Kolay Gelsin

I promised two new sections for the New Year: The Zen Desk and The Pit of the Artificial. Here is the first post with the new structure. I hope you like it.

What is kolay gelsin? Anatolian Orthodox Chant? A Severance episode? Traditional Bulgarian dish? You'll find the answer below 🙃

The Zen Desk

It feels wonderful to give and receive good wishes. People living in Türkiye push this to healthy overdose in their daily interactions.

I started living in the United States in 2003. I encountered the usual differences between more European/Middle Eastern/Balkan societies and the US: portion sizes, no public transport, constant fake happiness (I was in California), guns, dumb notices everywhere due to litigation risk... I wasn't surprised by these; everybody made fun of these differences before I moved there. However, I was not ready for one thing: almost zero exchanges of good wishes.

In Türkiye, you can't go without an exchange of good wishes when you go out. As soon as you interact with someone—a random person on the bus, a street vendor, an official of some sort—you will have a serial exchange of good wishes, thick with layers of good emotions.

Let me show this with an example. Say you ordered a sandwich for takeaway. This is how the conversation would go in the US:

Sandwich guy: Number 187!
You: Heyyy!
S: Here's your order man, enjoy and have a nice day.
Y: Thank you, you too
S: (Optionally in the south) Buh-bye, God bless you

The same exchange in Türkiye below. The translations deliberately avoid the usual English phrases to convey the word choices accurately. I included the Turkish versions too, if you want to run them through a translator and see the differences yourself.

Sandwich guy: Abi senin acılı kumru hazır.
Dear older brother, your spicy kumru sandwich is ready
No order numbers except global chains, remembering each customer's order instead.

You: Çok teşekkürler, elinize sağlık
Many thanks, health to your hands
Health to your hands, so that you could make more of these.