Turks Rule the Air, Almost the World

Did you know that American Airlines doesn't offer peanuts anymore? Peanuts used to be so cheap that my uncle would yell, "I'm getting paid peanuts!" If you yell that on an American flight, people will say, "In this economy? You've been blessed."

Not in Turkey. I had an hour and a half flight from Istanbul to Ankara yesterday, rounding out a 24 hour period of travel, and they served lunch. It wasn't even lunchtime. We left Istanbul at 1:30. And it was an inconvenient meal. As soon as we reached cruising altitude, the flight attendants were throwing these trays out. They didn't even bother with the cart. It was like dock workers throwing fish - cous cous in the face! And I hadn't even started my chocolate mousse before an attendant was shoveling my uneaten salad into a trash bag. She said we were preparing to land. We were preparing to take off thirty minutes ago.

You can't get mad, though. On my ten hour flight from New York to Istanbul, it was like the attendants were trying to compost the trash on my fold out tray. They would be handing out breakfast sandwiches and say, "Oh, I'll take the rest of your cheese tortellini."

I was lucky this time - I didn't get an emergency exit, but I did sit behind a woman who got an emergency exit, and she also had a broken arm. The flight attendant made her move because she was unable to operate the door. I volunteered to switch spots with her. As we disembarked in Turkey, she said to the attendant, "See - I told you we wouldn't crash."

On the way over the Atlantic, I watched The Green Zone and Prince of Persia. After The Green Zone I wanted to watch something much more fun and lightweight, but it turns out those movies are very similar. Apparently Prince of Persia is a thinly veiled allegory for Iraq. I'm serious. The whole movie the  king is searching for a weapons forge in this city he invaded, but it turns out his evil advisor tricked him into an attack to secure the Sands of Time. It's a good thing Jason Bourne was there, or he might have gotten away with it.

On the flight to Ankara, the pilot made a paragraph long announcement in Turkish, and the whole plane began to clap. I thought he had just told an awesome story about how he almost met Tom Cruise or accidentally stole a car in Zurich. But during his English translation, it turned out that the Turkish national basketball team was on the flight with us. They had just lost in the FIBA finals to the U.S. I didn't know this, however, because the Turkish papers in the airport had headlines that translated into, "CHAMPIONS." I guess Turkey decided to pull a North Korea on that one.