We were shocked and saddened to hear of the fatal car crash on the Torba Road that killed Engin, the chef from Koşede Restaurant in Yalıkavak and seriously injured his wife and child. We used to eat in the restaurant from time to time. We were only on nodding terms with Engin but know Emra, the front of house, a little better. The scale of the tragedy hit the news. The article in the Bodrum View is in Turkish but hardly needs to be. The pain on Emra’s face says it all. It brings back horrible memories of our own near death experience on the same road. I’m not religious in the slightest but think at these times but for the grace of God go all of us.
Category: Driving
Stop and Search
Fellow jobbing blogger Deborah writes Bitten by Spain, an amusing narrative of living on the Iberian rural edge. Deborah commented on my recent post about the Turkish Government’s attempt to curb suicidal driving. Deborah wrote:
‘We have an absurd situation here at the moment whereby the Spanish police are stopping to fine all extranjeros for driving in sandals without heel straps, or not having the dog belted into the back seat. During this operation a moped can be passing unsanctioned bearing two adults with a child sandwiched between them and a goat in the front basket. And none of them will be wearing helmets.’
It made me think of our own experiences of the local Jandarma. Road blocks are common, particularly at night. Drivers are routinely stopped and their particulars checked. The authorities are looking for drunk drivers and uninsured or un-roadworthy vehicles, all too common offences hereabouts. It’s the Law in Turkey to carry ID at all times. We often forget. Being Brits we’re just not used to it. We’ve been stopped a number of times by a youth in an ill-fitting uniform. On each occasion we smiled sweetly, spoke politely in English and were waved on. We assumed the spotty conscript just didn’t think it was worth the hassle. Or maybe we were just lucky.
On Your Marks…
Our house is located on an old narrow street furnished with intermittent pavements. The street traverses the old town and is part of the busy one way system. By day pedestrian passage is a testing experience. At particularly narrow sections, unsuspecting tourists find themselves pinned up against a wall clinging for dear life as overladen trucks thunder past at impatient speed. By night the street is transformed into a pale imitation of the Monaco Grand Prix circuit as suicidal biker boys race flashy fast cars and each other in reckless abandon. Death and permanent disability lurk at every tight twist of the ancient road.
Clunk, Click Every Trip
The Turkish Government is blitzing the airwaves with a road safety campaign. A combination of light-hearted and deadly serious adverts are being broadcast to warn of the dangers and consequences of jumping lights without a seatbelt while yelling down a mobile phone. It will take divine intervention to break the Turkish love affair with suicidal driving but ten out of ten to the Government for trying.
Liam does all the driving in our family but will only drive in Turkey when absolutely necessary. He’d rather negotiate the North Circular during the morning rush hour than the Torba Road at any time. Our near-fatal crash earlier in the year killed his confidence. He’s had his fill of lunatic Turks and inebriated emigreys. I never learned to drive. I never saw much point in London where jumping on the Tube is by far the most efficient way of crossing the city. Liam’s lot in life is to chauffeur me around. He calls it driving Miss Daisy.
Don’t Dilly Dolly on the Way
Charlotte and Alan invited us over for dinner in Yalıkavak. Charlotte used us as guinea pigs for her latest culinary acquisition, a lavishly produced padded vegetarian cookbook. The meal was splendid. As usual, we journeyed by dolly and, as usual, it was chock-a-block. It was a lively excursion. We were entertained by an animated row between the driver and an unseen female passenger at the rear of the bus arguing about the distance covered by an indi-bindi (short hop fare). Her loud and persistent protests were met by a robust stern-ward defence by the driver who feverishly waved about his official fare chart. Since he was paying little attention to the road ahead, he was oblivious to the small scooter carrying four individuals slotted together like Lego that weaved ominously in and out of the traffic around us. A disaster was averted by an evasive wrench of the steering wheel prompting a sudden lurch of the bus. All in a day’s work by a dolly driver.
Wacky Races
Clement invited us and Karen to inspect his new country pile. Charlotte, Alan and Charlotte’s mother, Lucia, were also asked along. They knew the way so we decided to follow them in their car. We took the Torba Road, one of the most perilous on the peninsula. It had been raining earlier in the day and the pot-holed, uncambered road was liberally puddled. As we approached a tight bend a coach conveying early bird tourists careered towards us. Liam slammed on the breaks. The car skated uncontrollably towards the coach, bounced off the side and performed a pirouette the great Margot Fontaine would have been proud of. Miraculously, the car came to rest neatly at the side of the road. Shaken but not stirred, Liam looked around to see which of his petrified charges had snuffed it. It was a relief that we were all still in the land of the living but my lower half had moistened uncontrollably.
Charlotte and Alan realised that we were no longing tailing them and returned to find us. They parked up on the opposite side of the road and crossed over to our car leaving Lucia in the front passenger seat. Within minutes, like a set piece from ‘Casualty’, a car sped around the same bend, skidded on the same oily wet patch and hurtled towards Lucia. The car ricocheted off the driver’s door and crashed into the ditched verge. Liam fretted that the driver had not survived the impact and ran to the rescue. Others ran towards Lucia fearing the worst. The ditched man climbed unscathed and smiling from his battered Fiat. It seemed he rather enjoyed the theatre of it all. Before we knew it we were all up to our ankles in mud attempting to haul his sorry wreck back onto the road. Lucia was extracted unharmed, a little shaken but otherwise in fine fettle. As the fiasco unfolded more cars joined the elaborate ice dance, skids and near misses piling up like a scene from ‘Wacky Races’. Fearful that she might join the casualty count Karen sensibly disappeared into the woods for safety. Lucia joined her.
The damage to both our cars was astonishingly slight and the matter was glossed over with the coach driver in a typically Turkish way – a nod, a wink, a half-hearted exchange of details and rounded off with a hearty handshake. Needless to say, we didn’t make it to Clement’s that day.
Party Poopers
In honour of Karen’s visit we decided to throw a bit of a do, our very first. We were a tad anxious. We didn’t want to transgress the unwritten social rules that must be obeyed. We sought the advice of catering Guru Chrissy on the food situation. She assured us that nibbles and a cold platter would be acceptable for a cocktail party. Guests will know to eat beforehand.
Our début soiree was well graced. Liam and Karen prepared a delightful spread of cold meats, cheeses, mezes, breads and objects on sticks. Karen mingled amiably with la crème dispensing easy urbane charm. We had our first delicious taste of Charlotte’s mother, Lucia, a seasoned older lady with a twinkle in the eye and a racy past. The more Lucia imbibed, the more her carefully cultivated middle class Donegal brogue degenerated into Bogside. Towards the end of the evening, we showed a DVD of our civil partnership ceremony – a calculated risk but one that went down a storm. Eyes welled, even those of macho Chuck.
Bernard got incredibly pissed very quickly and fell into the car at the end of the evening. He wasn’t fit to drive but managed to arrive home without running down any street dogs or wrapping his flash BCSD car around the trunk of an olive tree. Drink driving by emigreys is depressingly commonplace. Chrissy telephoned the next day and explained why Bernard had got so drunk – he didn’t eat because there wasn’t any hot food. ‘If it had been my party,’ she loftily pronounced, ‘I would have served a lasagne.‘ What a bloody cheek.
Don’t Mention the War
The Turkish scooter fraternity rarely wear crash helmets. For the few that do, Second World War style German helmets have become this year’s latest must have accessory. Young men foolishly speed along the pot holed rain-soaked roads like extras from ‘The Great Escape’ suicidally weaving through the traffic in reckless abandon. I doubt these fashion hats offer much cranial protection as they look a trifle flimsy and the riders seldom bother to fasten the chin strap. These boys have a death wish. I can’t see the craze catching on across the water. The Greeks have long memories of real life German military bikers washing their boots in the sea on their side of the Aegean in 1941.
Come Dine with Me
For better or for worse we have become part-time curios on the crème de la crème dinner party circuit adding exotic seasoning to various pretentious repasts. It’s all very Come Dine with Me and the competition is frightfully fierce. We attended a meal at Chrissy and Bernard’s imposing pile in Torba.
Around the fussily arranged table, we met vetpat Viv from Dereköy. Impeccably turned out, fifty something Viv is elegantly statuesque but struggles to raise her slender forearms due to the weight of clanging bangles. In bygone days she owned a Battersea bistro with her ex-husband until the day she found him in flagrante with the pastry delivery boy. She never suspected that her ex batted on both sides of the net though his treasured collection of classic Judy Garland vinyls was a bit of a clue.
Viv has since carved out a prolific career as a serial VOMIT hopping on top of one Anatolian after another. The boys get younger as she gets older. Despite the predictable pattern of broken heart and emptied purse, she remains irrepressibly upbeat about her lot. We make attentive listeners to assorted emigrey tales. The complement is rarely reciprocated. Do I have agony aunt tattooed across my forehead?
At the close of play Viv gave us a lift home taking the back road to evade the Jandarma. Naturally, we small-talked about the evening along the way. I commented how appetising the food had been. ‘The rice was cold’ came Viv’s withering verdict. We are not confident cooks and have no intention of being subjected to microscopic scrutiny from the affected. The most anyone can expect from us is a bottomless cellar and a few savoury nibbles.
The Seduction of Young Jack
We decided on a short overnighter to Marmaris as a break from our Hollywood nights. The drive was most enjoyable as the shrubby scrub and Cadbury’s crunchie-coloured rock typical of the Bodrum Peninsula gave way to dense, fragrant pine-forested hills. We stopped off for sustenance in Akyaka, a pleasant little resort purpose built in pretty, low-rise, faux Ottoman style situated at the far end of the Gulf of Gökova.
Over lunch, I romantically reminisced about my first visit to the town on my first visit to Turkey, lodging in a modest whitewashed villa adjacent to the tiny hamlet of Taşbükü on the Datça Peninsula about a 30 minute drive from Marmaris. We wallowed in rapture for two weeks, bathed in the gulf of shimmering turquoise, breakfasted in the tumble-down amphitheatre on Cleopatra’s Island (Sedir Island) and star gazed on cheap plonk. I was gently seduced and thus started an unlikely chain of events leading me to the here and now.
Back on the road, we dropped into Marmaris by mid-afternoon. Despite ruinous, rampant overdevelopment, Marmaris retains some charm due to the splendid position of the castled old town at the foot of a steep-walled, almost fully enclosing wooded bay. The town must have once been magical before the advent of mass tourism and the single-minded pursuit of hard currency. We sank a few Efes by the water’s edge, slept in a modest inn with lokanta attached and returned home early the next morning. The journey was more satisfying than the destination, and we were glad of the validation that we had chosen our home in Bodrum well.
Perking the Pansies 