Underwear Shopping in Istanbul

Underwear Shopping in Istanbul

Valentines day is raising its ugly head on the horizon, and being a good American with a good Valentine I know that I must purchase her the token hallmark of the holiday: underwear. It is a funny day when a bunch of stiff headed men have to go out panty shopping.

Pregnant Chaya has also burst out of her current bra from every seem, nook, and cranny, so this Valentines shopping excursion had a very practical bend.
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Wade from Vagabond Journey.com
in Istanbul, Turkey- February 14, 2009
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Underwear shopping in Istanbul:

I walked into a lingerie shop to find a few women in close quarters with bras, panties, and other weird woman things hanging from their arms. They looked surprised at my intrusion and dropped everything.

Unsure how to say “bra” in Turkish, I do the typical over exaggerated big boob gesture that I learned in my adolescents. The women gather around me in a semi-circle. I continued gesturing with one cupped hand held out from my right breast and another cupped hand extending from the left. I then pretended that I was jostling a gigantic set of make believe boobies. The women looked at me like I am from another planet.

“Big bra,” I say in English for good measure, “I need a really, really big bra.”

One woman had an epiphany and reached for a pair of pink panties and tried handing them too me with an excited smile. I declined the offer and continued with the unsuccessful gestures. The lady continued to offer me underwear. I then realized that the big boob gestures that I had learned as a kid in the USA had no function when trying to purchase a bra in Turkey, though I did learn the Turkish word for women’s underwear.

I figured that they only sell two things in a lingerie shop, and no matter how hard I tried I could not get them to guess the only remaining option. I then tried the traveler’s hallmark: pointing. But for some odd reason I could not crane my neck in any direction to be able to see a single bra. I happened to be very awkwardly boxed in by the semi-circle of women, and most of the items in the shop were packed up very conservatively in unmarked gift boxes. I tried to stumble passed the women to get myself into proper pointing position on a bra.

“Bra, bra, big bra,” I said as I discovered a brazier hanging on a rack behind the sales women. I excitedly pointed out the object of my search over the heads of the women.

My charade mixed with a little pointing eventually got my female onlookers to realize that my big boob gestures meant that I wanted a bra, but the wind had been expended from my sails: I knew that it would not be easy to explain that the bra I wanted needed to be large enough to house two full sized wrecking balls, a dozen cantaloupes, and a human head or two.

I got the impression that I was embarrassing these poor women with my incongruous gesturing. I also got the impression that I was embarrassing myself. I quickly turned for the door and left a group of women in my wake to ponder what usage a bearded foreign pervert could have for a super sized Turkish brazier.

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Underwear Shopping in Istanbul