Simiiiiiiiiiiit!

Every morning, an army of vendors takes to the streets to bring breakfast to Ankara. On every side street, past every house, on every street corner, their mission is to ensure that no single person in this city of 7 million misses out on the opportunity for a freshly baked morning energy boost. Some of them set up shop with a cart in the middle of the sidewalk to feed the pedestrian population. Others venture out on foot, their wares balanced expertly on top of their heads as they wander up and down the streets, bellowing to inform the world that breakfast is waiting just outside your apartment building should you care to come down and fetch it.



Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to the simitçi, one of the few traditional street peddlers whose trade has not yet been swept away by modern life. In Turkey fifty years ago, the streets were filled with vendors pushing carts and coming around to every house selling yogurt, ayran, ice cream, vegetables, or anything else you can imagine. But as streets grew more crowded and Western-style supermarkets started to open up, these vendors gradually started to disappear and these days it's rare in my neighborhood, at least, to see any of them. The one exception is the simitçi.

Every morning they walk by our house, and I don't know what sort of vocal training these guys get, but every single one of them has the lung capacity to be heard from at least two blocks away. Each one of them has a unique call, much like birds, and their bellowings are completely unintelligible. They might be saying, "Simit," they might be saying, "Luuuuuuuu," or it could also possibly be something like, "Heeeeelp meeeeeee," but since they spent too much time working on projection and not enough time on diction, it is impossible to say which interpretation is correct. A few of them might not be saying anything at all.

The truly amazing thing about the simitçis is their sense of balance. I think I've mentioned this before, but Ankara is hilly. You'd be hard pressed to find 200 feet of road that doesn't have a significant slope. But the hills and the fact that they have a hundred or so simit balanced on their head does not slow the simitçi down in the slightest. These guys are pros, and they can whip these boards on and off of their head as easy as if they were simply taking off a baseball cap. It is a fantastic sight.

Just as fantastic is the simit itself. This has grown into one of my staple foods, partly because of easy accessibility and cheapness, and partly because it's a tasty thing to snack upon. Picture a cross between a bagel and a large soft pretzel, hard on the outside but soft and chewy on the inside, covered in sesame seeds. They're boiled first, and then baked in a stone oven, and they come out looking like this:


Now picture having one of these with a cup of tea in the morning. Mmmmm. This is the traditional variety, and the one which you'll find piled on boards and carts on every sidewalk in the morning, but if you go into one of the many simit cafes you can find many variations on the simit theme. Some of them are larger, doughier, or made with other flavors, but I have yet to find a simit I do not enjoy at all.

The prices in the stores are set, but the magical thing about the simit carts on the street is that the simit get cheaper as the day goes on. If you go out in the morning you'll see signs on the carts advertising simit for .50 lira apiece (1 Turkish lira is about US $.65) or 3 simit for 1 lira. Not a bad deal to begin with, but then once it gets to be about 10 am, the signs change and suddenly it's 4 simit for a lira. By mid-afternoon you can get six or seven simit for a lira, and if you really want a simit at 5 pm, the simitçi will probably give you all the simit you can carry for the same price.

4 for 1 lira? Even the prime minister can't pass that up!

Traditional Turkish breakfast is more varied, and usually includes cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, cheese, and eggs along with the simit, but for the busy city folk sometimes this little munchie is just perfect to get you through the morning.