Category: Bodrum

Bedlam in Bodrum Revisited

Book Tour Intermission

While Bodrum collectively nursed its New Year hangover, the mechanical diggers moved in and started excavating the half of the promenade that wasn’t ripped apart last winter. These CATs don’t purr. Thankfully, we live far enough away from the main drag and didn’t have to endure the deafening rat-a-tat-tat competing with the deafening rat-a-tat-tat in our heads. Others were not so fortunate. Lessons have been learned from last year’s scramble to complete the makeover in time for the Spring rush. Not a minute has been wasted. Entire shop and restaurant frontages have been torn down leaving doorways hanging in the air. It’s not a case of mind the step, more grab the rope. Following the torrential rain of the last few days, the wide strip where the pavement used to be now resembles a bog which can only be crossed by impromptu paths of broken slabs set down by proprietors desperate to keep their doors open. Wheelchairs not welcome. Take a look at the before, during and after snaps.

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Ringing the Belles

New Year’s Eve brought a couple of tremors and torrential rain to Bodrum. We refused to let Mother Nature throw us off kilter or dampen our spirits as we joined the Bodrum Belles to drink in the New Year. The place of our undoing was Musto’s Restaurant, our haunt of choice. The source of our undoing was a bottle of Jaegermeister doing the rounds courtesy of a particularly boozy Belle (you know who you are). Think 100% proof cough mixture. At the stroke of midnight, Liam and I kissed in front of a passing copper, put out some windows with a salvo of party poppers the size of bazookas, watched the creditable firework display and shuffled from side to side to classic, cheesy, gay dance tracks of yesteryear. I wonder who chose the music?

It doesn’t get much cheesier than this.

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Cooking the Books

Our local supermarket, Tansaş, is a short stroll from the house along the narrow ancient street that Alexander the Great once minced down in 334 BCE. Like many ancient Anatolian thoroughfares, the road is just wide enough for two camels to pass each other unhindered. It wasn’t built for a speeding motorcade of Nissan tanks flanked by Vespas on amphetamines. It’s a one way street but we look in both directions to keep body and soul together. It’s just as well the Green Cross Code was hard-wired into my brain as a child.

Three or four times a week, we pass a two storey building containing a shop unit on the ground floor. In the short time we’ve lived in Bodrum, the unit has changed hands several times – variously reincarnated as a small market, café, kuaför (hairdressers) and now a market again. The current proprietor is a smiling middle-aged man with a kind face, balding on top with side strands stretched back and fashioned into a trendy pony tail. He spends his days sitting on a plastic patio chair, chain smoking and chatting amiably to passers-by. We’ve not once seen a customer cross his threshold. Alas, like the predecessors, his business seems doomed to fail. It occurs to me that in Blighty, a prospective buyer would check the books before parting with the readies. In Turkey I assume there are no books to cook.

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Perking the Pansies – Jack and Liam Move to Turkey

Room with a View

Room with a View

Our stone cottage is a little too small to lodge visitors, particularly those who prefer en-suite facilities for those ‘private’ moments. It’s a dilemma. Considering Bodrum’s popularity with the Turkish well-heeled, it’s odd that quality hotels in the centre of town are as rare as a bottle of so-so wine for under 50 lira in a restaurant. There’s no point relying on the star rating. It means little. Our usual recommendation is the Marina Vista. It’s close by and the location – on the promenade opposite the smart marina – can’t be equalled (hence the name, obviously). The top-notch Turkish breakfast served on the roof top restaurant is quite an experience, the foyer and communal areas are lavish and the pool is as inviting as it should be. Nothing is perfect, of course. The hotel isn’t cheap (though less expensive out of season), the rooms are cramped and have next to useless Juliet balconies, and the staff can be surly and unhelpful. I suppose you can’t have everything.

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Sizzling Bodrum

Bodrum, Bodrum so Good They Named it Twice

Old Bodrum Renewed

Old Bodrum Renewed

There is an authentic stone cottage in the heart of Bodrum Town sitting prettily in a well-stocked walled garden dominated by an ancient double-trunked olive tree. It is the original homestead of an old Bodrum family. As the family grew wealthy they moved on to larger premises and left their family home to slowly fall into quaint dilapidation. The house has an open-plan biblical feel, with a semi-basement – where I presume animals were once kept – a small mezzanine level and a larger first floor. One day the family had a bright idea. Selling off the family silver was unthinkable but maybe there was a little money to be made from the estate. They decided to renovate: extend the old house and build a brand new cottage in traditional style on the adjacent land where a small barn once stood. It took time, dedication and a few wrangles with the planners but they did it. It is a quality job. The family house now looks superb, sympathetically redressed in recycled stone finery. We seriously considered renting this bijou piece of local history but the cramped and quirky arrangement didn’t quite fit the way we live (no, I don’t mean camp discos, glitter balls and a blacked out sauna). Instead we rent the new house next door with its more practical and flexible living space. Both houses stand out from the crowd and are a happy snappers delight.

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Bodrum, a Town of Two Halves

Bikini Bare

Tumbledown Bodrum

Bodrum is sprinkled with tumbledown old stone houses, often open to the elements and slowly crumbling like a Turkish version of Pompeii. It’s a shame. Some of these gorgeous derelict dwellings may not be suitable for modern family living but what about a little tourist income? With a little imagination and investment many could be sensitively recycled into lucrative holiday lets attracting top dollar from the more discerning visitor. Not many addresses can claim to share the same street as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

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Tomorrow’s post – Old Bodrum Renewed.

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Under the Tuscan Sun

Under the Tuscan Sun

With Liam back in Blighty, I’m making do. Our Turkish neighbour, Bubbly Beril, knocked on the door and shoved a DVD in my hands.

Under the Tuscan Sun

Based loosely on a true story, Under the Tuscan Sun is the tale of an American woman whose marriage collapses around her. She emerges from deep despair and paralysing sense of failure by making a new life in Tuscany, all by chance. It’s a sentimental, sugar coated yarn of love lost and a life regained. Boo to the nasty man who dumped her and hurrah for the cast of colourful characters who pick her up, dust her down and help her start all over again. I cried like a child.

Of course, life isn’t really like a movie. Not everyone’s that nice. The female flotsam washing up on our shores seeking comfort in the arms of a Turk are mostly onto a hiding to nothing. It can work but the odds are stacked against it. For me, the most significant part of the film was that the Yankee expat first arrived in Italy on a Tuscan gay tour.  Beril had picked up the subplot. She was saying, ‘I know and I don’t mind.’

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Living in the centre of busy, bustling Bodrum means compromise. Hubbub abounds. It comes with the territory. It’s part of the charm. We filter out the mad traffic, high-pitched horns and loud rows. We’re from the Smoke and old London Town is not so different. It’s the price worth paying for the short skip to the marina inns and eateries that serve to remind us that we’re sophisticated boys about town (or so we think). Calm country living in the middle of a muddy field is not our style. But, (here comes the but) we are wrestling with the double whammy of ferocious, veracious miniscule flies and barking mad, howling hounds. The midget midges circle us like we’re rotting corpses. The mozzie net has been re-erected above our bed as our only line of defence.

The flies will die but there’s no easy solution for the dogs. As all emigreys know, most Turks have an entirely different relationship with man’s best friend. Here in Bodrum you will see some dogs on leads but they tend to be the toy variety attached to the over-dressed well-to-do. Most mutts hereabouts perform the traditional guard and protect function, chained up outside. For our considerable sins we’re surrounded by four of them. Passage down our busy thoroughfare, even in the small hours, is constant. So too is the barking. We’re serenaded by quadrophonic yapping 24 hours a day. Have people not heard of house alarms?

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The Perfidious Turk

Road Kill

Qué?

Liam and I were sitting in Kahve Dünyası, a superior coffee shop in Bodrum. We were with magnificent Murat, a handsome Brit of Turkish Cypriot extraction. Murat is blessed with a cheeky smile, dreadfully naughty eyes and buns you could bounce a penny off. Murat’s not gay, but healthily gay friendly and a diverting companion. A waiter approached to take our orders.

‘Sütlü americano lütfen,’ I said in my best Turkish (I realise only two of these words are actually Turkish). The waiter stared at me quizzically. Murat intervened. The conversation, in Turkish, went as follows:

‘What did he say?’

‘He asked for an americano with milk.’

‘I know.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘He’s got a foreign accent.’

‘Yeah. He’s foreign.’

‘What does he want then?’

‘You know what he wants.’

‘An americano with milk?’

‘Bullseye.’

‘So why didn’t he say that?’

‘He did say that.’

‘Huh! Bloody tourists.’

I don’t know why I bother. I should just shout loudly in English.

The serious point to this tale is that the British are more forgiving of people who speak bad English. Maybe we’re more accustomed to the weird pronunciations from first generation immigrants. Globalish, the reduced vocabulary version of our mother tongue, is prevalent at international conferences, on the streets and in many social situations. Of course, just to confuse people, the British have developed a countless number of regional British accents to baffle people everywhere.

Language can be such a barrier to communication.

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Swearing in Turkish

Bodrum, Nice and Slow

The tyranny of summer is behind us and a blesséd autumn waits impatiently out to sea. The mugging muggy days have given way to bright warmth and cooler, cuddly nights. Having outlived the big heat, we reoccupied the upper floor of the house for the first time in two months. I was glad to become re-acquainted with our superior sprung marital mattress.

Bodrum’s hysterical nightlife has slowed to a thin trickle. The hordes are back in Istanbul and the whores are back in Kiev, replaced by Teutonic types in fishing hats and sandals with socks. The hassle boys along bar street are out in force to squeeze one last pushy sale and itinerant workers are heading home to their winter pastures to marry their cousins. Fink, the exemplar rich bitch bar has gone into hibernation and its huge swaying red chandelier, the most photographed light fitting this side of Versailles, will soon be dismantled and packed away. This is Bodrum at its best. Snap it up while you can.

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Turk Season

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