Modern Conveniences

Whenever I come home from Turkey there are always some modern conveniences I miss dearly. Yes, that's right, these are the modern conveniences of Turkish life that I don't have at home. We've adapted some of these into our life at home, but most are more difficult or impossible.

One of the conveniences I miss a lot is that Turkish apartments in Istanbul pretty much all have in-line hot water heaters. This means your water is heated immediately as it comes through the line, instead of sitting in a hot water heater. This method is more energy efficient and means you get hot water more quickly and without running a lot of water waiting for it to heat. One of our faculty colleagues, Dr. Motscheidler, installed an in-line hot water heater at her house but they found that they had to run a larger gas line to their home to make it work. It's more expensive to install but more efficient overall. Turkey has always had these in-line hot water heaters. When I was here in the 1980s gas wasn't piped into the apartments, so you had to buy gas in tanks to attach to the heater, but the system was the same. In the 80s there were gas trucks that went through the streets with the drivers yelling out that they had gas. You waved them up when you needed a tank and they would bring a new tank and take your old one, and you would pay them a small fee for the new gas tank. I'm glad not to have to be carting gas around, but still like the immediate hot water and efficiency of the Turkish system. This system really is not anywhere near widely used in the US, which is a bit sad, because it's great.

Another convenience I love here is electric water kettles. We bought one of these years ago for home, but they didn't really catch on in the US until recently. On 220V you can boil a liter or two of water in 30 seconds. Quick, efficient, and almost immediate for tea. This trip I also saw an electric tea maker, which I haven't seen here before. Turkish tea is prepared in two parts: the top pot is concentrated tea, and the bottom is hot water. Each person drinking the tea customizes the strength to his or her taste. Betul served us tea recently from an electric tea pot that was a bit like a percolator. The top part held the tea leaves and a small pot for the concentrated tea and the bottom heated water. Water was heated by electricity and then some of it was routed up into the top pot to brew the tea concentrate. I was impressed. We bought a stove top double teapot for home at a Turkish grocery in the late 1990s (kind of like a modern samovar), which we used until it started leaking, but the electric ones are very nice for serving large groups.

Throughout Europe and Turkey I also really appreciate the efficiency and availability of public transportation. One of the students recently made a joke about how we needed to bring one of those Glade air fresheners to hang up in trams on busy days (those armpit to face days), and this is indeed a drawback, but it's very easy to get wherever you want to go, even if you have to go there with the crowds. This is a bit of a contrast to Riverside transit, that routinely takes quite a while to get anywhere. Also, you can't beat commuting on a ferry across the Bosphorus.