Turkey in the snow!

Posted on November 28, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

Whilst it’s always nice seeing clear blue skies, sunshine and beaches, it is nearly December, so I thought I’d share some more festive photos of Turkey as most of us have never seen it before.

The photos aren’t recent, and believe it or not they weren’t actually taken in winter at all, but in April this year during a freak period of cold weather in Denizli! I was in Turkey for a week visiting Berkay during his army break and we had travelled from Fethiye to the Denizli province, to his small home town of Beyagac. We were there for 2 days and the night before we travelled back to Fethiye we woke up to snow! It was all over the news about how unusual such cold weather and snowfall was for April and we had to drive for 4 hours back in it through the mountains.

Seeing snow is always a bit of a novelty when you live in England, it rarely happens over here, but over in Turkey with all the mountains and high ground it’s pretty much the norm in winter. Since it’s such a rarity for me, I made Berkay stop the car so that we could build a little snowman. It may sound a dumb thing to say, but it was absolutely freezing and instead of having the cool aircon on in the rental car like we had been using a few days before in Fethiye, we had the heater on instead.

I’m not sure exactly where we were, but it was a very remote area of Denizli, hardly any villages or houses, although we did drive past a snow-covered mosque and a couple of villagers. For the most part, we had the whole lanes to ourselves and the views were postcard picture perfect. Only two days previously we had driven through the same route and it was completely clear, so there had been quite a lot of snowfall overnight.

Driving through all the pine trees covered in snow, and with the wind blowing all the snow off their branches and making little mini-blizzards was so pretty, it was very Christmassy, which felt weird to say considering it was Spring. Some of the pictures I took were so festive I thought about having them printed for Christmas cards this year, nobody would ever guess it was Turkey in April!

It was quite surreal driving through the snow for half of our journey and then as we got a few hours closer to Fethiye the white snow clouds turned into clear blue skies, and snow covered fields turned into warm green ones instead. The only trace of snow was on Fethiye’s Mount Babadag which had also had a fresh covering of the white stuff the previous night.

I just love seeing snowy Turkey pictures, although its usually snow capped mountains from down below that I see. If you are ever in Fethiye in very early spring, you’ll see for yourself how magical the snowy mountains in the distance look, and the stark contrast in the temperature and weather between the different seasons which really surprises some people.

The country is definitely a thing of natural beauty, whatever the season.

Army life – broken foot & time off?

Posted on September 20, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

Its not unusual for Berkay to call me and tell me he’s been at the hospital all day, as he’s usually driving the ambulance back and forth between the base and the hospital when people get injured during training etc, but yesterday when he called me he told me he’d been in hospital all day, as a patient, after breaking his foot!

Apparently he was doing sport, as they do everyday, and when facing one of the obstacles on the course – jumping down in and out of a ditch – he jumped in and landed on something hard which shouldn’t have been in there, and broke his foot…

Since then he’s been on bed rest, only allowed to get up (with crutches) to use the phone, having all his food bought to his bed. He says his foot hurts a lot and is like a ‘balloon’ (swollen) and he has a cast on it… I hope he’s milking it for all it’s worth!

I’m actually quite pleased he broke it. The world works in mysterious ways, 2 weeks ago he was saying how he wanted to volunteer to go to the border towns to fight against the PKK after the recent trouble there, so having a dodgy foot has definitely ruled him out of that, for the time being!

I’m not sure what it means for his holiday – he wasn’t sure if he was going to get his 10 days leave in October and we’d decided that I’d not visit anyway so we was going to cancel it and finish 10 days early at the end of his service instead, but now he might be forced to take sick leave because of his foot, not much use as an ambulance driver with a plaster cast… He may get a few weeks holiday but it’s doubtful I’ll be able to visit since it will be too late notice to get time off work, and the fact that he doesn’t really have anywhere to go – his village is around 10 hours away from his army base by car, and Fethiye is around 12 hours away, not a nice distance to travel at the best of times let alone with a painful foot in a cast.

So it looks like I won’t be seeing him til February as planned, but at least he’s safe for now, even if a little pained, and less than 4 and a half months to go! (:

Army start date and a new home for Boncuk…

Posted on January 23, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

This week Berkay received his army start date – 4th February. That means there’s no more putting it off, in 11 days time he’ll be starting his 12 month national service. He’s been given Izmir as his training base, he’ll stay there for the first 3 ish weeks working in ‘transportation’ and then where he’s going after that we’re not sure.

He’s going to his family’s village on Saturday and will stay there until 4th Feb. Its tradition for friends, family (and pretty much every single person in the village) to visit the men before they go to the army and give them a small amount of money, they also usually have a ceremony in the town centre for all the men going to do their service as they have 3-4 intakes a year. I went to the ceremony when one of Berkay’s brothers went to the army, it was way out of my comfort zone, all the men on the outside of the square, all the men in the middle saying a prayer and going up and shaking the hands of the men about to join the army.. followed by everyone driving around in cars with huge Turkish flags draped over them and beeping their horns as they drive around the streets. Madness, passionate and very patriotic, I suppose it’s an exciting time for them, going to do their national service is a rite of passage for Turkish men, something everyone has to do.

Obviously Berkay going in the army means we needed to find a new home for Boncuk for a year, the plan was for her to go to Berkay’s family in the village, but when his dad couldn’t come and pick them up in his truck due to work, it meant we had no way of transporting Boncuk for the 4-5 hour journey – if only the buses allowed dogs on board! I had a last minute panic about where she’d go but luckily Berkay got permission from our friends (and their landlord) to allow her to stay in their garden. They’re our best friends out there, the ones I’ve mentioned previously with the twin babies, and I’m confident she’ll be looked after well. I just hope their own circumstances don’t change, because whilst I’m sure they’ll grow to love her, they won’t ever be as attached to her as we are!
After one last walk along Calis beach together, Berkay packed up the dog kennel and transported her the 20 minute journey to her new home… seeing her kennel all loaded up made me really sad but Berkay spoke with me on FaceTime afterwards and showed me Boncuk settled in her new home and she seemed happy enough. She had already made friends with the man looking after her as he’d given her a few plates of food and if there’s a sure way to win Boncuk’s heart its through a bowl of food or a game of fetch!

I feel so sorry for Boncuk, she has no idea that she won’t see Berkay for a long time, and she is probably already wondering where I disappeared to, I hope she doesn’t think we’ve abandoned her, if I could have her here in the UK with me I would! She always looks so happy when she’s with Berkay. I also feel really sad for her that she’s going from having free reign of the hotel all winter, to being tied up in the garden.. but she’ll be safe, fed, watered and have shelter and that’s a lot more than a lot of the dogs out there have. At least we know where she is, and I can contact her new ‘foster family’ on Facebook to check how she’s doing and get photo updates.

Be good Boncuk, wait for us.. 53 weeks and counting… ❤

Trees, sunsets and a hidden mine.

Posted on January 18, 2015 by livingtheturkishdream

While we were in the village of Beyağaç back in November, we drove up a mountain road to a forest area and explored a little whilst hunting for mushrooms.

While we were up there the sun began to set and the trees looked absolutely beautiful with the orange glow behind them and I couldn’t resist taking a few photos as they just looked so magical!

While we were wandering around we came across a mine, I’m not sure if it’s still in use but it was pretty creepy. I checked online and I believe its a chromite mine. I wandered down to the entrance and had a peek in, there were spider webs everywhere and it was really eerie, I don’t know how anyone manages to work in mines like this, it wasn’t very tall at all… it reminded me of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs!

We also found a huge hole in the ground, all sorts of weird and wonderful creatures live up in the mountains I’m sure, any suggestions as to what might have been living in this? It was quite wide and very deep, I couldn’t see the bottom.

We could see all of Beyağaç from the mountain, the views were stunning… fields, trees and farm land in all directions as far as the eye could see. It was so peaceful up there, although a little scary with the mine and I had visions of whatever animal was hidden in that giant hole coming out and chasing us back to the car… What a story that would have been!

Village adventure – Day 2

Posted on December 1, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

When I woke up the morning after we arrived in the village and looked out of the window, I won’t lie, I definitely thought ‘what on earth am I doing here?’ – it was the first time I’d seen the place in daylight (at least since I’d visited 3 years ago..) and to someone not used to living this way, it was quite a shock to the system.

The room we were sleeping in was now freezing as the soba had been turned off all night, so as soon as we woke up we bundled into the living room with the rest of the household and sat around their recently lit soba, there’s something very cosy about the soba, it reminds me of Christmas with everyone sitting around the fire in their pajamas. We weren’t up for long when Berkay’s aunt walked in and started making breakfast right away, as I mentioned previously she’s kind of taken the role of housekeeper on now that Berkay’s mum is sick.

She came out with a tray of breakfast foods, spicy Turkish sausage (sucuk), tomatoes, olives, boiled eggs and some sort of lentil dish which was lovely to dip the bread in! Of course this was all washed down with a few glasses of Turkish tea. While we were eating Berkay’s brother had a phonecall that the daily village delivery of coal had arrived and said that he and Berkay could go an unload it all for some cash. I could have waited in the house with Berkay’s mum and aunt, but I knew that when Berkay said ‘we’ll only be gone 2 hours’ he was talking Turkish time, and I learnt a long time ago that Turkish time means add on at least 2 hours more to everything they say, so I decided to go with them. I had a quick shower, which was much like having a shower at our own house, no hot water from the solar panels and no electric shower meant it was a boiled water from the stove and a jug job – no complaints from me as I’m definitely used to that by now!

We drove to the village centre and as it was freezing cold outside and the boys had work to do, I sat in the warm car watching them and being nosey at the surroundings. I wanted to have a walk around the town, but I would undoubtedly be the only woman down there, so I thought I’d feel a little uncomfortable and decided against it. Instead I sat in the car with my laptop writing a couple of blog posts. I’d look up every so often and see Berkay pushing a heavy wheelbarrow full of sacks of coal into the warehouse while his brother and a friend were on the truck moving the thousands of sacks into his reach. It definitely looked like hard work, and the fact they were sweating when it was a mere 6 oc outside said it all. They briefly stopped for lunch and we all shared some pide, which was delicious. The boys stunk and were covered in black dust from the coal, but eventually 4 hours after they had started their ‘just two hours’ job (*cough*… Turkish time…) they unloaded the last sack and off the truck drove back to wherever it came from. Berkay got 60tl for his effort, which is very good money for just a few hours work, he’d been working here in Calis recently earning 20tl for a 12 hour day! It’s so typical of Berkay to be working during his little holiday, he hates sitting around doing nothing.

When we arrived back at the village house it was around 2pm and more of Berkay’s family had arrived to visit him, his uncle, aunt, cousins and even second cousins were all there to greet us. Berkay’s other aunt had once again been preparing a meal and came out with a huge tray of food for everyone present. We all gathered on the floor, sat around the tray and tucked in – this time it was salad, kuru fasulye, bulgur rice, dried meat and onion and a huge bowl of garlicky yogurt to dip bread into. After our pide we weren’t really hungry but know they get offended if you decline food, no matter how politely, so we ended up eating some anyway.

After an hour or two of more chatting and cay drinking, the guests left, Berkay’s mum had a nap, his dad was at work, his brother was busy with the animals and we had some time to ourselves. We had a quick look around their garden and farm area behind the family home, I’d been dying to see the animals ever since we arrived. I love animals and love the idea of having a farm, although I’d be rubbish at it as I’d never be able to bring myself to kill them for meat or sell them, I’d get far too attached. Berkay’s family has a lot of animals – sheep, cows, goats, chickens, turkeys and a dog. Berkay’s dad wakes up at 6am every morning to milk the cows and they use the milk for drinking and for making butter. They have a baby cow which is only a week or two old, they still feed it with a bottle! It was so cute and so fluffy, I stepped into the cow shed and managed to stroke it – I love this photo of it trying to lick my hand – what an action shot! They also have one lamb at the moment, just look how in love with it Berkay was.

While we were walking around I couldn’t help but think how beautiful and picturesque the scenery was – so much countryside, farms and green hills as far as the eye could see.

Since we had some time to ourselves, Berkay said he wanted to take me for a drive so that he could show me the house he has born in and a few other important places for him around the village. He kept pointing out things his Grandad had made and built, trees Berkay himself had planted as a child with his nan and telling me stories of the things he had done with them. He always speaks highly of his grandparents, they raised him as a baby as his mother and dad abandoned him when he was only 28 days old, he’s still not seen his mother since and knows nothing about her, and although he is on speaking terms with his dad, he definitely had a stronger bond with his grandparents, who have both now passed away, he showed me the cemetery they’re both in too.

He drove us up to Esentepe just as the sun started to go down and we got out to take a photo of the beautiful scenery – it was pretty to look at but it was freezing cold, I ended up wearing my hoodie and Berkay’s thick leather jacket on top! The sun was just starting to go down but before it did Berkay said he wanted to wander through the trees and try and find some çintar mushrooms – special wild mushrooms that are a seasonal delicacy here in the south west of Turkey. A few minutes after starting searching I heard him shout “Danni, come here, I found one!” he was so excited.

He’s definitely the expert at finding them, he knew how to spot them under a pile of twigs and I was just walking around aimlessly not really knowing what I was looking for… I found a lot of ‘normal’ mushrooms, but no çintar ones, until I spotted a giant orange thing sticking out of the ground.. “look how big this one is…” I said, and then Berkay informed me it was exactly what we were looking for. I was very proud of our little mushroom stash, you’ve heard of the saying “bringing home the bacon”, well we were definitely “bringing home the mushrooms” and we took them all back to Berkay’s family ready to eat on the BBQ the next day.

After all the mushroom picking, food eating and tea drinking, we were exhausted and settled back in the house for the evening. I decided to change my outfit to fit in a bit more and put on my comfy ‘village’ flowery baggy pants. We ended up going to Berkay’s aunts house with his brothers and played OKEY, ate more sunflower seeds and drunk more tea… I was starting to think I’d end up looking like a glass of tea if I drank anymore…

Back to the Village..

Posted on January 12, 2014 by livingtheturkishdream

Berkay received a call from his brother a few days ago to tell him that his step-mum was ill, so he got on the next coach to his hometown of Beyağaç, Denizli to visit.

Fethiye to Denizli is a 5 hour bus ride, and then it’s a futher 1 and a half hours on a small dolmus from Denizli to the very remote town of Beyağaç, which has a population of less than 7000.

It’s a very traditional Turkish town, it is not at all modernised. Berkay’s family live in a small ground level house, it’s very basic, no luxuries, they don’t even have beds, just floor cushions. They have farmland and own 19 cows, 23 sheep and lots of chickens, which they keep for milk, cheese, eggs and meat. It is a very different way of life to what I am used to.

Some of the youngest cows are only a few days old, so cute. The photo on the left is Berkay’s step-mum, who is thankfully feeling much better now. .I love this photo on the right, who has a baby cow sitting in their garden beside their motorbike? Berkay’s family do 🙂

I have visited the village twice, and absolutely hated it. The main reason is because of just how traditional they are, and how alien I am to them, as a ‘ yabancı’ (foreigner). Both times we visited I wore modest clothes, jeans or a skirt with long leggings, socks, and a top that covered my shoulders, boobs and belly, yet I still looked like an outcast because quite literally every single other person was wearing ‘village pants’ .. the typical flowery type, and headscarves. Whereas people in Fethiye are normally mistaking me for a native Turk due to my skin colour, the people in Beyağaç were staring at me as if I had two heads, and they weren’t shy about it, I felt like I was in a zoo cage with hundreds of people staring and giggling at me. Another thing I found very difficult to cope with was the way the men and women were so segregated. Within the house, the roles of men and women were clearly defined. men outside sitting at tables smoking, women inside preparing food and cay. There was no mixing or conversation between men and women, they weren’t even allowed to sit in the same room. This was really horrible for me, as I couldn’t understand nor speak Turkish, and I was sat in a room full of people who couldn’t communicate with me either, add this to the staring they were doing and I became very paranoid!

Berkay rarely visits his family as he had a tough childhood and as a result, isn’t close to any of them. Berkay’s real mother left him when he was 28days old and moved elsewhere with his dad, temporarily, then they moved back to Denizli and had his brother. His mum then, again, abandoned his brother and left his dad. Berkay was being bought up by his grandparents, whom he adored. When his grandad sadly died, Berkay had to move back to his dad. His dad then remarried and had another son. When Berkay was just 15, his dad sent him away to Fethiye to attend school. He sent him with no food, no money, nothing. Berkay lived on the streets for a while until he met someone who took him in. He attended school and got a job, the money from which was all sent back to his dad. One month Berkay kept the money to pay bills, and his dad made the 6 hour journey to Fethiye to attack him and get the money for himself. Needless to say, their relationship does not exist now. They never speak and only see each other if there is a family death or special occasion. Berkay is quite close to his brothers still, but he is definitely the ‘black sheep’ of the family.

How someone can go through such a tough childhood and still be such a caring, kind, loving person I don’t know.

Anyway, thankfully Berkay’s step-mum is well again, and he is already back in Fethiye now. When he told me he was going to visit, I asked him to take tons of photos, so I could share how different his hometown is, he seems to have only taken photos of the animals, he knows I’m a sucker for animals! (: