September 12, 2013
Since the previous day was so exhausting, we slept in until noon. We had big plans for the evening; the ECER Conference was hosting a Bosphorus boat tour. We decided to meet up with Marja, the Finnish Ph.D. student we met a few nights before at the Welcome Reception, and get our hair done at the stylist again.
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| The final product! |
I asked for another up-do, and the hair dresser decided it would be a good idea to do a traditional bride hairstyle by putting sim, or glitter, on top as the finishing touch. The hairstyle was beautiful, but I felt a little underdressed as a result! When we were finished, we headed to the university to load the large ship that would take us on our tour.
When we were on board, we each grabbed a beer and found a table to stand at. We decided to be social and invite a few people over to join us. There was one girl sitting by herself and we asked her to join; her name was Marta and she was from Barcelona. We also invited over two girls from Switzerland named Rebekka and Nicolette. Throughout the entire evening, we enjoyed talking about all of the customs and traditions of the countries that we represented. We talked about different marriage customs and perceptions of the different countries. Pinar was a wonderful tour guide and gave us a history lesson about each monument and landmark we saw on the tour. The waiters on the ship stuffed our faces with food and beer. They literally fed us themselves, insisting that we try one of each type of appetizer and hor d’eourvre they brought out. I left the boat tour drunk and stuffed, waddling down the loading dock!
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| The service crew on the boat tour. |
We decided our evening wasn’t over yet, so we all jammed into a taxi van and traveled to Taksim, where we met Ertan and his friend, Lutfur. We continued our discussion about nationalities. I found out that the only perception that European countries have of Iowa are from the movies “Bridges of Madison County” and “Who’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” Sadly, I haven’t seen either of these movies. It’s on my to do list for when I get home!
We had so much fun together that we decided to meet up the following morning to tour the Spice Bazaar and the Grand Bazaar together. We parted ways, each taking separate taxis home, with plans to meet at the train station in front of Grand Bazaar the following morning.