Baby virus upload

Daddy got the cold (its cold in Sweden, very windy and cold) and decided not to work in order not to infect the colleagues at work. Instead he stayed at home and was taken care of by our sons mom. One day later mom and son got infected as well and daddy finally feels better to go back to work, which he has missed so much. Dealing with viruses each day has taught us a lot but nothing about how to prevent your own son to be infected by yourself. What kind of a daddy am I? Now he has cried over the whole day and the night seems to be a long one. We already called the local “child emergency” number to get some help, but what they told us wasn’t much of a help; seems like the technical support numbers I am used of. Good bye silent night!

Mr. No and Family Guy

Since our son was born we started to introduce to teach him what is good/allowed and what is bad/not allowed, by saying to him “good”, “gut”, “bra”, “aferim”, “masaAllah” etc. or “Nein” for the latter case. The latter is the most often word we are using since he started crawling. After friends have told us that he might think that his name is “Nein” we got worried and started to add “no”, “nej” and “hayir” to the word list. But somehow he still turns his head to us if we say “Nein” and then he starts smiling. Another thing he did or still does reminded me very much on Family Guy, namely that he gets shocked/scared if he himself farts or he even wakes ups and cries if he does it during his sleep. So the content of Family Guy isn’t always made up as you see here:

And only for people with Swedish humour the following:

Sorry for todays content, but for young parents these topics are daily business.

Pizza Arrivederci!

And it was somehow sad to leave Italy. Almost 3 month without TV in a language I could understand and no permanent Internet (thanks to those who give access to strangers) and I survived. Ok, I was out searching for WLAN access, like a hungry dog and had some lucky moments where I could be online, but it was somehow strange. Anyhow, the last time was quite nice. Instead of Pizza or other Italian stuff I wanted to try Sushi in Italy. Normally I have to eat Sushi each week, but in Italy I somehow forgot about it. So we had the most expensive and disgusting Sushi. It tasted like deep-frozen Sushi from ICA left outside for 2 weeks. The owner was also some strange guy who seemed like someone who was forced to prepare the little dishes. So don’t eat Sushi in Italy, or at least in Forli. To sum up. Despite all the odd moments I have to admit that I learned a lot, not only about these people, but also from a fluid dynamics point of view. And I am not forced by some Italians to say this, I am serious. Italy is a nice place if you know where to be at which time, so don’t go to Forli around summer time. People are funny, not only funny looking, so it isn’t that hard to live without Internet. To say goodbye from Italy I prepared a self-made “gelatocino” à la ferramis.

PS: Did you know they have a TV and free WLAN access at airports in the rooms for handicapped (I am not sure if this is the right terminology, but I consider myself handicapped so I can use it I guess) people? At the airport in Bologna they don’t have a nursing room, like in all other places in Sweden, so after asking several times at the Information they opened that room for us. So having a child can be quite nice sometimes. Tomorrow starts work in Sweden, finally!

I hate Sixt

Once I had a car, a small Nissan Micra. But when I moved to Sweden I sold it, because in Stockholm a car is, at least for our purposes, more or less unnecessary. So few times a year we rent a car and visit IKEA and LIDL (btw LIDL in Italy is even dirtier than in Sweden, although that might be hard to imagine it is true) and some other places. When I fly to Germany I usually do the same, to prevent that someone from my family or a friend has to pick me up. Normally holidayautos is a nice service or I book together with the flight ticket, which gives some discount. That is what I did when we flew to Germany recently. I selected the car, booked it and thought that the amount given in the receipt I had were the total cost. However, I never had used e-Sixt before, so I didn’t knew that those guys hate costumers and love money. They charged everything what could have been charged additional to the services I had booked. Maybe I am retarded and didn’t understand the German they were talking at the airport, maybe I am so used to Hertz and Europcar, that I thought e-Sixt would not try to sell all possible stupid services and add cleaning costs as well. If I ever rent a car by e-Sixt again I will force my son to puke, pee and shit in it for one week and return it then. I hate you e-Sixt. This is from the depth of my heart without thinking, just my pure emotions. Since Lexmark I haven’t hated so much, so thank you e-Sixt for your rip-off. Thank you for discharge my anger. Now I am back to normal.

PS: At least I stopped complainig about the dirty air, the white bread, the closed shops, the stupid scooter drivers in Italy.

Or am I?

After the declaration of my non-Turkishness I found a list with characteristics of Turks, of which some are true for me (ME) and some are true for my parents or the Turks I know (TRUE). So maybe after all I am not so different from those Turks, mmh.

You know you’re Turkish when….

-You think that the Turks are the most amazing race on the face of earth and everyone is jealous of us and try to destroy us (TRUE)
-You feel some kind of tension whenever you are around Greeks, Kurds or Armenians (unfortunately TRUE)
-Your mother can make yogurt from nothing (ME; and she forces us to eat everything she makes)
-MSN messenger is 100x better than AOL (ME)
-Your guy relatives look like Maffia during the holidays (ME)
-Your mother/father has a minor disagreement with his sister/brother and doesn’t talk to him for 10 years (unfortunately TRUE)
-You call an older person you have never met before “uncle”, “aunty” or abi (ME, but also “aunt”)
-You hide everything from your parents (ME; but not anymore)
-Your phone is always on silent (ME; most of the time)
-Your mother does everything for you if you are male (ME; regardless of my wishes, I don’t like it at all, but I liked it when I was young, very young)
-You do all the housework and cooking if you’re female (unfortunately TRUE; they even laugh at me if I do laundry, or do housework and call me “light erkek (man/male)”)
-Your relatives alone could populate a small city (not my, but generally TRUE)
-Everyone is a family friend or somehow related to you (TRUE; and therefore Turks often asked not only for your name, but also from which town/village your parents come from and if you know Dick and Harry –> German: Hinz und Kunz)
-You fight over who pays the dinner bill (ME; but I try to adjust)
-You get very upset when airlines refuses to accept your luggage which is 80 kg overweight (TRUE)
-You’re walking out of customs with your trolley at the airport and you see all 25 members of your family who have come to pick you up (TRUE)
-You ask your dad a simple question and he tells you story of how he had to walk miles to get to school (ME)
-You are always taking off and putting on your shoes wherever you go (ME)
-Your parents compare you to all of their friends kids (ME)
-No one ever seems to call ahead of time to say they are coming for a visit (TRUE)
-You talk with your guests at the door for 20-30 minutes when they are leaving (ME)
-You show your love and affection to people by physically hurting them
(esp. pinching, slapping, biting) (ME; especially German friends had to adjust to this habit)
-Grape leaves make a great dinner (ME)

Il duce, second try

After our first attempt to see how the duce is buried we visited Predappio during daytime, because – in our naivety – we thought that the little town would appear much nicer to us without the darkness. This time, however, we found two additional souvenir shops, much bigger and with much more stuff, which would bring you a lot of trouble (at least in Germany). Somehow we felt that we were at the wrong place, but before leaving the town we wanted to see duce’s grave. The cemetery was almost empty, it was around siesta, but we saw some people going in and out of a single small building, housing the tombs of the corpse of the Mussolini family. At this point, maybe due to the smiley face in my arm, the young and old people started speaking to me and I automatically had to pronounce that I am German and didn’t understand them. I guess the first part of my answer was rather a self-defence mechanism, because my brain remembered some pictures in the souvenir shops of one “special German friend” of duce. Behind bars his tomb placed next to some items he might have used and in front of it a guestbook were one had to wait to write some lines to duce. People were posing in front of his tomb and statue. Unfortunately I forgot my camera at home and couldn’t picture these odd moments (–>). By the way, if you visit Italy, you have to visit at least one cemetery; it is quite interesting with all the pictures and little houses (not really mausoleums) for the tombs of a big family.