17) Berlitz Turkish Travel Pack
I haven’t really finished this, but I gave it enough of a try during last week’s trip to northern Nicosia via Istanbul to justify writing it up. It’s a combination of the standard Berlitz tourist phrase book with a CD of sample important phrases. To be honest it’s not really worth paying the extra for the CD; it’s not sufficiently well integrated with the phrase book to be really useful, and the phrases are often too long and spoken too rapidly to repeat easily. But I bought it before I had discovered BYKI.com, which is what I shall use to get my ear in next time. The phrase book is fine, and it’s not their fault that I forgot it the one evening I found myself eating on my own at a restaurant where none of the staff spoke English.
The census reports 4000 of Protestant background and 2400 of Catholic background in the three wards, which splits roughly 60/40, more or less what I’ve done with my projections. Of course that was in 2001 so things may have changed.
Of course, Durkan doesn’t need loaned votes from the Strabane wards per se, as long as he keeps up his performance in getting votes from elsewhere.