Istanbul relatives

Electric tractors - the video is even funnier

Istanbul is only five or six hours away.  Our relatives took a night bus from Istanbul near midnight and arrived in Ankara early in the morning.  Tolga picked them up with his truck and they arrived noisily.  These cousins are where Turks and Italians share the most in cultural similarity.  Loud and opinionated.  Or maybe it's just my middle-aged cousin.

I was still in my pajamas - I hadn't even considered getting up and looking put together for them - I had been up to late cooking and talking to a friend.  The kids had woke me up just minutes before they arrived so my eyes were half closed as I wandered out to kiss my aunt's hand and kiss my cousin and her daughter.  (I tried to hold my morning breath too).  Teoman and Tomris were shy - they didn't know how to act with their excitement.  Teoman's default behavior these days is to go to Tuana and kiss her.  They all told me to go back to bed - but I was excited to have them as well and each took turns coming in to see Tuana in my room.  My cousin pinned a gold  coin onto Tuana's pajamas - a Turkish tradition.  

We had breakfast at the house - visiting and chatting about cars.  (Tolga took them to the dealership too to see the cars we were thinking about...).  In the afternoon, we piled into my car and Tolga's truck, driving down to Eymir Gol - a lake owned by my school's university.  It's a ten minute drive from our house, but feels as if it is far from the city because it's a steep drive down into a valley.  I've take the kids many times to this area of the city - and Tolga promised to climb one of the valley hills with Teoman - it's their thing - it's how Tolga shares his work with Teoman, and Teoman is always impressed with his Baba's truck, mud, and mountain climbing.

Baba occasionally takes Teoman to the "mountains" -
 so they pulled the truck over and climbed a steep  hill.

We were too late to enter the lake area (they close it to traffic after 11am on weekends - because while it may look to be outside of the city, it's too easily accessible by the millions that live within the city).  We found a garden cafe nearby that had a park and electric cars for the kids to play while we ate together.

Anne in the middle - Semahat (abla) on the left, Taze (Anne's older sister) on the right

Begum (Semahat able's daughter), Tolga, and Semahat