(A blog post by Mary, sister-in-law of Laura, wife of Paul, and friend to all creatures)
Let me first say: We were not prepared for Turkey.
Paul and I landed at the Istanbul airport without local cash, cell service, electrical adapters, or a single word of Turkish. It hadn’t occurred to us that we might need these things. What did we think awaited us on the other side of our Turkish Airlines flight? I don’t think we gave it a second thought. Once we landed, however, we were full of second thoughts. How will we meet up with Laura and Matt? How will we get downtown to our AirBnb? Where is our AirBnb? What city are we in, again?
We had just under two weeks in Turkey: a few days in the chaotic grandeur of Istanbul, then a long drive east to the arid plateau surrounding Cappadocia, and finally a southwest saunter along the Mediterranean coast. Laura and Matt were like our fairy godmothers – they were calm, they were collected, they had working phones. It was nice to be in their company.
ISTANBUL
We began our trip in Istanbul, the most overwhelming city I’ve visited: people striding through narrow streets, old trucks motoring down what I thought was sidewalk, huge Anatolian shepherds and one-eyed cats and pigeons in the spaces between. “Everything is road!” Paul said as we dodged buses and pushcarts. Personal bubbles are smaller in Istanbul. There are over 15 million people here; they can’t all insist on a 1.5 foot allowance. I felt people breathing down my neck in queues and at crosswalks. The place has more frenetic energy than New York, and is cooler to the touch. People gaze through you, there is no public mask of polite openness, but there is also less antipathy. Drivers cut one another off on the street; it’s fine. People bump and jostle past each other, and it doesn’t even warrant a grumble. Istanbul is like an old New York. It’s big, it’s cool, but there’s no ego.
GETTING AROUND
We took Turkey by car – rental car, driven by Paul. Within just a few hours of our road trip, it became clear that Paul is part Turkish. He has their same sangfroid – he was assertive but emotionless, cool under pressure, and undaunted by 40 degree sloped roads that date back to the Ottoman Empire. Matt was our navigator. Laura kept us positive. And what did I do? Well, I was pretty good at peeing on my own shoes when we couldn’t find western toilets. Point is, we all had something to contribute.
CAPPADOCIA
I wasn’t fully aware of this part of the trip. There were hot-air balloons, various rock formation “fairy castles,” and a kitten that adopted Matt. But I got kind of feverish and spent a lot of time horizontal. I believe the rest of the team went on some good hikes. I mostly thought about sleep and sour cherry juice.
TURKEY’S MEDITERRANEAN COAST
Do you long for a land with sunny days, cool nights, and views that span both the ocean and the mountains? Do you dream of bougainvillea and linen? Is your ideal meal a fattoush salad with a side of tabbouleh? I know a place where you can go: any one of the rustic-but-moneyed towns along the coast. We stopped in Antalya, Kaş, Ölüdeniz, and Fethiye, but there are others. This region is Turkey’s fish market and fruit basket. Pomegranate trees are everywhere. One night, we saw a fruit bat pigging out under a citrus tree (relatable). We spent the most time in Ölüdeniz, a tiny town behind the mountains, where you can watch the morning fog roll off Greek ruins notching the hillside. We sunned ourselves on a nearby beach, prettier than any beach I ever thought I’d see: pebble shore, super salty clear water, fish swimming around our feet, and pine trees ringing the rocky coastline. It’s a tourist haven here, and as we swam, scores of paragliders swooped down from the mountain above and gybed toward the water. (Very strange experience, to be in the land of Icarus and see so many people signing up to fly close to the sun.)
The coolest part of our stay in Ölüdeniz was the Greek ghost town, Kayaköy. It's an abandoned village that goes back thousands of years, and it was built and populated by Greek Christians. After the 1923 Turkish war of independence, the Greeks and the Turks made a deal: The Greek-speaking Christians in the stone hillside homes would be expelled, and shunted to Greece, and any Muslims in Greece would be repatriated to Turkey. But the Muslims that got sent over didn’t like their second-hand stone homes – they were too high up the mountain, too far from the good farmland – so they abandoned the buildings, and this ancient Greek village on the edge of the newly-created Turkey sank into disrepair. We walked slowly around the ruins, spotting remnants of blue paint, decorative etchings, and fig trees growing through walls. An old church had a courtyard floor mosaic made from wave-tumbled round stones. Supposedly, the village women would trek over the mountain to gather these stones on the beach and then carry them back in their skirts.
STRANGEST REVELATIONS
We happened to visit Turkey during its July 4th, known locally as Republic Day. And boy howdy, patriotism in the U.S. has nothing on patriotism in Turkey. Every other building was draped in a ginormous Turkish flag or banner portrait of Atatürk, the father of modern Turkey. I saw a driver zipping down the highway with an Atatürk flag wedged into her driver’s side door. She’s gotta futz with that sucker every time she gets in and out. Why not stick the flag on the dash and call it day? Turkey, baby! Where patriotism is a competitive sport. Turkey is a destination for medical tourism. We saw groups of friends walking around with bandages over their noses, presumably from rhinoplasties. Others, usually traveling solo, sported gauze over their scalp, pocked and reddened from recent hair implants. The joke is that they flew here via Turkish Hairlines.
Air quality in Turkey: Very bad. Thick haze blanketed the landscape until we reached the coast. My throat itched from taking in all the exhaust and cigarette smoke and who knows what else.
Favorite things about Turkey: The shepherds and shepherd dogs in the countryside, the patriotic music, the public calls to prayer, and the exchange rate. Least favorite things: The coffee, the tent camps of migrant workers alongside field crops, and the relative power of women.
Submitted with permission from her husband,
Mary
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