Man of Sivas - Blog

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Have you ever realized that drinking water is a criminal offence?
Me neither... 'till that one fateful moment in Al Jafaliya Metro Station.

Imagine the following: Poor old tourist enters metro station and drinks (without bad thoughts) a small zip of water from his precious little water-bottle (we are in the desert.. yes it IS supposed to be a scarce resource)

I was not aware that this would raise a diplomatic confrontation like the middle-east peace negotiations and a present police force like present on a German NPD-demonstration...
This being said: No matter I was asked by the security guy not to drink, so i apologize and put away the bottle... not 2 minutes later:
an angry and totally outraged little man in blue suite and way to short tie storms towards me... "You drink water. I see on camera". His escort was quite impressive as well: About 6 policemen in green overalls (yes WITH bats, and not the batman-ones!).
(AND BY THE WAY... HE DIDNT EVEN SAY "HELLO SIR, HOW ARE YOU SIR"... how rude...)
"You are troublemaker... you want cause trouble... your passport!"... At this stage I was quickly thinking through what would happen if I just pull on his little tie and give him a lil slap on the head... Oh yeah... The greens and the batters... Not good. So (being a trouble maker and all) I surrender my passport and after a whole load of BlaBla I get a 100AED fine (20€)... So I decide to take a cab and walk right out of the station...

One thought never left my mind...
What would have happened if I was actually eating a BigMac...?

Rarely things annoy me as much as service personnel in this country.
By all means, I don't want to appear ungrateful, but it I am (already) getting fed up.

Even entering my own apartment will lead to a minimum of 10 employees of the apartment corporation rushing up to me and yelling a loud "Hello sir, how are you?" with an expression on their face like they were just forced to drink a whole jug of sour milk... For all I care, if you don’t mean it, leave me alone.

Funnily enough, this principle applies to a maximum to my favorite local Mediamarkt-alike electronics shop.
While in Germany, generally you would need to go on a search for any helpful employee at said German store that makes the quest for the holy grale look like a walk on the beach, here you enter the shop to be instantly flanked by two employees of non-Arab origin that ( not forgetting a semi-cheerful "Hello Sir, how are you sir") will not move from your side like the secret service won’t move from Obama’s side.
After several futile attempts of saying "I will call you when I need you" I will usually give up and just ignore them. If for any reason ever i would dare to have a simple product related question, a storm of absolute absence of any knowledge matter makes communication even worse... "Hello, I need a range expander for my router to get WiFi in my bedroom. Do you have one that supports B,G and N networks?" "Hello sir, how are you sir" (No. They NEVER forget) "Yes, we have routers"... Now I am simply speechless... Doesn’t matter. "Thanks I look myself". After a 5 minutes search I found it. By that time the guy had actually left me. Yippieh. Finally one that adheres the concept of personal space. Off to the cashiers... It took a maximum of 15 seconds till two guys chased after me trying to patch their little sticker on the product to secure their sales-quotas. WHY? It’s not like they even did anything to help me.
And by the way... The usual answer to "Sorry sir, I don’t know what product / DVD you mean. Let me check in the system whether we have it" is "Sorry sir, out of stock" (so happened on a li’l PS3 game I wanted to acquire). I’ll bet you a cup of coffee for every time where it is really out of stock. And you get me one if you find it 2 meters down the aisle because the dude was totally unaware of his inventory. Caffeine overdose here I come.

In all fairness... there are some really cool guys here that are actually sincere about their "Hello sir, how are you sir". Best greetings to my personal Chiquita-Banana Smoothie Dealer in the Metro station, who always greets me with "Hey boss, how are you" :)