Today, as the sun is setting for the last time in this decade on the other side of the Bosphorus, I am reflecting on 2019 and what it meant to me and who / what I am grateful for. The sun sets in Istanbul on New Year’s Eve 2019 for the final time in this […]
Originally written 8 May 2018, updated 17 December 2019 In a spring cleaning in 2018 I found an old diary of mine with entries from 2005 and then again from 2008. Back then in May 2008, almost 10 years before to the day, I had taken stock of my life up to that point of […]
September 13, 2017 As a foreigner working and living with his family here in Turkey, it is natural for me to learn to speak Turkish. I have met a couple of expats who have been living here for years and do not even try to learn the language instead trying to get by with English. […]
September 17, 2017 When we were still living in Germany, a colleague of Burcu’s once made her this “compliment”: “I am really positively surprised by you. I always thought all Turks were lazy and slow.” The colleague was apparently not at all aware at that time how discriminatory her comment actually was. We Germans tend […]
