Hamam!

The idea of social bathing always fascinated me as a kid. Having grown up with classical studies, I was well aware that the ancient Romans made a habit of combining hygiene and gossip by gathering at public baths. Frankly it appalled me, both that they used oil to clean themselves and that one would leave the house to bathe. The process and the concept of having such a long and elaborate bathing routine was intriguing, but all the same I was thankful to be born in an advanced time where indoor plumbing had rendered the need for public baths obsolete.

Along those lines, I had definitely heard the phrase "Turkish bath" a few times, and assumed it to be a similar concept to the Roman bath: exotic, slightly barbaric, and extinct. So it surprised me to discover when I came here that the tradition of the hamam had not died out with the Ottoman Empire, and that it was possible to experience it for myself.

So why did it take me so long to actually visit one of these? Fear of the unknown. There were too many variables involved in this: what's the protocol? What do I bring with me? What do I expect when I go? How much does it cost? Am I allowed to wear clothes?

But today was a public holiday in Turkey, and so a couple of the girls in my Turkish class decided to take a trip to the hamam, which turned into all six of the girls in my Turkish class, plus my flatmate, going together on a girls' day out. One of the French girls had been to a hamam before and knew what to expect, so it was a bit less intimidating. "It's like a spa," she said. "You can get a massage, you can get waxing, you can get a pedicure, anything you want!" Perfect.


There's a really cute area of Ankara called Hamamönü that is full of restored Ottoman-era buildings and is now a comfortable district full of cheap cafes and interesting shopping. It's also the location of the historic Karacabey Hamam, which was built in 1440 and is still functioning today, and it was to this hamam that our cheerful group went today.


This is the front, which is the men's entrance. There's a separate area for women in the back. It doesn't look like much from the outside, but once you get inside you feel immediately at home. The women at the reception area were delighted to have a group of seven foreign visitors, and did their best to welcome us. First they escorted us to a large room to change into our swimsuits, complimenting our beauty all the while. After we'd changed, they handed us some towels to cover up with and we headed into the steam-filled dreamworld of the Turkish bath.

This picture isn't the hamam we went to, but it gives you an idea what they look like

The bath area itself is a large room decorated all in white marble, with a high domed ceiling and marble sinks lining the walls. In the middle is a large octagon-shaped table, big enough for a person to lie comfortably on each side. The whole place is hot and full of steam and water.

The first step of the bath is opening up your pores in the hot room. We sat on the marble benches next to the sinks, pouring basinfuls of lukewarm water over ourselves as the steam softened our skin and got us ready for the scrubdown. Time seemed to stop as our muscles relaxed and we sat around casually chatting about anything that came to mind. I was starting to think that maybe the Romans weren't as crazy as I thought.

Last night I mentioned to my students that I was going to the hamam today. They were excited that I was finally going to experience this part of traditional Turkish culture, but offered one caveat: "Don't be ashamed. You think you are a clean person, but you will discover that you're wrong. When they scrub you, lots of dirty things will come off your skin. It's normal."

Turns out my students were right. A woman came in and called us individually into the main room, where we lay on the big marble tables as attendants came to give us the greatest exfoliation of our lives. They use a rough mitt called a kese to thoroughly scrub every inch of my body, and I was completely disgusted when I finally opened my eyes and noticed that she had rubbed off what looked like nearly a quarter inch of dead skin.

After scrubbing me clear, the attendant then proceeded to give me a full-body massage while soaping me down, finishing off by washing my hair via the most lovely scalp massage you can imagine. It would have been the most relaxing experience ever if my dozings hadn't been interrupted by this woman periodically grabbing my hand and directing me to flip over.

Once we were fully rinsed off, we were sent back into the steam room, where we continued to sit and marvel at how amazingly soft and clean our skin felt, pouring water over ourselves to cool off. It really was like a magical place from another world, with the soft light and white marble creating the atmosphere of a fairy tale palace, and the echoes of water and our voices bouncing off the walls like a cave, distorting sounds enough that it was difficult to keep my mind focused.

In total, I think we were in the bath area over an hour, although I was in such a trance-like state that I honestly couldn't tell you how long it was. But we arrived at 3:30 and didn't leave until nearly 5:30. And the price for such an experience? A paltry US $15.

We finished off the day with a visit to a nearby cafe for more great conversation, delicious snacks, and lots of water to rehydrate. It was nice to spend more time with the girls from class, since our conversations are usually hindered by the fact that our Turkish teacher doesn't allow us to speak English in class. Our group included four Americans, a Korean, and two French girls, each here for different purposes and coming from different backgrounds, but united by the freakiness of being a foreigner in a vastly different country. I dearly love my Turkish friends and acquaintances, and value the time I can spend with them, but there is definitely something to be said for having time to decompress with other people who are experiencing the same thing as you.

So tomorrow it's back to work, back to teaching and getting to know as much as I can about this country, the people here, and their lives. But tomorrow I can face the day with freshly relaxed muscles and exfoliated skin, which might give me just the energy boost I need to get through a long weekend.

*PS- If you want to come visit me here in Turkey I will gladly take you to a hamam. I'm not even joking.*

Adventures at the hair salon, part deux

Turkish, as I've mentioned before, has borrowed a lot of foreign words, which are generally transliterated into Turkish spelling in hilariously literal ways. There are a couple of French girls in my Turkish class, and I think they have an easier time learning the language because so many words came from French and have simply been converted into Turkish spelling. For example, one day we encountered the word "puan" in Turkish and none of us knew what it meant until the French girl looked it up in her dictionary and said, "Oh-- point!" which in French sounds exactly like "puan." Of course, we have the exact same word in English, albeit with an Anglicized pronunciation. It makes me wonder which the French hate more: Turks retaining the pronunciation of borrowed words but mangling the spelling, or the English retaining the spelling but mangling the pronunciation.

The Turkish word for hair salon, "Kuaför," is one that threw me for a loop the first few weeks I was in Turkey until I had mastered the rules of Turkish pronunciation and started reading signs aloud to myself to practice, an obsessive-compulsive habit that makes me look crazy but also helps me learn languages faster. "Balikçı, kitabevi, ayakkabı hastanesi, kuaför--oh, coiffure! Got it." It seems so ridiculously simply once you pronounce the word out loud and can hear the similarity.

Anyway, this is where the story begins. Last week I decided it was yet again time to submit myself to the scissor-clutching grip of a Turkish stylist, so I went back to the kuaför that I had visited previously. I was a little less nervous this time because last month I started taking Turkish lessons and I feel a lot better about my listening comprehension these days, although my ability to form sentences is still on par with the average three year old. So I walked into the shop, told the stylist I needed a trim, and he escorted me over to the sink to rinse off my hair. All was well, they were chatting with me about the usual- how long have I been in Turkey, do I like it, etc. Then the stylist looked at me pointedly and stated: "Boya." This is a word I do not know, so I kindly asked him to explain himself and he said, "You need to change your hair color."

"No, no I don't, thanks," I replied.

"No, you definitely need to change your color. Here, look, I can make you beautiful!" He then enthusiastically whipped out his book full of tiny hair samples in a variety of tacky shades and pointed to a vivid color that in Crayola terms I'd call either "razzmatazz" or "violet red." "Beautiful," he kept repeating.

"I like this color," I said, desperately hoping that my kindergarten sentences would be enough to fend off what seemed like a very determined effort to turn my hair magenta.

He dropped my hair at this point and leaned back dramatically to make eye contact with me through the mirror. "Why?" he asked. "This color is not good. You are a beautiful girl, and you need beautiful hair."

"But this is my natural color!" I insisted. "And I like it!" He shook his head sadly, baffled by my preference to remain in the prison of my own fashion ineptitude. "Don't you at least want some highlights?" he tried. "I could make you blonde just on the top here. It would look so nice. You don't really like your natural hair color, do you?"

He finally gave up after a few minutes when he saw that my resistance was not abating, and resigned himself to simply cutting my hair. During this time, however, he did discover in himself a secret passion for teaching and realized that this was the perfect opportunity to help a hapless foreigner by instructing her in his native language.

"What's your name again?" he asked a couple times as his assistant ran off to fetch me a cup of tea. "Heidi! That's a nice name. And you say you understand pretty much everything I say?" He stopped and looked at me as if I were completely paralyzed, able only to respond yes or no by blinking my eyes. I managed to reply as best as I could, but my ability to keep a conversation going at this point is pretty limited, which means the burden of coming up with new topics is on the Turkish person. Most Turks get annoyed by this, but my new friend relished the opportunity.

"Heidi!" he'd say, dropping his scissors and coming round to the front of the chair to look at me. "Tell me about your family. How many siblings do you have? Where do they live? What do they do?" And he'd grin broadly at my stammered, childlike answers while he congratulated himself on his marvelous ability to teach the Turkish language. "I'm a great teacher, aren't I?" he said periodically to his assistant, who was perched on the windowsill laughing hysterically at everything I said.

To be fair, he is a pretty good teacher, and I'm fairly confident that he could switch careers successfully if he ever put his mind to it. At one point he was blow drying my hair when he suddenly turned off the blow dryer, looked at me, and said, "Heidi, do you know what I'm doing to you right now?" I replied that I couldn't say it in Turkish, and he beamed again. "I'm blow drying your hair. Repeat it after me. Okay, now again. Now let's practice. Next time you're going to come in here and what are you going to tell me? Here, stand up. Pretend you're ringing the door bell. I come to the door and say, 'Welcome!' Now what are you going to say?"

This went on for an hour and a half, during which time a couple of his friends wandered in just to hang out for a bit, and they began chatting with me too. The stylist fawned over me like a prize pupil. "Heidi is so cute," he said over and over. This seems to be a common theme in Turkey. In many countries, such as the United States, foreigners with limited language abilities are mocked and scorned, but in others it just ups your "cuteness" factor and can actually make you quite popular. "I like you a lot, Heidi. Do you like me? You're going to come back here and talk to me again, right? I'll teach you more Turkish!"

Later, when I insisted that it was time to leave because I had to teach a class, he seemed genuinely distressed. His friends got my cell phone number and texted me later to invite me to visit their office at the ministry of culture and tourism. The stylist escorted me to the door and reminded me to visit him again, even if I don't need a haircut.

Turkey: land of always getting more than you bargained for.