Having bashed through an obscene amount of work the last few days, and missed more deadlines than I probably have in years, today was, finally, a quieter day. Well, I say quieter as I did finish an article and then go off with the GF to run a series of errands, most of which had results. First to Turkish coffee, very pleasant as the weather is cooler than it has been since we arrived, then to the bank where our terrifyingly effective account manager dealt with matters like requesting new cards, resetting banking pins and getting quotes for health insurance. Then a few small missions: profiteroles from the historic profiterolerie, then tarama and smoked hamsi from the historic fish fumerie, then poking through the brothel district, with women, cis and transgender, peering through windows as we searched for a small cooperative shop from which we bought some useful supplies (olive oil etc). I do wonder about these cooperative shops. There are a few of them around the city, they invariably have excellent and very inexpensive produce, and I can’t imagine how anyone makes money from them. The final mission was to get a direct debit set up for our internet service, which wasn’t done but despite the air of rage-filled chaos in the shop, and the brusque staff, we did find out what needs to be done and so returned satisfied, stopping to buy some simit as we are out of bread and the tarama demands to be eaten.
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