Hello everyone, welcome back to my Art and Culture weekly blog. This week, my posts will be about culture shocks, this first post being about the ones that I’ve experienced here, and the other one… You’ll have to see.

As a foreigner in Turkey, it’s very interesting to see how the more casual and daily things that you feel as completely normal in your country, might be very odd or unusual here. For example, the fact that men are very care giving between each other’s, they walk holding their arms, or greet them with two kisses… It’s very unusual to see two middle aged men in Spain to greet each other with two kisses, if you have a very, very, very close relation you might give a hug, and maybe one kiss, and even in some cases they don’t do it. The bazaar culture is another whole different chapter. In Spain we have a similar thing called ‘mercadillo’, the point is the same, but the intensity… Not even close. I love the hustle and bustle of walking through the Kemeralti bazaar, where vendors try with all their might to sell you something until, they’re exhausted enough to leave you alone, even though it might be stressful, I feel like that’s the essence of it. On Spanish ‘mercadillos’ they’ll try to sell you everything, but from their spot, if you pass through them, they’ll catch the next person.

Those are just two examples that caught my eye, but like those they are dozens. I feel like that’s the point of the Erasmus experience, leave your life in different.