Rhodes Stories

As our vessel approached Rhodes port on a hot day, I wondered where Collossus of Rhodes stood. I tried to imagine we were passing between the legs of Helios while shades of folded sails and swinging ropes were sweeping the floorboards, and cries of ancient deckhands are heard for a safe passage. 

We saw the walls of Rhodes Old Town and minarets of two mosques afar, Süleymaniye Mosque and Ibrahim Pasha Mosque decorating the ancient skyline. 

We rented a renovated house close to St John’s Gate at the end of Pithagora Lane. Rhodes Old Town is UNESCO listed. Decscendants of Greek and Turkish ancestors who made this place home for many centuries still live in Old Town. As you walk by on narrow cobblestone alleys you may notice some house-doors are left open, from where murmurs of old stories escape along with mist. Sometimes a motorcyclist pass by, but otherwise in this part of the town you will be breathing the past.  

Upstairs, I sit on a small sofa in a small hall and fixed my gaze outside. The balcony door has windows from ground to ceiling. Outside there was a tiny Juliette balcony, on it a tiny table with a green plant in a terracotta pot and tiny chairs on each side. Beyond I see ancient walls of a desolate house waiting to be renovated. Behind that there are city walls close to St. John’s gate. I hear constant buzzing of cicadas singing through intense heat, taking me to what this place looked like five hundred years ago. 

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As you walk down Pithagora Lane towards Hippocrates Square at noon you will see more and more tourists. When you reach the square suddenly the magic is lost; you will be surrounded by hundreds of sweaty tourists with bad sunburns. Phones are in hand or mounted on selfie sticks, harsh daylight is casting ugly shades everywhere, everybody is in Instagram or TikTok, or Facebook, or WhatsApp or GodKnowsWhat recording mode, desperate to show off they are having good time, while makeups, fake eyelash glues and ice creams are melting fast in thirty four degrees Celsius. 

Tourists are drinking coloured drinks, taking selfies for most bizarre looking photos, standing next to store entrances where the cold AC air blows. 

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When the sun sets and magic hour begins, crowds get most intense, barkers appear in restaurant fronts. Tourists appear strolling in better outfits, summery and light coloured, suitable for dinner; all had showers, young women and young men suntanned, glance at each other briefly, no doubt they are now feeling good with a prospect of romance sparkles their eyes, everybody is in their better selves, insecurities were shelved, sicknesses and world’s troubles were forgotten just for tonight. 

We dined in New Town then came back to Old Town late at night. It was busier than daytime. While waiting for the girls shopping in a gift shop on Socratous Street, I threw myself to a shop front across the street to avoid crowds. I noticed it was a jewellery shop with bright lights. Realising I was blocking the shop window, I moved aside. The owner acknowledged my gesture and we started to talk. 

- Waiting for the girls, my wife and my sister, they are shopping there. Sorry. I didn’t want to obstruct your shop window. 

- Yes, you’d better. 

- My name is Ergun. Yours?

- Nikos. 

- We love Rhodians’ hospitality. We had troubles in the past. But things are better now. With relaxed visa rules, trade between Marmaris and Rhodes flourished. 

- We fought for nothing. You and I are normal, politicians are not. The shop owner there and there (indicating shops) are Turks. We are friends. We eat and drink together. 

- Yes. You are right. Politicians are not normal. 

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We went to Museum of Modern Greek Art to see a photography exhibition, Ara Güler’s Anatolia in Colour. 

After visiting the exhibition we chatted with a young guy whom we bought the tickets from. Yannis wants to be a chef. He recommended a few authentic Greek tavernas in the southern part of the city, outside St. George’s gate. 

In the evening we went home, freshened up, then walked up the St John’s gate and passed to the south. We walked fair bit at dusk with a feeble white light pouring from my cell phone’s Google Maps. 

We were in a working class suburb. We can tell from clothing lines, worn off supermarket store signs and black garbage bags overflowing large bins on the pavement. Not that this was off putting; I like experiencing real lives of real people. When we reached Alex. Ipsilantou lane. There it was Μια Πιρουνιά (A Fork). The entrance was modest, it could have been a garage, or a warehouse, nothing suggested there was a charming, old school taverna inside. 

Alekos, the host of “A Fork” taverna greeted us. He was a sympathetic man in his seventies. He showed us a group of black and white photographs of his ancestors hung on the wall behind him. There was a beautiful girl image with sad eyes. Alekos told us she was starved to death during Nazi occupation.

Inside, it was simply a medium size hall with walls painted in pink, featuring a clock going in reverse, anecdotes written on mirrors, little pots with colourful little flowers, more anecdotes written on blackboards, some in Greek, some in English, like “The problem with the world is everyone is a few drinks behind - Humphrey Bogart”. 

Inside the hall, there was a stage near the entrance. The rest of the hall had pale green wooden tables, around them there were pink and yellow wooden chairs. 

The pale green roof was covering half of the hall length from the stage end. The other half was  just a skeleton of beams supporting the walls. You could see the sky, dark blue, deep and sad, and stars are sprinkled on it. 

It was a balmy evening with aniseed breeze and unsung songs. 

We had delicious food, octopus, calamari, salad, cheese balls, fried cheese with honey and sesame seed and uzo. 

Two musicians took stage. One was playing a guitar and the other one, a slim guy with glasses, a bouzouki. Ballads of Dodecanese Islands filled the air. The slim musician played Zülfü Livaneli’s “kardeşin duymaz el oğlu duyar” in Greek. I greeted him. I tapped my right hand on my chest; he did the same. 

At the door we thanked Aleko; he had the waitress took our photograph with him in memory of the night. 

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I saw him sitting on a stone wall under the shade of a tree. He was a dapper man, in his eighties perhaps, holding a rosary in his hands, with blue trousers, a light blue shirt and a blue fedora hat. He greeted me (his name was Şahap) and we started to talk in Turkish. 

- I am ninety years old. 

- You don’t look like ninety. 

- My ancestors came with Yavuz Sultan Selim from Karaman. I’ve seen so many things. Now everybody is gone. 

There was a silence. 

- Do you think Azrael discriminate when your time comes?

- Err.. I don’t know.

- No it won’t. It won’t give you a minute if you ask for a minute. It will take you right away. Who do you think then is the most welcoming?

- God?

- No. It is the Mother Earth. It will take you to its bosom whether you are a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim. 

Şahap was looking for something in his shirt’s pocket. He pulled two passport size black and white photographs. One a young handsome man in his thirties (it was him), and another one a beautiful woman. 

- It has been many years since I lost her. I have been living here all by myself. I don’t know where I want to be buried. 

- But don’t you have children, grandchildren?

- I do but I live alone and I’m alone. 

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When we left Rhodes, once again Mediterranean Sea embraced us. Harsh winds were whistling through the upper deck while white foams were kissing dark blue waves. In them hundreds of stories were being retold, like sirens’ whispers they sounded unintelligible as they mixed with each-other and as we left beautiful Rhodes behind.  

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The Hagia Sophia

 I was standing before the altar in the Hagia Sophia. I looked up and saw two long curtains coming down from the apse ceiling, partially covering up mosaics depicting Virgin Marry and the Christ Child. There is solemn sadness in their gaze, visible from the gap between the curtains. The curtains were installed when the complex was converted from a museum into a mosque in 2020.

Two calligraphic wood-panel medallions are located within the interior nave of the apse. They bare names of Allah and Muhammed.

The crowd beneath the dome, tourists, faithful and unfaithful alike, were looking up and around in awe. I wondered how many of Christian and Muslim visitors realised how absurd it was to be unified under one place of worship designed and redesigned to revere different versions of conceptually the same god.

The Hagia Sophia was built as a church building in 537 AD and remained a mosque from 1453 until 1931, when it was closed to the public for four years. It was re-opened in 1935 as a museum under the secular Republic of Turkey, and the building was Turkey's most visited tourist attraction as of 2019. In July 2020, the Council of State annulled the 1934 decision to establish the museum, and the Hagia Sophia was reclassified as a mosque. The decision to designate Hagia Sophia as a mosque was highly controversial and drew condemnation from the Turkish opposition, UNESCO, the World Council of Churches and the International Association of Byzantine Studies, as well as numerous international leaders. 1

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1. Hagia Sophia - Wikipedia ↩︎

Demise of wall clocks

In the foyer where the giant teddy bear with its lifeless gaze is watching crowds below, parents take pictures of their children with cellphones. Travellers from all over the world are buzzing about in the airport. This place feels like an extraterrestrial space station with air conditioners protecting humans from hostile desert weather outside. There is even a small botanic garden inside.

Battered by a fourteen hour flight, standing there before the final leg of our journey, we were happy regardless. We moved to an area where people watched an electronic display of flight schedules. 

I don’t wear a wristwatch. 

My cellphone was still showing Sydney time. I wanted to know what the local time was. 

I looked around, high ceilings, giant columns, gorgeous shop windows, shrines of Italian fashion brands, the giant teddy bear, and the flight schedule display, but no sign of a wall clock anywhere. 

Remembering gorgeous Swiss railway clocks and their imitations, I wonder what happened to them. 

We used to have wall clocks in foyers. They were useful artefacts of the analog age. If your mechanical wristwatch failed or you didn’t own one, you could always count on wall clocks. They were revered, communal objects.

With the rise of cellphones, we forgot wall clocks. 

Apple initially used the Swiss railway clock design without permission in iOS 6. Although the exact details of the licensing agreement are confidential. It was reported that Apple ultimately paid Swiss national rail operator SBB about CHF 20M (about US$ 22.4M as of January 2014) to license the use of the clock design. Apple later removed the design from its operating system with iOS 7 (Source: Wikipedia)

The cellphone clock is useful, precise, and doesn’t require readjusting. But cellphones are multifunctional devices, and displaying time is a demoted function. The clock is permanently present on the home screen and sometimes on the status bar. However availability of local time depends on the Location service that may not be available when you don’t have Internet access. That is often the case in airports.

My eyes scanned the flight display, no trace of the local time. 

Five minutes passed. Next to a label “Local Time” at the bottom of the flight display I saw a tiny digital clock. 

A deep sigh followed. 

Bodrum Bodrum

”When you reach the hill, you will see Bodrum. Don’t think you’ll leave as you came. Others before you thought the same, as they departed they left their soul behind in Bodrum” wrote Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı (1886-1973) The Fisherman of Halicarnassus, poet, writer of novels and short stories and essays, ethnographer and travel writer. 

In 1945, Cevat Şakir wrote a letter to his artist, writer and poet friends and asked them to be in Izmir on the date he determined. If they came, he  promised to sail them to heaven - at the time there was no access to Bodrum by land. 

Sabahattin Eyüboğlu, Bedri Rahmi, Erol Güney, Sabahattin Ali, Samim Kocagöz, Fuat Erol Keskinoğlu and Necati Cumalı answered his call and met in Izmir on the same day. 

They sailed to the Aegean Sea by taking bread, cheese, water, Kos rusk, tobacco and lots of rakı on a boat. They agreed they will not read newspapers, they will not listen to the radio, they will not go ashore unless they have to, they will be cut off from the whole world, and they will be lost in the blue paradise called Bodrum, where no one has gone until then.

They did not know, the boat trip they made to Bodrum changed the fate of a once sleepy fishing and sponge diving village profoundly. 

Bodrum was a quintessential bohemian holiday town in early 70’s. If you are a baby-boomer who lived in Turkey then, it is likely that you had worn flare jeans, owned a Cat Stevens vinyl, protested 6th US Flotilla, and visited Bodrum in the summer with a Beetle or a Renault 12. 

Bodrum was much smaller then, it had not sprawled its satellite towns yet, Gümüşlük among others was a sleepy village with cow dung smell in the air, hippies sleeping outdoors, with no trace of gold rush that would soon bring the tourism monster and destroy the peace that boomers had given a chance. 

Today you may wonder what went wrong, but what happened to Bodrum is not unique - other places had similar chance encounters that started the decay, eventually turning the paradise into something unrecognisable. 

In Saint Tropez, Brigitte Bardot was photographed by Willy Rizzo, in July 1958. She had a leading role in Roger Vadim’s debut movie “And God Created Woman.”  BB wasn’t a hippie (this was nearly a decade before counterculture hippiedom was invented), but she was one of many alternative culture influencers who rebelled against popular norms of 50’s. What followed was a boom. 

Life is short and can be cruel. Everyone, rich, poor, famous, or ordinary seeks their paradise on earth.  

Soon after BB posed alongside fish stands and fishing nets, the wealthy, yearning to productise bohemian lifestyle without being bohemian, and the poor, who would drive, wipe, feed or serve wealthy, both types of outsiders rushed into the sleepy village like flies on a cow dung. 

Overnight, the sleepy village is no longer a sleepy village but a place where annoyingly poor guitar performers wake up everybody else into a cheap wine hangover. Before you knew, hotels and villas popped up like mushrooms. The invasion had begun. 

People on vacation are loaded with cash, but short in time, they demand comfort and convenience to maximise their return on investment. The result is fast vacation economics. 

Tourists don’t care about sustainability, they drink water in plastic bottles, use plastic bags, use plastic packaging, turn on air conditioning units, overuse water for personal needs, use cars even for short distances, shop in shopping malls, look for fast food stalls. 

It is nighttime. We are waiting in a car at a red light - traffic lights are mere suggestions here, sometimes drivers ignore the red light. 

A motorcycle with a rider and a passenger, no helmets, swooshed in from the refuge and stopped in front of us with dust swirling in spotlight. The young passenger sitting at the back, a cigarette in his left hand, was scrolling his cell phone screen with his right hand - his smile was visible under the screen’s light, it’s an Instagram share from a girl he was looking at. The lights turned green, the rider released the bike like a longbow arrow. The passenger, legs in air, almost fell, barely held the rider’s shirt, before both vanished into the darkness. 

As our vacation nears its end, eternal quest for paradise continues. Paradise is where we move and live slowly and thoughtfully, in harmony with nature, not in spite of it. The idea of  vacation is to vacate our hectic work lifestyle. With more people working  remotely, there is now a good chance to move to the paradise for good, connect with nature, live slowly while respecting the environment, favour local commerce and economic sustainability, and involve with community work to protect the paradise. 

Reluctant Tourist

Visiting art museums

Visiting art museums in a city as a tourist is a great way to understand the historical context through which the city evolved and what contributions its artists made to the world of art.

Appreciating art

Most people visiting art museums these days can hardly appreciate art. This is not because they choose to be ignorant but rather the conditions to consume art has changed.

Appreciation of a painting is an educated process. One should have an idea about the period in which the painting was created, what it represents and how it relates to the artist’s world view and to other works of art at the time.

Visitors should seek solitary moments to view art long enough to absorb its meaning. Most museums have seats for visitors to take a break and enjoy art, with their view interrupted only occasionally by others walking around.

Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam

Van Gogh is not only the most famous painter ever lived but like Che Guevara he has risen to a cult figure status in pop culture.

If you visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the first hurdle awaiting you is a long queue coiled outside the building. Then, once inside, you will join a chaotic flow.

You will notice Instagram or Facebook aficionados fulfilling their narcissistic tendencies, taking 45 degree selfies in front of famous paintings.

It is not just selfie paparazzi, but excessive number of people admitted to museums increased stress among art lovers and diminished the value exchanged in return of the admission fee paid.

Appreciating a painting with a full view has become an impossible task. By visiting a “must see” museum therefore, you will end up ruining your day.

Welcome to perils of modern tourism.

Giethoorn

Giethoorn is promoted as an idyllic Dutch village from a romantic past. A far cry from it, you will find an overcrowded Disneyland-like theme park.

Giethoorn is a minuscule Venice; there are houses separated by waterways, connected with tiny bridges and pathways flocked by hundreds of tourists. Waterways too are invaded by them squeezed in tiny boats frequently halting in traffic jams.

Giethoorn is a classical example of what happened to a once idyllic village, after it fell victim to mass tourism.

Old times

During late sixties when I grew up as a young kid, globalisation as we know today, did not exist. The world was much poorer and China had not opened its economy yet. Airline travel was expensive, affordable by the rich. The world’s socio-economic dynamics were ruled by nation states, and European countries had thousands of kilometres long protected borders. EU had not been formed yet.

There were regional wars and conflicts, but mass immigration to the West, excluding perhaps Vietnamese fleeing the war was not as widely spread as today.

There was no Internet. News depended solely on newspapers, radio and tv broadcasting.

Yet the world was much more interesting and tourists were much happier with more space allocated for them.

In the half a century that followed, improved global wealth, the rise of Internet and cheaper air travel, ramped up tourism by 56 times ⁽¹⁾. Today nearly 4 million tourists travel the world everyday.

On the positive side, mass tourism democratised travelling, once available only for privileged. It increased awareness of other cultures and helped humans to mix. Even sporadic global terrorism threats did not deter crowds from travelling.

Environmental impact

On the flip side, mass tourism had been bad for the environment. Past century saw enormous rise of carbon emissions and consumption of plastic. Tourism related pollution across the globe increased dramatically. There are now mountains of plastic encircling in the Atlantic visible from the outer space.

Loss of innocence

Prior to mass tourism the world used to be a more mysterious and romantic place.

During my childhood our household had subscription to a child magazine called “Brother Doğan” (Tr. “Doğan Kardeş”). I remember in early sixties I was trying to make sense of a certain cartoon strip in that called “Mr Hunter”, who hunted wild elephants in colonial Africa with a trumpet shaped rifle. Africa was a remote world without anyone’s reach, decorated with silhouettes of giraffes walking in the wild. There were still undiscovered tribes in the Amazon. As a child I was fascinated by this big world of wonders. The world used to offer endless surprises. The world was interesting.

Every individual was a discoverer. With no Google at our disposal, there was a notion of surprise, a sense of adventure, a sense of “I don’t fully control my destiny” that sent our spines chills.

In contrast today’s tourists lost their sense of wonder, thanks to Internet. Modern tourists can hardly go beyond what is prescribed by the Internet. Everywhere they go they will be surrounded by like-minded herds, whereas better venues may be hiding at a stone’s throw distance. Most interesting tapas places in Barcelona are the ones not known to Internet, attended by locals only. If you’re stuck at La Rambla however you may end up dining in a tourist trap where you will overpay for substandard food.   

Iceland

You may fancy the idea of visiting Iceland when you see a wonderful Instagram photo, or perhaps you read about famous shipwrecks in a TripAdvisor article. On YouTube you might even watch a drone video exploring the coastline of entire island. Within an hour or so you will have a list of best spots to visit in Iceland.

Thousands of people watch the same videos, see the same photos and read the same articles. So when you get there it should be no surprise to find flocks of photographers around the shipwreck trying to exclude each other from the frame.

This is what adventure looks like in the 21st century.
   

Narcissism

Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube run on narcissism. Consequently touristic value of a place is determined by how accommodating it is to fulfil narcissist desires, rather than how interesting it actually is.

Selfie phenomenon is the key indicator of narcissistic economy.

Take medieval towns like Bruges and Ghent. They are touristic because, they offer endless opportunities for people who want to share photographs in social media. They have canals which accommodate selfie paparazzi flocked in boats like sardines, as well as many restaurants facing canals and medieval panorama.

Canals once loaded with faeces in medieval times are now loaded with tourists thanks to social media. Every selfie or photograph shared, drops a coin in the coffers of Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. 

Remedy

Ironically great pulling gravity of information bubble created by Internet can work for tourists who want to have better experience. There are ways to stay outside the bubble and avoid crowds.

1. Find/meet a local and use their knowledge.
2. Hire a guide who may know tricks to defeat crowds.
3. Travel off-season.

(1) The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) estimates that internationally there were just 25 million tourist arrivals in 1950. 68 years later this number has increased to 1.4 billion international arrivals per year. This is a 56-fold increase (source: Bastian Herre and Veronika Samborska (2023) - “Tourism” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. Retrieved from: https://ourworldindata.org/tourism)

An antique shop in Amsterdam

An antique shop window in Amsterdam.. Delight of browsing through objects survived distant past. Just think about care, craftsmanship and love embedded in these objects, and happiness or sorrow they caused in fellow beings who are no longer with us. These objects whisper us stories they witnessed, life dramas they were part of. Alas we can't hear them.

The Avenue

Slender women with veil, every few hundred meters prostrate themselves on wide pavements of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, a small plastic cup in their sun burnt hands. Passers, mostly tourists gazed at them briefly with indifference as they continue their stroll before large, bright shop windows.

The sun rapidly sets beyond the colossal arms of the Arc de Triomphe, small black cars and vespas are busily circling around it like fire flies attracted to bonfire.

Tourists, Europeans, Americans, Australians, Arabs, Chinese, Japanese, with track-pants, sneakers, and backpacks are scanning surrounding buildings in every direction, looking at reliefs above window frames, reliefs partly covered in gray exhaust dirt, watching the crowd below with a contemptuous look.

Native Parisians who just left their offices heading home choose to walk briskly on the road side, as shop fronts are packed with tourists.

A group of men is in desperation to grab attention of passers by; they play loud Arabic music and encourage crowd to dance. 

A security guard controlled tourist queue is hanging out of Louis Vuitton shop.

The Avenue, once a symbol of Parisian attitude, turned into a globalization showcase, its hay days are long gone and its distinct glamorous character was left behind like an old sweetheart’s sigh.

Neon lights

There is something mysteriously beautiful about neon lights in twilight.

As the night closes in like an owl’s heavy wings, neon lights appear to remind strangers their irresistible solitude.

In those magic moments of twilight we see the sunlight tangoing with neon lights.

We witness a silent carnival in twilight; the most ordinary becomes extraordinary and beautiful.

Then suddenly the full moon rises over the roof of Café Artemis. We hope the night may bring pleasant surprises.

A stranger walks in to a Tobacco shop.

The man behind the cash register gazes at him with tired eyes.

A breeze of slight discomfort fills the air.

Chinese restaurant in Bodrum

Sometimes life offers us bizarre opportunities to laugh about.

These days we see accidents like this one more often than before. Thanks to Globalisation, we now have Amazon rainforest tribesmen wearing I Love NY teeshirts.

This photo shows a mosque overlaid by an image of a tiny and hopelessly ugly mini-shopping centre. On the right a Chinese Restaurant. Sacredness and solemnity of the mosque are challenged by an opportunist vision.

A Chinese Restaurant in a holiday town in Turkey would have been a laughable idea until not long ago. I think it is still funny if you consider great majority of tourists pour into Turkey for authentic Turkish food.

click to enlarge

I have to say I hate the modern sun-roof like structure in the middle; at first glance it looks as if it is cut out from a modern Texan skyscraper overnight by an organised mob of Turkish pirate-architects.

But the hideous blue glass thing makes a perfect irony in terms of composition. It shows local merchants' desire to become modernised. These local small businessmen lack sophistication that may only come through centuries-long social refinement. Nevertheless despite my urge to throw up, I salute their bravery to change themselves.

This photo was shot in Turgutreis, the second largest holiday town in Bodrum peninsula, in September 2011.

Many beautiful things

How we organise things reflect our attitude towards life. These photos were shot during my holiday in Bodrum, Turkey in September 2011.  They show my desire to capture life from merchandise organised by simple shopkeepers.  

turkish delights

shoes

breads

seashells

glasswork

beads

beautiful charms from ayse and ali

sunglasses

herbs

flat bottles

Coffa or cauphe

In 1656 a London barrister, Thomas Blount, published his Glossographia: or a Dictionary, Interpreting all such Hard Words of Whatsoever Language, now used in our refined English Tongue. Blount’s dictionary listed more than eleven thousand words, many of which, he recognised, were new, reaching London in the hurly-burly of trade and commerce¹:

coffa or cauphe, a kind of drink among the Turks and Persians, (and of late introduced among us) which is black, thick and bitter, destrained from Berries of that nature, and name, thought good and very wholesom: they say it expels melancholy.

Three and a half century later I am enjoying a well-made cup of Turkish coffee here in Bodrum, Turkey. The aroma and flavour of centuries long oriental tradition leaves a distinguished taste on the palate up to an hour.

The diamond shaped thing on the plate is called süt helvası from Fındıklı, Rize; a rough sugar-like dessert made by cooking equal amounts of sugar and milk for hours until the mixture becomes thick.

This should not make you believe that we Turks are equally good at making Cappuccino, or Latte. In my view the best Italian coffee is served in Roma, Italy or in Sydney, Australia.

You should enjoy local food proven by centuries long scrutiny when you are travelling and avoid global brands in order to make your holiday a memorable one.

1. From The Information, James Gleick

Off-peak holidaying in Bodrum

Finally we made our journey to Yalikavak, a seaside town in Bodrum peninsula. It is the beginning of September. The weather is very pleasant, thirty plus degrees.

Many people have already gone home following ‘bayram’ holiday break as schools are starting. At this time of the year locals, childless couples, and retirees complete the life-scape, and of course those melancholic stray dogs.

If you don’t have young children you should consider holidaying off-peak season. You may have the best holiday of your life in September –or May I am told- in southwest Turkey. It is much less crowded; everybody is more relaxed, the climate is still warm -not boiling hot compared to peak season-. And you have the chance to blend into local population.

There is ‘pazar’ –local markets- in Yalikavak today. We took a ‘dolmus’ –minibus- from Gundogan to Yalikavak. Due to low season, public transportation is less frequent now. Our dolmus is packed with people, 29 in total, twice its capacity.

Semra and Tulin went to stroll in pazar’s endless alleys protected from sunlight by large sails. I am sitting in a local café right now enjoying my cold beer, and typing on my MacBook Air. This is heaven. No not that, I mean seriously what else a middle aged man would want.

Earlier I went to pazar with them and we bought ‘dolma’ from a local seller, a woman whom I may qualify as ‘dolma nazi’. She was proud of her produce and didn’t bother answering our calls for a while as her dolmas were selling fast.

I noticed and Semra too, women in this region are strong in character. Many of them own their own business. Their gestures, the way they talk and behave reflect their pride and strength to a large extent due to perhaps their economic independence. This is in contrast to Anatolian women, who seem trapped inside conservative family structure of Islamic lifestyle.