Turkish Muse

Food: A Story in Three Parts

This joke -- brought to you by Jeff -- goes over big here on the Aegean:

A university student is late to class and his teacher says, "Where have you been?"

"Sorry, hocam, I didn't get up until 9," the student replies.

"But class doesn't start till noon," the teacher says.

"But, hocam, I had to have breakfast."

*     *     *     *     *

While having breakfast at a restaurant in our neighborhood the other day, Jeff and I mulled over the menu options, trying to choose orders that wouldn't take too long to prepare as we had other engagements that morning.

I chose an omlette, which I knew them to make rather quickly, and Jeff chose sahanda yumurta and also a simit tabağı, or a plate of simit with a side of tomatoes, cucumber and beyaz peynir (kind of like the equivalent of ordering a bagel, cream cheese and fruit in the US).

For a relatively quick breakfast, I noted to Jeff that it still seemed to be a lot of food.

After we gave our order, the waiter looked up and said:

"So you don't want a normal breakfast then?"

*     *     *     *     *

That same morning at breakfast we watched as dozens of people lined up outside in the cold but for what we didn't know. The line wasn't moving, and yet people kept coming and the line ended up snaking around the corner.

We posited multiple theories as to what they were all waiting for: a social security payment, perhaps? (Many of the people in line seemed to be of retirement age, hence this theory.) 

Then we thought maybe they were all waiting to see a judge, as we also have a theory that the building they were lining up in front of is municipal housing for judges. Where we first got this idea, I have no idea. It's possible we just made it up.

Finally, we asked the waiter what they were all waiting for.

"Ah," he said. "Every day, a truck comes from a Foça co-op with farm-fresh eggs, milk and cheese. Every day people wait there to buy their eggs and milk. They are very good quality eggs."

*     *     *     *     *

Conversation in Sultanahmet

I scanned the rows of park benches and one by one ruled out all those I couldn’t sit on. Family of tourists, no room for me anyway; young Turkish man who might get the wrong idea; elderly couple having a romantic moment in the dwindling sunlight.

A middle-aged woman sitting alone at the edge of one bench caught my eye and I approached her.

“May I sit here?” I asked in Turkish.

“Of course, of course,” she said, moving an eighth of an inch closer to the edge of the bench, the way polite people do when there is no need to make room but want to appear welcoming.

I sat and put my bags next to me, clutching the straps through my arm. It was still touristy, I told myself, you never know who might try to take your bag.

From my bench, I had the most beautiful view of the Sultanahmet Mosque, lit up by the setting sun, sparkling behind the water fountain’s mist. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been here in so long. I hadn’t ever noticed how many locals were doing the same thing I was, just sitting, staring, contemplating, maybe a wee bit in awe of how strikingly beautiful the view was.

I remarked as such to the woman next to me.

“It is gorgeous, isn’t it?” she nodded in affirmation. “I love coming here.”

She asked me what I was doing in Turkey, and I told her I lived here.

In Istanbul? No, I said. Izmir.

“I hate Izmir,” she said, vehemently. “I went there last year and hated it.”

I was surprised and said so. I’ve met very few Turkish people who don’t like Izmir. I asked her why she didn’t like the city.

“There’s nothing there, nothing at all. It has no soul.” Here she nodded knowingly, as if imparting some kind of sacred information.

“Now, Istanbul, Istanbul is something else, isn’t it?” she said, and it wasn’t really a question the way she said it.

We sat in silence for a moment, watching the seagulls swooping wide and low over the mosque.

“I’d offer you some tea, but I don’t imagine you carry a teacup with you,” she said with a smile, gesturing with her own hour-glass teacup, which she had produced from a canvas bag carrying a thermos filled with tea.

I laughed. No, I said, I don’t have a teacup in my purse, but thank you for the offer.

We sat in silence for a while longer, and then I stood up to go.

 

The Best -- Even if it is the Only -- Reason to Visit Izmir

I am not the world's best advocate for Izmir tourism. I have often pointed out on this blog and to friends that Izmir is a rather boring, quiet town with no museums of note, no beaches, and no historic sites or monuments worth visiting.

Visiting Izmir is not for every traveller coming to Turkey. Most of the typical, traditional reasons people visit a city -- good food, vibrant nightlife, history, museums -- don't apply to Izmir. Simply put: if you're interested in sun and sand, you'd be better off in Bodrum or Antalya. If you want to see historic Ottoman mosques, go to Bursa and Istanbul.

However, I have also said before -- and I stand by this -- that anyone who professes a love of Turkey should visit Izmir to get a better sense of what a modern, nationalist Turkish city looks like than you can get from just visiting Istanbul or a few cities along the Mediterranean.

Izmir is Turkey's Republican dream, the concrete manifestation of its utopian vision of a "Turkey for the Turks". You don't really see that kind of philosophy play out in Istanbul, where the city's more international, cosmopolitan inhabitants are frankly more welcoming of outsiders, whether they're from the US, Eastern Europe or Diyarbakir.

But Izmir did start out like Istanbul: like Istanbul, Izmir has always been a center of commerce. Throughout the city's several thousand year history, Izmir's port saw heavy trading with the rest of the world. Trading and commerce flourished, particularly during the latter years of the Ottoman Empire, and people from all over Europe (known as Levantines) settled in Izmir, opening businesses, hotels and restaurants. All that changed, though, in 1923.

Now, Izmir does not many attract international tourists, except those on a cross-country bus trip who are on their way to Ephesus and who stop here for a few hours in the afternoon. Many tourists who come to Izmir mistakenly believe there are beaches here and are sorely disappointed to discover that Çeşme, which Izmir's marketing material lists as a great spot for swimming, is at least 30 minutes away by car and much longer if you go by bus.

However.

In the past two weeks, we've had two sets of visitors stay with us. The first set consisted of two American women, one of whom was Jeff's former colleague from Philly, and then two CouchSurfers from Germany. In explaining to them what Izmir had to offer, I started out with what the city doesn't have: museums, sites, historic buildings, mosques, churches, beaches.

But when pressed for what there is to do here, I kept coming back to the same answer again and again: soaking up Izmir's culture and lifestyle. Izmir has a very particular vibe that is unlike any other Turkish city I have visited. Life here is relaxing. It's slow, laidback, not necessarily quiet, but definitely calm, especially in summer when people don't work too terribly hard.

Life in Izmir is sitting on the Kordon at night and watching the sun set. It's navigating Alsancak's alleys and sipping Turkish coffee at one of the few historic Greek houses that survived the devastation of 1923. It's spending several languid hours eating a lavish (but not necessarily expensive) fish and meze dinner. It's sitting for tea with your butcher in the middle of the afternoon just because.

Maybe what Izmir has to offer tourists is not a harried day tour, or a jog through a spice market or covered bazaar. So it doesn't have beaches where you can sunbathe and order a cocktail. Perhaps that's not the point. Maybe Izmir has something different to offer: a respite, a chance to slow down for a moment while travelling, a space to eat and drink well.

Because eating and drinking are two things Izmir does exceptionally well. The food in this town, especially in summer when all the gorgeous produce is in season, is phenomenal. If you're a vegetarian, you'll eat very well here. And if you love meat, there's plenty for you too, as Izmir is famous in Turkey for head meat. (There are more traditional cuts of meat available as well, of course.)

Izmirlis are also proud of the fact that there are so many bars in this city. (Never mind that they are all the same and only serve Efes.) Even though we lived for two years in Beyoğlu before moving to Izmir, I was still surprised at the sheer number of bars in Izmir, not just in the central district, but all over.

Perhaps the best reason -- and maybe the only reason -- to visit Izmir is to simply see a "real" Turkish city, to see one side of what Turkey is. There are few tourists in Izmir, there are no foreigners who own beachfront property. There's just a bunch of people going to work every day, teaching their children right and wrong, planning for their retirement, worrying about the AKP winning another election.

And maybe that's reason enough to visit Izmir. To see what Turkey looks like when you get away from its massive tourism industry, to sit with the locals on the quay and feel the breeze blowing off the Aegean, and to catch a glimpse of what modern Turkey looks like today.

My Favorite Thing About Turkey: The Kindness of Strangers

The Turkey lovefest continues today! Today's guest post is brought to you by Phyllis Nobles.

I’ve been in Istanbul teaching English for 14 months now. And while I’ve studied successful blogs and started up a half dozen of my own, there’s always the morning that I wake up and take everything down. I even blogged from Venice in February, but once back in Istanbul felt I sounded so Elizabeth Gilbert [editor's note: EG is an American writer best known for her 2006 memoir "Eat, Pray, Love") that I deleted 26 of the most beautifully photographed posts you will never see.

You have to know that I am no Elizabeth Gilbert. Meaning, I’ve tried. And trying to be EG has to date cost me about $30,000. A long story from 2008 involving a Molotov Cocktail of an already desperate financial situation, a Doubleday editor who helped acquire "Eat, Pray, Love" who asked to see my unfinished manuscript, Credit Cards R Us, oh, and a recession. Ah, 48. Such a naïve and complicated age. Back when I thought I needed to model my life after someone else’s.

Which brings me up to Barbara, and her gracious offer to let me post while she’s in Paris. Barbara so wisely said about my blog crisis, I’m sure that as you continue writing you will find your writing niche and your blog will feel more like home to you. Which brings me to my favorite thing about Istanbul: the kindness of strangers.

People who don’t even know you and need nothing from you who hold out their hands. The guy at the bakery who offers you a bite of something sweet. Or the olive and the pistachio men at the grocery. The bus driver who spots you — the crazy American walking on the edge of a dangerous highway — and gives you a ride back to the city. The family out in the country whose garden you admire who invites you in for tea.

And these guys whose photograph I wanted to take who made me sit down first to talk — even though they don’t really speak English and I don’t really speak Turkish.

I’ve found something very retro American, circa late 1960s about Istanbul. Back when we cared more about people than about money. And happiness. Which brings me up to one morning last week when — thanks to Barbara’s advice that I thought about all evening — I woke up a million miles from home at home inside my own skin. Something that has miraculously solved all my blogger problems. And, I suspect, my Elizabeth Gilbert Complex.

About the Author: Phyllis Nobles is from Oxford, Mississippi, USA and is editing "Cowgirl Up: How to Write a Best-Seller in a Chick-Lit Market", "totally 20☮ how i spent my economic crisis" and a new blog at The Sweet Life of Phyllis Nobles.

Sunday on the Aegean: A Photo Story

Sundays are lovely days in Izmir. The pace of life is already pretty slow here, but on Sundays it practically grinds to a complete halt. Very few shops are open, save for a handful of grocers and the neighborhood pet shop happy to sell 130 TL worth of cat food to a couple of foreigners.

Now that the weather is starting to warm up -- finally! -- and it isn't too hot yet, everyone's out on Sundays along the Aegean Coast, picnicking with their families, flying a kite with their children, or simply sitting in the sunshine.

It's one of the nicest things about living close to Izmir's waterfront. Hopefully, wherever you are today, whatever you're doing, a bit of Izmir's relaxed vibe can rub off a little on you too...

Enjoy your Sunday, everyone, and the rest of the weekend!

Start of the Summer Season

The start of the summer season in Turkey is always a lot of fun for me. It's when all the hotels along the coast dust off their tables, fill the pools, wash the linens and ready themselves for the onslaught of tourists, travelers, backpackers and expats who come down to the Aegean and the Mediterranean every year for a bit of sun.

Every year I get a bit giddy as I notice the shops staying open later, the tour buses parked on the Kordon in Izmir, and the random German and French I begin hearing in Alsancak. Tourism in Turkey truly is seasonal: it begins in late April/early May and runs until October, when most coastal hotels close up shop for the winter and take a much-deserved break.

So even though Jeff and I took a few trips over the winter -- namely to Bergama and a day trip to Nysa and Aphrodisias -- it wasn't until last Saturday, when we were sitting in Fethiye under a gorgeous sun by a sparkling pool overlooking the city, that it hit me: the tourism season had officially begun!

Naturally, we had to celebrate with an ice cold Efes.

What about you? Does anything in particular kick off tourism season, or more generally, summer, for you?

Kayaköy: A Photo Journey

In trying to find the words to write this post, I discovered that what moved me more than anything I could say about Kayaköy were the photos I took of the city, which was largely abandoned after 1923 as a result of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey saw the two countries forcibly exchange Christians from Turkey and Muslims from Greece.

I started looking through all my pictures and realized that what I wanted to say about the Treaty of Lausanne and the deportations was better portrayed through my photos of the empty houses themselves, the dilapidated churches, the poppies pushing up between the foundations of people's former homes. So I created this video of my best photos (the song is A Diamandidis Dalgas by Huseini Manes, an example of rembetika, Greek underground music from the 1920s):

  

Kayaköy is a lovely place to visit, but it does help to know a bit about the town's history and why it is such an important site today. If you're interested in learning more about the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey and the events leading up to it, I can recommend the following books (descriptions from their back covers):

"Birds Without Wings" by Louis de Bernières: "Set against the backdrop of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, the Gallipoli campaign and the subsequent bitter struggle between Greeks and Turks, [the novel] traces the fortunes of one small community in south-west Anatolia -- a town in which Christian and Muslim lives and traditions have co-existed peacefully for centuries.

"Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City" by Marjorie Housepian Dobkin: "Dobkin has rendered the first account of what took place within the city. She has used as sources diaries, letters and eyewitness reports of the participants themselves."

Twice a Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey" by Bruce Clark: "Clark's fascinating account of these turbulent events draws on new research in Greece and Turkey, and interviews with surviving refugees who lived through those years, allowing the victims of this large-scale ethnic cleansing to speak for themselves for the first time."

"Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922, The Destruction of Islam's City of Tolerance" by Giles Milton: "A powerful tale of destruction, heorism and survival -- told with the narrative verve that has made Giles Milton a bestselling historian. It unfolds through the memories of the last remaining survivors and the eyewitness accounts of those who found themselves caught up in one of the greatest catastrophes of the modern age."

If you can recommend any other books, please let us know in the comments.

Practical Info: You can get to Kayaköy easily from Fethiye. From the town center, look for a dolmuş that says "Kaya" on the dashboard. At the time of writing, the cost per person was 3.50 TL, and the ride takes about 35-40 minutes. Admission to the historical site is 8 TL.

Next: A wine restaurant in Kayaköy. Previously: Louis de Bernières in Kayaköy.

Louis de Bernières in Kayaköy

"The rest of the population had gathered to observe the departure, but they were not apparently about to do anything untoward. They seemed curious, and oddly subdued, as if they were about to witness a passing procession of animals rather than the deportation of their friends and neighbours. ..."

So begins the description of the forced evacuation of all the Christians out of Eskibahçe, a fictional town in Louis de Bernières' book, "Birds Without Wings." It's one thing to read those words snug in bed at night in Izmir; it's another to hear them read about by the author himself while gazing at the abandoned homes of Christians who once lived in Kayaköy, the real-life village that forms the basis for Eskibahçe.

Yesterday afternoon, under a low, cloudy sky, we trekked over to Kayaköy from Fethiye to attend a book reading and discussion with de Bernières about the novel, a fictitious account of a village populated with both Greeks and Turks and how the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the passing of the Treaty of Lausanne and the subsequent forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey affected its inhabitants.

We arrived in Kayaköy in the morning to give ourselves plenty of time to see the abandoned city before going to the talk. It was the perfect day for hiking through the ruined city, with low, dark clouds overhead and a cool breeze blowing through the empty shells where, not so long ago, Turkish Muslims and Greek Christians once lived in relative peace.

The event was held at the lovely Gunay Gardens, located just a few minutes walking distance from the entrance to Kayaköy, outside by the pool, where we could all sit to eat lunch and then lay on carpets and divans to listen to the talk.

de Bernières read a few passages from the novel, then answered a few questions from the audience. He did all of the research for the novel himself, and it took him almost 10 years to finish the book, mainly because, he said, his previous novel, "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", had done quite well and he spent a lot of time playing golf. (I'm not sure if he was joking here.)

Someone asked if there would be a film made of "Birds Without Wings", and de Bernières said that trying to make this film was like "trying to keep kittens in a box". Maybe someday the film will be made, he said, but right now no one has a definite timeline of when anything will happen.

Even though the book is written in English by a British author, I still assumed that the turnout would include many more local Turkish people than came. Of the some 100 people or so in attendance, the great majority of them were British (which, as I said, sort of does make sense given de Bernières himself is from the UK and the book is in English). But I supposed that more local people would come out -- the novel was translated into Turkish after all -- and so it felt a little bit like a early Doris Lessing novel ("Martha Quest", not "Shikasta", if you catch my drift).

While making our way back to Fethiye, we passed a field growing wild with deep red poppies, and I wondered to myself if, on their way out of Kayaköy in 1923, the departing Christians passed flowers just as beautiful.

Next: A more in-depth look at the village of Kayaköy (with a photo video).

Off to Fethiye

Tomorrow morning Jeff and I are heading out the door just before 6 am to catch the bus to Fethiye. It will be a whirlwind of a weekend: we arrive in Fethiye around lunchtime, whereupon we will head to our hotel, then while away the afternoon by the pool, hopefully with a drink in hand.

We're hoping to meet up with the lovely people behind Turkey's For Life, one of my favorite expat-in-Turkey blogs, and then Sunday we're heading over to Kayakoy for a discussion/book signing with Louis de Bernieres, the author of "Birds Without Wings". (Thankfully, I have just finished it!) Sunday night we head out by bus at 11:30 and get back to Izmir around 6 in the morning.

I am looking forward to this trip, despite the crazy schedule, because it's been a rough couple of days for me and I'll be glad to get away for a little while. One of the kittens we've been taking care of for the past couple of weeks died last night. I always root for the little guys, you know, the ones who have the least chance of surviving, and it just breaks my heart when they don't make it.

I'm not sure exactly how a discussion of the Lausanne Treaty and the 1923 population exchange between Turkey and Greece will cheer me up, but I'm sure it will reorient my current state of mind.

I'll be back next week with a full report on the talk and of our first impressions of Fethiye and Kayakoy!

P.S. Also, I have not forgotten about the Aphrodisias post! It is coming! There are just so many photos! And history! And descriptions of marble! It will be posted next week.

Priorities

It was maybe the fourth or fifth time that our bus stalled that I realized this problem wasn't going to go away quickly. We were on the highway south of Izmir on our way to Aphrodisias when the bus stalled once, twice, three times. It continued to stall every 500 metres or so, slowly puttering to a complete stop in the right lane of a busy highway.

It seemed our bus didn't like hills and was protesting even the slighest inclines. Slowly, slowly, we'd hear the engine slow, then sputter to a stop. Then the driver attempting one, two, three, four times to start it again.

As the driver attempted to get the engine to turn over, everyone on the bus clucked their tongues but said nothing. No one asked if the driver or the tour operator had called a mechanic. No one asked if they had any inkling what the problem was. No one asked what the contingency plan was for situations like this. And neither the tour operator nor the driver thought to let us know what, exactly, the plan was if the bus left us stranded.

Jeff pointing to our bus as it sat stalled on the road. The driver's solution was to have a cigarette break.

So maybe you can imagine my surprise when we finally made it to the restaurant for lunch (the price of which was included in our tour ticket) and everyone started clamoring for more of this and different of that.

"Why isn't the water included in the price?"

"What's wrong with this soup? It tastes funny."

"Can we have another salad? This one is too small."

"We don't like the set menu. Can we have pide?"

I mean, really, it was hilarious. No one bothered to ask about the problems with the bus, no one wanted to know if a mechanic was coming to fix it, but by golly they sure let it be known that their soup tasted funny!

As for me, I wasn't really too bothered by the whole thing. On the bus I had my iPod and  episodes of "Modern Family" to keep me busy, and I found the lunch to be positively delightful, particularly the dessert.

And, yes, the bus did get fixed: while we all ate our lunch (or complained about it), a mechanic came out and fixed the engine!