A Lonely Journey with Friends

This is a lonely journey of me and my shadow. This is also a wonderful journey with all my friends who invited me to our shared experience.

The Lonely Journey
When the flight finally arrived at Ankara International Airport, I found myself lost in an alien country where most people do not speak the languages I use. When I strove to get to the dormitory and slept for hours to recover from the jet leg, I was surprised to find that the sun was still in the sky at 19:30 and the menu in the campus restaurant was written in something that by no means could I understand. Fortunately, this was not totally unfamiliar to me. Four years ago, English and Chinese characters could be some kind of supplements for me to communicate with Japanese people in Fukouka. Two years ago, Mandarin and English could help me to survive in Hong Kong though I wasn’t able to speak Cantonese at that time. But this time, it is tougher.
As a very special country connects Asia and Europe, Turkey always presents a mysterious culture to me, from the huge Muslim community to the mysterious Huns descendants, from the historically great Constantinople to the current splendid Istanbul.
To explore this wonderful country, I set off my journey since the second day of my arrival. It was a lonely journey of me and my shadow. In the following a month and a half, I used all my free time to travel, from Ankara to Antalya, from Cappadocia to Izmir, and from Pamukkale to Istanbul. This journey was not merely a sight-seeing tour. It was my adventure of the culture, history, nature and people.
I seldom travel with agencies. Usually such journey can be more flexible and amazing. When I arrived in Izmir in the early morning, the quiet Aegean Sea patted this historical city gently. Some people were fishing near the Republic Square after the celebration of Turkish soccer victory against Croatia in the EURO 2008 the previous night. A middle-aged man even slept on the bench, covered with the national flag. As the sun rose, the city woke up. In one of the most traditional Bazzar in the country, people were bargaining for anything attracted them. A variety of stores gathered in this region with several blocks long and wide. Compared with the ancient Agora (old bazzar) hundreds of years ago two streets away, the history similarizes itself. When ancestors invented the markets for goods exchange and expanded them to a large scale, they never expected that their descendants centuries later would lived in the same way as they did, though many of the goods exchanged were quite different. Standing on the wall of the castle Kadifekale established by the Alexander the Great and overlooking the Aegean Sea and the whole city of Izmir, I could feel the proud of the great emperor, conqueror, and adventurer.
People, the market and the castle displayed different angles of the city. Tour is just the appearance of the travelling, and the essence is the desire for adventure which in turn presents you a complex world.
During my adventure in Turkey, I’ve met people of different nationality, and with different stories. One of my Poland friends shouted angrily towards a waiter who tried to sell the drinks to him using Russian in Antalya where 99% of the tourists are from Russia. “Here, no one speaks Russian.” This was the natural response from the hearts of many Poles in the contemporary world. It is also not surprising when I met a family from Palestine who complained to me that Israel’s ruling over Palestine was terrible and sadly recalled the lost of their house just one month after the marriage of the grandmother. “Many Palestinians still keep their keys to their old house… My furniture was still in the original order as it was for my marriage sixty years ago when Israel host allowed me to pay a visit in 2005.” The 80-year-old Palestinian grandmother recalled the experience full of sadness. It is even quite understandable when a Kuwaiti was scared to travel in Iraq and two Iraqi engineers were complaining the military occupation of the United States.
My adventure in Turkey brought me not only the idea of what Turkey is but also the movie sections of what the world is. The adventure does not provide me with the exact answer toward the questions around the world. However, it presents me all the possibilities and arouses my interest in exploring more and try to understand a problem through more angles.

The Journey with Friends
Emre was the first colleague I knew since I entered the TOBB. He was an intern in TOBB and we shared the table. We both had a lot of work to do. He was quite experienced in conference reception and Turkish news summaries, and I was working on the English document summaries, album illustration edition and some paper work. Whenever we had some time in the afternoon, we talked a lot from politics to religion, from customs to anecdotes. The second day we met, he invited me to his flat where several other students in his university shared the rooms. It is not common for Chinese people to invite unfamiliar people home. However, it is a normal practice in Turkey as I gradually discovered in the following one month and a half.
The visit to Emre’s home proved to be just a start for me to visit them and live with them. We five boys had a good balance point in discussing political and social issues and the EURO 2008 as well. During my stay in Turkey, the political challenges against AKP, the ruling party, the arrest of several military generals and the president of ATO and the EURO 2008 were the most important and heated-discussed issues in Turkey. I was fortunate to have Turkish friends with me to know more about the local views on these issues. Especially for my one-week intern in ATO later, just one week after the arrest of the president, I lived with Emre and his friends who gave me support to understand the structure and nature of ATO and help me to relieve my anxiety when my boss gave me a seemingly challenging business order.
At the end of June, I was invited to Eskişehir, the hometown of Emre to attend a wedding ceremony of his relative. This is my first time to meet such a huge relative network. In the wedding party, the whole hall with more than 100 desks were full of guests. Relatives come from this table to that table to greet each other. When I asked how could the bridegroom and bride afford such wedding, I was surprised to know that most of the relatives would present some small gold coins or bracelets as gift. The newly married couple would sell some of those gifts to finance the wedding.
In the following two days I spent with Emre’s family, I had good chances to see the daily life of a typical Turkish family. For the family breadfast, the whole family were laughing at my “strange idea” of the “balcony of belly” since Turkish people have got used to the bulky abdomen. I was also delighted to know that I looks alike the grandfather of Emre’s aunt, a descendent of Tartar. Before I left Eskişehir, I purchased some dessert for Emre’s parents, they were so delighted that his father repeatedly use his broken English to express his appreciation, “you not forget here.” Finally, I became their Chinese son, younger brother of Emre and elder brother of Murat.
During my stay in Turkey, so many people had wonderful days and nights with me. I will never forget the owner of a small restaurant Güneydoğu who had made two delicious dinners for me and told me that I was the first one in his life to communicate with him as a guest. I will also keep contact with the 16-year-old clever Russian boy who wanted to know different culture and business behavior by travelling around the world for future business and claimed to hire me if I would become a famous economist. I will remember in my life the wonderful pictures I’ve taken with a group of young Turkish soldiers in Pamukkale. When they said that they loved China, their eyes sparkled light.

My journey in Turkey is a special one. I adventured in this wonderful country with my shadow and my friends.