Lost and Found

"It's very simple," Kemal the rental car man tells me as he points to the map.  "You exit the old city here, and turn to the right.  Then you go left here.  After this, you go to the second stop light - not the first, but the second - and go left again.  Then at the next stop light, you turn right, and you are on the main road out of the city."

I'm certain Kemal sees me frown and bite my lower lip as I try to memorize and count the number of turns.  He tries to reassure me.  "You can't get lost," he promises.  "It's very easy. Çok kolay."

"Çok kolay," I repeat, as if by saying the phrase out loud I can convince myself of its truth.  I've never driven in Turkey before, but the principles are all the same, right?  Right, left, two lights, another left, then a right.  Directions an imbecile could follow.

Yet even while I'm saying it, I know deep down that Kemal is mistaken.  Literally and figuratively, I've been down this road before.  It won't be easy, and I will get lost.  But one way or another, eventually, I will probably figure it out.  

Story of my life.

Emboldened by the belief that things will work out because they usually do, I open the door of my tiny Chevy Aveo rental clown car, move the seat back as far as it will go, and drive off slowly down the cobblestone streets of Antalya.

*     *     *

I had come to Antalya for two reasons.   First of all, I was tired of being cold.   Istanbul had been experiencing a colder-than-usual winter, with snow, slush, icy wind and all the other unpleasantries of a typical winter in New York or Pittsburgh.  By early March everyone is sick of it, myself included.   I wanted to go somewhere that I didn't have walk around with my collar turned up and my hands jammed in my pockets.  

Second, I had come to realize that Turkey was a big place, and in five months' time I had seen exactly one city in the entire country.   I had become like one of those foreign tourists who come to New York for three days, ride to the top of the Empire State Building, and think they've seen America.   Searching for warmth and another part of Turkey, I decided it was time to hit the road.

After thumbing through a few guidebooks and checking out a couple of internet sites, I picked Antalya: once a small fishing village and now a city of more than 1 million on the southern coast of Turkey.  Make no mistake: Antalya has been discovered.  But I am able to snag a flight from Istanbul to Antalya that cost all of $72 USD.  

That's $72, as in $72 round trip.   At this price, I could almost afford to fly back and forth every day. 

On the internet I locate a hotel that had been converted from an 18th Century Ottoman stone and timber house.  The cost of my room?  Fifty five dollars a night.   In New York or San Francisco, you might be able to find a hotel room for $55.  But that would be $55 per hour, and both you and the hooker would be afraid to sit on the bed spread.

As I board the airport bus in Istanbul to fly off to the southern coast of Turkey, the weather is gray, rainy and cold.   In contrast, as I step out of the Antalya airport on the southern coast of Turkey, the weather is gray, rainy, and somewhat less cold.  Apparently it's still winter, even in Antalya.

I see.  Maybe this is why you can still fly here for the price of a bus ticket.

*     *     *     *

Back in the rental car, I've managed to get lost in less than five minutes.  This may be a record, even for me.  After a right and two lefts, there seems to be no road on which to turn right again.  Instead, I am on an unidentified four-lane boulevard with signs pointing to some location I've never heard of.   Slowing down to try to read Turkish street signs seems to aggravate the drivers behind me, honking as if they are incredulous to have the bad luck to be stuck behind yet another clueless tourist.

I have no idea where it is I am currently headed.  But I do know that where ever it is, that's not where I want to go.   Looking on the bright side, I am beginning to narrow things down:  I need to go any direction but this.  I need to go left.  Or perhaps right.   Based on nothing but instinct, I opt for the U-Turn.

*     *     *    *

After arriving at the airport the first day, by the time I reach my little hotel in Antalya's old city (Kaleiçi, or "Inside the Castle"), it is nearly six o'clock.  My room's  sleeping arrangements consist of two twin beds, more or less pushed together.  The decor looks like something my grandmother might have picked out, if my grandmother had been a French prostitute in the 18th Century.

Still, I'm very pleased with my $55 a night accommodations.  No, it's not the Ritz Carlton, but it's not the Motel 6, either.  Outside it is still raining, and the forecast calls for more rain tomorrow.  Perhaps the less than ideal weather explains the cheap hotel rates, and the fact that I currently seem to be one of only a dozen tourists in all of Antalya.

Around 7:00 I stumble out into the rain to forage for food. I make the mistake of by passing the very chic-looking restaurant attached to the hotel, and instead wander into town to a place billed on the outside as a "kafe bistro." On the back wall inside is a flat-panel TV, with a continuous recording running of a wood-burning fireplace.   A television station in Pittsburgh used to run the same thing for six hours every Christmas morning: "The Yule Log: A Holiday Tradition!"  Hey, that's reason enough for me to give this place my business. 
 
In front of the simulated fire are two musicians, playing the bağlama and guitar.  They are not playing them particularly well.  And like the faux fireplace, the food that arrives at the table is not so much food, as it is an approximation of food.  It's as if the chef had no real experience preparing food, but had once seen pictures and tried his best to re-create it from memory.   

On a positive note, beer is served.

Hoping for better luck tomorrow,  I finish my beer and my ersatz food, warm my hands in front of the ersatz fire, zip up my anorak, and head out in the rain back to my tastefully decorated brothel.

The rain has more or less stopped the next day, but the weather remains gray, cloudy and cold.  I decide to start the day by walking through the streets of the old town.  The old town streets are indeed ancient and quaint.  They are also packed with tourist trinket shops of every conceivable incarnation. 

Unfortunately, at this stage of the season there appear to be more tourist trinket shops in Antalya than there are actual tourists.  As I walk down the street, it is as if someone has pushed the tourist alarm button and placed all shop owners on Def Con 3.  The charming cobblestone streets soon become a nightmarish gauntlet of desperate merchants, working me as if their child's next meal depends on it. 

 I imagine this is what the zombie apocalypse will be like, if the zombies are hawking rugs, T shirts, and cheap ceramics.

In response to every request to come inside and look around, I repeat again and again what soon become the five most important words in the Turkish language:  Şimdi değil, ama belki sonra. ("Not now, but maybe later.")  I repeat it so often it becomes a mantra: "Şimdi değil, ama belki sonra." "Şimdi değil, ama belki sonra."  

The magic words appease almost everyone, save for one persistent shop owner, who comes out of his doorway and begins to follow me down the street.  "Şimdi değil, ama belki sonra," I say to him. "Şimdi değil, ama belki sonra."   But he keeps coming; the words bounce off of him like bullets off the chest of Superman.  I begin to wonder if the only way to stop him is to drive a stake through his heart.

As I'm still walking, he makes one last desperate attempt to make a sale.  "I need your money!" he shouts at me in English.

I answer him over my shoulder without breaking stride. "Bende," I tell him.  Yeah. Me too.  

*     *     *    * 

As I left the shop of Kemal the rental car man, he made the following statement: "The petrol is on reserve, so you will return it on reserve."  I had no idea in hell what he was talking about.  Yet, because he was speaking English, and English is supposed to be a language I have mastered, I nodded as if I understood completely.  Yes, of course; the petrol is on reserve.  Please, Kemal, my friend.  This goes without staying.

After driving around in circles in the streets of Antalya for 15 minutes fruitlessly searching for the Road out of Town and finally glancing at the dashboard, the meaning of Kemal's words finally become clear to me.   "The petrol is on reserve," is Turkish (translated into English) for "The gas tank is empty."  Oh. I see. I probably should have clarified that, before I'd gotten lost.  

To avoid having to figure out how to say "Is there a Turkish AAA?" or "Help me; I am screwed" in Turkish, I temporarily suspend my quest for the apparently mythical Road out of Town, and start looking for something that resembles a gas station.


*     *     *     *

I emerge from the Labyrinth of the Trinket Sellers shaken, but thankfully with money still in my wallet.  With the weather still gray and overcast, I decide this might be a good time to head off to the Antalya Archaeological Museum.

Just as there aren't any tourists in the trinket shops, there aren't many history nerds in the archaeological museum either.  Perhaps there is a limited audience for Roman statues, Greek coins, and clay pots fished out of the sea, even on the worst of days.

I confess that my eyes glaze over and my mind begins to wander after about the sixth statue gallery.  I notice that on each of the seemingly dozens of statutes of Hercules, the genitalia has been completely snapped off.  Every single one.  I wonder if there was some period of male statue genitalia debasement not covered in my 9th grade history book, or if there is a separate exhibit of the offending appendages, back behind a curtain somewhere.  Surely they were not just tossed in the trash; someone must have them.   I'm not finding an explanation on any of the placards. How would I ask that in Turkish?

My God, I hope the weather is better tomorrow.

Sure enough, the skies clear and the sun comes out on the third day.   The scenery that has been obscured to this point finally shows itself.   Across an expanse of almost turquoise blue water you can see the long stretch of Mediterranean beaches, framed by a towering range of snow-capped mountains.   It's like looking at Hawaii, with Montana sticking out of it.

I rent a bike and ride out along the cliffs above the sea, running unexpectedly into the Dunden Waterfalls about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) outside of town.  Busloads of French and German tourists have been disgorged here take photographs, but the falls are pretty spectacular all the same.


The day is topped off with a dinner at a restaurant in the Old City yacht harbor of fish soup, calamari salad, grilled sea bass, and (of course) plenty of rakı.   The only other people in the restaurant the entire time I am here is a Turkish couple entertaining an overweight Finnish businessman, who spends the evening recounting to his hosts in a loud voice how he built his business from the ground up.  At one point he summons the restaurant owner to the table, to expound on his views (in English) of proper kitchen hygiene practices.

  It is somehow comforting to know that America is not the world's sole exporter of pompous blowhards.  I order another rakı, and call it a good day.

*     *     *     *

Back in California, my sister has a GPS device in her Prius that she affectionately refers to as "Navigation Lady."   Navigation Lady is a stern dominatrix, whom my sister disobeys at her own peril ("Navigation Lady wants me to take the freeway."  "Navigation Lady is upset because I missed the turn.").  The advantage to a GPS guidance system like Navigation Lady is that you never have to really figure anything out, because you always have someone telling you what to do.   There's no denying the comfort in that.



But there is also a downside to obediently listening to what others tell you to do.   Recently in Australia a car full of Japanese tourists drove their rented Hyundai 50 yards into the ocean when the Japanese version of Navigation Lady directed them down a road that, unfortunately, didn't actually exist. 

"It told us we could drive down there," Yuzu Noda, 21, told the local Australian newspaper. "It kept saying it would navigate us to a road."  Yes, Yuzu and his friends did exactly what they were told.  You see where that got them.

There is no Navigation Lady - American, Turkish, Japanese or otherwise - in my Aveo clown car.  Yes, it's true: I am lost. But I've come by it honestly.  Eventually I will find the right road on my own.   And I'm reasonably confident that, in the process, I can avoid driving off into the ocean.

*     *     *     *

The morning after the Night of the Bloviating Finn, I head out to the the beach in Antalya. Finally, the weather is perfect: sunny, warm (68-70 degrees), and beautiful. I wade into the water and read a book on the pebbly beach.  The only other people within 100 yards of me are two young female tourists, who squeal and curse in German as they try swimming in the still-too-chilly water.  

The snow-capped mountains of the Toros Dağları rise up behind me; the blue water of the Mediterranean stretches out ahead of me all the way to Israel.   I could sit in this spot all day, or forever maybe.  It is sunny and warm and calm and comfortable.  No person in his right mind could possibly complain, or want anything more than this.

And yet.

I keep looking back over my shoulder at the mountains where I've never been before.  I throw one of the round beach stones into the water, then another.  Then I stand up and collect my things.  I remember passing a rental car place on the way down to the beach.   Kemal's something or other.

*     *     *     *

I have finally found a gas station,  and secured "petrol for the reserve."  Lost still, yes, but disaster has been averted.  In Turkish, I tell the gas station attendant (who is actually pumping my gas and cleaning my windshield, by the way) that I am looking for the Road out of Town, and ask him if he knows where I could find it. 

"Tabii,"  he tells me.  Of course.   He points to a street sign about 25 yards away, and tells me in Turkish to turn right at this sign, and go straight.   I look to where he is pointing. Turn right there? I ask him.   Yes, right there.  The place he points to is not a major road, but instead a broken-asphalt side street that appears to be headed into one of the less-desirable neighborhoods of Antalya. 

This will take me to the Road out of Town? 

Yes.

This street here?

Yes.

I look at the man again.  He has clear blue eyes, dark curly hair and a mustache growing over both sides of his mouth, like a Turkish version of Jim Croce, or perhaps, his Turkish reincarnation.

  What he is telling me seems to defy all logic.  That can't possibly be the right road; it looks completely wrong.  And yet.  I pay for the gas, thank him, climb back in the Aveo, and take a right at the sign into the ramshackle neighborhood.

Almost immediately, I'm convinced I'm completely screwed.   The street quickly narrows into little more than a one-way alley, going from broken asphalt to no asphalt at all.  I slow the car down to a crawl trying to drive around the enormous potholes.  A stray dog and three kids playing soccer in a vacant lot stop and look up at me
as I drive by, as if I have arrived in their neighborhood from another planet. 

As wrong as it seems, I have no choice but to keep going.  The road is so narrow there is no place to turn around.  Even if I could, I would still have no idea where I was anyway.

In a sense, I created all of this uncertainty the moment I stood up from my place on the beautiful beach,  and walked through the doors of Kemal's rent-a-car shop.   Of course now there is no going back to that place on the beach.  Sometimes, like it or not, the only place you can go is to go on.

After several more minutes crawling down the alleyway, I can see cars whizzing by up ahead.   It is a highway, and at the intersection I can see a sign for the airport.   It is, in fact, the Road Out of Town.

I put the Aveo in first and ease my way into the stream of traffic, heading off toward the snow-capped mountains in the distance.

I still don't know where I'm going.  But I'm on my way.

Jim Croce and Paul Simon be praised.

     

Kafe Life

I always wondered who these people were I saw sitting in cafes all day long. Now I have become one of them.

We are generally a peaceful people, if perhaps a bit over caffeinated. We don’t ask for much: a reasonably comfortable chair, perhaps a small table, and a bathroom that doesn’t require a code to get into. Okay, we’ll grudgingly deal with the bathroom code, if it’s less than five digits. But then we’d better be getting some internet access, pal. There’s only so much uncompensated oppression we’re willing to take.

You will find Denizens of the Cafe all over the world, of course.  I have joined them here in Istanbul. We are writers, students, office-less workers, artists, dilettantes, ne’er-do-wells, poets, people watchers, book readers who have come out of the house for air, lost souls, social malcontents, and, I don't know, I guess people who just really really really can’t stop drinking coffee.

In Istanbul there are literally thousands of cafes (kafeler, in Turkish) and tea houses in which to hang out.  They range from those with fine china and linen tablecloths to those with paper cups and folding chairs.  The ones I frequent  (somewhere in between the two extremes) are all off the main streets of Beyoğlu.   With only one exception these are all places I just stumbled into while wandering around the back streets of my neighborhood.  I kept coming back if they offered an internet connection, and were reasonably tolerant of my mangled Turkish. 

Honestly I'd be hard pressed to give you directions to any of these places.  But if you were looking to track me down on any given afternoon, here's where you might find me.

Cafe Urban

I will confess up front that the reason I discovered Cafe Urban is because it is a cafe with a fully stocked bar, one that includes Jameson, Glenlivet, and my Turkish beer of choice, Efes Dark.  Cafe Urban also has a decent menu, where you can find everything from baked salmon to spaghetti bolognese.  

But I don't consider Cafe Urban either a bar, or a restaurant (although you could argue it is both). It is a cafe in more than name only, because it is open almost all the time, and no one cares if you sit there all day and night, as long you occasionally order something.   It can be coffee, tea, carrot cake or a double scotch on the rocks.

In this sense, Cafe Urban satisfies a large number of my necessities of life.  If they did my laundry and let me take a shower occasionally, I might never leave.


There is a slightly hip but thankfully unpretentious vibe to Cafe Urban.  It lies in a back alley-like street between Istiklal Ceddesi and the "world famous" Galatasaray Tarihi Hamami (to steal a line from Mel Brooks, it's World Famous in Turkey). The cafe itself has 4 different levels, and seems to have been built into the walls of an old bakery; the lowest level contains bricked-in ovens and vaulted stone arches from another incarnation. On the ancient stone wall hangs a large black and white photo of Times Square.

 To complete the cafe's cosmopolitan bona fides, behind another stone wall there is a single unisex restroom.  (No Starbucks code to punch in here.) Yes, you get your own locked and sealed stall, but if want to wash your hands, we're all in this together, sister.  You can go hide in the powder room some place else.

There is no doubt that ex pats from around the world have discovered this place.  On this particular afternoon I am sitting two tables down from an American guy (I heard him answer his cell phone) reading J.M. Coetzee, and a level up from a middle aged schoolteacher in a bright-red hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with the words Alman Lisesi (The German School), typing on his iPad.

But Cafe Urban still belongs to the Istanbulu, which is why I like it.  Turkish people come here any time of the day to meet and talk with their friends, or have a drink with their date after a movie.   It's one of those rare places that is as fancy or casual as you want it to be. It tries to be all things to all people, and largely succeeds. 

In other words, this the kind of place that should be in every neighborhood in the world, but isn't.  I'm happy to have it while I can.

Laterne Cafe

In my mind, the Laterne Cafe is the anti-Starbucks of the Cafe World.  I'm not sure I've seen anything like in America or anywhere else.

Yes, the Laterne is a cafe, in the sense that you can get coffee and tea, and a couple plates of food if you are hungry.   Everything here is dirt-cheap.  I have no idea how they make any money. A glass of tea cost 1.5 Turkish lira, or about 80 cents.  If you want to spring for a cappuccino (not a great cappuccino, but still), it'll set you back all of  3 lira ($1.60).   There is no menu.  The food offered - dishes of pasta salad, couscous, stuffed grape leaves, and other cold mezze - seem as if they have been prepared at the employees' homes for a company pot-luck picnic.  These saran-wrap covered dishes sit atop a small counter in the front.  If something looks good, you just point and they'll dish it out for you.

The tables are laminated white or covered with a green velour tablecloth.  The seating in the center of the room consists of two rows of wooden park-like benches, facing each other over little glass tables.  The main room (there is an upstairs, too) is usually noisy; the lighting has the florescent glow of a junior high school cafeteria. 

But the appeal of Laterne is neither the food, the cheap drinks, nor the atmosphere.   Laterne is almost always packed, almost exclusively by Turks under 25 or so.  (Apparently I'm allowed in under some kind of middle-aged foreigner novelty exception).  No, people apparently come here for another reason.  Oddly enough, they seem to actually want to talk to each other.

There is a compound verb in Turkish: sohbet etmek.  There's not really a great English translation, possibly because it's not something we do a lot of.  It essentially means to chat with, or to visit with, or spend some time with.  This is what they do at Laterne Cafe; they come here to sohbet etmek.

No one is texting or typing on their laptop (except for me, which immediately identifies me as The Freak From Another Other Country).  Instead, they chat with their friends, play tavula (backgammon), Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble (that's Turkish Scrabble, mind you, which I imagine must be something like Chinese arithmetic), and laugh and talk and just hang out.

I can't be positive, but I think the word is "socialize."  It's been so long since I've seen anything like this in America, I feel like I am trying to explain the bizarre customs of some newly discovered tribe in the Amazon.

Compare this scene to your last trip to an American Starbucks.  Look for the people who have been sitting there for hours with their ear buds in and their laptops on.   Try talking to them.  No, wait; try just making eye contact.  Odds are great they will either: a) try to ignore you, b) reach for the pepper spray, or c) contact management to have you forcefully removed from the premises.  If you want to "socialize," freak, you'd better grab a computer and get yourself to a chat room.

They like me at Laterne Cafe, even if I don't play backgammon.  When leaving I always get a smile, a handshake, and heart-felt "Görüşürüz," Turkish for "I'll see you," or literally "You will be seen." They know me too well.

 I think they figure that, sooner or later, I will cave and try the homemade potato salad.  Then there will be no turning back.

Cafe Mitanni

Like Cafe Laterne, Cafe Mitanni sits on a quiet back street not far from the insane crowds of Taksim Square and Istiklal Ceddese.   It's the kind of place you could never find if you were actually looking for it.  You would either have to accidentally stumble across it, or, like me, pass it a dozen times before realizing it was a semi-legitimate business.

The Cafe Mitanni menu, such as it is, is written on a chalkboard outside the entrance.  Written on a second chalkboard is a message that reads, in English, "Don't Think Twice; Just Get In!"  This leads me to believe that more than one person has stood outside the entrance, thinking twice or three times, before daring to venture inside.   

The front of the cafe is only about ten feet wide, with three small tables and folding chairs, an old radio, a magazine rack, several unwatered dying plants, and two armchairs that look like they were tossed in a dumpster after being unsuccessfully offered at a garage sale.  Sometimes the cafe is quiet; other times a particularly pensive form of jazz from the 1950s is playing, the kind you would applaud by snapping your fingers. 
Seldom is anyone sitting in the front room.  If you sit there long enough, absolutely no one will come to take your order.   You walk through a short hallway to reach the back room, where you can make your food or beverage request.  The back room is slightly larger, complete with more tables, a small couch, and an upright piano.

I will admit that the only reason I ever ventured into Cafe Mitanni was because the nearby Cafe Laterne was too crowded or noisy. I've never encountered this problem at Cafe Mitanni.

 On weekends and some evenings, instruments are set up in the corner, as if a band is getting ready to play a set.   Yet in my half dozen visits, I've yet to see any musicians actually playing anything.  I don't know; maybe it's me.  In my paranoid fantasies I imagine they are waiting for me to leave before starting, lest the music be contaminated in the front room by my tragic unhipness.

On a recent rainy Sunday afternoon, a small scruffy group of ex pats of undetermined origin in their late 20s/early 30s - complete with a golden retriever puppy wearing a bandanna - sit around the coffee table in the back room, drinking tea and eating plates of various food from a makeshift buffet, set up on a card table.   To order a cup of tea I locate the sole attendant, a shaggy haired man wearing a turquoise T-shirt and apricot-colored pants, washing dishes in a small room behind a curtain.  After about 10 minutes he brings me my tea in cup that also looks like is was thrown out after the same garage sale.  A tiny spoon is sitting almost entirely submerged in the tea, so that I burn my fingers trying to fish it out.

 My sole companion in the front room this day is a young woman wearing an overcoat and fingerless wool gloves, reading xeroxed pages of something and underlining significant passages with a tiny golf pencil.   Her backpack and tennis shoes tell me without asking that she is American.    When owner brings her a refill on her tea, I politely offer her the sugar bowl.

"No thanks," she replies in perfect California English.  "I don't do sugar." 

She doesn't do sugar.  For a moment I imagine that I have been transported back to San Francisco, and next she will tell me my meridians are out of alignment.  But no, we're still here in Istanbul, although perhaps in a bit of a time/cultural vortex.  While I don't want to hang out here every day, there is an odd comfort of home feeling that I can occasionally appreciate.

Şimdi Cafe

In contrast to Mitanni, Şimdi Cafe is the kind of place that probably belongs in Paris or Milan, rather than on a side street in the middle of Istanbul.   If beamed Star Trek-style from your living room to the middle of this cafe, I assure you your first "where am I?" guess would not be Turkey.

The waiters are all male, all wearing the same white dress shirt (yes, untucked, but still) and black pants uniform.   There is real cappuccino here, and a real wine list.   The uber-cool background music ranges from Sade to the Cure to Tom Waits.   You can order pizza or pasta, eggs or omelettes, fish soup or smoked salmon. But no Turkish lamb kabob or shepherd's salad here at Şimdi.  You will need to walk around the corner if you want that kind of action.   Even the ubiquitous glass cups of Turkish tea seen everywhere else in the city seemed to be served here reluctantly.  

Şimdi is located just a few blocks from the British, Dutch, Italian, and Swedish consulates, which may at least partially explain the international vibe.   Not many tourists have discovered Şimdi (thank God), but the ex pats of Istanbul seem to know all about it.   Let's face it; no matter how much you love Turkish tea and baklava, sometimes your body simply demands an omelet and a decent cup of coffee.

 And yes, there is liquor license.  The Efes Dark beer is served in a frosted glass, and comes with a bowl of potato chips.  All of which is great, but honestly, to steal another movie line (this one from Jerry McGuire), they had me at beer.

The hip international bon vivant vibe is not lost on the Turks, either.  They're all over Şimdi, too, for much the same reason the yabanciler (foreigners) are.   It's just a very cool place to be, no matter where you are from.
    
In front of the cafe is a communal table that seats eight, along with a couch and several green velvet chairs around a square coffee table, complete with a bowl of oranges.  (I've never been able to figure out if the oranges are meant to be food or only table decoration.  For this reason, I've never had the guts to eat one.) 

For me, Şimdi is another great place to hang out, albeit at a slightly higher cover charge than others in the rotation.  Again, as long as you are ordering something, no one is going to hurry you along.  If you sit there long enough, you can segue from your late morning tea to your afternoon coffee to your evening frosty-mugged beer without ever surrendering your seat on the couch.  Trust me; I've done it.

All this, and a bowl of chips.   Like the other Denizens of the Cafe, you know I'll be back.   As long as there's coffee and an accessible bathroom, we'll always be back.

In other words, I will be seen. 

Görüşürüz.