Thursday, September 9, 2010

Ramazan Bayrami

I happened to match my trip to Turkey with Ramazan Bayrami - the big holiday to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Its kind of the Christmas in Turkey. People are free from work in three days and goes to visit their relatives. Children run between the houses celebrating and getting candy or money.

Me and Cem went to Izmit to celebrate with his parents, and we also visited his relatives. According to tradition are you supposed to kiss the elders with a special greeting. I was practicing all way in the car, but of course I was so nervous when the time was in that I made a fool of myself in front of Cems parents and grandparents and did the correct greeting only one of four times. When we were about to leave were we supposed to do it all over again, then it worked better!

During tea drinkning and baklava eating I had a hard time finding anything at all to say (even if it had been in swedish, because I was so nervous), but then I was able to grind out some sentences in turkish about the swedish weather and Cems grandmother was surprised and flattered me "But the girl knows turkish!" (said in turkish of course).

We ate a fantastic dinner at a restaurant, and as usual I felt really bad afterwards, because of the huge amount of food I was able to stuff myself with. We ate the longest pide (turkish pizza) I've ever seen!



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