Sunday, September 23, 2012
Up here at the Borderlands Lodge we're celebrating 20 years of life in the Turkic World. It was twenty years ago this weekend that I flew out to Turkey to begin what I thought would be just a year or two before I found something better to do. Twenty years later, Turkey and the Turkic World are still a huge part of my life. Go figure.
How did it all begin? Well, if you've read by bio you probably know most of the details. I had been traveling around southeastern Europe in the Spring of 1992, fresh out of college and trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. The plan, to the extent that I had one, was to find a job teaching English somewhere. Turkey was far from my mind, though. Instead, I was hoping to find work in some of the newly opened-up parts of Eastern Europe, someplace like Prague or Budapest. Istanbul was supposed to just be a quick stop between Greece and Bulgaria.
It didn't quite work out that way. Traveling in to Istanbul I met a Turkish kid who would end up helping out a group of foreigners from the train I'd taken, myself included. One thing led to another, and I ended up getting a job at Marmara University. I tell the story here, if you're interested.
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| The carefree days of 1992 |
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