Note: The woman in the above photo is not "the extra blanket. It was not a great hotel, but it was what they had. There was a plaque in my room indicating that the President of Turkish Cyprus Rauf Denktash had slept in this very room. Rauf obviously was traveling on a budget. Good for me, as my Turkish was nonexistent. I found that I could get along quite well in Arabic. This was November and there was a steady cold wind off the Med at night. The room had no heating to speak of, and really inadequate bedding.
I guess at about midnight, I had about had it with the cold, so I put on some clothes and went to the front desk, woke up the attendant and asked if he spoke Arabic. Yes - great. I asked him if I could have an extra blanket.
He gave me the strangest look, shrugged and looked at his watch. I had no idea what he was doing, but he said to give him about half an hour and he would see what he could do.
How hard can it be to get a blanket? I said I'd wait in my room. True to his word, there is a knock at the door about 40 minutes later. I open the door and there is this rather cute young lady. I asked her in Arabic what she wanted, who she was, etc. She gave me the "what are you talking about" look back. As I found out later, "extra blanket" in that part of Turkey means a prostitute. Well, she had come out late at night, it was cold, and there were international relations to consider - after all, Turkey is a NATO ally.
Ah, the things you do for your country By Rick Francona www.
