GEOGRAPHY100 Final Project

 GEOG100

Yusuf Baykal

BAYYD1902

Journey Of A Traveler

Map of the Cities

The cities i have chosen are Istanbul the city where i was born and spend most of my life the other cities i have been are London and budapest.these cities impacted me culturally and i believe as an indivudual i impacted them aswell.i have stayed in london for two months met many people from around world aswell as immigrants who came to london to live have a better lives in budapest i have seen the historical places and i have seen the place where the ottoman emprie conquered and how my people impacted budapest in the past i have seen this people myself and we had bad past with hungarians and i believe i changed that culturally and it changed me in a few ways.and i saw similarities in these cities and differences with the people and always love to see the interconncectivity between these cities and culture in them

Map of Istanbul

Istanbul

How Culturally Impacted Me

I was born in istanbul i spent most of my life in istanbul but my parents they are not from istanbul they eastern part of turkey in a small village that was undeveloped when my mother was pregnant they decided to move Istanbul because they knew it was the best city in turkey and more developed.i grew up in the european side of Istanbul as you know istanbul connects to continents and because of the istanbul is city that holds two different cultures together thanks to that there are a lot of diversity in my city especially culturally you will meet different people from different backgrounds and ethnicities and the most beatiful thing about this city is its almost 1700 years old.it is so old that many empires conquered it and ruled over the city that i was born in.so while i grew up i always hear from my dad that we are lucky to be in this city because it is old and culturally diverse that we get to see many people different cultures.so as a city boy i was more progressive than my father because this city impacted me culturally and a lot and i see the world really different from father who grew up in a village and seen liitle of this world.my family still holds old traditions they still value things like tradtional dresses and their way of life but since i grew up in a modern city that made me different from my father and rest of my family i remember that we sat in the living room in our house with my dad my girl cousins and my girl cousins were making tea for us so we can drink with my dad but one of my cousins did do the tea correctly so my dad said to my cousin she needs to know how to make a tea because she would be really bad as a wife in the future to her husband and told her she needs to know how to cook aswell.and told my dad that she doesnt need to know how to make a tea or how know how to cook just because she is a girl she can whatever she wants in her life her future is not just be wife and take care of the kids.that was the first time i told my dad something directly and he was suprised and he said to me thats not how things happen in our family and things i said were wrong and shouldnt be in our culture i told my dad this is how things work in todays society and things changed and things he believes in are old and outdated. he didnt like what i said after my answer my dad said this city changed you a lot and it made you more isolated from your culture.your environment changes you and changes you culturally and it can even change a society.and one place can shape your personality and culture plays big role in it and because the city i live in geographicly is in the west considered to be progressive part of turkey but my fathers village is backwards culturally.i never gave a thought about how i would be if i was born same place as my dad did and sometimes we visit our village and i feel like a stranger amongst my family because i grew up in a city.when i walk in the city with my dad we see many people and sometimes my dad sees boys with earrings or so he would judge them harshly but for me its compeletely normal i have seen many types of people so it is not suprising to me.these are cultural traits of my family and eastern part of turkey it is not developed well and it is culturally backwards istanbul changed me culturally a lot and made me a stranger in my family

How I Impacted Culturally

As and indivual i beleive i can impact my city and my family cultrally in many ways i talked how Istanbul impacted me culturally now i beleive impacted my culture starting from my family i remember one night our family gather together to drink tea and eat some snacks in our culture men seat and have chat together young and old and woman bring tea and snacks to men after men finish now woman are able to seat and have a chat with eachother i didnt really like it i found really wrong and outdated so i told my girl cousins and my mom to stop and rest me and my brothers can bring tea and snacks to my uncles and my father because i try to show my little cousins that this is not right just because they are woman they shouldnt be the ones who are serving doing things together can help us to more connected and be more modern and change our culture.since my little cousins grew up in istanbul aswell they are different from their parents aswell so i try to show them that istanbul is not a place old traditions can survive that they are in a different part of turkey and city is different.so we with my actions i believe i chnaged them even if it is a small thing it is still something.some of my uncles are religious and some of their views are not really fitted to this centuary like things about homosexuality they thing it is something wrong or something that should be cured by doctors or it is a disablity religion do affect our culture and becuase of that i sometimes talk to my cousins about sexaul orientation that it is okey to have different from other people i try to change it impact of religion in our culture so it can be more positive and inclusive since the city they live in is not a place for old cultural and religous beliefs i try to bring more positive change to our cultural traits in my family and change its cultural region.i impacted my cities culture with these action and i try to impact my cities culture with the these small actions so in the future we will have more inclusive and more accepted culture around the world.while walking around our neigborhood i saw doner restaurant doner is a traditonal turkish food when i went and ate the food i thought it was good doner but it had near no spice at all the thing is in istanbul doner can be less spicy or no spice at all i told the chef if he can put more spice in the food so it would taste more delicious.by doing this i believe changed the habit of the chef it is something small but it canges the people around you city itself. 

Map Of Budapest

Budapest

How Culturally Impacted Me

When i visied hungary Budapest i knew historical things about the country and little nothing of the city itself so i was excited to see other parts of Europe when i landed in budapest we went to our hotel and i decided walk by myself around the city to meet new people i met this guy named Atilla i was quite surprised because we have the same in my culture atilla is important figure in turkic culture i guess we share similarities even though we are from different countries than i had chat with atilla and we talked a lot he showed me around he was same age as me 16 we talked about education in our contries and i was saying that my countries education is really awful and you always have to respect teacher and can show the teacher wrongs or criticese her atilla told me that in hungarian culture and in their education everythin and everyone can be criticised and they should be even prophets,saviors,world leaders criticesing a prophet that stuck because if i criticese my religion in family i would get a bad look but for them it is quite normal and accepted that changed me in my culture you cant criticese your elders or your teachers any religion because it deemed as a disrespectfull against those people that impacted me a lot that gave me courage to be more critical of people and about my life as we moved on Budapest is proggresive city LGBTQ people were widely accepted in budapest seeing the people like that can change your views about your culture and the way you live your life in istanbul you see less LGBTQ people because it is still not safe for them but in Budapest when i saw with my own eyes when you get to know them they are like normal people this geographical change made me different when i cameback i try adopt the things happened in hungary Budapest i would say i had more positive changes in budapest culturally i have seen things that is not in my culture or accepted widely by my people.budapest was eye opening experience for a boy who is 16 years old so things i have seen budapest was really beatiful nad seeing their culture bring something from the culture to my city and country.

How I Impacted Culturally

While i was in budapest you can see a lot of tourists i went a cafe in budapest and when i saw the menu i saw the dessert called gullac i was surprised because we have gulllac aswell in my country when i called waiter i told him that we have the same dessert in my country and i ordered the dessert and it was similar some ingredients were different but it tasted delicous by talking the waiter i showed them how e do it in my country and how we make the dessert i brought  a view to the hungarian waiter that this is how we do it in my country.when i left to resaturant we walked thorugh the streets of budapest i always try to meet new people im really curious about the hungarian culture and it similarities between turkish people becuase historically they come from central asia aswell and we lived together once there was group of hungarians dancing to their tradtional songs with their tradional dances i wanted to show them how we do it in my country how celeberate and i showed how to do halay one of the tradional dances in turkey.we had so much fun and i really like when i see similarities between my culture and in other countries in the world.

Map Of London

London

How Culturally Impacted Me

When i visited London  it was beatiful i have seen most touristic places like buckingham palace westminister and big ben it was beatiful and rainy when i met people in there a lots of diverisity i have seen many people from different backgrounds.it was more diverese than my city and i saw a lot of old buildings and i was surprised how they keep them so well they really care about their historical buildings when you see those buildings you can be surprised because how they can keep it so new and beatiful  it was nice to see something ike that the value they give to their historical buildings gave a me new perspective.everytime i walk into a church or a palace it was clean very well kept restored well they put care well into their cultural buildings.it impacted me a lot because when you see those buildings you see this maginficent architecture in english culture and i was amazed by it.especially kings college it was so beatiful didnt want to leave the building even one building can leave a impression on people that unexpected but beautiful.i walked around the city i have seen these kids doing skating listening to pop music doing fun activities in the city open it was nice to see young people showing their interest on things like these activities because in my area these things were seen as stupid or just nonesense  it showed kids here dont care what others say what others do they are open about these things even those small things can change the view about my culture.

How I Impacted Culturally 

Me and my friends at night walking in the city we met these kids when we met them we had nice conversation aobut countries and funny moments and i showed one of the kids how we greet someone when meet or see each other we usually hold hands kiss in the both cheeks its kind of showing sincertiy between people and they liked it i usually find people in the west europe the way greet eachother to be cold and not sincere but when i showed them how we do it they liked and next they when met again they did our handshake it shows persons sincerity i was really happy when they did it.it was a intercation between these people to show them make their handshake sincere .they invited us to nice restaurant we went to this pub together it was a nice english pub when we had beer together when one of the guys asked how do you guys say cheer and i told them we say serefe together and they did it was quite funny but it was nice to see them try we had nice chat together we had a nice conversation about music and i showed them one of my favorite turkish jazz singer who make tradtional music with jazz style called Gurbet by ozdemir Erdogan they it is really nice and they even downloaded to their spotify everytime i make someone listen to my favorite musician they always like it want to listen again it was nice to see someone appreciate turkish jazz this was a wonderfull interaction in London i had with these people.