Tag: turks

The Hammam

M's Adventures
The sink from inside fancy hammam in Istanbul.

Many years ago, I went to a fabulous hammam (the idea of it being a “Turkish bath” was introduced in 1644 even though the tradition is more than 2,000 years old and started as “thermae” in Rome) in Istanbul. Now that I live in Adana, I wanted to find the experience again.

I asked some colleagues if they went to the hammam. As one man said to me, “No, I do not like strange men touching me… and especially when I have no clothes on.” Fair comment, fair comment. I asked others who told me that they did not go the hammam. No tradition of it now that everyone has a bathroom in their own home. In the old days, people had no running hot water in the home so they went to the bathhouse.

The hamman tradition is a remnant of the Romans (again, it’s all about those roads leading to Rome). The Romans also had no baths at home. The bath houses were a place to do more than bath. One went there to exercise, eat, and socialize. Everywhere the Romans went, they built baths (and roads). Even after the “fall of Rome” the Roman empire continued as the Byzantine Empire, then as the Ottoman Empire. Fast forward a century, and the hammam still exists.

Recently I learned that in olden times (I assume Ottoman times), mothers would go to the hammam to find a wife for their sons… well, I guess that is a sure way to do a visual inspection. I cannot speak to the visual inspection thing, but what I do know is that most young people and many others do not use the public hammams anymore. On top of which at many of the hammams, they have private rooms.

A hammam in Adana which is easy to identify by the skylights.

Despite what the modern Turks prefer, I was looking forward to getting regular Turkish baths. So I went searching. Most of the hotels have Turkish bathhouses. So far, I can see that they are staffed with Balinese women. One hotel had Balinese women for the English speakers and Turkmen women for the Turkish speakers. Generally the price is around 2,000 to 2,500 for a Turkish bath at a hotel. You do not need to be staying at the hotel to use the hammam.

It may seem a mystery for many so I will explain the basics of the Turkish bath. The men and women are separated either by location or time (some days or parts of the days for women and others for men). You can make an appointment or walk in and see if they have someone available.

This is one of the hammams in Adana. They have a plunge pool. Note the Turkish towels on the shelves.

Some places will have blue “shower caps” for your shoes for you to put on before you enter the spa area.

Some of the shoe cover machines do not use blue shower caps.

Once you enter, you will be taken to a locker room where you put your belongings in a locker (including your underwear although I’m told that some people keep it on). Then put on the robe or cotton wrap and paper slippers. Some places will make you shower before, but some do not have showers at the beginning. Then someone will guide you to the sauna, then the steam room (the sauna and steam room are optional), and then to the room with the golden taps and golden dish to rinse yourself. The person bathing you will be wearing a Turkish towel as well or maybe that and a top (if a woman). After you, and they, have rinsed you enough, they will indicate that you lie down on the warm marble slab (which is usually octagonal and in the center of the room) where they have placed a Turkish cotton towel.

Then, the person will take a special scrubbing brush and scrub a few layers of skin off you. This will be all over you, except for the genitalia. But very close. They will indicate when you need to roll over, when you need to sit up, and so on. They will scrub your face and wash your hair as well. They will massage you a bit. Then you will be rinsed off again.

Then you lie down on the warm wet towel again. And the best part happens… they take a cotton “pillow case” and suds it up in a cauldron. From there, they squeeze the suds and bubbles over you. It is marvelous. The warm bubbles effervesce on you like giddy bubble bath champagne. It is bliss.

A view showing the marble bench where you would sit and rinse yourself (also from the fancy place in Istanbul).

After the hammam is over, you may be covered in more towels and taken out to a rest area. There you may be offered tea or other restoratives.

Typical rest area in a hotel spa.

And then you pay. You can tip if you want to. Some places want cash payment which I find a bit…

Turkey, Should We Give It A New Name?

M's Adventures

Türkiye, the nation, had the UN officially recognize the spelling of its name in English as Türkiye (tur-key-YAY) in 2022 to have the spelling match the pronunciation in Turkish. But it is still hard for some people to call it that. Even for the Turks, many of whom called it Turkey for decades and then had to change in 2022. By now, most remember. If one slips up, no one comments. They are forgiving.

But until then, why did the place and the bird share the same name?

The land was called, “the land of the Turks” = Turkey. Pronounced, tur-key-YAY, but in English the Y at the end doesn’t have that “yay” sound. The land, whatever its name, has had humans living on, in, it for a long, wait, really long, time. More than 12,000 years. That’s considered a long time in human history. One of the many names was “Asia Minor,” or “Anatolia” which derives from the Greek term for where the “sun rises” or “levant” which means to “rise” or “sunrise” and before that, “the Land of the Hattians.” So, even over here in Adana, all roads lead to Rome. But more about that some other time.

So how did it become “Turkey?” For that we move forward to 1077 when the Seljuk Turks set up their nation and called it the “Sultanate of Rūm” referring to the area being considered “Eastern Rome” and today rūm refers to Orthodox Christians who were in this part of the world since Christianity arose. Keep in mind that St. Paul was born in Tarsus, less than an hour’s drive from Adana. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II declared himself, “Kayser-i-Rum” or “Caesar of the Romans” or Emperor. So all roads do lead to Rome… by the 12th century, Europeans, west of the Balkans, started using the term, “Turchia” which is what the modern Romans, Italians, call Türkiye. So even though the first of the Turkic groups to rule modern day Türkiye, called it something else, from this point on, the land started becoming more and more Turkish.

Chicken wing, chicken breast, and liver kebab.

Now, to the bird. By the way, as an aside, the way that the Turks give the bird is quite dramatic and done with flourish. More on that another time.

The bird, the Meleagris gallopavo, is indigenous to the Americas. When the Europeans encountered the bird, they called it guinea fowl or turkey cock/hen as they had seen pheasants and guinea fowl from Africa that looked similar. But, maybe not as big. In 1550, an Englishman William Strickland, who had introduced the bird to England (the first turkeys in Europe were taken to Spain by the Spanish from Mexico), was given a coat of arms which included the “turkey-cock in his pride proper.” Turkeys were introduced to North America by the English in the 17th century.

The bird was named after the country. Why? This article explains it well. Basically, when the birds were being traded for food, a confusion arose between the bird from the Americas with a bird from Africa…

But was it a fair trade? And should we re-name the bird? Call it the Mexican fowl? Or “huexolotl”? That’s the sixteenth-century Nahuatl, language of the central America, name. So for Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving or “Turkey-day”, they could say, “Happy Huexolotl!”

That said, here in Adana, they do not eat so much turkey. Mostly chicken.