Istanbul, small fish and strange packages

A relaxing day in Istanbul started with borek, simit--which is kind of like a big sesame covered bagel, honey and kaymak for breakfast. With tea, of course. Not enough tea however. Mina hasn't been sleeping well--shes waking very frequently, like every half hour, 40 min all night for the last 2 nights. I felt like someone was sitting on my eyelids all day.
We went to meet k's friend, who suggested we meet at Starbucks. Granted it is an especially beautiful and well placed starbucks, right on the water. Turkish people love Starbucks--it's very upscale and fashionable here, that and some other American place called Gloria jeans. We met some fabulous Korean flight attendants who took many photos of themselves posing with Mina-hilarious. Mina is a big hit.
After a delicious lunch of grilled hemsi we headed back to pick up the package sent from k's parents in the village. First we went to the package pickup place where I was amazed at the things people were shipping; shopping bags taped together, mysterious bundles. Then we went home to meet the delivery--it was a plastic basket stacked with pomegranates with a piece of blanket tied on top(!), 2 metal cans full of liquid fruit syrup and a sack of other stuff including 10-15lbs of dried figs. I couldn't believe you could ship things like this. K says it's normal.
Before dinner I whipped together a cheesecake using a recipe off the Internet and some creative ingredient sourcing. Hopefully its delicious, our host was interested in cheesecake--is this another thing Turkish people love? It's one of the only things k requests that I make him.
Mina was playful and stayed up past her mothers bedtime until 10pm so no blog posts were written until this morning.

Istanbul, so beautiful...and showers too.

We dropped off the rental car in Izmir this morning--it was a little filthy after transporting the picnic, etc. but we didn't feel too badly as the owner charged us a really high fee for picking up the car, saying that's how much it would cost to send someone to pick it up, and then he showed up himself to pick up the car.
We also barely made our plane as the airline mysteriously changed the takeoff time from 11am to 10:20. Aside from that, Turkish Airlines is great--lots of space between seats, delicious snacks and drinks even if the flight is only an hour and very friendly flight attendants. We are so used to mediocrity we don't even know what we are missing.
Another interesting data point about Turkey--in the us when you get on a plane with a baby, people generally look annoyed or look away, hoping you won't sit near them. We got on the plane late and everyone looked ecstatic to see Mina, people were cooing and making funny faces and engaging her all around us. The flight attendants grabbed her and walked up and down the aisle, chatting and playing with her. Turkish people love the babies. Of course she was almost attacked by a big group of Japanese ladies in Istanbul--only the arrival of our luggage saved her from being carried off, so maybe it's just Americans who aren't as enthused with babies.
We had a third breakfast of the day after we arrived at Olga and Mustafa's apartment in Istanbul. All three were different and Turkish breakfast is delicious enough to eat 3 times a day.
Mina tested out sucking directly on the bottled water spout which I thought was a little disgusting but luckily our hosts have a great sense of humor and thought she was hilarious. Mina was highly entertained by both if them.
We did some walking around Istanbul, had coffee in the beautiful garden of the archeological museum and finished off with su buregi and olive oil baklava, 2 of my favorites. Olive oil baklava doesn't sound like it will taste better than butter baklava but it is truly amazing. Su buregi is available in new york but all the versions I've had just make me want the real thing more. It's kind if like lasagna with only a little cheese in it, and not stretchy cheese but more of a not-so-salty feta type, and then a layer of pastry on top. I warned K that we may have to eat burek every day since we're only here for 3 days.

More picnic photos

I just looked on k's phone since we have email and am including a few more photos from the picnic including one of me picking olives and several showcasing all the crap we brought along.
Also I wanted to note about the photo from yesterday of the village house with the tractor parked outside: note the solar panels on the roof. Most of the village houses in the west have these to heat water, they are even on some big apartment buildings. Apparently the solar isn't enough for house electricity but works for showers and laundry.

2nd day in Emine's village

Lots of tractor traffic everywhere, on the highways, in the village, at the gas station--this is serious farm country. In this photo, k stopped in the middle of the road to buy a melon and tractors lined up in both directions waiting to get by.
I'm taking way less photos this trip partially since I'm always juggling the baby when I see the perfect shot and maybe I'm getting used to seeing it all, the village life isn't as foreign as it was, still fascinating and somewhat repelling at the same time. There isn't much space for romanticizing country living here.
We went olive picking today which involved packing a huge picnic lunch, including a grill, blankets, a rug, pillows, a watermelon and some other fruit, a bucket of tomatoes and onions, a gas stove for tea and 2-part tea pot of course, a couple of raw chickens, 5 loaves of bread, 2 bottles of soda and water, glasses for tea with spoons and sugar, 4 children and 4 adults. And no, our rental car is not huge--a 4-door hatchback ford. We picked olives and then barbequed and drank tea--it was a very comfortable picnic after a very crowded drive. Mina reclines on her fathers legs eating peeled grapes in one photo.
Later we ditched all the equipment and half the children and drove into manisa. Visiting the weekly bazaar for turkish towels, again without success-Turkish people don't use pestemel towels apparently, only foreigners like me. The bazaar was incredibly crowded--I was pushed by old ladies and young ladies and even multiple little boys, more shoving than I ever encounter in times square or the subway. I guess we arrived at vegetable mark-down time, late afternoon when the fruit and vegetables go on sale. One man bumped me deliberately, recognizing I was a foreign woman and K swore at him in Turkish to his face, forgetting he could understand. K swears at people in New York in Turkish or Zaza as he knows they can't understand--this guy definitely got it.
Then we went for baklava with kaymak on top--I had no idea these 2 things were served together. Kaymak is like creme fraiche, very rich and creamy, it kind of completed the baklava--adding creamy and cutting the super sweetness. Not a diet combination.
It's after dinner now and the other room is full of guests from the village, that are all originally from Siverek so everyone is yelling at each other in zaza. I was helping slice the olives to cure them but have gratefully retired with a sleeping Mina to the other room--amazed at what Mina can sleep through.

1st day in Emine's village

Again noting that I had no idea how much of Turkey is very, very rural. Emine's village is 40 minutes from a city of 6 million people and many worlds away. Its similar to the village in the east except somewhat more modern and the land is much lusher. More modern in this case means a bathroom in the house with a 'normal' western toilet, (--I won't go into the toilet thing as I wrote about it extensively on the last trip) a washer, electricity and running water but no shower or heat, other than space heaters and a woodstove. The first thing I noticed was that all the women were working hard; whitewashing walls, chopping wood with little knives, pushing wheelbarrows full of stuff and all the men were zipping around on motorbikes and tractors and sitting in the tea house chatting--of course, I'm a bit biased on these things.
Mina adored her cousin, Hatice Sena, 16 months, who busily toddled around the whole time, calling Mina 'aya' and giving her kisses on the head. She was really too cute.
Emine's husband works at the school so we visited and I was requested by the English class to answer questions--finally I can accurately answer some questions. I'm perfecting the smiling blankly like I understand thing.
All the neighbor ladies came over to bake their bread in emine's oven--unfortunately I didn't get a photo--the oven is a huge wood burning stone oven about 4 feet wide and the bread was amazing. Big rough round loaves of dense whole wheat but lighter than our whole wheat--they grow and grind the wheat locally and it is so much tastier than ours.
Mina got dressed up in her cousins outfit of burgundy velvet with gold patterns, it also had a little hat with a burgundy veil sewn with coins that Mina refused to wear under any circumstances--she obviously had no idea how cute it was. The outfit was part of some ceremony involving henna that usually takes place when the baby is 6 months. Then she pushed a little wooden walker thing around the yard--since we are not particularly eager for her to walk, at all actually, the walker got stashed away after a few rounds.
We ended the day with a walk around the fields. K lived in this village for a few years as a teen so the walk was accompanied by stories of how he picked tobacco in this field and grapes in that one, no documentary video today unfortunately. We met with a fig tree full of figs and emine fearlessly climbed above my head to pick figs. She is just great.

Izmir bazaar and forest agency

On our way to k's sisters house we stopped at the bazaar in Izmir--it was nuts. I'm not used to bazaars at all so unfortunately I was too stunned to take many photos. We managed to get some dried pepper from urfa, near where k is from in the southeast, but we were unsuccessful in finding pestemels, which are thin Turkish towels. Actually we found but they were all icky plaids instead of pretty stripes. Mina and I were both fascinated by so much to look at. We got pretty thoroughly lost trying to get out and find our car--it took about 45 minutes of walking different ways--we had to stop and get coffee and tea--the photo is of the coffee/tea guy in his stall.
After the bazaar we drove to the forest service, it was a long way away--apparently Izmir's population is 6 million? A huge city, I had no idea--plus it's really spread out, no highrises as it's on a fault line.
K's friend is head of the forest service for the region but unfortunately was called out to survey a fire by helicopter and was quite late. We visited and left in the dark for emine's village. Mina drove as we were a little tired.

Ruins of Ephesus and too many antiquities

So our pansiyon had 3 people trying to fix the wifi but it was still broken this morning so we went to a cafe, where the Internet didn't work and then magically found a free signal while driving out of town-an explanation for the double posts today.
The ruins of the roman city of Ephesus are about a mile out of town and they were really spectacular. Turkey apparently only started preserving and digging Ephesus out in the last century and they will probably be digging for a few more centuries to uncover all the ruins. They've found so many broken columns and carved lintels and other pieces that they categorize by type and stick everything in a field together--this doesn't seem like the most efficient system for putting complicated things back together again but it does make interesting fields. And of course we couldn't resist posing Mina with the ruins. This is but a small, small sample of the series of Mina and the antiquities. Ephesus was completely overrun with bus tours from cruise ships--hundreds of people, it's interesting because they don't make it into Selcuk at all. We spent a few hours walking around, longer than we expected as there was so much to see and it was so lovely to wander around pastures full of big carved fragments and try to imagine what it must have looked like two thousand years ago. Kahraman narrated more documentary iPhone footage so if anyone wants the full tour...
We had an unfortunate lunch in Selcuk followed by some Turkish ice cream, called dondurma. Dondurma has some powdered root, I think it's salep, in it that makes it somewhat stretchy--yes, stretchy ice cream, strange but true.
After we went to the remains of the temple of Artemis, surprisingly it was in a field that we can see from our pansiyon window. What's left is one giant column, about 3 feet across and 50 feet high--but there were 127 columns like this. These pieces were even less guarded or organized than Ephesus. 3,500 year old carved pillar chunks sprinkled across a field populated by a flock of cranky geese--it was great.
Next we trekked up to see the house where the virgin Mary lived--actually it was a shrine built on the foundation of the house that Mary might have lived in. I found the description of the 'evidence' a bit dubious--an invalid nun in Germany dreamed or had visions about Marys house and explorers were sent out in 1891 and found it apparently exactly as she described. But then I've always been a bit on the cynical side. I'm posting photos in the next post of Mina playing on the table outside of Marys.
We came back and had a delicious meal at our pansiyon--the owners mother does the cooking, fabulous cauliflower. Mina is feeling much better and back to her cheerful self and is even eating food again--yay! She has also learned to pull out drawers and make a funny clicking noise with her tongue.

Arriving in Selcuk

We were so happy to drive away from Ekincik and back down the long and beautiful road and we decided that we wanted to spend 2 nights in one place for the novelty of it. Mina is feeling much better and has been overall, amazingly tolerant of going to sleep in a different bed every night. She does however still look like she has some kind of pox from the 20-something bugbites she got on her forehead while sleeping.
We took a bad navigational "short-cut", (I was navigating,) that brought us through a bunch of remote farming villages and along a completely quiet ridge with land falling away on both sides. Lots of goats periodically in the road. I am amazed at how many people live in villages throughout Turkey, I thought it was just in the southeast where K is from. These villages are somewhat more modern and the climate is friendlier with lush greenery and trees everywhere but conditions are still very much on a peasant level. we stopped and got some honey and gave another older auntie a ride to the next town. She cackled at Mina who eyed her from a safe distance with fascination.
We had lunch in Mugla and it continues to get chillier and chillier. We had local specialties for the area including some kind of savory wheat porridge that even K never had, I forgot to take photos until after we had eaten most of it as everything was too delicious.
We continued on, planning to spend 2 nights in sirince, a village in the mountains that was straight out of another time with ottoman era houses and donkeys and wine making. Sirince has also been all mucked up as a big tourist trap; we still would have stayed as it was too beautiful except the houses were very cold and uninsulated with crazy floor space-heaters. With a very mobile Mina this seemed possibly disastrous and definitely freezing, even if she didn't manage to burn herself. We skipped it and found a friendly pansiyon in Selcuk that is also cold but the heat is up high at least. Our Internet has been very spotty the last few days--k tried to help fix the wifi tonight as we are supposed to have it, hopefully soon so we can skype with mina's American grandmother again.

Rainy day driving, mud and creepy Ekincik.

We left Kalkan in a cold pouring rain and a dark sky, k disappointed at not going out on the boat to the sunken city--we stayed over hoping to go in the morning. We drove through more beautiful farmland and mountains and breathtaking views, literally breathtaking for some people in the car as we careened around mountain roads.
I had a running joke going about kokorec vans--we passed a few different old crappy vans selling kokorec, kokorec is pronounced 'co-co-retch' and it is sheeps intestines wrapped around a stick and grilled, I wouldn't know if its delicious or not as I can't deal with eating parts. But, if I was going to eat kokorec, I certainly would choose somewhere other than a dirty van in the middle of nowhere; it seems that I am alone in this based on how many vans we saw.
This part of Turkey is very lush and green, trees heavy with fruit and nuts and olives and field after field of greenhouses. We stop for a snack of gozleme and tea in the rain by the side of the road--at first it seemed like it might be amazingly good as it was in a couples house and the man went out in the rain and picked us some fresh arugula for a salad with lemon and salt, but something funky happened with the gozleme involving running across the highway and it was greasy and not so tasty.
A note about young turkish men, they love the babies--everywhere we've travelled hip, cute young guys google at Mina, make funny faces and noises and ask to hold her. They have slicked back hair-dos and jeans with elaborate stitching and they are teenagers to late 20s. It struck me as a cultural difference from the US.
We drove to Dalyan where we caught a very short boat across the river to a mudbath and mineral pool. Of course Mina had to sit this out so we each took turns--I went first, covering myself with stinky gray mud, on a chilly drizzly day and then taking a cold outdoor shower with a horde of German tourists and then jumping into a warm sulfurous pool--I'm in the middle of the pool photo. By the time K went in the whole German bus tour contingent left and he had the whole place to himself. It was pretty fun. We both agreed that our skin felt nice but sun or warmth would have enhanced the experience. A group of about 10 Turkish people came towards the end, only one guy went in and everyone else laughed at him.
We were so enchanted by Cirali that we've been trying to find places like that since. We went over the edge this time. We drove off to find ekincik, an isolated beach town that turned out to be more of a ghost town but it was 36 kilometers down a beautiful road so we decided to stay even though the place was mostly closed for the season. The one hotel that was open was pretty spooky and they wanted too much money for a really crappy room with, gasp, no hot water! They didn't tell us that, of course. Oh and nowhere to eat except the hotel. And really weird furnishings like dayglo woven wall art and bad waterfall paintings. And in the morning we had to first wake up the cook for breakfast at 9, and then wake up the owner to pay so we could leave at 10.
This is what you get with spontaneous travel sometimes I guess. It did have a pretty view and we made it out alive, although without the last swim we were hoping for--too chilly.

Leaving Cirali and going to Kalkan

After a great breakfast with 2 kinds of strangely delicious homemade orange marmalade and home-cured olives, we were about to leave Cirali we heard about the open air museum which turned out to be the city of Olympus and right down the beach. Amazing overgrown ruins, Mina demanded a picnic snack in the midst and K wandered around narrating iPhone documentaries to himself. We both agree that Cirali would be a good place to stay for a week or so. We decide to leave anyway mostly on the basis of the twenty odd mosquito bites that Mina got in the night.
We were supposed to go on a boat to a sunken city but it was very windy for a boat outing so we continued to drive the winding turning road beside the shockingly blue and sparkling water. Mina really dislikes car trips involving her little car chair. We are hoping she gets used to it and lives to forgive her heartless parents.
We arrived in kas where we planned on staying the night and had some Turkish ice cream and decided the town was 'too boring', k's words, and kept driving.
We drove to Kalkan which seems to be a town that gets a ton of English tourists and we are hoping it will be still enough tomorrow to take the boat trip, actually that's K hoping, I'm kind of whatever on the boat thing. We found a little restaurant with husband waiting tables and wife cooking and had a wonderful meal of hemsi, little fish from the black sea similar to sardines, and fresh salad. I didnt get photos as it was too delicious.

Leaving Alanya, roman ruins and the joys of getting lost

We finally made it out of Alanya, getting a late start with Mina unhappily strapped into her little car chair and screaming about it.
Our first stop was a roman stadium, very well preserved from 200AD. We sat high up on stone benches originally used for the kings family and Mina had a surreptitious snack. K made sure to point out where the hungry lions were let out to kill the Christians. Apparently the prominent business men and nobles sat in the first 2 rows and so were most likely to be eaten if the lions ran amok. Perhaps with the "occupy wall street" thing this could be re-instituted?
A Turkish man proposed to his girlfriend while we were sitting there, yelling up from the middle row to the top--she said yes and everyone who spoke Turkish clapped.
Some hot and crabby camels were in the parking lots for rides--I would not allow k to take a ride with Mina.
Then we drove and drove looking for some hotel with little tree houses--we went miles down a windy dirt road only to find it was the wrong road and ended up staying in a fantastic little pansiyon right on the Mediterranean surrounded by mountains--the last photo is the view from our balcony, we are in the middle of an orchard of orange and lemon trees. I took a bunch of photos of the layers of clouds and mountains.
Mina is starting to get better, less fevers although her nose is all stuffy. We torture her several times a day by holding all her limbs and pouring vile smelling medicine down her throat while squeezing her cheeks so she swallows.