Cheap Phones and Flirty Waiters

Of course, Keri and I knew that we needed to get phones, but we wanted the simplest, cheapest ones possible. I also needed to buy bus tickets to visit Alex at Cunda, where he is studying now. We took the shuttle service from Sabancı University to Kadıköy and did some comparison shopping. Generally, electronics are more expensive than in the U.S., but I think we did pretty well. To use the type of phone I got, I need to buy minutes rather than a contract. Text messages are cheaper than talking, but the phone is old enough that it doesn’t have a QWERTY keyboard, I have to tap through all the letters to get something close to what I want to text. Fresh from our success getting the oldest cell phones on the planet, we looked into various ferries we could take across the Bosphorus and still make it back in time for the return shuttle service to Sabancı. We took the ferry to Beşiktaş (only 15 minutes to Europe!) and on the trip over, I discovered that my “new” phone was locked, which meant that I would have to go back to the shop to get that taken care of. In Beşiktaş, we found a café to have lunch. There we encountered the common species known as the flirty waiter. Let’s just say that his attention was slightly ridiculous, and did not result in a better tip at all. Good thing the food was delicious—we enjoyed mevsim salata, cheese and spinach gözleme, and ayran. Then we had just enough time to catch the return ferry to Kadıköy; I went back to the shop and Keri went in search of bakery bread to bring to Tolga and Funda. At the shop, when I tried to explain the problem, the owner joked in Turkish, “Did you get this phone here?”, but I didn’t get that it was a joke at first, I was a little stressed about time for that. He then told me to wait five minutes and took the phone to the back room. At that point, I had 20 minutes before the shuttle left, so I had to make myself believe that it would all work out (rather than split a gasket). Ten minutes later, another guy came out—really looking like they kept him in the basement to hack locked phones—and gave me the phone. I asked if it worked and he said yes, so I headed over to the shuttle stop as fast as I could. Then Keri came with the Ramazan pidesi and all was well--back in time to make yummy mercimek köftesi!