Finnish or Turkish

Went last year December to a party of the Finnish General Consulate.
Lots of people. The interesting thing was the mixture of the faces: a lot of people there from Finland with the same Asian expression as here in Turkey.
They say that Turkey doesn't belong to the Middle East (right!) not to Asia (although their roots are from Mongolia and NW China) not to Africa (absolutely right!) but also not Europe...
Still confused after 2 1/2 years in Turkey...
Has Turkey the same (strategic) position as Finland, which looks like sandwiched between Europe and Russia?
Anyway, in 10 years we will know more...

A Culture Shock...

Five years ago, when I went to Prague for some marketing research, I expected a gray country. Czechoslovakia (since 1993 separated in Czech Republic and Slovakia) was a former ‘East block’ country and I thought that not much was changed since it became independent from the former Soviet Union. But what a difference with my expectations..

Prague was already transformed into a Western city. And its beautiful architecture was intact.

The same happened with me when I came to Istanbul in June 2002 for the first time. Yes, I did know Turkish people from Amsterdam. Kind and friendly as always, they didn’t cause problems but were pretty much on their own. But such a contrast with the Turkish people in Istanbul. A cosmopolitan city with more than 15.000.000 people (ask any citizen of Istanbul how many people are living in Istanbul; most of them will give you a different answer, between 12 and 16 million). What is weird is that the Asian side of Istanbul is more European and the European side is more Asian.

And, thanks Jonathan, for helping me out with my first blog.