Category: Vetpats

Bodrum Reborn

Barring a few meteorological mishaps and last-minute mayhem from Mother Nature, I think spring has sprung. We’re not leaving until the summer, so we intend to make the most of what we have left. We’ve washed down the patio furniture and shampooed the cushions, wiped the windows and showered the courtyard. Patio doors have been flung open to freshen the musk and murder the mould. We were regaled by the call to prayer at full volume and the first row of the season between our Turkish neighbours. It was a corker of a commotion with Beril’s throat at full throttle. Welcome to Bodrum reborn.

I’ve suffered a premature exclamation. Since I wrote this we’ve had that meteorological mishap. An instant cold snap has slapped us about the face like an icy flannel. We lunched with the Belles today at a modest promenade eaterie. Over the pide (Turkish pizza), Jessica gazed up at the uniform blanket of light grey and remarked ‘I think it’ll snow today.’ And lo and behold, it did. It was just a weak little flurry of flakes and was over in a jiffy, but it was a bona fide blizzard. Our first and probably our last.

Yum!

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Back to the Future

Liam and I were minding our own business in Tansaş. We were queuing up at the till, weighed down by a basket-full of cheap plonk. The lady in front of us turned towards me and smiled. “You’re Jack,” she said. “I love your book.” I blushed like a spotty teen and shifted uncomfortably from side to side. It was like being a z-list celeb, furtively emerging from a grubby massage parlour with my tail between my legs. Next time, I’ll don a floral headscarf and designer shades before I venture out.

I composed myself and we chatted over the veg and booze. It turns out that we’re near neighbours. My fellow shopper was a former Bodrum Belle of years long past and she recently returned to renew her club membership. As an old and new kid on the block, she has started her own blog, Back to Bodrum. The then and now observations offer a unique perspective of a town on the move. Take a look – fascinating stuff.

Review of the Year, 2011

Happy New Year to pansy fans one and all from a stormy, rain-sodden Bodrum. In the best tradition of the New Year and all those cheap-to-make review and top ten TV compilations I give you:

Perking the Pansies Top Ten 2011

An eclectic mix of the mad, the glad, the sad and the bad, the old, the bold, the sold and the gold. It’s interesting how few of these posts are actually related to expats directly. The list represents around 20% of all hits to Perking the Pansies (out of about 500 posts). Fancy that.

  1. Amy Winehouse, RIP
  2. Now, That’s What I Call Old
  3. Are We Mad?
  4. Pussy Galore
  5. Gay Marriage in New York
  6. Expat Glossary
  7. Publish and Be Damned
  8. There’s Hope for Us All
  9. Happy Birthday Perking the Pansies
  10. Sisters Are Doing it for Themselves

I wonder what 2012 has in store?

This is in store right now.

Sunshine Soup

Jo Parfitt runs Summertime Publishing, the company that is publishing Perking the Pansies. I’m in safe hands. Jo is an accomplished and successful author, mentor, journalist and publisher with 27 books and hundreds of articles under her belt. Jo is nervous, but why? Well, she has just released her debut novel, Sunshine Soup, Nourishing the Global Soul. Anyone who’s poured their heart and soul into a book will empathise with Jo. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Booker prize contender or the writer of a production line penny romance, your labour of love will have you biting your nails until they bleed. I know. Mine are already bruised and bloodied.

Sunshine Soup

Meet Maya, wife, mother of two and owner of a successful deli. Sunshine Soup whisks her away from her friends and a job she adores, to an uncertain life as an expat wife in Dubai. Next, transplant Maya into a fabulous new house, throw in an obsequious maid, send the teenage boys to school and the husband to work, add a potent mix of expat women and stir. What happens next is a colourful and poignant story of a woman who gradually grows into her strange new life but faces some difficult choices and uncomfortable questions along the way. Maya’s friendship with Barb, a colourful, experienced and seemingly confident expat wife, is a fascinating development. Things are not quite what they seem.

It’s impossible not to be drawn in to Sunshine Soup. The characters are strikingly drawn and developed, the plot is compelling and the exotic sights and sounds of Dubai form an evocative backdrop to a hugely enjoyable story of loss, intrigue and redemption.

“Maya picked up her coffee, slid the French doors aside, and stepped out. She would drink it slowly, savouring every mouthful. She rested her arms on the low balcony wall and looked out. Green parrots flitted between the palms and she heard their rough squawks as they dipped and rose. Inspired, her shoulders followed their lead. She raised each in turn coquettishly up towards her ears. Samir, the gardener, hunkered beside a squat palm, slicing away the lower fronds, now dry and pale, to reveal more of the emerging trunk. The blue water in the pool was smooth and glassy as the shadows shrank and the sun lifted towards what would undoubtedly be another beautiful day.”

More than anything, Maya’s story is believable. It is this reality that ultimately makes the novel an important addition to any bookshelf. And yes, there is an actual recipe for Sunshine Soup at the end of the book, along with 19 others – a very nice touch and some delicious recipes.

Sunshine Soup is hot off the press at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com

Tomorrow: an interview with Jo Parfitt

A Tight Wide-open Space

Once in a while a chance encounter with a stranger can change things forever. My happy happenstance was crashing into Liam one wintry afternoon after work in a pub called ‘Half Way to Heaven’.

Matt Krause, a mighty Yankee vetpat from California has recently released a book. A Tight Wide-open Space tells the touching tale of his own chance meeting that led to love and a journey across an ocean to follow his heart. The story is much more than a boy-meets-girl penny romance, as sweet as that is. It’s also about his struggle to adapt to the strange ways of a strange faraway land. We can all identify with that one.

If you’d like to know more, take a look at Matt’s website. The book is available in paperback or kindle at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

To celebrate the release of the book, I asked Matt to write a guest post about his love, hate, love relationship with that great and ancient metropolis that straddles two continents.

I am not a city boy.  In my more militant moments I will rail against urban life, calling cities “cesspools of human filth” and swearing up and down the truest beauty in all the world can only be found when no man is present.  In fact, put a glass of scotch in me (I am a lightweight, it only takes one), and I am likely to say things that make the Unabomber look like a humanity-loving urban hipster.

So why did I write a book that starts out as “boy meets girl,” but ends up being “boy loves city”?

Believe me, it wasn’t easy (learning to love a city I mean, although writing a book is no cake walk either).

There are people who go to Istanbul and fall in love with it in 20 seconds.  They barely even pull away from the airport before they start raving about how amazing the place is.  Immediately they begin posting photos to Facebook and drooling all over everything and generally acting like giddy teenagers who just found the most perfect guy or girl in like, EVER!

I am not one of those people. When I first got to Istanbul I saw little but smog and chaos and stress.  Even six years after I arrived I was comparing living there to living like a lab rat in a cage stuffed with so many other lab rats they go insane from the overcrowding, and end up attacking each other and gnawing off their own feet.

But Istanbul has a way of getting under one’s skin, even mine.  Few things bring me peace like strolling through the square just north of the Ortakoy mosque on a cool summer night, where young lovers cuddle on the benches and little kids laugh as they chase each other around the plaza.  Few things strike me with awe like standing atop the stone walls of the Rumeli Hisari while watching a massive Ukrainian tanker sail south down the Bosphorus on its way to the Mediterranean.

Don’t let my mixed feelings about Istanbul scare you away from it. For every person like me who doesn’t know whether to call that place a shining city on the bay or a shameful scar on the face of the earth, there are ten who say without reservation that it is the greatest city they’ve ever seen in their entire lives.  Istanbul is the kind of place that every person, country boy or city slicker, should see at least once before they die.

And certainly don’t let my mixed feelings about Istanbul scare you away from Turkey in general.  If I were to list the five most beautiful places in the world, three of them would be in Turkey.  The first would be a particular balcony in Gumusluk, a small town on the Bodrum peninsula Jack mentions occasionally on this blog, from which all you can see is sea and all you can hear is wind and waves.  The second would be the side of a hill in Kapadokya, 600 kilometers inland, where in the mornings you can step out your front door and marvel at a sky so big and so blue it reminds you it is the sky that brings life to this earth, not the ground you are standing on.  And the third, well, that third image is just for me.

Maybe I wrote a book about adjusting to life in Istanbul because I was trying to sort through contradictory feelings that will never reconcile.  Maybe I did it because after the thousandth person asked me what it was like in Turkey, and for the thousandth time I didn’t know where to start, I thought maybe writing it down would help me clear my head and move on.

A fat lot of good that seems to have done me though.  I miss Istanbul and will be moving back in a few months.

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Swearing in Turkish

When I was on holiday and soliciting for guest posts, Dina, a Bodrum Belle of class and distinction, sent me two articles. The first, Siren Inflation was published last month, but I received her second piece too late in the day to include among the  holiday crop. I’m unsurprised it was a little delayed as Dina and her partner Dave run a successful gulet charter business here in old Bodrum Town called South Cross Blue Cruising. It’s been a busy season.

Here is Dina’s second guest post.

Swearing in Turkish is an acquired art.  The wrong word at a dinner party will guarantee a permanent ban, whereas a well-timed curse can open doors, and little is as satisfying as swearing profusely while driving in Turkey.

I once lived 20 meters up on a one way street from the main road in downtown Bodrum. This meant either driving up the one way street the wrong way in order to get into my private parking space, or circumventing the entire perimeter of Bodrum in order to arrive at the house 15 minutes and 2 liters of petrol later on the correct, one way route.

Fast forward to the bustle of August with Istanbul ’34’ number plates dominating all of the one way highways and tight Bodrum alleys. I was trying to get home and did a quick glance up my one way street which appeared completely clear. I gassed the little Fiat Uno up the alley the wrong way to duck into my parking space.  From a parked position, a tired, late 70s model, avocado green, 34 plated Mercedes sedan crept out and met me at the entrance to my parking space, with just enough room to not let me into my garage.  I signalled right – he shook his head.  I signalled right again, as all he had to do is reverse one meter to allow me access. I made a face and pointed towards my alley.  His brassy haired, bouffanted wife gave me the Turkish equivalent of the finger above her gold bangles.A combination of strong hormones and heat rash thus persuaded me to intentionally stall my Uno.  Alas, two more 34 plates appeared behind the Benz, as did a neighbor’s 48 licensed Bodrum car behind me, with shortcut intentions similar to mine.

Salak kari! bellowed the fat, sweaty Benz driver through all three of his chins. (Stupid broad)

Lavuk!  I tossed back. (Imbecile)

Oruspu!  yelled the aging Istanbulite’s missus at me above her gyrating fist. (Prostitute)

Whore! I yelled back, trying to intimidate in English.

Manyak! screeched the red faced man, blowing on his horn at me. (Maniac)

Hiyar! I retorted out of my open window. (Cucumber)

The local market boys ran out to participate in the entertaining engagement. They first attempted to assuage the Mercedes, which, in the Turkish pecking order and its big city license plate, had potential clout which almost rivalled that of mine as a trusted and known neighbor.  Realizing the aggressiveness and possible languid VIP factor within the aging Benz, as well as not wanting me to switch mini market loyalties, the market boys rearranged cement flower pots for me to pull onto the curb and allow the MB to pass.  The Honda behind me continued the argument until the Honda became an ayi (bear) and the Benz became the son of a pimp of sodomy.  Having delivered the purported greater insult, the 48 licensed Bodrum Honda backed up to let the frustrated 34 Benz pass.

An Anatolian Adventure

Today’s guest is gorgeous Kym who is the author of Turkeywithstuffin’s Blog and the pretty brain behind On the Ege, the monthly online magazine about Turkey’s Aegean coast.  Kym is married to dusky Murat, her hunky Turk. When veteran expat Kym wears a headscarf, she wants to look like Sophia Loren but thinks she looks more like Hilda Ogden. Personally, I think she resembles a darker version of Gynneth Paltrow in the Talented Mr Ripley.

It’s a Thursday in November 2008 and I am on my first road trip to Sanliurfa, my husband’s birth town. When we first arrived in Urfa late at night, the electricity was off and the city was in darkness.  Perhaps because I was tired from the long journey, I felt uneasy and had commented more than once that I’d been kidnapped and taken to Beirut. I did for a moment consider taken a plane home the following day. As we stood in the dark alley I was moaning, but once the large iron gate opened things could not have looked more different. We walked into a beautiful stone courtyard with mosaic tiles, Ottoman seating, potted plants and a small fountain.

The Manager at the Beyzade Konak Hotel is Murat’s cousin’s husband, Omer. He shows us to our room and once I have the internet and some coffee (they have a generator), I’m quite happy to chuck Murat out for an hour or so to allow him to play with his cousin Mehmet. I have a boiling hot shower, get my pajamas on and send a few quick “I’ve landed” emails. Then it’s lights out and a sleep so deep I could be in the cemetery.

Day breaks and I realise the hotel is between two mosques. I open my eyes to the dual call to prayer, one a heartbeat behind the other. I doze for a bit then remember I’m actually on holiday and there are shops out there.

After breakfast, I nip back to our room and cover my locks with a headscarf. It’s a simple gesture of respect while I’m here and among the more traditional rellies. Well, that and I don’t really want to get stoned in the street! Mu of course thinks this is great and off we trot, out through the iron gate and onto the streets of Sanliurfa.

Once we leave the cobbled alley and get onto the main drag, its bustling; busses hog the road, cars fight for space beside them, scooters weave in and out of the traffic and pedestrians narrowly avoid being run over.  The air is filled with BBQ spices, pungent & smoky and the smell is everywhere. Small eateries and kebab houses jostle for space alongside clothes shops and jewelers who have 24 karat rays shining from their windows.

There are a few glances my way naturally. It could be the pale skin and the green eyes, or it could be the flip flops and bright red toenails that don’t quite go with the rest of my ensemble. Still, that’s a great excuse to buy shoes isn’t it?

First things first, I need a new camera. We wander across to the maze of connecting alleyways that make up one of the eight covered bazars, to the collection of electronic shops. The salesman shows us his wares and converses with Murat: “Senin Esin mı?”(your wife),  “Yabanci” (a foreigner), “Alman?” (German).  Mu confirms the first two and I answer the last. “English” I say, not realising at the time that we will have this conversation many times during our stay. I guess it’s due to my height and build and of course, my great Grandparents, Mr & Mrs Shram!

I end up with an Olympus, a compact professional the man says. We will see.

Leaving the shop we are met by Cousin Mehmet and Hassan Amca. Their first words to me are “Kym, Beirut Nasil?” Very funny!  The four of us then continue around the bazaar which contains a veritable Aladdin’s Cave full of treasure. There is even a street full of workshops where workmen batter copper and solder iron.

Heading into the Balikigol area toward the cay bache, we pass through the ‘Sipahi Bazar’ and the ‘Kazzaz Bazaar’, the oldest covered Bazaars of Urfa. These were built by the Ottoman Emperor, Suleiman the Magnificent in 1562.  It really is like stepping back in time and I watch ancient shalvar wearing salesmen sitting cross legged in their little tented alcoves, bathed in rich colour and drinking tea while customers peruse their antique carpets, kilims and hand woven head dresses.

During our small shopping excursion, I’d picked up some elastic hair bands that I needed and watched as three pairs of hands reach into theirpockets to pay for them. Oooooo I like shopping here. I wonder if it works in shoe shops? A few minutes’ walk and we reach the cave of Abraham. Legend has it that the Babylonian King, Nemrud, had Abraham captured and thrown into fire. His crime?  Calling upon the people to worship the real god and not the icons of celestial objects, as was the religion of the time.  Of course, God was watching and on seeing this, he turned the fire into water, saving Abraham from certain death. Not content with that, he then turned the surrounding woods into the sacred fish, the ancestors of which we see today at the site of the “Halil ur Rahmen” Mosque in the centre of Urfa.

I buy a dish of fish pellets and watch the fat feisty fish fight each other for each tiny morsel, after which we take a rest in the cay bachesi. I sit sipping hot sweet tea and take a look at my photos so far. The photos are amazing; sneaky zoom shots of men at prayer and performing the abtest, plus the usual tourist shots of minarets and domes. It’s getting late now and as dusk settles over the city, we head back to the hotel.

So far so good, my first day in Urfa was wonderful and I am hungry for more. We have decided to use Urfa as a base for a few road trips. On my list are: Harran, Nemrut, and Hasenkeyf, then, a stop at Cappadocia on the way home.  I had no idea at the time but this journey would also encompass, Mardin, Midyat, Batman & Siirt. My Anatolian adventure continues.

It’s All Greek to Me!

My fourth guest blogger is Bodrum vetpat and dedicated pansy fan, Carole Meads. Carole offers keenly priced, top-notch holiday properties in the pretty and peaceful resort of Torba, just 4kms from Bodrum. Here’s Carole writing about her attempts to learn Turkish. We’ve all been there.

Six and a half years ago I decided to make this idyllic coastal part of Turkey my home, along with a good friend who reassured me that learning the language wouldn’t be a problem. The Turkish language has its roots in Central Asia and the written form dates back to the 8th Century BC. in Mongolia.  As part of Ataturk’s reforms in 1928 he changed the written form of the language from the Arabic alphabet to the phonetic form of the Latin alphabet. He hoped this would aid communications and simplify things for non-Arab speakers…

Sadly, for a first time new language student, grappling with a different word order is hard enough and then it gets complicated. The Turkish language is based on vowel harmony and agglutination. It has to sound right and words are built up into sometimes incomprehensible length in order to make a point! So armed with a library of grammar, phrase books and CDs we set about teaching ourselves but somehow it never came to anything. ‘Speak to the locals’ knowledgeable ex-pats advised. These attempts at communication were met with confused expressions, grunts or replies in perfect English!

We soon decided that living in Bodrum, learning the lingo was going to be no mean feat. To be fair we quickly picked up basic chat and essential phrases – we got by but as soon as the conversation went ‘off-piste’ we were flummoxed. Then eighteen months ago a minor miracle happened. We heard about a new Turkish course starting up locally and at a price which matched our “non working” status! By this time I had become convinced that I would never learn Turkish, my friend already having mastered a couple of other languages was not so easily put off and immediately signed up. Her enthusiasm spread, several of our friends joined up and eventually even I gave in and decided to give it a go.

Erhan our teacher can only be described as ‘saintly’. He painstakingly prepares idiot proof lessons, listens to our horrendous annihilation of his native tongue, laughs with us not at us, all the while trying to understand the idiosyncrasies of the English language and ex-pats.

These days I lurch between declaring that I will never be able to speak this damn language and catching the jist of overheard conversation as I sit crammed in amongst the locals on the Dolmus. They say you have lost about 90% of your ability to learn a new language by the time you reach nine years old. Having reached an age considerably past nine, perhaps I shouldn’t be giving myself such a hard time?

Summer Redefined

Today’s guest post is from Linda at Adventures in Expatland. Linda writes prolifically and brilliantly about her life in the Netherlands and the expat experience. I’m certain she was a spook for the CIA in her former life, though she denies it. ‘If  I told you,’ she said, ‘I’d have to kill you.’ Here she writes about the glories of summer. When I read her post, my own childhood memories came flooding back. Remember the days when summers lasted forever? These days, the years just fly by. At this rate, it won’t be long before I’m six foot under.

Growing up as a child in upstate New York back in the US, summer was a gloriously sunny season that seemed to go on and on. That is, when it wasn’t raining. Which wasn’t all that often, but still. After morning chores were completed, my days were generally my own, filled with swimming, riding bikes, the annual family vacation. More than anything else, summer meant just hanging out with friends.

We finished the school year in mid-June, and didn’t have to report back until the day after Labor Day. Since this national holiday must fall on the first Monday in September, that usually meant we headed back to school sometime during the first week of the month. The entire months of July and August were summer, pure and simple.

A few times I recall the thrill of September 1st arriving on a Tuesday. That meant that in those special years Labor Day Monday would fall on the 7th, and we didn’t have to go to school until the 8th. The 8th! I still recall that magical feeling that we’d somehow wrangled a few extra precious days of summer.

As I got older and moved around the country a bit, I learned that school districts in other cities and towns had sizable leeway in setting their school calendars. When we lived in Arlington, Virginia (outside of Washington DC), the local school district chose to cut back on a few vacation days during the year to allow children to finish earlier in June, yet they still adhered to the day after Labor Day as the start of the new school year.

Imagine Son and Daughter’s dismay the year we moved further south to North Carolina: school started and ended two weeks earlier. Their summer freedom that year was shortened by two full weeks. They were livid. I recall unpacking boxes in our new home to the sweltering chorus of Two full weeks! We’ve been robbed. Cheated!

Let me tell you: Handel’s Messiah it wasn’t.

We settled in, and for five years it was fine. Then we moved to The Netherlands. And you’ll never guess what we learned. (Yeah, right, like you couldn’t see this coming a mile away.) Their international school started one week – all together now – earlier than their schools back in North Carolina.

Go figure.

I’d like to say that they handled it better this time because they were older, more mature, and guided by my stellar parenting skills. Actually, it was because Son and Daughter were so bored not knowing anyone and so overwhelmed with culture shock that they were happy to get back into the school day grind just to meet others who could help them make sense of their new world. Oh, and we didn’t have cable television at home yet.

With school starting August 17th this year, I’m going to be at home by myself during the final days of August. And what will I be doing? Working, of course. Except for those extra special days of fabulous weather when I reclaim summer and steal away for a few hours, riding my bike on beautiful trails to the beach.

Shhhhh…don’t tell the kids.

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Turks and Tampons

My third Guest blogger is Alexandra from Death by Dolmuş. Alexandra is a Yankee lass who teaches in Istanbul. She writes about the quirky side of life in the ancient city and has a mild obsession with public transport. Alexandra also publishes an amazing photoblog. If you don’t like discussions about women’s itty bitty parts, don’t read the following (oh, go on).

There are strange things that occur in Turkey. I am pretty on top of most of it, but from time to time things do catch me off guard. I’m unfazed when a man brings a 12 foot (4 meter) ladder into an over-packed dolmuş (roughly 5 meters long itself.) I’m unfazed when my bank calls to ask permission of my employer when I wish to close my account (obviously a mere mortal like me can’t be trusted with such a serious decision.)

I was caught off guard when my colleague, a punk, riot-grrrl feminist with red hair (not Irish red, but like, the color red) and combat boots, moans to me, doubled over in pain, ‘Gahh, I wish I hadn’t left the window open last night.’ It had been a sweltering 80 degrees (25 C) and I couldn’t understand what that had to do with her abdominal pain. ‘The wind, the night air, you know, it gives me cramps.’ Efendim?

Now, I’m fairly certain that cramps are caused by your uterine walls contracting to expel the lining. But, you know, who can say for certain…

I was constantly appalled by the lack of knowledge these university educated women displayed about their own bodies and the science contained in them. I know Freud thought that hysteria (that vague, female-ish complaint) was caused by a ‘disturbance’ to the uterus, but I’m pretty sure somewhere in my 6th grade sex-ed class, I remember learning something different…

As I was moving out, I had an enormous amount of tampons that my roommate and I had hoarded like we were preparing for the apocalypse. God knows when we would be able to find tampons again, so every time we ventured out of the Islamic Republic of Turkey, we bought up the store like they were going out of style.

Not having space in my luggage for 47 boxes of Tampax Pearls, and with the confidence that I could pick some up any time nature called at my nearest pharmacy (that’s a chemist’s for you Brits), when back in the US, I decided to give them away. Because honestly, who doesn’t like free tampons? Apparently, Turkish women.

So that’s how I found myself, on my last day of work, sitting in a locked office with my colleague, demonstrating how to use a tampon. I unwrapped it, showed how the applicator worked, as she dissected the tampon I had handed her, checking that the string was in fact well secured at the center. I extolled the tampon’s virtues: you can go swimming! (Her face lit up, what do you mean? She asked in disbelief.) You can wear white pants with no fear! Thinking back to all those tampon commercials of my youth, you can go shopping with your fresh-faced friends and laugh to your heart’s desire while spinning around in circles to demonstrate your new-found freedom!