Missing Tidbits, Pizza Related Existential Crises, & the Norwegian Cinema Industry

[aggienaut]

Jumping ahead in the narrative a bit to find the most Veteran's-Day-related picture from my Turkey adventures, here's a representation of where, at Bomb Ridge, during the WWI Gallipoli campaign the Turkish and ANZAC trenches were a mere 20 ft apart.

And jumping back out of order, two things worth mentioning earlier that I forgot to include:

(1) While in Istanbul: there's one website upon which you can order any kind of fast food (be it kebab or pide or Burger King or probably even Chinese). I believe it actually works for all of Turkey though I'd imagine your options would be more limited in many places.
   On the subject of pide, pide is basically pizza, though it comes out in a boat shape. And causes one a sudden existential crisis when one realizes it's just holding a place in a continuum between "pita" and "pizza," between which one suddenly realizes there's not much etymological difference! Blew my fricken mind!

(2) Among the big group of backpackers I met and hung out with in Olympos I almost forgot that there were two who were in the midst of intercontinental bike rides. One had, if I recall correctly, started out somewhere in India and took a roundabout route through Pakistan, Iran, up to Georgia (through either Armenia or Azerbaijan?), and then across Turkey to Olympos, eventually planning on biking across Europe to England! The other I think may have _only_ started at the other end of Turkey but was also planning on biking to the western end of Europe.

---

   In completely unrelated news last night I watched the Norwegian film Into the White (2012) and rather liked it. The film takes place in WWII, with a German bomber crashing in a remote Norwegian ice field after downing a British fighter. The survivors of both crews must overcome their initial hostility and learn to work together to survive. Also there's breathtaking Norwegian landscapes.
   I really like this theme, where people are forced to work together despite coming from political circumstances where they would be expected to kill eachother.
   Another movie in a similar vein is No Man's Land (2001), a Bosnian film about soldiers from opposing sides that get stuck together in the trenches between the lines in the Bosnian civil war. Another movie I rather liked, which despite its serious bent had an almost dark-comedy aspect to it with for example UN Peacekeepers visiting the men in the trench but being unable to help them due to their very specific mandate and eventually leaving with the men still pinned down together.

   And unrelated to that theme but on the subject of the Norwegian cinema industry, last year I watched Headhunters (2011). A Norwegian language film about a headhunter (in the finding people employment sense) who is also an art thief, and severe shenanigans ensue.
   I wasn't much of a fan of the previous generation of Scandinavian cinema, a la depressing and slow Ingmar Bergman films, but both these movies were entertaining and well-put-together movies at least as good as anything Hollywood has churned out lately.

Comments

[nibot.livejournal.com]

> While in Istanbul: there's one website upon which you can order any kind of fast food

There's a bunch of these in the U.S., though you might have to be in a major metro area.

http://www.seamless.com/

https://www.grubhub.com/

Well, apparently those two companies just merged, so maybe there isn't "a bunch". But there's at least one!

[drcuriosity]

I like the fact that I can get pide in the local mall food court here in Christchurch now. A good sign that our tastes are getting at least a little more cosmopolitan.

(Of course, you can also get yourself a traditional English-style roast beef dinner with mixed vegetables, potatoes and gravy from the Chinese guys in the next shop over...)

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

Love your Tintin user icon!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Oh nice, I'd never seen pide anywhere, that I noticed anyway, before Turkey. Coming back I was kind of annoyed because most "Turkish" places just serve kebab and I was hungering for the many non-kebab Turkish food items!

[drcuriosity]

Similar here, but there are some places that do kebabs and pides :-)

While there's not a lot of them, we do have a few proper restaurants catering to people with a taste for Turkish, Persian and even Afghan food, too.

[selucius.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the movie suggestions. They have been added to my Netflix queue.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Oh if you're into extremely well-made foreign films that use a war-torn setting to make a deep and meaningful point, I also very strongly recommend the Russian film Prisoner of the Mountains (2006). One of my favorites!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Christchurch must be very metropolitan, in all of Orange County, California, with its population of three million, as far as I could tell after performing several google searches of likely combinations of words, there were only two places that might sell Turkish cuisine beyond kebabs.

There's actually an extremely good Afghan place not far from my parents house though! You know its good because its always PACKED with Afghanis. (:

[drcuriosity]

Just differently so, I think. We've only got one decent Mexican restaurant, for example. My partner misses the food selection from when she was living in and around LA.

The Afghan restaurant isn't very well appointed, but it is very Afghan hospitality, and good food. I had it recommended by a couple of the Iranian grad students in my department. I saw a review of the place where someone went in to order three kebabs like at any other takeaway, and the guy said "no, for three of you eating here, I'll make you something better", and they ended up getting a variety of good dishes to share.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha that's great, about him insisting on making them something better than merely three kebabs.

[sharya.livejournal.com]

I can't even contemplate those trenches being 20 feet apart!

How the hell did they manage to dig them, or are they natural earth formations?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I think they are able to keep digging them closer to eachother and work their way forwards to eachother? But it really must have been madness, I feel like the scene portrayed above probably doesn't do it justice, for one tihng, all these guys standing at their full height with their head and shoulders over the trenches would have been dead immediately, I think they probably were all just barely peeking over. Over on the Australian side of the sculpture one of the guys has this interesting thing that looks like a gun attached to a periscope.

[selucius.livejournal.com]

I think you mean 1996? Added!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I do! I really love that movie. Let me know what you think when you watch it (or the other ones I recommended), I'll be curious what you think (: