So, what I did in the last almost 2 weeks, fast forward:

1. I visited Ankara (especially Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’ Mausoleum – Anit Kabir). Take a Turkish person with you to tell you about everything you see. It is interesting to see in their eyes what they feel for Ataturk. We don’t have the same kind of historic figure in Romania and I think that some of the patriotic feelings the Turks have are there especially because it is so much easier to feel closeness to a person in history than to a undefined concept like a country.

2. I visited almost every shopping mall in Ankara. These people, here, are crazy about malls: they eat there, they spend their time there, they shop there… What the hell is wrong?

3. I was the trainer in a sort of “Blogoree Workshop” ( ) I had for people here, a more basic one than the ones I have in Romania (the audience was different), but it was a great workshop for me (I hope it was the same for the attendees). The title of the workshop? “Basic Use of the Internet”. I talked about Firefox (best browser), about search engine operators, about feeds (what they are, where to find them and how to use them). Quite basic, right? Well, not so when you really get to it.

Other than that, some business opportunities came my way and, who knows, I might visit Turkey earlier than I expected (business not being the only reason).

I will get in details later on, because I have lots of photos and, more, I have to tell you about traffic here and their suicidal pedestrians. I thought traffic in Bucharest was bad… trust me, that is nothing compared to Ankara and, from what they are saying, Istanbul is worse (though I will be there from Monday to Wednesday).

First bad thing: no internet. It wasn’t working. But Yucel, one of my friends here, came to help and in 30-60 minutes, the most, everything was ok and we were connected. We checked our emails, and since everybody we knew in Ankara was busy, we decided to take a plunge on our own and visit the surroundings of our apartment, to know where we can find things to buy. We needed cables for the cameras, a map, food and more.

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So we finally went out to find a place to eat. And after around a hour of walking, we finally decided on this place, on a corner of a fairly busy street. We went in, we said Hello!, somebody came that actually understood English and even spoke it quite ok. So, we ordered some chicken (I don’t really like lamb, so I try to avoid it): chicken shish and chicken casserole. Great food, I have to tell you. Finally, after eating everything, we left and, while outside, took some pictures of the establishment, to tell people it’s worth stopping there (we also have the address, of course). Well, the surprise came there: they saw us taking pictures and called us in to take pictures of the cook, of the kitchen, of the owner… The result? My cousin got a job, as you can see in the pictures below.

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After that, while looking for the map, we found a guy in a bookstore that intends to travel around the World, too. We will meet for a drink sometime next week.

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Yesterday was a busy day in Ankara, since there was a demonstration against unbanning of the head scarves for women in Universities. We wanted to get there, but when we reached the location, at around 4pm, everything was already finished. Finally, we took some more pictures, we got a map of the city and we returned home. We were quite tired (I was also feeling the 17 hours drive and the fact that I didn’t sleep too much the day before) so we just stayed in, got in touch with our families at home, worked on some of our websites (this included) and we went to sleep.

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Today, we will go around the city. So, more pictures to come.