I travelled to Turkey with some friends on an overnight bus ride this past weekend, which took somewhere around ten hours. We had to buy a visa just to get in (which thankfully is far less work than getting a Greek visa… all I had to do this time was pay) but got to see a bit of Muslim culture while there. Mosques are everywhere in Turkey. Five times a day people go to pray and the loud singing/chanting is heard throughout the city.
Turkey not only has a crazy unique name (shared with a beloved Thanksgiving dish), but holds a culture unlike any other. Istanbul, where I was just this past weekend, is split by a body of water and somehow belongs to two continents! So, doing the only reasonable thing I could think of, I casually boarded a ferry to Asia last Saturday.
In Turkey I experienced something else that I’m not sure I’ll ever find in the U.S. (It is a bit controversial, so please send small children away from the computer). For a whopping 50 lira (roughly $33.45) I paid to get washed.
Turkish baths are a culture all on their own. I went there and was scrubbed down in an open room – where everyone was naked. Quite the experience, and for the sake of seeing your facial expressions, I’ll let you ask me more about it once I return to the States. But, I think this may fall under the growing category of “doing something I’ve never done before or EVER imagined myself doing“.
Growing Abroad 