Wednesday, April 19, 2006
The Call of the Open Road
We are a mobile touring unit now! We have our wheels, which has made our office ambulatory; our laptop is connected to the car’s cigarette lighter and our wireless PC card streams broadband access to us from to T-Mobile’s satellite internet service (in theory, at least). While one of us navigates the roads, the other updates the blog as we tear up the highway.
We are now passing through the fifth state of our tour. Before halting for a few days in Syracuse, New York, we made an impromptu stop in the former silk-producing town of Paterson, New Jersey, a town now so filled with Turkish people that half of the shops on Main Street have Turkish names. We stopped in a corner market that felt just like Istanbul with so many Turkish products on its shelves-- in fact it was called Istanbul II! We also met Ismail Bey at Turkiyem Video & Electronic, a store of Turkish music, books, and Turkophile memorabilia. Ismail was kind enough to display our promotional postcards and even buy two copies of our book, one for his sister (Happy Birthday, Burcu!) and one for his friend Gulserin. We were happy to have our first Turkish meal in USA at Toros Restaurant across the street. Azize, our waitress and a Turk from Thrace, sent us on our way with friendly kisses and a dish of borek!
We are a mobile touring unit now! We have our wheels, which has made our office ambulatory; our laptop is connected to the car’s cigarette lighter and our wireless PC card streams broadband access to us from to T-Mobile’s satellite internet service (in theory, at least). While one of us navigates the roads, the other updates the blog as we tear up the highway.
We are now passing through the fifth state of our tour. Before halting for a few days in Syracuse, New York, we made an impromptu stop in the former silk-producing town of Paterson, New Jersey, a town now so filled with Turkish people that half of the shops on Main Street have Turkish names. We stopped in a corner market that felt just like Istanbul with so many Turkish products on its shelves-- in fact it was called Istanbul II! We also met Ismail Bey at Turkiyem Video & Electronic, a store of Turkish music, books, and Turkophile memorabilia. Ismail was kind enough to display our promotional postcards and even buy two copies of our book, one for his sister (Happy Birthday, Burcu!) and one for his friend Gulserin. We were happy to have our first Turkish meal in USA at Toros Restaurant across the street. Azize, our waitress and a Turk from Thrace, sent us on our way with friendly kisses and a dish of borek!
