Hot Milk with *t***u**'s (Or, Sometimes You Just Gotta Be a Tourist)

In a recent post on how to get the most out of Istanbul I recommended getting into tea drinking. I certainly do when I'm in Turkey, so much so that after a few days on the ground I experience cravings for a glass or two mid-morning, mid-afternoon, early evening, and so on. Lunch or dinner without a glass of tea to follow? Unimagineable!

But there is one time of the day when tea, even strong Turkish tea uncut with water, won't do the job: immediately after I wake. I am a card-carrying caffeine addict and for me that initial, life-giving A.M. jolt comes in one and only one form -- coffee. (Actually, that is not quite accurate -- if given the opportunity I always preface my first sip of morning coffee with a few slugs of Diet Coke. It's not pretty, I know. But it's the truth.)

These days a decent cup is readily (if expensively) available in Istanbul and, I'm guessing, maybe elsewhere on the country's well-touristed western and Mediterranean coasts. But not so much in middle Anatolia eastward, where we've been spending most of our Turkey time these last two years. Nescafe is to be found just about everywhere and I've been known to drink it like medicine, holding nose between thumb and forefinger, when necessary. Now, t! hanks to a certain Evil Empire-like American coffee chain, Nescafe is a beverage of my past.

I should be ashamed to admit it but these days when we pack our bags for Turkey there's always a ziploc bag or two of single-serving instant coffee from said coffee chain tucked between the jeans and t-shirts. The best part? The stuff actually tastes like coffee (instead of medicine), and pretty good coffee at that

The next best part is that Turkey is an instant coffee-friendly country, for two reasons: (1) even the most down-and-out lodgings usually come with an in-house breakfast and (2) Turkey's tea preparation modus operandi guarantees a ready supply of plain hot water for breakfasters. It is the rare breakfast offering that does not feature either a traditional caydanlik -- a double boiler consisting of two stacked kettles, the lower containing hot water only, while the upper holds tea -- or an electric samovar-like contraption with one spout dispensing hot water on demand.

At first it was embarassing to whip out my *t***u**'s instant coffee packet at the hotel or guest house buffet. Some of my fellow diners looked askance (Turks are much to polite to openly snicker), especially when. like a beer drinker with her whiskey chaser, I accompanied each cup of coffee (2 is my Magic Number) with a full glass of dark, undiluted tea.

But soon I got over the shame and was brandishing my coffee packets with ease. Yes, I'm a boorish American who cannot adapt -- nay, refuses to adapt -- to local caffeine customs, those foil cylinders probably announced to some.

But a fog-free head and a spring in my step, even at 7am, were my rewards.

What else would y! ou expec t to see at a fresh milk-serving tea house in what is possiblyTurkey's dustiest town? A patron dressed in white, head to toe.

Then in Van Dave and I spyed a cay evi advertising fresh hot milk. Hot milk just hours from the cow is something that must be tasted to be believed; we'd been drinking it before bed in village homes further north in Kars.

How incredible, I wondered, would our *t***u**'s instant coffee taste stirred into that liquid white gold?

Back in our hotel room we debated. Would it be rude to defile the cay evi's otherworldly hot fresh milk with our instant coffee? Would other patrons be shocked if we pulled out our packets at a street-side table and shook the contents into our glasses?

Then it occurred to me: while hot fresh milk may be something extraordinary to me and to Dave, to Vanlilar -- or at least to the male Vanlilar who frequent this particular tea shop -- Hot Fresh Milk ain't no big thang. Add that to the fact that, as yabancilar, to the tea shop proprietor and his customers we'd be pretty much alien beings who engage in all sorts of bizarre behavior anyway. Our so-called dilemma became a no-brainer.

We went. We ordered glasses of taze st. We added our *t***u**'s instant and stirred. And then we drank -- I kid you not -- the BEST frigging coffee of our lives.

The instant coffee -- you know where to get it. The tea house is opposite the blue mosque by the peynir carsisi, or cheese market, Van.