Advice & Info

To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he...

If you need something new to suppress the bad-weather blues or you just want to get out of Istanbul and into your ski boots,...

  Fear not fellow summer lovers! Yes, September approaches and all your expat teacher friends are bemoaning the end of their two-month-long vacations, but the...

In Turkish, the word ‘korkma’ means ‘don’t be scared.’ How I learned this makes for an interesting story—one which strengthened my belief that people,...

The end of this semester is approaching quickly. Along with it, come final projects, papers, tests, presentations, and a number of other things, which...

There is a new space for performing arts in Kadıköy’s vibrant Yeldeğirmeni neighborhood: Köşe ("corner" in Turkish). Located on the Asian side of Istanbul, Köşe...

Nothing: nothing to do, nothing to fix. No work to go to, no garden to tend. No meetings to go to, no dance classes…absolutely...

Even though decades pass, some stories and books are ageless. Reading is more than just a hobby, as books also help us manage mental...

With so many rapid changes happening in Turkey and the world, along with all the changes in our personal lives, the LGBT community needs...

Housing some of Istanbul's oldest churches and synagogues, Kuzguncuk historically was a cosmopolitan mix of Ottoman Istanbul's many cultures. Today, although a little more homogeneous, it...

There's no denying that life in Istanbul can be a bit hectic. It's what makes this city so intoxicating. But there are times when...

Being Australian and living in Istanbul, one of the hardest things to cope with at first was the difficulty of finding a pool to...

Perhaps there is no word more loaded and simultaneously mythologized yet scorned than the term “gypsy”. From Fleetwood Mac to Cher to Lady Gaga...

There’s a moment in The Time Regulation Institute, the novel by acclaimed Turkish author Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, where the protagonist Hayri Irdal explains the...

Nestled between two of Istiklal’s more upscale establishments, Terkos Passage is one of Taksim’s finest bargain pazars. It is a place where flawed or...

My wife and I visited Konya, May 2023. Never having been to Konya before, we decided to hire a guide for an all-day walking...

Have you ever heard of the word yabancı, which also lends its name to this platform? If you've ever visited Istanbul, you’ve probably heard...

Walk. Breathe. Eat. Drink. Consume. Repeat. Wasn’t life nice and easy in Istanbul before coronavirus? We didn’t realize how fortunate we were back then. Thankfully,...

There are a number of phrases that Turks use in daily life that you may not find properly explained in your Intro to Turkish...

One of the best ways to unwind and relax after a long week of dealing with work (not to mention the Istanbul traffic) is...

The summer of 2018 has been a dive in history and this dive would have been incomplete had I not visited the archaeological site...

Some places in the world make you want to gush and at the same time bite your tongue, as if there were an unspoken...

So, you’ve been in Turkey for a while and decided that it might make sense to buy a house or maybe you have your...

Mimar Sinan was, without a doubt, the greatest architect of the Ottoman empire. His importance and influence are often compared with his contemporary Michelangelo, and it's an established...