Catching Up

It’s already been a week since our arrival in Turkey. As is typical of our trips to Turkey, we are here to visit family, so we haven’t done much that is worthy of a footprint. That should change later this week when we leave on the first of several sightseeing getaways we have planned. In fact, we just added to our October sightseeing plans today, so I definitely should have more to write about.

Turkey has a centralized health portal called e-Nabız. Technically, we don’t have much use for it. However, we wanted to get our COVID-19 shots recorded in the system as that will link the shots to our HES codes, which we need to present for domestic travel. We created our accounts before we left the US, but were unable to load our shot records. After doing some research yesterday, Mui figured out how to get that done through the province’s health bureau. He and Deniz, my brother, turned in the necessary documents today. Now, we just have to monitor the app and when the shot-info is uploaded, we can download our official shot cards. The bonus here is that the card will include an EU-approved QR code as well.

While they were running errands, Aylin, mom, and I went for a walk in Kültür Park — Izmir’s answer to New York’s Central Park, if you will. We were hoping to have tea and pastries at a café in the park, but the place has changed ownership and didn’t have much to offer. So we ended up going to a new patisserie near the house instead. At least I finally got a photo of “Zeynep Teyze” in bloom … a topiary honoring a woman who emigrated from Greece to Bayındır, Turkey in 1940. In her time, she was apparently at the forefront of teaching the locals in her region about growing different varieties of flowers.Read more