BAŞKA Martın en iyisi! (MORE Best of March)

-Apparently, once you turn, like, 22, or something, it's not cool to brag about your mom. So I tried to leave her out of the Olympos account as much as possible. But I'm not gonna, lie it was awesome having her there, if for no other reason than that it made me feel smart for knowing the word for "soup" again (çorba). The Tuesday after that trip I had off from work, so after listening to the opening pitch for the Red Sox 2008 season in Tokyo at noon, Turkey time, we went downtown to shop for fabric and do some additional sightseeing.

My Mama may not have raised no fool (well, the jury's still out on Mike, ZING!), but she did raise at least one dope, as I evidenced by forgetting to look up the word for "fabric" (kumaş) before we left. Luckily, Mom had the presence of mind to draw some pants and a shirt in the process of being sewn together in a rather nifty version of real-life Pictionary, and a friend of the pharmacist whose store we stopped in led us to a fabric store. Score one for McKay. Unfortunately, one of the areas in which Turkey has failed to modernize rapidly enough is putting its fabric bolts out for people to feel like we do in the States, so no go on that one.

From there I tried to find the "Hal" market which went to back in September with Marion and Meredith and Laura. After only an hour of confused wandering around Ulus and one unfortunate side-trip down an alley full of pirated porn-vendors, we made it there. Even on a weekday afternoon, the market still radiated with a bustling sensuousness. The produce stalls had changed a few shades of green since the fall and the "HAMSI, IKI MILYON" ("ANCHOVIES, TWO MILLION" as in two million old Turkish Lira, the denomination in which a lot of people still give prices since they only switched a few years ago- one million old Turkish Lira equal one New Turkish Lira, the change having been made because of inflation; did I mention this is a currency that has out-performed the dollar most of the year until a recent political crisis involving the potential banning of Turkey's current plurality-holding party? I will now convert my life savings to soya beans) guy wasn't really hitting his stride yet at 2pm, but the density of human energy was still there. We bought a half kilo of strawberries and I borrowed a hose from one of the fish vendors to wash them off with so we could eat them while we walked around.

Navigating with only my street smarts, experience, the sun and a streetmap of Ankara, I next managed to successfully navigate us to a natural spices and herbs store in Kızılay. Between making our way there and then to Kocatepe Caddesi for the Kocatepe Mosque, I managed to turn a journey of a couple hundred yards into about forty minutes walking. If I had actually mapped the route on paper it would resemble a Family Circus cartoon of Billy's route home from his after-school job as a Wal-Mart greeter (I know, I already made a joke about those cartoons in the fall, but if Bill Keane can run them out every other month I say I get two per year, minimum). The spice store was like a cross between an herbal remedies place and a dried goods market, with a space heater and darkly varnished wood for all the shelves to give it an authentic aura. I think all we picked up was some coffee beans for Dad. By the way, how are the coffee beans, Dad?

The Kocatepe Mosque was the third-most amazing one that I have been in (out of maybe a dozen). It's very new and modern, as is the shopping center that it sits atop. Really, it's hard not to be in awe of the geometric splendor in a place like that. What Muslims lack in idolatry they certainly make up for in symmetry. The expansive beauty of the inside made me feel very reverential, but as always made me wonder how such aesthetic expressions could manifest themselves in a place that simultaneously represents a fearful and repressive gender inequality.

Afterwards, we went to an incredible iskender restaurant near the American embassy. Iskender is a veal kebap over sliced pita bread with a tomato sauce on top of yogurt covering it. At this particular place, they come out with the food and pour on sizzling butter during the presentation as well, with some fresh sauce. I made the sound Homer Simpson makes when he is thinking about donuts as this was happening. The other specialty is kunefe, a dessert shredded grain soaked in honey, with cheese in the middle, soaked with honey, served hot and soaked with honey. Again for this presentation they came out with the dish fresh and poured sizzling honey on it before we ate. More Homer Simpson noises, this time including squeals of delight.