A shave, baking bread, and a bus ride

My brother Matthew and his wife Laurie visited Turkey a couple of years ago. We visited some of the same places that they did, and it was nice to have someone recommend the place. He spoke longingly about the shaves that he would get at the Turkish barbers.

So I was looking forward to getting a real shave. This would be the first time I had outsources my shaving.

It is really quite nice. You could get use to this sort of treatment.

First, they lather you up luxuriously with a soft badger brush and warm suds. They lathered, and lathered, and lathered. I use a "wet shave" myself, but never have I lathered as long as they do. So that was nice.

Then they shave you with a straight razor. One of the guys squirted the blade with alcohol, and they lit it on fire. (Fire seems to be an integral part of shaving here)

It is great being shaved with a straight razor. They pull your nose and lips this way and that. When they are done, they start all over again. The second time, they don't lather quiet as long.

After the shave, they make a cotton ball wet with alcohol, light it on fire, and dab it around your ears to burn off you ear hair. Oh well...

After a certain amount of trimming with scissors and the blade, the strangest thing happened.

The barber grabbed what looked like a long piece of dental floss, held it in each hand and his mouth, making a triangle, and snapped it all over my face, pulling out all the small, stray hairs you have. Like between your eyebrows. He also shaped my eyebrows in the same manner.

That wasn't so much fun. I had to participate by pulling the skin on my face tight. Yipes!

Finally, you get a nice shoulder, arm, and hand massage.

And then you look like this:


We had some great bread in Sirince. Here are the women baking some in an outdoor, wood fired oven. I am sure it has a name, but I don't know what it is.


We did not take much public transportation while in Turkey. But the little buses that we did take were pretty nice. This one cost about YTL 2.5 per each, and we enjoyed it.


They almost never use the air conditioning or open the windows in the Turkish buses. That is because there is a superstition that you can die from the wind.



So I did not have to worry about my hat blowing off.