Party in the hallway!

One of the nicest features of our furnished apartment is that it came with a treadmill. My flatmates are both avid runners and plan to participate in the Istanbul Marathon next October, so this has been a great blessing. It's also strategically located next to the balcony, which allows us to prop open the door for a cool breeze whilst exercising.

However, a couple months ago I discovered that the open balcony door creates something of a wind tunnel throughout the apartment when I stepped out front to put out the garbage only to have the door immediately slam shut behind me. At the time, one flatmate was in the shower and the other was on the treadmill, totally zoned out with her iPod, so I had to lean on the doorbell for a good five minutes before the flatmate in the shower finally yelled out, "Heidi, would you answer the door?" and I yelled back, "I'm locked out!'

The lesson from that story is: when the balcony door is open, keep one foot firmly planted inside the front door. I failed to learn this lesson, because the exact same thing happened again this morning, except that one variable had changed: the flatmate in the shower had become the flatmate who wasn't home.

I'm an idiot, basically. I heard the door slam shut behind me and immediately thought, oh no, not again. I knew my flatmate had just hopped onto the treadmill and would likely be oblivious to the world for the next forty minutes. Meanwhile I was in the hallway with no cell phone, no keys, and no shoes. I banged on the door, rang the doorbell continuously, and after about fifteen minutes gave up and decided to sit patiently by the door until I heard the treadmill stop.

So I sat there for a few minutes, mentally running through all my Turkish vocabulary to see if I could conjure up an explanation good enough to convince a neighbor to let me sit in their flat for a few minutes while I waited. Just then a man came up the stairs, delivering a big jug of water to someone in the building. He cocked an eyebrow when he saw me sitting, shoeless, on the floor, and I grinned stupidly at him, aware of how ridiculous I looked. He kept walking, but also kept an eye on me, so as he disappeared up the stairs I blurted out the first thing I could think of: "I have no keys!" He kind of chuckled, and went to deliver his water.

I was worried for a minute that he would mistake me for a gypsy or drug addict or someone who didn't belong in the building, but this deliveryman was more perceptive than that. A minute later he came back and tried to coax more information out of me. "What were you doing out here with no shoes in the first place?"

"Uhhhh....." I pointed at the garbage bag. "Garbage. And the door......shut. My friend is at home, but.....she is running. And listening to music."

He pulled out his cell phone and handed it to me. So she can't hear the doorbell, but she'll hear a phone? Right. But it was a nice gesture, so I took the phone and dialed while he pressed his ear to the door. "I don't hear any music," he said, skeptically. "iPod," I replied.

Next he started banging on the door with the full strength of his muscular arm, smirking all the while. "What's her name? What's your name? You're American?" Yes, yes, yes, my Germanic features and broken Turkish give me away pretty well.

I looked ruefully at my watch. "Fifteen minutes ago," I told him. He gave me a brief pitying look before allowing himself to laugh at my predicament. "Do you have a balcony? We could go round to the back and throw things at the window! Oh wait, you don't have any shoes." With this, the man suddenly decided that his fist wasn't producing the volume required to rouse my flatmate from her exercise trance, so he pulled a coin out of his pocket, curled it into his palm for maximum acoustics, and continued pounding on the door. He kept this up until the next-door-neighbor came out to investigate.

She saw my stockinged feet and immediately clucked her tongue at me, "You got locked out with no shoes?" Cluck cluck cluck- the universal Turkish signal of disapproval at the ineptitude of foreigners. "Is your friend inside? Is she sleeping? Do you need a phone?" I held up the water deliveryman's phone while he explained to her that I'd now been outside for twenty minutes, which made her laugh too.

A couple minutes later my flatmate finally came to the door, panting and sweating from her workout. The water guy looked at her accusingly and greeted her with, "Twenty minutes your friend has been out here." She didn't know how to respond to this, so while she stood there in surprise, I thanked the friendly Turks and ducked inside.

I'm sure both my neighbor and the water guy will be telling the story of the silly American to all their friends today. Glad I can be so amusing to those around me.