A couple of cultural observations...

One of the cultural differences that I noticed in Switzerland, in contrast to the US, is the number of people who have tattoos.  Tattoos were everywhere, it seemed, on our trip to Zürich. Heather reckoned that many of the people were not actually Swiss, but from other countries - a valid point especially in light of the Euro 2008 taking place half the time in Switzerland. On top of this, more than 20% of Switzerland's population are foreigners - so maybe the sample is still a little skew.

Turkey, on the other hand, has many fewer people with tattoos. There are a lot of foreign nationals in Istanbul, it is quite apparent. But still, probably many of these foreigners are, on average, from more conservative Muslim countries. It's still a remarkable contrast to me how few people have tattoos here.

There seems to be a pretty pronounced culture of apprenticeship here, in Istanbul. It seems that nearly wherever we go, there is a younger man who rarely - if ever - speaks in front of the customer, and does a lot of the grunt work of the boss. Lots of pronounced, imposing deference. I mean, sure, parts of this dynamic are present even in America, but in Turkey, it just seems to be a lot more pronounced. It's like there's a (vicious? virtuous?) circle of, "hey, if I put my time in now and put up with the boss's crap, one day I'll be the big boss and can dish out my own crap!" My observations are admittedly very surface, but those are my initial conclusions.