deputychairman replied to your post
Aug. 24th, 2018 03:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2LnzHQa
deputychairman replied to your post “walburgablack replied to your post “walburgablack replied to your…”
Turkey will be FINE, idk why American travel advice is so negative but I was in Istanbul for a week last autumn and it is a lovely friendly safe place, full of tourists & families from all over the world! Plus almost every shop in the Grand Bazar takes credit cards, if that helps you decide about changing money.
I mean, to be fair, most of the warnings on the US State Department site are along the lines of DO NOT GO TO THE BORDER WITH SYRIA and DO NOT START TROUBLE, so. But. It was still alarming. (Also: listen, American travel advice is super negative because America as a nation among nations is fucking awful and has been for a long time. You overthrow a few democratically-elected governments and bomb the shit out of a bunch of others in a perpetual fucking tantrum of unaccountability over the course of about a hundred years, and it turns out it makes you unpopular, who knew? I don’t blame the State Department for being super fucking pessimistic about my chances out there in the greater sphere of the planet Earth.)
(Dude and I, over dinner tonight, were pondering whether we should get a Tim Horton’s travel mug to clip to one of our backpacks, so that no one would suspect we were Americans. [I can’t find it, there was a Tim Horton’s commercial in the early 00s that played on the CBC featuring a young kid on a Finding Himself Around The World trip getting recognized everywhere by fellow Canadians because of his Horto’s travel mug.] If anyone asks, we’re from “south of Toronto”, which is technically more or less true. I just. It’s not that I’m worried, I just. I Don’t Want To Talk About It. Christ in Heaven, I don’t want to talk about it.)
Oh, but I started this thread off, way back in the beginning of all my freaking out, with the discovery that my credit cards do not work in Turkey, as per the nice lady at my bank and her list of Places These Cards Don’t Work, so. Neither at ATMs nor at point of sale. I didn’t think to try getting a different card (and it’s possible that the sanctions the US has in place would prevent any US-based card being used, I’m not sure; it might not just be my bank’s credit card provider), so I won’t be able to access my accounts from there. It’ll have to be cash, and the question is, what kind of cash. But I imagine they’re used to these sorts of problems and will happily figure it out in the interests of selling me things, so.
I have made myself a phrase book for the trip. The Turkey part is only two or three days, and all in touristy parts of Istanbul, so I just wrote down things like “hello” and “yes please” and “excuse me” and “bye-bye!”. The kind of shit that makes locals more kindly disposed to your ignorant American ass, swanning in here dripping cash and mispronouncing things but bless them, they at least know what language we speak here, that’s better than most. (it worked a treat on the Greeks, I found. They still weren’t friendly, but they’d actually admit they spoke English, if you tried it in Greek first.)
The Kyrgyz leg of the journey will be a bit more adventurous and remote, so that part of the phrase book (well, it’s all in Russian, there’s very little Kyrgyz available on the Internet for perusal) has more practical things, not just cute ones. I included things like “please for the love of god do you know anyone who speaks English” and “please help me” and “i am lost” and “where is the toilet” and “that’s too much money”. You know, needful stuff. Also, like, the names of the major food animals, just so I might have some idea what I was eating.
I should find some cute Kyrgyz things to say to throw in there for charm, though. Like, bonus extra effort. I do happen to know that Kyrgyz uses the same number words as Turkish, which is a fascinating tidbit.
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deputychairman replied to your post “walburgablack replied to your post “walburgablack replied to your…”
Turkey will be FINE, idk why American travel advice is so negative but I was in Istanbul for a week last autumn and it is a lovely friendly safe place, full of tourists & families from all over the world! Plus almost every shop in the Grand Bazar takes credit cards, if that helps you decide about changing money.
I mean, to be fair, most of the warnings on the US State Department site are along the lines of DO NOT GO TO THE BORDER WITH SYRIA and DO NOT START TROUBLE, so. But. It was still alarming. (Also: listen, American travel advice is super negative because America as a nation among nations is fucking awful and has been for a long time. You overthrow a few democratically-elected governments and bomb the shit out of a bunch of others in a perpetual fucking tantrum of unaccountability over the course of about a hundred years, and it turns out it makes you unpopular, who knew? I don’t blame the State Department for being super fucking pessimistic about my chances out there in the greater sphere of the planet Earth.)
(Dude and I, over dinner tonight, were pondering whether we should get a Tim Horton’s travel mug to clip to one of our backpacks, so that no one would suspect we were Americans. [I can’t find it, there was a Tim Horton’s commercial in the early 00s that played on the CBC featuring a young kid on a Finding Himself Around The World trip getting recognized everywhere by fellow Canadians because of his Horto’s travel mug.] If anyone asks, we’re from “south of Toronto”, which is technically more or less true. I just. It’s not that I’m worried, I just. I Don’t Want To Talk About It. Christ in Heaven, I don’t want to talk about it.)
Oh, but I started this thread off, way back in the beginning of all my freaking out, with the discovery that my credit cards do not work in Turkey, as per the nice lady at my bank and her list of Places These Cards Don’t Work, so. Neither at ATMs nor at point of sale. I didn’t think to try getting a different card (and it’s possible that the sanctions the US has in place would prevent any US-based card being used, I’m not sure; it might not just be my bank’s credit card provider), so I won’t be able to access my accounts from there. It’ll have to be cash, and the question is, what kind of cash. But I imagine they’re used to these sorts of problems and will happily figure it out in the interests of selling me things, so.
I have made myself a phrase book for the trip. The Turkey part is only two or three days, and all in touristy parts of Istanbul, so I just wrote down things like “hello” and “yes please” and “excuse me” and “bye-bye!”. The kind of shit that makes locals more kindly disposed to your ignorant American ass, swanning in here dripping cash and mispronouncing things but bless them, they at least know what language we speak here, that’s better than most. (it worked a treat on the Greeks, I found. They still weren’t friendly, but they’d actually admit they spoke English, if you tried it in Greek first.)
The Kyrgyz leg of the journey will be a bit more adventurous and remote, so that part of the phrase book (well, it’s all in Russian, there’s very little Kyrgyz available on the Internet for perusal) has more practical things, not just cute ones. I included things like “please for the love of god do you know anyone who speaks English” and “please help me” and “i am lost” and “where is the toilet” and “that’s too much money”. You know, needful stuff. Also, like, the names of the major food animals, just so I might have some idea what I was eating.
I should find some cute Kyrgyz things to say to throw in there for charm, though. Like, bonus extra effort. I do happen to know that Kyrgyz uses the same number words as Turkish, which is a fascinating tidbit.
(Your picture was not posted)
