Turkey

After the queen's funeral, the Man and I took a holiday. We stayed in a sleepy town on the Turkish coast,  lodging with our friend Selma in the pension she runs with the help of her three daughters. 

The town is notable for having a mountain that has been perpetually on fire for ever - one can walk up a path at any time of night or day and come to an area where flames are burning out of holes in the rock. These flames are visible to boats on the sea. People thought it to be the breath of a Chimera - a fearsome snakey-goaty-lionish creature that lives inside the mountain. 

Every evening, large tour groups follow men with flags to see the flames, where they roast marshmallows, and drink beer at sunset.

We went to the flamey mountain before dawn, the route involves meandering uphill for a couple of kilometres, then a steep kilometre of increasingly impressive stone steps, it was still quite dark when we turned the corner and saw all the fires dancing on the rocks ahead of us, - and completely magical. A cat had followed us to the flames and we'd noticed bobbling headtorch lights much further up the mountain path but at that dawn moment we were just the three of us being in awe of the phenomenon.

Once the sun was up the debris left by the marshmallow revellers from previous evenings became apparent, the headtorch lights ahead had gone, there were now voices and then young people with backpacks.

The young people were Russians, Putin had announced a partial mobilisation a few days previously, it seems that few were prepared to fight his war, everyone knew what happened in Russia if you put up opposition and the young are trying to leave in their tens of thousands. These people told us about the limited options for ways out - most borders are closed, their homes were now abandoned and they didn't forsee that they could ever return - whatever might succeed Putin was not likely to be any better.

When we  returned to our pension we started noticing all the Russian cars and started meeting other young Russians, they had also backed what seemed like the only viable alternative - Navalny -  apparently now very weakened by continued torture in detention, there is little faith that he will be allowed to recover.

Coming Back To The Marie Celeste

I’m back to work. The office is very quiet because Miss Whiplash ran off to Sharm el Sheikh with a new lover a week ago and has now picked up some sort of disease that is apparently keeping her in bed until next week. The boys are away filming in Kenya, except for the youngest Camera Boy who did come back with the German trophy (and it really is made of sand), I can't actually tell when he's in though because he disappears under a massive pile of cables in the kit room that all need cleaning and untangling.


My Turkish holiday is already a distant memory, just before I set off on the trip I had this exchange with my hairdresser;
She: Are you off on holiday then?
Me: Yes, Turkey
She: Lovely - a beach holiday?
Me: Not really - there'll be a lot of loafing about and eating though, I don’t think I'll be spending loads of time looking at monuments
She: Well you don’t go to Turkey to look at monuments do you?

Hilarious, but she was right, Turkey might be crammed with impressive monuments but it is also a country full of the loveliest people - the best bits of my trip were definitely the bits with Turks in. Nice thing about Turkish people is that they’re as nosey as I am, and wonderfully direct, a lady on the bus to the airport asked my nationality then, What sort of education have you had?

Most surprising moment was after an earnest young man came to my rescue in Istanbul then took me to a cake shop owned by the city’s mayor and made me try the chicken pudding (Tavuk göğsü). This fat white tubular dessert is made with finely minced chicken breast, I tried the one in the picture and can report that it is a very sweet, rubbery sort of thing (like Turkish Delight) and I could have handled it better with a knife and fork than the dainty spoon I was given, meat fibres are a strange thing to see in a pudding.

Better Stop Looking Now

The party at Bonjour Pensiyon (see last post) went on most of the night and involved a lot of singing and dancing, even Grandma forgot her humming and danced and grinned like it was the best party ever – which it was. Next day I loaded their computer with the movies and photos I had made during the evening and they loaded me up with a big bag filled with olive oil, jars of olives and olive oil soap (because the olives in Ayvelik are the best in the world!) and the following evening I staggered on to the night bus - bound for Istanbul.


My baggage consisted of little more than a skirt, a summer dress, some t shirts, swimwear, spare knickers, a hat and a shawl - and a lot of olive-based products. The weather in Istanbul is in the 20s and feels like the height of a British summer but the residents of Istanbul are swathed in their autumnal woolies and I was looking ridiculous.

Yesterday morning I went to Taksim, the area one goes for shopping.

An escalator brought me, and a pile of other people, into Taksim square from the underground station, there was a demonstration going on and several of us stopped to watch, the crowds were perfectly well-behaved, marching nicely through the square with their banners, then the police started firing tear gas and the demonstration was made chaotic, I got swept up running with all the protestors, filtering off down side streets stopping finally by a shop to buy lemons and water which helped ease the burning.


Finally today I managed to get me an autumn outfit, a frock and some shoes, all I needed were some black tights - could I find some?

There are countless shops selling hosiery but none have plain black tights. The shop assistant, determined to sell me something, produced a pair the wrong colour, I said these are brown

the shop assistant replied no not brown, light black

Staring

I’m staying in a small fishing town opposite the Greek island of Lesbos (famous for inventing lesbianism). Now that I have been assured that staring is perfectly acceptable behaviour in Turkey I have embraced the concept wholeheartedly and stare as hard as I like as I wander around, and I must say that I’m thrilled with the results. I passed a bakery today and stopped to watch several men, all with cigarettes firmly clamped in their mouths, working together to load the oven. They asked me in and I photographed the handsome brutes. My staring drew stares from the rest of the square and soon there was quite a crowd of us. Next door’s, extremely young, male hairdresser came in with tea -there are loads of hairdressers - and there’s always tea. This hairdresser gave me a bracing infusion of eucalyptus, a flavour I wouldn’t ever actually choose, but I’ve put worse things in my mouth so I swallowed bravely and now feel quite medicated.

Wanting to communicate something and failing a bit, the Hairdresser ran off to fetch an exercise book, in which were hand-written all the English phrases that could come in useful to a hairdresser

Hello, How are you, Would you like a haircut, a shampooing, how much to cut?

We leafed through the book but there was nothing that matched what the Hairdresser wanted to say. Actually I would have quite liked a haircut but he was redecorating the salon and his hands were all painty, also I would have had to climb over the piled up chairs to get to the shampooing sink.

I’m staying at the Bonjour Pensiyon, a guesthouse straight out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. A large, crumbling and beautiful house from the Ottoman period with painted ceilings and fabulous light fittings. The central courtyard is paved with marble and piled with plants, this is where breakfast is served and where the sultry girls who run the place spend their time, smoking, gossiping and looking after grandma who has been suffering from Alzheimer's for 20 years now, the old lady is like a baby bird with her shock of fluffy white hair, she hums constantly and tends to wander off when nobody’s looking.

Yesterday there was another guest, a silent Turkish commercial traveller. Now the sole paying inmate, I spent lunchtime with the family and have been invited to the birthday party of a member of the household this evening - the large man who had manned the reception desk yesterday. I remembered him because he was naked apart from his red satin underpants.

Strange Visitor

I didn’t intend to stop for more than one night in Aydin, but I hadn’t reckoned on the fulsomeness of Turkish hospitality. One of the professors from this town's university visited my house in Bristol last year, so I dropped by to say hello on my way north - I’m not allowed to leave until I’ve been properly shown around.

Aydin is largely made up of newish pastel-coloured concrete tower blocks and mosques, visitors do not come here. Before I go out on the street I put on clothes that I think are properly sober, I look in the mirror and think 'would a Turkish person wear that?’ and I think they might, but people are falling off their bicycles trying to get a better look at me, so I guess that I must appear as an odd cartoonish figure in this landscape. If I look back at the women I pass, they have often stopped in the street and turned to watch me, when they see me they smile and wave, which is nice but slightly unnerving.

I am leaving tomorrow but not before I have made a supper party, my mouth made the suggestion before my brain could stop it and now I’m a bit daunted by the prospect of cooking for a roomful of Turkish academics, possibly they are all daunted by the thought that I might make them eat toad in the hole and spotted dick.

Aydin is known for it’s figs so I’m going to make this tagliatelle dish with figs, lemon and chilli (it’s good, try it) followed by chicken and spinach salad with roast peppers.

This morning I went to the market with its streets of vegetable stalls piled high with produce. The other shoppers are all pushing big overflowing trolleys, I try and buy just one handful of chilli peppers and I get laughed at, it’s not worth charging me for such a small amount, nor the single lime - then some ladies stop me and ask me something - I can’t understand, so one of the women makes a call on her mobile and passes the handset to me so that I can speak to a young girl trying to translate her mother’s question

My mother wants to know ... whasserangum afffersezzem ...

... actually I can’t remember the exact sounds made after that first bit, but it was incomprehensible, we flounder around trying out sounds on each other until the phone runs out of battery, we part company with none of us any the wiser.


Mudbathing Postscript
There seemed to be demand for an image of the mud baths, I'm the one wallowing.

If you stand up in this warm salty compound it's thigh deep but lie down in it and you bob on the surface - weird, and cool, when you want to de-mud you can just dive into the lake on the other side of the wall.

Hot Turkey

The first part of this trip has been in Dalyan, a small Turkish holiday town. We stayed in one of the messy jumble of small pensions hugging the curve of a fat river, the tourism here is low-rise - not chic but there are no chain outlets here either. The bulk of the foreign tourists have gone and the holiday-makers are mostly Turkish now.

The popular thing to do is hop on one of the boats going to the coast, whole families come along on these trips, the men take my husband aside and try and teach him something about fishing while the women get out their purses and, through sheer force of will, make me understand their family history illustrated with the bundles of photographs they always have with them. A ten-year-old from Istanbul with frighteningly good English helped with some translation and, hearing that I had not eaten well the night before, has drawn me up a list of what I must eat and the places I must visit when I get to her city. The image here is one side of several pages of instructions, you might need to click on it if you want to read it.

The Director has now gone to America to attend another film festival and I’m going to go and look at some other bits of Turkey on my own. Lone travelling always gets a bit more extreme and I’ve had some awful times doing it as well as some really good ones, if I can get a connection I’ll tell you about it...