What price range is this Lokanta?

And nobody noted that the negative image of Islam and Arabs might be (in other words IS) connected to regular bombings by Islamic extremists?

Just like any other place, Turkish towns have a lot of good people in them, some bad, and a couple of crazies. Istanbul is also like any other typical large city. Some areas are no-go, you can ask your fellow students once you are in Istanbul. But as a student you wouldn´t normally go there anyway. Student housing is typically not in bad neighborhoods, even if you are not on campus. I visited a friend in Athens the other day, and was shocked at the neighborhood of foreign student housing there, and the state of the universities there. People say Turkey and Greece are a lot alike... and yes, they are, but safety and especially student safety is NOT the same. Turkey is heaven!

I don´t think this is a good plan. It will not help the people in Gaza at all, and will cause further violence. How about the Turkish government and international organizations actively voicing that they stand behind the opinion of Obama, saying that the original borders between Palestine and Israel need to be re-established? And putting pressure on Israel financially? This boat-thing will not help anybody.

The point I was trying to make is NOT that Amy Whinehouse is a hippy, but that she would have been called a hippy if she was alive and kicking in the 1970s. Most of the artists from that decade would have been called giant junkies by now, and kicked into rehab. Even the golden oldies who were alive those days admit that they can hardly remember those decades, what they did and what they said because they were stoned out of their minds back than. We like to view the past in rose coloured glasses. If people complain about something today they are spoiled little brats, who don´t appreciate what they have. If people don´t complain they are uninterested consumerists from generation "me".

I don´t understand how you can take a news article about horrible things that happened in the 1970s, and twist it into a complaint about society today!

By the way, don´t try to patronize me by saying "ever heard of Miles Davis?" ... If you want to try and impress me by naming artists from the 1970s, you shouldn´t name Miles Davis. He did his most influential work before the 1970s, (yes, I´m a jazz enthouasiast, so I know this stuff) so naming him as an artist of the 70s is very strange. Pink Floyd was productive in the 1970s, not because it was the 1970s but because of their age at that point. Just like Prince didn´t have his most productive period in the 1970s, because he was a kid! He is an amazing artist, and he was most productive in the 80s/90s. There have been amazing artists after the 1960s and 1970s period, and naming musical bands as evidence for superiority of society during those decades is short sighted.

It causes your brain to do something irregular, and this is always good brain training. It makes your mind switch off the automatic pilot. The same is true for taking a different route to work sometimes.

I disagree. People like to paint the current society as consumerism at the top, no real heart or soul. I don´t think this is true, and I disagree that people in 1979 were more diversified. I think today´s world is more diversified than back than, especially with migration. I don´t think people back than wanted to achieve more than people now. The spirit of the 70s is overrated. 1979 didn´t have any of that spirit anyway, I don´t know why you would bring that spirit into this, since we´re talking about something horrible back than. But the spirit of the 1970s was using drugs and having sex with everybody for a great bunch of people. Nowadays we don´t call somebody like Amy Winehouse a "free spirit" but a junky, because that´s just the truth. I have talked to some hippies from those times who admitted that they just wore flowers in their hair because they knew it would help them score chicks. Just like there are people now who will buy biological food because they think they can score a chick in the food-section

I wonder why the newspaper in 1979 didn´t dig deeper, so that they would have discovered back than that it was more than just two women that it happened too. By the way, keep in mind that this was 1979, so that luckily this doesn´t happen anymore. To judge people today on this behaviour is wrong. I do think the government today should go back to the women that were found in those files that they discovered, and compensate them today, and say sorry.

Chess is not the holy grail of brain training. It´s a nice exercise if you actually like chess, but not everybody does! There are enough other ways to train the brain. Doing puzzels, playing word games, all sorts of things. There are also enough video games that have interesting puzzels in them (I´m not talking about brain training, but games like old-school Zelda or Prof. Layton). The brain can also be trained by artistic activities such as painting. And, simple things like remembering your groceries instead of bringing a list also trains the brain. Another nice way is to use your left hand all day when you´re right-handed.

Perhaps there are some foreign girls that are easy to get, but nothing is more easy to get than a Turkish guy in a touristic resort. You just need to buy a drink at his bar, and you don´t even have to look somewhat pretty!

By the way, when I was younger I had a Turkish summer romance. I was a virgin and the guy was constantly trying to get in my pants, cause for Muslims "virginity isn´t a big deal right?" After making clear that I wasn´t going beyond some heavy kissing, he thought that I must be the only Western girl that was still a virgin after the age of 12 or something... We broke up rather fast, since he cheated on me. He thought that was okay, since I was probably cheating on him as well. Since, as his friends told him, all Western girls are sex crazy and cheat. Yeah right...

The problem is not foreign girls but Turkish friends who fill the boys´ heads with crazy ideas. Perhaps it´s also not the best thing to judge all foreign people by the lonely women who go to bars to pick up young men and drink until they black out.

PS: I have never sunbathed topless and I´m horrible at flirting. In Turkey you don´t have to flirt at all as a woman in a touristic place anyway. You just need a wallet and the dudus come running.