Thank you, Simon. I certainly would love to meet you too in person.
I am planning a third one-month trip to Cairo for May of this year, and traveling outside May is difficult for me because of my work schedule at the university. August is a month during which overseas travel is possible each year, but not April. I hope that the security situation in Cairo will be good in may.
We will have the first ever Pensacola RFF Meeting on April 28/29 this year, so I will have to settle for it! If there are RFF members in the USA who cannot travel to Istanbul but manage a trip to sunny Florida, maybe some of them could plan to join us here in Pensacola.
Istanbul is on the Top list for my family as our next overseas trip. We have been watching Turkish soap operas since a couple of years, and the daily lives of simple Turkish people (not the fake rich characters in TV) remind us of good old times with family back home. Drinking tea or coffee seems always to be a good thing to do at any time of the day, and eating Kabab and lots of fresh vegetables make each dinner look just wonderful on TV. I would focus on the lower income parts of Istanbul, and try to meet with ordinary people in villages around the city. Quite often, paying a taxi driver for the day to take you to such areas could be arranged. Maybe a Turkish RFF member can help out in the logistics.
