Turkish Traditional Coffe Houses

On a sunny Monday day I and Liene went outside to go to the tea cafe near our house.

Since my first day in Turkey I wanted to visit one of traditional tea drinking places: sit on the street on a small plastic chair and drink a tea. (This homework was good opportunity to do that!)

First when we stopped outside of cafe I didn’t feel like going inside because place only with grown up and old men doesn’t look tempting for me. But then one man who is working there came outside and said something in Turkish to us. Thanks to his body language we understood that he is inviting us in. We followed him inside.

First feelings inside were quite strange but first impressions were good. I liked that everything was so simple and at the same time homely.

We sat down for tea and started watching around. Next to our table was a group of men who were playing ‘number game’ (gamed called Okey). At that time we had no idea about that game because they played it diffrent than I know how to play it.

In the middle of our first tea, after friendly invitation Liene joined the game table. But I stayed at my ‘safe’ place because for me it takes some time to feel comfortable in unknown place.

It was interesting to watched them. All men were talking in Turkish. In English they knew only some words, for example, ‘one, two, three’, ‘bad’ and ‘good’. Anyway, they tried to tell us something about the game. After some time watching them and drinking tea I understood the basic idea how to play. It became interesting and interesting to watch them in processs of playing.

The most I liked that they did every move connecting with game with a big sound!

I enjoyed our ‘conversation’ what was happening through the games. It’s interesting that in situations like this when different languages are like a wall between people, they can find other ways of communication.

We spend there more than 2 hours and I even didn’t noticed how fast time was going.

Now when I am passing over that cafe the man, who invited us in, greets me.

We definately will go there again to play games!