Social Doesn't Mean Healthy

One of the things to do while living in Turkey is to buy a water pipe (hookah). They call them "nargile" here. On any row of restaurants you'll be able to see a Nargile place that advertises itself as such where people congregate to have a few drinks and take a few puffs off of a lightly adorned piece of glass. The light tobacco you smoke out (sheesha) of it is flavored anywhere from peach to cotton candy. Since we still can't talk to anyone here in their native language, we've decided we'd better do something that makes us feel Turkish so BAM! we got a nargile.

Doing so was a simultaneously delightful and painful process. It was great going from place to place to haggle for pipes, seeing the same styles repeated, but never quite the same. What was difficult, however, was coming to consensus on what to get since Mel and I had staunchly different views on what a nargile should look like. After several weekends of looking an bargaining we finally rested on a high quality deep blue that we got for a really good price.

I enjoy the thing. The guy that sold it to us provided us with both cappuccino and strawberry flavors. Mmm! The problem is that this is an altogether unhealthy habit. It was two years ago that I made a New Year's resolution to not even socially smoke cigarettes anymore (you know, when you've been drinking and your judgement isn't what it should be). I've faithfully kept to this. According to the World Health organization, smoking out of a water pipe for the hour that the substance usually burns for can equal 100 or more cigarettes! NHS has something sightly different to say about it, which can be summed up here. I was taught to smoke a cigar by only puffing into the mouth, not inhaling into the lungs. This doesn't really work with a water pipe. It takes a significant breath to draw enough smoke down into the vessel so the tiny little puffs I use hardly get any of that fruity or coffee-like taste onto my buds. We only break the nargile out bi-weekly or even less, but I wonder how well this fits into my plans of dying healthy. I'll post a picture of my lungs a little later.

Eat Slowly

I have lots of good stuff to say about Turkey, but as an informal critique of restaurant dining service, I have to mention that Turkey gets an D-. This, to me, means that it just barely passes as suitable enough to rarely venture out, knowing you're throwing the dice, hoping for a seven, but knowing you will most likely roll the snake eyes. Last night's outing was perhaps below par, but it was not atypical. We had a Groupon thing to a sushi place called Ninja.

I know what you're going to say next: "Sven, aren't ninjas known for their table service?" Well, of course they are. A proper ninja will bring you out a live cow and ask you what portion you want. After pointing to the appropriate place on the cow, he will slice it off with a single swipe of his sword and it will land on your plate cooked to perfection. You can't see because his face is covered, but his smile never falters. Never under tip a ninja.

Unfortunately, this restaurant was not populated by proper ninjas. Instead, we got a waiter who seemed only able to serve half of our table of eight. He preferred the other end for some reason. This is an acceptable problem for the most part. I know that although my food will come ten minutes later than the person sitting to my left, it will come eventually and that it will probably taste pretty good when it gets there because I'll be so famished by that time. What is not so acceptable is effusive body odor that not only emanates from the arm pits, but also the feet. Now when the food finally comes, the otherwise prayed for aromas have to compete with the excrement of a trillion microorganisms that are feeding off your waiter's sweat. I counted myself somewhat fortunate that our waiter was able to bring the check in good time so we were able escape his emissions.

As mentioned, this is not what is experienced every time, but service in Turkey does tend to be slow, forgetful, wrong, and poorly documented. You don't get an actual check in Turkey, you see. You get a slip of paper with some scribbling that may be numbers and a circled total at the bottom. If you can figure out what all of it means you win the right to argue that this isn't what the menu said.

Despite all these problems, the food is quite delicious. This, however, assumes that you are ordering Turkish food. I've yet to experience their handling of foreign cuisine extremely well, and to be quite honest, I've found that I enjoy Germany's rendition of Turkish food better thus far.

A parting tip: One should also keep a bottle of Imodium AD handy. Turkish restaurants are quite well known for causing what they call "Turkey Tummy," which is as pleasant as it sounds.