Dec 2007

Well, the last few weeks of our time in Istanbul (Before Christmas) were somewhat exciting. Because we lived through it, we are stronger for it. But a few of the events we would both prefer not to have experienced. Let’s start at the beginning.

The last of the blog updates had us leaving Berlitz and, following the ritual shaving off of the Mo’ (with Jen and Steve) looking younger, smarter and faster. We were completing our last few lessons with the classes that we had for Berlitz, when one night, it all seemed to come crashing down.

Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

We got home from work to find our flatmates (now referred to as Hat and Melon – to protect the innocent) in a flat spin and all excited about a gun related incident. After a few questions and a lot of “Hat! Calm down and explain what happened”, we discovered that the gun related incident was infact very serious and a little too close to home.

Some of the Berlitz teachers (and good friends of ours) had returned home to their apartment to be followed inside by a guy with a handgun. Claiming to be searching for a large quantity of elicit substances he held these good friends of ours hostage for 3 hours. Terrifying to say the least.

Eventually they were released and immediately reported to the police and began the arduous tasks of providing witness statements etc for the investigation. That night they came back to ours and our other friends places to try to relax and get some sense of normality back. What an ordeal. For one night, and one night only, differences were set aside for those in the Adam, Meaghan, Hat and Melon household, while we all set about trying to provide a sense of community for the girls.

This effort continued the next day when a few of us had a little chat to the owner of the Berlitz franchise in Istanbul. It seemed a little strange to us that he would interrogate the girls himself and subject them to accusations that they had brought this on themselves, so we let him know what we thought. Some things were said that were pretty imflamatory and under any other circumstances (ie if we were dealing with rational people) we would have burned every bridge concerning working with Berlitz ever again. Not so here though – they are already chasing us for work.

The girls ended up leaving town a few days later. Sad to see them go, we then set about getting our stuff organised for our big Australian holiday.

Not before the fateful events of the last night in the Hat and Melon house though. I’ve lived with a lot of different people in a lot of different places but these two are by far the weirdest, most inconsiderate, socially deficient flatmates I have ever had the pleasure of cleaning up after. I don’t feel in the least bad about writing that here because they gave us an opportunity to state our case and tell it like we saw it on our last night in the flat.

It went something like this.

As we left the flat and started down the stairs Hat came running out of the flat, screaming at us all red in the face and turned, ran inside and slammed the door. Unexpected… you could say that, he had not said a word to either of us in 6 weeks. So we went back in to investigate.

The door opens and Hat jumps up from his chair (A chair surrounded by filth collected over a month or two of utter laziness that extended to personal hygiene) and comes running at us again yelling indecipherable abuse, waving his arms around and looking very much like he was going to hit us. Unexpected… you bet.

Anyway, those of you that know Meaghan even half as well as I do, know that my beautiful wife has more nerve than most and is almost impossible to beat in a fight head on, so she takes it back to Hat full steam. I sit down, hands in pocket and talk to Melon about these strange events unfolding.

It all comes out that Hat and Melon were terrified that we were going to leave the country without paying for the time in the flat. Now this wasn’t too unexpected because they had been hiding bills from us for a couple of weeks. Strange but true. So after a few home truths about our financial situation and our ability to pay the bills etc both Hat and Melon were left a little embarrassed by their tantrums.

So we explained the plan and that we were in fact coming back to Istanbul to work. This seemed to reassure Melon and by this time Meaghan had all but beat the living daylights out of Hat (Verbally anyway). Hats screaming abating, we packed the remainder of our stuff and left that night.

Amazed. In my previous life counselling in Western Australia I have met a range of people with some pretty serious social and personality disorders. Hat and Melon take the cake though.

On the flipside, we did end up staying a night with our good friends The Canadians – Josh and Jess, soon to be our flatmates.

So, bridges burned, guns away and nowhere to be seen, Hat and Melon wondering what they had done to deserve living with us, we were ready to come home for Christmas.