A BIG Mall

Yesterday we visited one of the bigger malls that's a little further from our house, called Panora.  (They have a great website which is in Turkish, but you could still look around and see the floor plan and store listings.)  This mall really IS big!  Seven levels and hundreds of stores. Mind-boggling!  Now before I even talk about the mall, I have to tell about a cultural lesson I had.  Justin suggested we go to check out this mall on Saturday, and I said I didn't want to on a weekend because it would be so crowded.  I mean, in this weather, what else does everybody have to do besides go to the mall?!  But Justin persuaded me that it'll be fun even if it's crowded, so we loaded into a taxi and got there just after it opened at 10am.  We walked in and it was like a ghost town.  Completely empty.  I was baffled!  However, what I have learned is that Turkish culture runs on a much later schedule than I'm used to in the U.S.  They go to bed much later than we do, and they get up much later too.  So at 10am, most families are still sleeping!  Pretty much anyplace we go before noon, there is a very small crowd.  Numbers begin to pick up after lunch, and by evening everyplace is packed.  That's convenient for us to get our errands run before the crowds come out, since Elias still gets up at 7am - he doesn't seem worried about fitting in with Turkish culture!  So I learned my lesson about that, and I won't argue with Justin wanting to go anywhere in the morning, even on a Saturday!

So we walked in and the first thing we noticed, besides the vast size of the place, is the glass elevator!

Our mall has some great escalators, but no elevator.  So that's fun!  There were a LOT of recognizable stores in this mall - you can see on the top level in this picture the Nike store on the left side of the elevator and the Adidas store on the right.

This was taken from the top floor, which is called Level 2.  Below you can see Level 1 and Level 0 (Ground Floor).  Then the underground levels are called -1, -2, and -3!

One thing that was neat about the way this mall was set up is that some of the stores were organized by category.  They had a section marked "Sports Street" where all the athletic stores were in one place.  They also had a "Kids Street," so it was easy to find the kids clothes and toys!  There were two huge toy stores that were not in that section, though, but we found them too!

Most of the toys in all these stores were way overpriced, but we did find a Winnie-the-Pooh pinwheel for only $1 - Elias carried that all around the rest of the mall!

Our FAVORITE thing about this mall, though, is there was a HUGE saltwater fish tank that was beautiful and fun to look at!  We stood there for a long time just admiring the fish!

So this was a really fun activity for us to do - we'll go back again!

Then at the end of our visit, we discovered in the bottom level a store called Kipa (again, website in Turkish), which I had heard from a friend was really awesome.  And wow, it was!!!!  It was a huge supermarket that had a huge selection, but what we were most excited about was the low prices!  WAY cheaper than we've seen anywhere else.  A friend told us there's another one even closer to our house, so we'll probably go there often!

For more photos of Panora than I've put here, check out the photo albums on their website!

*Note: The legend I hear is that there are still bigger malls than this one, so I'll report when we explore them!

Doing Business in Turkey - payroll taxes

(Justin) One of the best overviews I've seen on doing business in Turkey is guide written by Price Waterhouse Coopers entitled "Doing Business in Turkey in a Nutshell." While published in 2008, it is still very relevant and gives you a sense of the ever-changing tax codes and regulatory environment. As Turkey moves closer in line with OECD and EU standards, business will become easier. But for 2011 the World Bank ranks Turkey as only #71 in ease of doing business (behind Belarus and Kyrgyzstan) and #61 in starting a business. It doesn't fit the image of what you'd expect with the #16 size economy in the world and one of the currently fastest-growing.

One difficulty business owners face is a high payroll tax for Social Security. In the U.S. the employer pays 6.2% of a person's salary up $110,100. In Turkey, the statutory rate for Social Security and unemployment totals to about 18.8% of gross salary. (Employers I've talked to quote a percentage well beyond 50% for this, it's one thing I'm trying to figure out.) Additionally, businesses are required to provide several weeks of severance pay to employees who have worked longer than a month. Employees who have been terminated have a right to get paid a certain number of hours a day while they seek new employment (you can read the labor law here). This makes it more costly for businesses to fire employees, makes it cost-prohibitive to hire replacements, and makes a business hesitant to hire a person in the first place.

To reduce the tax burden, businesses will under-report the salaries they are paying workers and then pay the workers the difference off-the-books. This creates a dilemma for business owners who want to do everything above-board and on-the-books.  I'm told that even the smallest businesses here have to hire someone to keep track of their taxes. 

One business we've been talking to here has been suffering that burden. To be above-board meant to be unprofitable and unable to hire the necessary workers to run the business. The government allows deferral of payroll taxes but with something like a 5% penalty per month.

The labor and tax laws are something we're learning more about as we talk to businesses here and seek possible employment or to start a business of our own. Every country has its challenges and hurdles to business; the cost of legal labor might be Turkey's biggest.

Heating our home (Turkish gas adventures)

(Justin) Being a cold winter here, natural gas is an important commodity. The apartment buildings here are heated by a gas radiator system, either centrally controlled by the building or individually controlled by the residents. In our building, everything is individually controlled and our hot water heater handles the radiator as well as the running water.There is no tank, it heats running water as it goes (similar to what we had in Moldova). The dial on the left is radiator temperature, the dial on the bottom right is faucet water temperature (the magnets are the local delivery services-- McDonalds, local grocers, water, etc.).

One nice aspect of the natural gas system is that it is prepaid, the meter outside our door tells us how many cubic litres we have left (and is a daily reminder of how much we're using). We refill by taking a prepaid card to a local office and paying cash.  If you run out, no more gas until you reload your card.

When we moved in, the apartment had sat empty for months and the heat was turned on only the day before, so the apartment was quite chilly (it was -22C the night before our arrival). There wasn't much credit left on the meter and the payment office would be closed for the next two days--the weekend.  I was rather concerned about the chill so we turned the heaters up to maximum hoping the apartment would eventually get warm (it did). The gas meter was steadily decreasing and I was concerned that we might not have enough gas at this rate to make it through the weekend. I made sure to get to the office when it opened early Monday morning to be first in line to put money on the card, or else we'd have run out that day. This was officially our first bill paid in Turkey.  

Last Saturday, we had another adventure with the gas as suddenly the faucet hot water quit working while the radiators worked fine.  I called our landlord, Mustafa bey (who speaks perfect English), and he walked me through some possible steps, including adding more water to the system. Apparently the valves are really sensitive and before I knew it I had overloaded the system and water came gushing out of pipes in our kitchen, all over the floor. Mustafa sent some of his employees over to look at it, and they tried a few more things (including putting water all over our bathroom floor) to no avail and they called a repairman for later in the day. 

We've been very pleased with Turkish service and I was eager to talk to the repairman, who knew no English (I haven't found a conversation partner yet, so I take what I can get). He discovered that the valve that allowed hot water to flow into the pipes wasn't lifting properly ("yukarı gitmez"). After taking the heater apart and blowing dust out of the connections, he got it to work again (this took about an hour). He decided that the motor pushing the valve might be going bad and if it happened again it'd have to be replaced ("değişmesi gerekir"). This procedure cost us 50 TL (about $28) and some awkwardness as I offered him tea and he used phrases to decline the offers that I didn't know and I probably didn't respond appropriately.  But I learned how the heater worked.

Gas, water, electricity, and internet are things we tend to take for granted.  Joni and I have lived places where these didn't exist or weren't an everyday thing, so we're reminded to be thankful. 

Here's the view from our living room today as we picked up another inch or two of snow. If you look at the bottom of the picture you can see that the neighboring buildings have solar powered water heaters.  

Our apartment is on a corner of a top floor, so the exterior rooms are exposed to too much, so we keep them mostly shut in order to save gas. Judging from our neighbors' meters, they use gas as sparingly as possible and probably live in fewer rooms during the winter.  The expensiveness of gas is something we had inadequately budgeted for, honestly, and we're quite ready for spring to come.

The Mall

We have a mall quite close to our neighborhood, and we went to explore it last week.  We had been there before because there is a large Super Wal-Mart type store attached to it where we can find a lot of things we can't get at the local grocery stores.  However, we decided to just take some extra time to explore the mall.  We found a toy store that had all American products with Turkish labels, which we thought was pretty fun!  Elias felt right at home.  We bought him a DVD of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse in Turkish!  I giggled at the big display of Beyblades, which my nephews are really into, and they taught Elias how to play in January:

There was also a huge food court and see if you recognize any of the restaurants (Click to enlarge):

Yep, Popeye's, Sbarro, and Burger King all in the local food court!  Cracking me up.  Then right across from the food court is this big children's play area with a climbing gym, ball pit, and train ride!

It's not free, but at about $1.70 to get in, you can bet we're going to be spending some time there!

The huge escalators were a hit by themselves!

That's Justin & Elias going down!

So all these things made the mall about our favorite place ever!

*Note: This mall has 5 floors and countless stores, with an underground parking garage, not to mention the supermarket right in it.  However, I later heard someone who has lived here for many years call it a "small" mall.  Apparently they get much bigger in this city!!!  I'm both frightened and intrigued.  :)  For Ankara folks who may want to know, this small mall is the 365.

Fun in the Kitchen

I've always enjoyed cooking and experimenting in the kitchen, so I'm having a lot of fun learning what foods I can get here and trying to figure out what I can create with them!  When we first arrived, our good friends who live here brought us a bag of groceries to get us started, which was so thoughtful and helpful!  Justin also could navigate the grocery store pretty well, so he picked us up a few staples too.  So our first full day in Turkey, we ate grilled cheese sandwiches and corn for lunch, with sliced apples on the side.

Then we had spaghetti and meatballs for dinner!

Justin had found these premade refrigerated meatballs at the store, and we just combined them with the pasta and sauce our friends had given.  The peas and carrots we found frozen at the grocery store, so it turned out to be a simple AND delicious meal!

The pasta sauce is expensive and hard to find in a jar, though, so today I attempted to make my own with what I could find at our local store (and the Italian Seasoning I had brought).  It wasn't too bad for a first attempt!

Elias and I also made our first attempt at banana bread a few days after we arrived.  (He and I always made it together at home.)  He likes the measuring and mixing, but his favorite part is licking the bowl!

I thought I'd point out a few things from the above photo, especially for those of you who have lived overseas before and might have such questions.

• Starting from the left side of the picture: The bread pan is really long and narrow.  It ended up cooking about the same length of time as a 9x5 pan, although with the temperature conversion to Celsius and my weird convection oven, who knows how it really compares?!  
• The white bottle is refrigerated milk!  (Many countries only have milk that is kept unrefrigerated on a shelf, and that's what we were expecting to find here.  Even the shelf-stable milk here isn't bad, but the refrigerator milk is DELICIOUS and not very expensive.  Win!)  
• Then in the red bowl up front, we made our own brown sugar by mixing white sugar with molasses. 
• The oil is sunflower oil - they don't have vegetable oil or canola oil here, so that's what we've got for a light oil!

It baked up very well though, and was DELICIOUS!  (In fact, some of the best we've ever made.  I suspect it's because we used real sugar - we used to use Splenda in the States.)  Elias approves!

Going Downtown

Yesterday we braved the city bus system for the first time and went to the downtown district of Ankara! (Well, Justin had ridden the buses before, but this was Elias' and my first time.) It was fairly easy to navigate - the trick for me is going to be learning where to get off to get where I'm going! If Elias sits in one of our laps, he rides free, so that's a bonus. It was fairly crowded, but I was touched when a Turkish gentleman got up so that Elias and I could have his seat. We'll do just fine here! :)

We just wandered a bit taking in the downtown scene. It was definitely faster and busier than our neighborhood! Elias took it all in stride, though.

He enjoyed all the pedestrian bridges, tunnels, escalators, and various other fun ways of getting from one place to another on foot! We also ate at McDonald's, so life gets no better for that little man. The Cheeseburger Happy Meal here looked EXACTLY the same as in the States, minus the apples. He even got a toy with his meal, probably the same one you'd get at a McD's in the States right now (Humpty Dumpty from Puss in Boots).

I thought I'd branch out a little and try a Turkish menu item at McD's called the McTurco. It was two beef patties in a pita with lettuce, tomato, and a sauce kind of like barbecue sauce. Yummy!

So we enjoyed getting out and exploring a bit more of the city - we're excited to live in a place like this!

First Days

We've had a good first couple of days getting settled into our new home. The apartment is beautiful and we are so thankful for how convenient it was to have a furnished place to come home to! It is on the 4th floor (which is the top floor) of our apartment building, so we have quite a few steps to get here, but it's good exercise, and the view is amazing! Here's the view from one of our rooms:Although completely furnished, the apartment was still lacking quite a bit in just simple household items like extra linens, many cooking and baking items, etc. However, we've been able to find almost everything we wanted just in the couple blocks around our house! That's so great! We have several great grocery and general stores just around the corner, so that's incredibly convenient.

On Sunday morning, Elias woke up sick and was yucky all day. He was slightly better on Monday, much better on Tuesday, and completely well today. That made for a bummer couple of days, though, because we couldn't get out with him, not to mention how completely not fun it is to be sick or clean up after someone who is! He's a trooper, though, and bounces back quickly, so we're back in stride now. Here he is playing with his Thomas puzzle on Monday morning:
So right now our focus is language! Although Justin is functional, he still has a lot he wants to learn to improve. And I'm starting from scratch but already making some great headway with concentrated study. It's so much easier when it's all around you! Elias is even getting a start with words Justin is teaching him, and Justin has been showing him some Turkish children's television on a station called TRT Çocuk (pronounced cho-juke). He has found some of Elias' favorite shows dubbed over in Turkish, such as Dinosaur Train and Chuggington. However, Elias even loves the Turkish shows he's never seen before. Look at him laughing at one of them!