Thursday, August 12, 2010

It's good to be a man

.... in Turkey.

It's really amazing how people from different countries can have such different views of the world and different way of thinking than what i'm used to. When i went to Denmark i cannot say that there was a very big culture shock and people were not the same but mostly similar. In Turkey however people see the world in such a different way , so it was a very good opportunity to see how a Muslim country makes out of the world. 

First of all Turkey was quite amazing! The country itself is quite interesting and the cities(not Istanbul) had a very vintage look-like you're back 30 or 40 years. People are extremely polite which i didn't really expect, to such a point that they can get far out of their way just to help you. Men are mostly smartly dressed with shirts and trousers, but at least for my taste they were not at all appealing. Some women however were actually following the muslim ideas and were mostly covered. It was really weird to see women in 35+ degrees with trousers, sweaters, with their traditional headcloths and on top of that a raincoat. Those women weren't that much but still was crazy.

The most interesting part is the position of a man in society. For example we were in a kebab place and it was me( a guy) and 3 women,at the time, and the guy was calling me "the chief  or "the boss" and whenever he asked about something he was addressing me and waiting for me to answer ,listening to me. He wasn't disrespecting women at all,he was quite polite even, but in their culture the man is,as the guy said, the boss and he's looked as the head of the family with no questions asked. I actually liked that , it was a weird ego boost type of thing.

Istanbul on the other hand is very modern and a giant piece of city. 5th largest in population terms according to wikipedia- 12.8 million people. It's incredibly beautiful and just a proper treat to see. A must see in my opinion. Also was in the Asian part of the city so i can say now that i have been in Asia aswell. Went over the Bosphorus which was smaller than what i expected, but still amazingly breathtaking. A thing that i saw was the large amount of mosques there, at one point when we were going on the freeway i started counting them and for 5 km there were at least 15 , but i stopped counting cuz it was close to impossible to count the hundreds of mosques out there.

Overall it was an amazing holiday and would defo go another time if the opportunity arises. I had a blast tho very soon i'll have to go back again to depressing Denmark. :(

I hope you're all good and have a great day/night/week :)

3 comments:

  1. Wow! That's very interesting - thanks!

    I sort of had an idea about the difference in Society but you expressed it very clearly there.

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  2. Daniel sounds like you had a wonderful time.I really find it hard to understand why the woman need to dress the way they do - do think that being polite is great. Sounds like a very beautiful place.
    Nice to have you back.
    Regards Stef

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  3. @ Micky - I also had an idea about the difference in culture and people, but seeing it first hand is interesting in it's own little way.

    @ southern - Great place to be with very good people.. ahem and cheap clothes. As for the women it's religion that makes them wear such clothes, but all in all Turkey is far better in those terms than most of the Arabic world.

    Thanks for commenting guys :)

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