According to Bill Bryson, whose book, A Short History Of Nearly Everything, I totally recommend, the English word “uncertainty” doesn’t translate perfectly into German. Did you know that? It’s just too vague for them. You could say weltschmerz, but this translates as uncertainty about the world. Or maybe, zukunftsangst, but this means uncertainty about the future.Languages are often a reflection of the culture where they reside and are said to evolve to fit the needs of those using it. Germany is often fairly assessed as a land full of detail-oriented and organized folk, not big on religion, for example, or. . . .gambling. They’re not big on trusting in the universe and prefer a concise means of self-expression. Therefore, in German culture, it’s easy to see why a vague term such as “uncertainty” just might ilicit the response: Uncertainty of what? Be more specific!So even amidst uncertainty, they want to be certain.Sounds a little like me. I don’t have any German roots I know about, but I found this especially poignant. You see, I’ve realized that my worrying, my craving for certainty, my neurotic level of planning, is actually an addiction. And I don’t like it at all. You might call me hardwired this way. But I’ll go one step further by saying that my insatiable need to know things will “turn out” (a more and more dubious phrase) actually represents a staggering lack of faith in the universe.And, I can’t explain it right now, but this is not who I want to be.So, I have taken action. Or rather, I have chosen not to. And the universe has rewarded me. I had read, for example, a few days ago, that Bursa, Turkey, was famous for its shadow puppet theater—oil-soaked, camel-hide figurines which are painted, then lightcast against a white cloth. Apparently, a hunchback called Karagoz amused himself with such crafts while working on Bursa’s famed Ulu Cami, a twenty-domed, calligraphy-walled mosque from the 12th century. The Sultan, infuriated by the goofing off, had his shadow-puppeteering friends put to death. Perhaps not an uplifting story, but this revived art form seemed like a quirky and innovative look into a legendary Turkish subculture.In the past, I would have copied down the address and mapped a route, holding tight to expectations and remaining determined to accomplish my goal, missing the forest of mosque minarets and Turkish barber shops for the shadow puppet trees. But I chilled. Our first day we took a wander round the city in no particular direction. Eventually stopping to rest for a street-side glass of tea, I was taking in the terrace when I saw a banner. About the shadow puppet theater. Right there, that night, in the very café where we sat.But wait, then it happened again. We were In search of a ferry from Istanbul to Muldanya. After chasing our plans down a maze of rickety lanes, onto a tram, across the Galata Bridge, and past three ticket counters (all the wrong TYPE of ticket counter), up the hill, into the train station, down the hill, and back up the hill again, we finally made the ferry at Yenikapi Port, JUST in time. Yesterday, via email, our first Turkish couchsurfing host, Meric, said to call him when we arrived.But the phone didn’t work. Or maybe it was the number. Or the confusing rules about area codes and zeros and mobile phones using longer numbers. Or just that whole “we’re in a different country” thing. Sometimes I hate it when real life appears.I did not panic, which is really so huge for me and so pleasant for Michael. We knew that we needed to somehow check the validity of our phone SIM card or login to the website and double check our host’s number. So we lugged on our packs and began walking into this coastal town on the MarMara sea. A mere half a block later, plastered with glowing lights and several harmless loiterers, was a Turkcell store and an Internet café. Side by side. Nothing but kebab shops and convenient stores squished along the rest of the lane. Exactly what we needed.And I thought: OMG. This really works.

I’d heard the stew-brewing controversy about the headscarf ban a few years ago, but I never really got it. I remember thinking: A majority of Turkey’s population are Muslim, so what’s the deal? The protests surrounding restrictions in French schools seemed to further submerge the issue in a murky bath of obvious modesty, yet nonconforming rebellion. Confused and not terribly concerned, I forgot all about it.But a few trips to Istanbul during our Peace Corp service planted a couple quickly flowering plants in my ever-expanding, but weedy, garden of ideas. So what was the headscarf ban all about? Should women be allowed to wear these seemingly harmless hijabs in government-funded environments?Our new Turkish friend, Sez, who hosted us through a smashing little thing called couchsurfing, thinks yes. But while he believes women should be able to express their own interpretations of the Koran in any way they choose, he also urged his own sisters, upon approaching adolescence, to abstain from the headscarf. Why? Because in Turkey, you must choose. Hijab-free, you can attend high school and university. With it, you’re forced by law to self-study. According to him, the Qur’an says merely to “cover yourself” but does not specify how. He feels they should not forsake their education for this amorphous rule–and that going without a headscarf does not make one less Muslim.Now in Turkey for more than two weeks, I am no longer just reading a story about a clandestine book club amidst a Muslim community. Nor are my impressions captured within the confines of a two hour film about an American trying to escape her Iranian husband.I understand now that this country is a lot more like Europe than the Middle East. A lot more like Greece than Iran. As I shop for groceries. . .as I walked home in the dark last night to the sound of the eternally haunting call to prayer. . .as I ride the subway with Ipod-clutching, paisley-pattern-covered, and generously eye-lined 17-year olds, I am here.From this vantage point, complications fall away with ease. Clarity emerges. Just like in the US, some people go to church and some people don’t. Some find strength in the holy spirit, others in running triathlons and still others in restoring vintage pinball machines. It’s your choice. And similar trends shine through as well. When heading from Chicago to, say, Kenosha, Wisconsin, bible ownership and potluck suppers probably increase. Similarly, Islam is more apparent in the village than in Istanbul. Women here just happen to wear their Allah-worshiping heart on their sleeve. I can see how it’s really none of anyone else’s business.So, again, why the headscarf ban?In short, so Turkey can maintain the glowing impression I’ve just received. Straddling the East West fault-line in many ways, they want to appear European, dedicated to secularism enough, to wash from their billowing, balcony-hung flags, any wrinkle of a potential return to an Islamic state–a place where religion and government are one, public hangings and stonings actually happen and women aren’t allowed an education. On the lengthy Turkish timeline, it was “just” a century ago that the Ottoman Empire fell and a guy named Ataturk led the Turkish National Movement, helping to establish a modern, secular Turkish democracy. And thank God (or maybe not, depending on your denomination) that he did.In America, for the most part, we’re comfortable with yamikas, headscarves, beards, aprons, crosses or robes–whatever you deem spiritually fashionable. Maybe because religious freedom was one of our nation’s founding principles. Or maybe because there is no fear, in America, of returning to some Quaker or Christian state. However, relative to developing countries, America IS fond of  “bright lines”; enforced laws drawn in the sand (or in our case, grass) which are relatively unsusceptable to corruption. And as much as I eventually warmed up to the benefits of a bendable rules in Bulgaria, defined lines, such as a ban on headscarves, are a characteristic of a developed country, where social order is held a little more sacred. Moreover, who knows how the United States would react (perhaps a la the French) if we had an overwhelmingly large Muslim population throwing a little too much religion into the classroom. It’s tough to say.Strange, isn’t it that the very law which drives Turkish women away from formal education is the same one meant to make Turkey a more modern, more Western place. But so it is. And with neighbor Iran demonstrating the very Islamic state at the end of a slippery slope Turkey is struggling so desperately to avoid, I’m starting to get it. Why the headscarf is a halo of heated controversy. Why the ban is actually protecting women from a potentially worse fate. Why different laws work for different countries. Why Turkey is holding its ground.

We hitchhiked today. It was the first time for both of us. Never took more than six minutes to get a ride and four friendly people carried us across the southwestern half of the country. A Turkish bus (complete with wet wipes, tea, juice, cookies and water) is not bad, but hitchhiking is better. It’s cheap, a challenge, and just so much more interesting. Most of all, it’s a move that expresses our comfort in the seat we call the universe. Not every situation, time of day, country and road are right for it, but today was. It’s how we found ourselves learning Turkish numbers while drinking tea in a hospital, a pit stop for two young well-dressed medical workers who picked us up, because you know, in Turkey, a hitchhiker-host just doesn’t think twice about running an errand and figuring you’d like to come too. How the first guy with his shiny SUV and three-year old begged us to come back to his house for breakfast and meet his wife. How we were eventually between the leather of a mafioso’s BMW, smoke seeming to come from his ears as much as his mouth, racing along the mountains to a Michael Bolton meets Oriental kind of tune. But he bought lamb-roasted lunch from his wad of 50s. Delivered us well. Made sure we were comfortable. Like Tony Soprano, he was mad at his boss and his cell phone and his past and his money—not us.Besides, he was so obviously a blinking neon light: Michael. Andrea. You’re on the right track. Money isn’t exactly the key.Indeed, hitchhiking is liberating.But this was only the first half of the day. Then we arrived at Yakabag Farm. Which is basically a commune. For those who like to think of your life as a movie, please picture mine a cabernet-merlot blend of The Tuscan Sun, Stealing Beauty and the Beach, but with more hippies. No, really. I think I saw Ken Kesey in the hall yesterday.People come and go. You can stay as long as you want. There are few introductions and less instructions. You learn as you go. If you have a question, just ask. The atmosphere, along with whatever tribal rhythms happen to be on, seem to say cheerfully: There’s so much to do but all of eternity to do it in.You can clean the kitchen. Or not clean the kitchen.The grape vines which do a shadow dance on my wall will keep growing either way. The pomegranates with their nest of sweet, fossilized rubies stacked inside, (the fruit which flavored my grenadine’d girlie drinks through college,) will keep falling to the ground, ripe and real. This morning I practiced yoga on the roof. I learned to make bread. I met the horse I am encouraged to ride. I saw the complex, olive-smashing machine, which has just now begun working—the one Sinan hired an Italian to make seven years ago. I signed up to make breakfast on Saturday. I was assigned to weed the orchard. I sat on a wooden blue chair and ate olives and tea and oranges for breakfast with nine housemates.Oranges I had picked that morning I helped Michael make lunch, chopping tomatoes upon a cutting board made from a two-inch thick tree slice. I learned what goes in the garbage, the chicken feed bucket and the compost bucket. This is not a work camp. It’s not a provincial farm with some Turkish mother. It’s just. . .different. Tomorrow we might pick olives. But then again we might not.And the scenery. We are in a fabulous fairytale valley of villages, orchards, headscarf-wrapped tractor drivers, stone farmhouses and a lot of chickens and sheep. A mosque’s wandering minaret with its tiny megaphones whose prayers awake us at 6:30 each AM, pricks the sunset. Mountains are every which way but up.While the attic of this 19^th century farm house is a shadowy, bamboo-sheet divided barn of sleeping bags, blankets and candles, much like the hut where we stayed in Thailand, the only appropriate word for our room is spooky. A fireplace painted with ocean swirls and Hindu temples was painted by someone who, I can tell, might have been, say, a teacher, but just got up one day and decided to paint the fireplace. Two window seats, shielded by satin curtains on one side and Ottoman timber shutters on the other, are a perfect hiding place between worlds. The shelf above the naked black seamstress’s mannequin bust is lined with handwritten-labeled potions and oils. A light bulb cradled by a wide-brimmed hat, sliced to let in the light, creates what can only be described as an extremely eerie glow. A crinoline mosquito petticoat bustle hangs above our heads. No less than seven swaying dream-catchers are not letting anything, good or bad, out of that room. A red and decadent elephant tapestry, which I just realized I find happiness and safety in, lifts its trunk from one wall. No wonder. Because a Ouija board, patient and perfectly crafted by good ‘ol Parker Brothers, is propped within the fireplace’s forgotten ashes.And now, we lounge, a shelf of luscious unread books at my side. I just changed the CD —someWoodstock sounds—and to my surprise, just as we end our umpteenth conversation about our hitchhiking experience, Hitchin’ A Ride comes on. What’s stranger is that my Mom had this 45 when I was little. I can picture the label. It was red. Yet I had always passed it up for Crocodile Rock. I’ve never once heard it before right now. Even on those late night commercials.I guess it’s been waiting for me to understand.That 70’s DayWe hitchhiked today.It was the first time for both of us. Never took more than six minutes to get a ride and four friendly people carried us across the southwestern half of the country. A Turkish bus (complete with wet wipes, tea, juice, cookies and water) is not bad, but hitchhiking is better. It’s cheap, a challenge, and just so much more interesting. Most of all, it’s a move that expresses our comfort in the seat we call the universe. Not every situation, time of day, country and road are right for it, but today was. It’s how we found ourselves learning Turkish numbers while drinking tea in a hospital, a pit stop for two young well-dressed medical workers who picked us up, because you know, in Turkey, a hitchhiker-host just doesn’t think twice about running an errand and figuring you’d like to come too. How the first guy with his shiny SUV and three-year old begged us to come back to his house for breakfast and meet his wife. How we were eventually between the leather of a mafioso’s BMW, smoke seeming to come from his ears as much as his mouth, racing along the mountains to a Michael Bolton meets Oriental kind of tune. But he bought lamb-roasted lunch from his wad of 50s. Delivered us well. Made sure we were comfortable. Like Tony Soprano, he was mad at his boss and his cell phone and his past and his money—not us.Besides, he was so obviously a blinking neon light: Michael. Andrea. You’re on the right track. Money isn’t exactly the key.Indeed, hitchhiking is liberating.But this was only the first half of the day. Then we arrived at Yakabag Farm. Which is basically a commune. For those who like to think of your life as a movie, please picture mine a cabernet-merlot blend of The Tuscan Sun, Stealing Beauty and the Beach, but with more hippies. No, really. I think I saw Ken Kesey in the hall yesterday.People come and go. You can stay as long as you want. There are few introductions and less instructions. You learn as you go. If you have a question, just ask. The atmosphere, along with whatever tribal rhythms happen to be on, seem to say cheerfully: There’s so much to do but all of eternity to do it in.You can clean the kitchen. Or not clean the kitchen.The grape vines which do a shadow dance on my wall will keep growing either way. The pomegranates with their nest of sweet, fossilized rubies stacked inside, (the fruit which flavored my grenadine’d girlie drinks through college,) will keep falling to the ground, ripe and real. This morning I practiced yoga on the roof. I learned to make bread. I met the horse I am encouraged to ride. I saw the complex, olive-smashing machine, which has just now begun working—the one Sinan hired an Italian to make seven years ago. I signed up to make breakfast on Saturday. I was assigned to weed the orchard. I sat on a wooden blue chair and ate olives and tea and oranges for breakfast with nine housemates.Oranges I had picked that morning I helped Michael make lunch, chopping tomatoes upon a cutting board made from a two-inch thick tree slice. I learned what goes in the garbage, the chicken feed bucket and the compost bucket. This is not a work camp. It’s not a provincial farm with some Turkish mother. It’s just. . .different. Tomorrow we might pick olives. But then again we might not.And the scenery. We are in a fabulous fairytale valley of villages, orchards, headscarf-wrapped tractor drivers, stone farmhouses and a lot of chickens and sheep. A mosque’s wandering minaret with its tiny megaphones whose prayers awake us at 6:30 each AM, pricks the sunset. Mountains are every which way but up.While the attic of this 19^th century farm house is a shadowy, bamboo-sheet divided barn of sleeping bags, blankets and candles, much like the hut where we stayed in Thailand, the only appropriate word for our room is spooky. A fireplace painted with ocean swirls and Hindu temples was painted by someone who, I can tell, might have been, say, a teacher, but just got up one day and decided to paint the fireplace. Two window seats, shielded by satin curtains on one side and Ottoman timber shutters on the other, are a perfect hiding place between worlds. The shelf above the naked black seamstress’s mannequin bust is lined with handwritten-labeled potions and oils. A light bulb cradled by a wide-brimmed hat, sliced to let in the light, creates what can only be described as an extremely eerie glow. A crinoline mosquito petticoat bustle hangs above our heads. No less than seven swaying dream-catchers are not letting anything, good or bad, out of that room. A red and decadent elephant tapestry, which I just realized I find happiness and safety in, lifts its trunk from one wall. No wonder. Because a Ouija board, patient and perfectly crafted by good ‘ol Parker Brothers, is propped within the fireplace’s forgotten ashes.And now, we lounge, a shelf of luscious unread books at my side. I just changed the CD —someWoodstock sounds—and to my surprise, just as we end our umpteenth conversation about our hitchhiking experience, Hitchin’ A Ride comes on. What’s stranger is that my Mom had this 45 when I was little. I can picture the label. It was red. Yet I had always passed it up for Crocodile Rock. I’ve never once heard it before right now. Even on those late night commercials.I guess it’s been waiting for me to understand.