakı.  That would be suicide.  Instead, the Turks insist that rakı be drunk only with food, most commonly with seafood.  If you look around the tables at any Istanbul fish restaurant, you can immediately spot the tourist by finding a wine glass on a table.  All the self-respecting Turks are drinking their rakı.

Rakı is clear like vodka (or rubbing alcohol, for that matter), and served in a tall thin glass.  The hard-core rakı drinkers will take it neat; the more timid mix it with water, which for chemical reasons beyond my understanding, turns the drink a milky white.  Ice can also be added, if that's how you like your milk-colored, anise-flavored alcoholic beverage.  The French have a version of this (pastis), as do the Greeks (ouzo and sambuca) and, oddly, the Colombians (aguardiente).  The translation of the South American version - aguardiente - is literally "fiery water."  Enough said.

The first time I tried rakı, I truly hated it.  Hated it.   I never liked the taste of anise or licorice to begin with, from the first handful of Good & Plenty candy I spat out as a child.  Mix that with 90 proof alcohol, and I felt like I was choking down red rope dissolved in kerosene. Ugh.  The national drink?  Really?

Couldn't they at least try the whiskey?

But the fact is I wanted to like rakı.  Turkey is where I live now, and this is what Turkish drinkers who drink alcohol want to drink when they're out drinking (and eating fish, at least).  Who wants to sit at dinner with a group of Turks laughing and talking and toasting each other with rakı while you ask the waiter if he can perhaps recommend a nice Cabernet, precocious yet with a hint of whimsy?   It would be like going to Oktoberfest in Munich and ordering a mojito.

So I kept giving rakı its second, third, and fourth chances. With water, and three cubes of ice, please, or as we say in Turkey, buzlu. Yes, it still tasted like red rope.  But at least it was cold red rope.

Then, on about the fourth try, I noticed that the rakı started going down much easier.  After an hour or so, as the rakı glass continued to be refilled, I stopped in mid-sentence, looked across the table at my dinner companion and said:  "You know, I am really digging this rakı!  Should we get more?" 

 Just like that, the rakı makers had sucked in another convert.  Remember, it is 45 percent alcohol.  My theory is that the brain cells charged with remembering that the drink tastes like licorice are systematically eliminated, like witnesses to a mob hit.  Eventually most of the remaining brain cells decide that, hey, this actually tastes pretty good.  The others are beaten into submission, or otherwise intimidated into silence. 

Perhaps this is something the makers of Good & Plenty should look into.

Of course drinking - even drinking fiery licorice water - is one thing.  Smoking is quite another.

I smoked my last cigarette on April Fool's Day, 1986.  I was eight years old.  

Oh, I'm joking, of course.  I was twelve years old. 

In fact I was a serious smoker back in the day, but since that time I have rarely, if ever, had any kind of craving for a cigarette or any other tobacco-related product.  If I'm honest about it, I will admit that part of the reason I quit was that smoking was no longer an acceptable social activity (in contrast to, say, the much more socially acceptable activity of binge drinking).  We've done a pretty effective job of turning smokers into social pariahs, forcing them into a back room or out in the cold if they still want to light up.  If you want to smoke in America, you have to really want to smoke.

Turkey, however, hasn't made it nearly as far down this path.  True, smoking cigarettes is officially banned in all enclosed public spaces in Istanbul.  (Bars and some restaurants will wink at this, bringing a customer a paper cup for an ashtray if they pull out a cigarette).  But that ban has not been extended to the nargile bar - a centuries-old establishment that combines the conviviality of a coffee house with the ambiance of a Chinese opium den.


If you know about nargile (nar-geel-eh) at all, you probably know it as hookah, or shisha, as it is called throughout the Middle East.  It is essentially an over sized, bong-like water pipe with a hose sticking out of it.  Attached to the hose - in Turkey, at least - is perhaps a two-foot-long, baton-like stick that looks like something a snake charmer would play.  Atop the water pipe is a bowl and a metal tray.  In the bowl is placed, um, something to smoke.  The bowl is then covered with foil, and heated with coals. 

When you walk into a nargile bar, you truly know you are not in Shreveport anymore.  The clientele usually is about 90 percent men, and often you do get to sit close to the ground on little cushions, just like the inside of Barbara Eden's bottle on "I Dream of Jeannie."  (That fact alone might explain its lasting popularity.)

While I had passed by countless nargile bars in Istanbul, this was not an activity I was likely to try on my own.  I would have no idea what I was doing, and I would hate to cause an international incident by trying to suck on the wrong end of something.  Yet when my long-time friend Mark came to visit recently, it was only a matter of time before we ended up at a bar that just happened to offer nargile.  And what were going to do when offered?  Just say no?

I had never been anywhere near a nargile pipe before coming to Turkey. Quite honestly I had no idea what it was, or at least, what was being smoked.  This particular bar offered the nargile in a variety of "flavors."  As the menu was in Turkish, the only flavor I recognized was apple (elma), so that's what I picked.  The waiter appeared to be pleased with my choice, and this seemed harmless enough to me.   It was hard to imagine falling into a bad crowd by smoking something that normally comes in a pastry.


The waiter loaded up and covered the bowl, stuck on some hot coals, and fired up the pipe.  We were given our own individual little plastic mouthpieces to fit into the smoking baton.  When I held the fabric-covered stick up to mouth for the first time I felt slightly ridiculous, realizing that this is exactly what I would look like if I played the oboe. 

But the smoke went down surprisingly smoothly, as if this wasn't really smoking at all.  This, of course, is the whole idea.   It didn't quite taste like apple, but it didn't taste like tobacco, either.   Groups at each table talked and laughed, passed their pipes back and forth, and ordered more drinks.  I gave a big thumbs up to the social part of Social Smoking.   But then again, for the first time since the Nancy Reagan Administration, I was smoking.  I mean, I was smoking something. 

Whatever I was smoking, I rationalized that it couldn't be as bad as smoking a cigarette.  If there was any tobacco at all, I figured it must be some kind of faux tobacco, like the nicotine version of Splenda, or I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.  It was apple, for God's sake.  This was probably just like smoking a piece of pie, right?

Post-nargile bar research revealed that I was right.  Smoking nargile is not as bad as smoking a cigarette.  It's actually 100 times worse than smoking a cigarette.

The substance being smoked is in fact tobacco, claims of "apple" not withstanding.  According to the Mayo Clinic, each nargile session typically lasts more than 40 minutes (yeah, I'm sure we hit that), and consists of 50 to 200 inhalations that each range from 0.15 to 0.50 liters of smoke (sounds about right). That means that in an hour-long smoking session of nargile, a user will consume about 100 to 200 times the smoke of a single cigarette; in a 45-minute smoking session a typical smoker would inhale 1.7 times the nicotine of a single cigarette.  

Oh.  I see.  So I guess what the Mayo Clinic is trying to tell me is that as much as I'd like to pretend otherwise, smoking nargile is not just like playing the oboe. 

So alright then: for the sake of my lungs I guess I'll pass on the nargile, and stick with the tea, baklava, and occasional rakı.  If only I knew where I could snag some of those I Dream of Jeannie throw pillows.  















 

Happy New Year from the Panpan Kafe

  I have always believed there are two kinds of people in this world: those who look forward to New Years’ Eve, and those who are content to stay home and find out whether Dick Clark is still allowed to stay up past midnight.

  I myself have always loved the New Year holiday, somehow nearly always stumbling into some memorable New Years’ Eve story, then happily nursing a hangover the following day by watching an endless stream of meaningless college bowl games on TV.  (There's a Tangerine Bowl?  Sure, why not.) As this combines two of my favorite activities – a) drinking, and b) lying on the couch in a semi-catatonic stupor – for me New Years was always something to look forward to.

  I had kept the faith that things would be no different here in Istanbul.  Despite a residence of just two months, I figured I’d get a party invitation from somewhere. But as New Year’s Eve approached, that didn’t seem to be happening. My Turkish language classmates all seemed to be elsewhere ("Snowboarding in Austria!" read Carla’s New Year’s Eve Facebook update) or conspicuously silent ("Hey Christian! What are you doing for New Year’s? Christian? Hello? Is this thing working? Hello?")

  So as a proper reflection of my current life, it would seem I would be on my own to get into some kind of New Year's Eve trouble.   Not too much trouble, of course. I was looking for the This-Will-Make-A-Good-Story variety of trouble. Not the Where-Are-My-Pants?-Help-I-Need-to-Contact-the-Embassy kind of trouble.

 A few days before New Years' Eve, I finally receive a party invitation.  Kind of.

  Just up the hill from my cat-invested neighborhood sits a little cafe/restaurant/bar called the Panpan Turuncu Kafe.  I started eating regularly at Panpan because the food was pretty good (chilled red wine notwithstanding), and there was never any problem getting a table.  In fact, there rarely ever seemed to be anyone else eating there at all.  Three young guys appeared to be the owners, and anyone else in the place always seemed to know the owners, like they were just hanging out in their living room.  There was one employee: a middle-aged waiter, routinely dressed in a maroon sweater stretched out by an over sized belly.  The waiter always seemed happy to see me, as if now that I was here, he finally he had something to do.  I wasn't just a regular; I was the regular.

  In the Italian neighborhood of Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn where I lived for ten years, there was a "business" on Court Street referred to as Da Plant Stoua.  This "plant store" had about six plants in the front window that had been there so long there was dust on the leaves.  No one actually ever bought a plant from The Plant Store, but plenty of guys from da neighba-hood would hang out there, to get together, talk and, you know, look at plants.

  I had to begun to wonder if Panpan might be a Turkish version of Da Plant Stoua, and I was the only one in the neighborhood too stupid to realize it.  But like one of the neighborhood strays, I'd keep coming back as long as they'd keep putting out food for me.  When the waiter invited me to come to Panpan for New Years Eve,  I figured if nothing else it would make a good story.  At the very least it would save me from sitting alone in my basement apartment with the TV remote, searching channels for the Turkish-version of New Year's Rockin' Eve.

  The invitation, however, was not without its complications. Everyone in Turkey had given me the same piece of advice regarding New Year’s Eve: whatever you do, don’t go to Taksim. On New Year’s Eve, bad things happen in Taksim. "Çok tehlikeli!" (It’s very dangerous). Too many people. Too many drunk people. Too many drunk people throwing flammable objects for no particular reason. The image I was getting was somewhere between Times Square (where no self-respecting New Yorker would ever go for New Year’s Eve, by the way) and a Brazilian soccer riot. So whatever you do on New Year’s Eve, I was told again and again, just don’t go to Taksim. Anywhere but Taksim.  Taksim yok! Got that?

The Panpan, of course, sits in the heart of Taksim, steps away from Taksim Square, where one easily could be crushed to death by throngs of humanity on a normal business day,  just waiting for a bus.  So of course, despite the repeated warnings, this meant there was only one place I could go on New Year’s Eve.   Tehlikeli, schmehlikeli. So there would be a lot of drunks in the street.  Chances were good that I could avoid being trampled, right?  This would be like Pamplona, but instead of the Running of the Bulls, this would be the Running of the Drunks.   If I didn’t go out wearing a red bandana, I figured I could probably make it to Panpan without being gored.

The scene at Taksim Square about 10:30 p.m. on New Year's Eve,  however, is surprisingly sedate.  Frankly, I've seen more drunks at a Sunday afternoon Yankees' game.   A steady rain has been falling all night, perhaps keeping the drunks off the streets and in the bars, or at least sobering them up when they venture outside.  Street vendors are working hard to sell off their New Year's Eve paraphernalia, which oddly enough for muslim Turkey, includes Santa Claus Hats. 

I buy one, of course, and pose for a photo before a light display that looks suspiciously like a Christmas tree.

   A few fireworks go off prematurely.  People clap politely.  Disappointed by the lack of promised anarchy, I head off to Panpan to count down to midnight.

 Arriving at Panpan I see they have managed to fill up the room with 30 or 40 people of what appear to be family friends and, uh, business associates.   One table of ten includes two teenagers and three kids under 6.  A young man is playing the guitar, singing Turkish songs that have been requested by being written on paper napkins.

   Like the crowd outside, the gathering at Panpan is polite and well behaved.  No one but me is wearing a Santa Hat.

 The waiter greets me warmly ("the regular is here!")  and seats me at the bar next to two large men in ill-fitting leather jackets.  One of the owners recognizes me, shakes my hand, and asks what I'd like to drink.  "What kind of beer do you have?"  I ask him in Turkish.   Hmm, beer. Beer ... He kneels down and searches under the bar, like he is at home looking in the fridge for a forgotten jar of maraschino cherries or kosher dills.  Yes, three variety of beers, he announces.  He seems happily surprised, as if relieved that someone remembered to order the beer props.

  At every family gathering there is always one crazy relative who makes a scene.  Think Fredo's blonde-haired floozy wife in "The Godfather, Part II."   While no one is yet dancing, a middle-aged, oval-shaped woman who appears to be about four and a half feet tall now gets up and begins a dance that looks something like a Turkish version of the Macarena.   Whatever she is doing is completely out of sync with the guitar player's music, making me wonder if this is not actually a dance but instead some kind of involuntary seizure.   It's as if someone walked off the set of the "Wizard of Oz" and dropped acid. Those at the tables nearby ignore Crazy Aunt Freda and continue eating. 

 People are drinking a glass of wine or rakı here or there, but not very much.  Back at the bar, I'm doing my best to take up the slack.  As it gets closer to midnight, things begin to pick up a bit.  Everyone recognizes the Turkish songs that are being sung, and begin to clap and sign along.  Dancing starts.  As my burly bar stool mates are now clapping, I start clapping too, just to keep everybody happy.  I'm not looking for the piss off the big guys in leather jackets at the bar kind of trouble, either.

  As midnight comes, I am struck by two thoughts: a) there is no champagne anywhere in sight, and b) any kiss I get is going to be really uncomfortable. And yes, as is customary in Turkey, it turns out I do get kisses. From the men. One on each cheek. Happy New Year!

Almost immediately after midnight, the party starts to break up, as if everyone needs to get home to let the dog out and put the kids to bed. If there is debauchery going on in Istanbul on New Year's Eve, it is happening in another bar. I thank my hosts, shake hands, put my Santa Hat back on, and walk back out into the rain-soaked hoards of Taksim. I am wet, but happily neither trampled nor gored.

 I walk home by a back street, and - miraculously - find a baklava shop open on New Year's Eve at one in the morning.   Admittedly not trouble in the conventional sense, but I will accept this as a substitute.  And surely this will come in handy lying on the couch the on New Year's Day.  With a few pieces of baklava and a Santa Hat, I guess I can learn to live without the college football.