Bread Lines

There's something about waiting in line for food that brings out the worst in people. I am firmly convinced that the USSR would have lasted quite a bit longer if so many people hadn't spent so much time standing in cold, huddled lines to pick up their biweekly cabbage ration.

Just sayin'.

Anyway. Lunch at school works under the same principle. There are two venue options: the yemekhane, or the cantin. The yemekhane is buffet-style and features good hot food and free slices of bread. It also costs $150 TL/month - almost exactly $100 USD, which is half again as much as my entire monthly stipend, not that I've ever actually recieved my stipend - but that's another post. Suffice to say that the yemekhane is so far out of my monetary reach that you'd need binoculars to see it.

The cantin is the other option. It's essentially a wide and varied a la carte - you can buy sandwiches, burgers, soft drinks, tea, coffee, kofte (mystery meat on a bun), etc. Rather than the orderly buffet of the yemekhane, it's a wide window opening to a small kitchen with about four beleagured employees, tearing around and delivering food to a mass of hungry, squabbling humanity waving $5 TL notes. Seriously. At anyone time, between five and twenty people will be crammed into the window's opening, extending their arms piteously inward, shouting demands for hamburgers and cola - and that's not counting the other forty people crushing in around them. It's bedlam. It's horrible.

I am not, by nature, a pushy person. I can be mean, and I don't mind digging my heels (or claws) in - but only if someone else starts it. So I carefully make my way to the cantin window, and politely order my tost (and juice, if I'm feeling indulgent). I smile. I say please and thank you. If I've been waiting a while, the cantin employees will ignore pushier customers and ask me what I want - although I've been ordering tost long enough that they usually know what I'm going to say. And I find myself now being routinely undercharged. The employees ask me how my day's going. It's a highly pleasant interaction in the midddle of a small riot.

I never bought my lunch in high school in the US - a habit dating back to junior high, when I couldn't reach the trays in the buffet line and started bringing sandwiches from home out of necessity. In high school, I typically brought an apple and some peanut butter. A granola bar, if I was feeling hungry. And that was that. Occasionally a friend and I would traipse down to the cafeteria if strawberries were in season, and we'd spring for cookies if it'd been a rough day (roughly all of spring semester of senior year). But we were hardly common patrons of the school kitchens. I don't remember the sort of craziness in the cafeteria there. I never paid enough attention. I can't remember if I ever said thank you to any of the cashiers.

I hope I did.