Knocked up abroad: the baby-friendly difference

by Meg Nesterov on

Me in Istanbul on Mother’s Day, 7 months pregnant, with Dalin baby product mascot

Just over two weeks ago, I made the leap from pregnant American in Istanbul to expat with child. My decision to have my first baby in a foreign country has been met with reactions from friends and strangers ranging from surprise and curiosity to outright disapproval. The transition to new parenthood is a strange and challenging time for nearly everyone, but living in a country that respects pregnant women and worships babies has made all the difference. While baby and child bans are being considered in many places from travel companies like Malaysia Airlines to American restaurants, Turkey remains one big baby-friendly country.


On the surface, Istanbul is not an easy place with a baby. The city is crowded, traffic is terrible and taxi drivers will barely pause to let you run across the street, and the sidewalks are a mini Olympics for a stroller with few ramps, cracked pavement, uneven cobblestones, and endless hills. There’s not many green spaces or parks, and for older children, few museums or activities designed for or appealing to kids. It’s the people that make the city welcoming to children. I can’t walk down the street without a chorus of “Maşallah” (bless you) and “çok güzel” (how cute!). Crowds form around us in stores of people wanting to kiss the baby, ask questions about her, and give me advice (this is when my limited Turkish is a blessing and I can just smile and nod). Waiters in restaurants coo over her and offer to hold her when I go to the bathroom (note: I’m hyper-aware of being a disturbance for other diners and will always take her out if she starts to fuss). As much as she is adored, the feedback isn’t always positive. Some older Turks don’t believe young babies should be out in public and think mothers should follow the custom of staying in the house for the first 40 days (our pediatrician says it’s fine to go out and we’ve taken her places nearly every day since she was born). Despite the current 100 degree heat, I’m warned against holding the baby near a fan, in air conditioning or even in front of the refrigerated case in the grocery store, lest she catch a draft.
Even before the baby arrived, Turks go above and beyond to make mothers and babies comfortable. Recently, a Turkish woman told me how she had been heavily pregnant in winter and one day found herself out in the rain, unable to get a taxi home. She began to cry in frustration and a police officer stopped to see if she was okay. She told him she was fine, just wanted to get home, so he approached a nearby taxi with two men inside, kicked them out, and gave the cab to her. I have no doubt that the ousted men were probably understanding and gracious about the situation, and the whole story encapsulates the Turkish experience for me.

In contrast, when I spent a week home in New York at five months pregnant, I was never offered a seat on the subway and struggled like everyone else for a taxi in the rain. Shortly after my visit, I read an article about a proposed official ban on food in the NYC subway (the idea has since been dismissed) with suggestions for other things that should be banned and was shocked to see a few commenters indignantly refuse to give up their seat to pregnant women. They reasoned that pregnancy was a choice and not the responsibility of society or any other passenger to cater to them. While I can understand their viewpoint, it’s so far from the Turkish mentality, I’d be hard pressed to explain it here.

While these are very extreme examples and not necessarily indicative of the average pregnant woman’s experience in New York or Istanbul, they represent two ends of the spectrum in terms of baby- or pregnant-friendliness. Consider this chart of a New York woman’s experience getting seats on the subway; while the overall results aren’t bad (just over 80% of the time she was offered a seat), it’s pretty appalling by Turkish standards. Since I began to show, I could barely step onto a bus or through the metro doors before I was offered at least one seat (and they’ll insist on it, even if I say I’m not traveling far). It’s not just on public transportation: I’ve been offered to cut in line for public bathrooms and even in line for ice cream. Several American cities like Boston and Chicago are considering or enacting rules against strollers (at least open ones) on public transportation to save space and aggravation for other passengers. When I return to New York, I’ll plan on wearing a baby sling or carrier on the subway, especially since few stations have elevators or escalators.

A few weeks before my baby arrived, I was wandering around Cihangir, a neighborhood I’d compare to San Francisco partially due its artsy, cafe-culture vibe, but mainly due to its many hills. My afternoon stroll involved many hikes up steep staircases and near-vertical sidewalks. Each time I’d pass a Turk, he would stop, watch, and wait for me to get to the top and once he saw I was okay and not about to pass out or go into labor, he’d continue on his way. Last week, I battled the same hills with a stroller and was helped by Turkish men on nearly every corner and curb.

So what makes Istanbul such a welcoming city for little ones while New York remains hostile? It’s hardly a small town, Istanbul’s official population of 13 million is nearly double that of New York and the high density doesn’t make it much less crowded. It could be the volume of children, Turkey’s birth rate is nearly double that of many western European countries and significantly higher than the United States. I asked on Twitter about what countries travelers have found to be the most baby-friendly and most hostile, and nearly all of the positive experiences were in European and Latin American countries. Writer Anita Bulan put it well when she noted that in these baby-friendly countries, kids are seen as a part of life and allowed to participate in it. I’ve seen babies out late at night with their parents in Argentina, young children at fancy restaurants in Italy, and toddlers in museums in Spain. I’ve also seen hardly any tantrums in these places. I haven’t figured out their secret yet, but I imagine it has to do with exposing them to real life from an early age. Few restaurants in Istanbul have a kid’s menu but nearly every place will happily provide something appealing to a child, even if it’s not on the menu. If a baby cries, the parents as well as strangers will quickly comfort him and return to their meal practically before anyone else can notice.

This week I applied for my baby’s first passport and am planning travel in Europe and home to the US in the next few months. I’m not sure what to expect in each place, we might continue to be treated like rock stars in Europe and get dirty looks in America, or the reverse. I’m hoping my past travel experience helps me navigate airports and new cities but I’m aware of how a little one will slow me down and make me think ten steps ahead. My baby won’t remember these early trips or appreciate new places, but I hope that kindly strangers and a well-used passport for my child will make me a better mother and traveler.

Vera Alcazar Nesterov was born July 12 in Istanbul. Read her about her travels before birth and pregnancy in a foreign country in past Knocked up Abroad posts.

Venice’s Island of the Dead, Isola San Michele

by Gadling Staff on

Half an hour away by vaporetto, Venice‘s waterbus, from the chaos of Saint Mark’s square, is the Isola San Michele, a stopping point between the city of Venice and the island of Murano. Circling the city of Venice by boat towards the north, the lagoon is paved with small islands, but Isola San Michele turns heads. It is a small island surrounded by terracotta brick wall punctuated by arched tips at regular intervals. Cypress trees peer over the wall giving the appearance of a floating garden in the lagoon, until you pass round the front of the island and notice a grand entrance with three arched gates with white steps disappearing into the water. Above the gates is a simple white cross, marking the entrance to Venice’s Island of the dead.

There is a sense of serenity when you step off the vaporetto onto the unstable platform at Isola San Michele. It is one of Venice’s best-kept secrets, as most tourists will continue on the boat to Murano. The cemetery is both tranquil and surreal. Venice as a city is silent after the cruise ships go home, there are no cars and the only sound you’ll hear are the occasional footsteps echoing through the alleys and sometimes a church bell. In the cemetery the silence is broken only by birdsong. Walking between the tall cypress trees, you are aware of crunching gravel beneath your feet and you feel something is out of place.Unlike Pére Lachaise in Paris, Venice’s cemetery is surprisingly “modern,” there are no tombs or mausoleums dating back for centuries, no hoards of tourists scouring the graves name-hunting. Here, the graves are tightly packed line by line, with the path lined with cypresses running down the middle towards the grand arched gates where the coffins are carried up from funerary gondolas. If you’ve seen the cult classic, “Don’t Look Now,” the front view of the gates, as approached by boat, look familiar. From the waters, the gates are an ominous “momento mori,” a reminder of our mortality; looking out from the inside through the wrought iron, you glimpse the city of Venice lingering in the distance across the waters, a peaceful reflection of life.

Walking away from the central division of the cemetery, you’ll find the neo-classical mausoleums and tombs dating back to the 19th century that belong to prestigious Venetian families. Memorial walls for the dead, circle the island’s perimeter, while rows of tall white columbarium walls, containing plaque-covered niches for cremated remains, close in on small pathways as you head back to the vaporetto jetty.

While Isola San Michele is not one of the great monumental cemeteries – like those found in Paris, Milan or London – Isola San Michele is a curiosity, it is after all the resting place of Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Diaghilev and Ezra Pound. A key player in Venice’s history, surrounded by the calm waters of the Venetian lagoon, almost forgotten behind its terracotta walls and under its cypress trees – welcome to Venice’s Island of the Dead.

Video of the Day – Summer in the Alps

by Stephen Greenwood on


If you could capture your favorite snippets of summer, what would they be? Backyard barbecues? Ambitious road trips? A visit to your favorite lake?

Today’s Video of the Day is a gorgeous montage of summer moments from the French & Italian Alps, compiled by French filmmaker and mountain guide Sebastien Montaz-Rosset. Sebastien writes that he “filmed and edited what I personally like in the mountain culture: sports, lifestyle, art of living, culture and people”. The result is a dream-like sequence that shows off some of the best action and most beautiful scenes that the Alps have to offer.

Share your own favorite moments of summer with us! Submit your photos the Gadling Group on Flickr, or leave a link to your best videos in the comments section below. It could wind up as our next Photo / Video of the Day!

Embracing the moment: A lakeside lesson in Italy

by Don George on

I’m sitting at a bayside café in San Francisco, on a sun-spattered, blue-sky afternoon, reading my journal and traveling back to a similar day three years ago at a lakeside café in northern Italy, when I re-learned one of travel’s great lessons: the importance of immersing yourself in the moment.

As the summer travel season unfolds, it’s a good reminder that travel’s gifts can stay with us long after the journey ends:

At the Piccolo Hotel café, Garda, Italy:

I’m sitting lakeside at the extraordinary town of Garda in the extraordinary region of Lake Garda, about 80 miles west of Venice.

I’m at the end of an exhausting but also very wonderful two-week stay in this enchanted and enchanting region, and feeling that odd mix of delighted expectation at the prospect of returning home and melancholic sentimentality of having to leave a place that has now become a rooted and enriching part of me, that has shown me so much and reawakened so much.

How to compress the riches of this place into a few words? The beauty of the landscape, the sane slow pace of life – the enjoyment of life! History embodied in old stone palazzo, piazzi and farmhouses. Culture embodied in centuries-old frescoes and 21st-century fashions. Cobblestoned streets and soaring stony chiese. Pasta perfectly al dente. Exquisite house wine. Vineyard-latticed hillsides. Rows of trees brightly budding into green. Sitting at a café by a lake, watching the red and blue and yellow motorboats bob and the stately deep green cypress trees reach like green prayers for the sky.

Arranged before me is a spaghetti alla bolognese, a basket of breads (rolls, sliced baguette, breadsticks), a plate of cherry tomatoes with mozzarella and rocket leaves, a glass of crisp chilled white wine, a side glass of sparkling water. I’m watching sailboats skim the smoky blue surface of the lake – and I’m in heaven.

This is what I want to take back with me – the sense of exultation in small and simple things. The Italians seem to do life so well.

Sitting at a serene lakeside table exulting in the simple sensual richness of things is not the ultimate meaning of life – but if life is a book, I would like to make this sense the texture of the paper that book is printed on.

Or at least the Italy chapters. Of course other places have their own rich textures, but right here, right now, I am immersed in the Italian moment – and it is an exultation of almost indescribable depth and richness.

I am content. Perhaps this is what it all comes down to – a moment of cobblestoned, cypress-green, sun-caressed, vineyard-latticed, chilled vino bianco contentment.

The salad is delicious – the tomato tasting of sun and soil, the rocket piquant and fresh, the mozzarella silky and smooth. I savor another forkful of spaghetti and sigh.

I look at the stony cliffs to my right, the spectrum of greens, from lemon to pine; the elegant aging buildings that line the lakefront – tangerine, pale lemon, blood orange – like a long wonderful fresco. Outside the buildings on the cobbled piazza are dozens of tables covered in bright tablecloths – red, yellow, orange like the buildings. Ducks quack and squabble for breadcrumbs thrown by German tourists. A sleek ferry streams in, passing a sailboat that idles in the breeze-less afternoon.

I want to absorb this scene so deeply that this table, this lake, this slice of Italy, becomes a part of me.

I had never heard of Lake Garda before this trip, even though it is the largest lake in Italy, but from now on, whenever I hear “Italy,” I will think of this blessed place, and the peace and plenty I have found here.

Home life awaits. In less than 48 hours I will be immersed in that reality, dealing with deadlines, crazed by how much I have to do in so little time.

But I hope when the craziness threatens to overwhelm, I can stop and come back to this moment – a table covered by a cream-colored cloth, bright boats bobbing on the lake, tree-covered slopes to my left and right and pastel buildings and café tables behind me.

Good food and wine, good people, a surrounding of natural and manmade beauty, the synthesis of the old and the new, nature and design: a place where life proceeds with an effortless grace.

Three years later, at a sun-lit San Francisco cafe, I read these words and think: Contentment blooms anew on the shores of Lake Garda.

New Florence App hits app store (and it’s free!)

by Grant Martin on

Update! The app is now also available for Android devices.

Our old friend and partner-in-crime Leif Pettersen has been busy since his departure from Gadling in 2007. The wayward Lonely Planet author, travel guru and generally affable guy has been bombasting around the planet on various projects, but one in particular recently got our attention at Gadling Labs.

Turns out, Pettersen just finished putting the final touches on a new digital travel guide to Florence, the product of which is currently available in the app store for all iPhone, iPad and iVanity hardware. And best of all, it’s free for the next day. All that you have to do is scoot over to the site, click download and get your hands on the full product. In Leif’s words, “your review can be the payment.”

Here at Gadling Labs we’re itching to try out the app, but with our Android phones on a Linux operating system (in a Faraday-cage newsroom no less) it’s really difficult to jump into the river of mainstream app culture. Regretfully, our 8″ thick binder of printed AAA maps, hand written notes and excerpts from Herodotus will have to continue working as our guidebooks.

For those heading or planning to head to Florence with an iPhone, however, give Leif’s Florence guide a spin. For the cost, we’re sure it’s worth at least checking out.

[Flickr image via Arianna M]