This is all a Turkish entrepreneur needs. Put some tea in here and grab a couple disposable cups and some sugar from the pantry and you have yourself a tea business.
On the weekends, hordes of people just chill out in the parks here. They just sit on benches and puff away on cigarettes or sip on tea or coffee while the day wastes away. Sometimes they use a newspaper or a child as an excuse to be in the park, but mostly they just stare at everyone passing by.
Some of the more ambitious people invest in a few of these handy dandy pump-acting thermoses and away they go. This past Sunday there was a youth parade to Taksim square (I swear there is a parade almost every Sunday -- this is the place they say the stay away from big crowds and the like), so the Çay/Kahve guys were out in full force. Literally walking with a thermos in each hand and bag-o-disposable cups wrapped around their wrists. I am thinking about leaving teaching and being one of these guys. I think I might be able to be the first female tea person. I am thinking of breaking that glass ceiling.
You could also break new ground by using real cups. Even just those colorful kid cups from IKEA.
ReplyDeleteHow much money do these guys make, you think?
This is such a great post. I see stuff all the time that I just wouldn't have seen in the States. But I'm not sure how to write about them.
I remember in Damascus there were these guys that walked around with a giant contraption that provided hot Turkish coffee-- metal and strapped to their back and looked like it was built sometime during the Byzantine Empire. Does Turkey have these guys. They always had big moustaches (and no women).
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