Hot on the heels of Clive’s double came Ian’s extended fun fest. The function room of a posh gastropub overlooking Victoria Park in East London was the host for the opening episode. Squally showers did nothing to dampen our spirits as we partied the afternoon away entertained by faces old and new. Drinks were plentiful and complementary and the bash bounced along to the naff sounds of Eurovision. The annual song-fest is a huge but harmless addiction for Ian and his partner, Matt. At the close of play it was back to their Bow penthouse for more liquid refreshment and more Eurovision. They wisely invested in their top storey pad just after London won the Olympics and their balcony directly overlooks the grand stadium. Since it is easier to win the lottery than secure a seat at the opening ceremony, I know where we’ll be on opening night.
Our Euro adventure ended with a final flourish in a French farmhouse a few miles outside Bordeaux. Ian rented a four bedroom pile that oozed rustic Gallic charm and invited along his nearest and dearest to sample his hospitality and clear out his wine cellar. The weather was kind and we had two boozy days of wit and repartee around the bracing pool. Ian and Matt played the gracious hosts with the most with understated panache and saintly patience. Our glasses were never empty as we sank the Bordeaux in Bordeaux and the table was always set for endless fine French fare. The final night’s jollity had Clive and Angus dancing a rumba in the kitchen and me doing something rather obscene with a banana. When Clive makes it as a full-time thespian he’ll be the odds on favourite to win Strictly Come Dancing. ‘Not with my arthritis,’ he yelled from the wings. I’m sure the Bow Belles were glad to see the back of us when we departed, if only to get some rest. I was carrying my liver home in a jiffy bag.
Apart from celebrating our niece’s nuptials and spending quality time with our folks, the main purpose of our extended excursion to Blighty and beyond was to rejoice in the half centuries of my two oldest friends, Clive and Ian. Their birthdays are a day apart and they decided to revel in style, each with a two centre commemoration.
Clive’s was up first with a posh meal in a posh eatery in posh Islington attended by a select group of friends and family, including his consort and civil partner, Angus. The superior banter was lubricated with bountiful booze and nourished by top notch nosh. Clive’s second soiree was at Duckie, the legendary avant-garde club night for those seeking something a little bit different from the usual Saturday night set menu (hard house and South American waiters with chest implants and spaced out expressions).
Coincidentally, it was Duckie’s 16th birthday bash, so they too celebrated in style by hiring the ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall for the evening. The compere dished up a hit and miss medley of arty-farty cabaret which I must confess was more miss than hit, a bit like watching someone’s end of year drama college project. The evening had a British tribal theme – punks, mods, new romantics, blokes in bowlers, housewives, Greenham Common wimin – you get the idea. We went as seventies clones – check shirts, tight stone washed 501s, coloured hankies and joke shop handlebar tashes – more Frisco than disco. We danced the night away to period pop courtesy of the resident DJs, the Readers Wives. I pogoed to God Save the Queen by the Sex Pistols, which seemed appropriate given the venue. My cheap fake tash dropped off in the process.
As the evening drew to a close, we tottered across Hungerford Bridge to the Strand and boarded our night bus home. Of course, we sat on the top deck like a couple of tourists. The passenger list was like London life in miniature. Two young men sat canoodling at the front on the bus, nothing pornographic you understand, just a fine romance. A mixed-race straight couple sat in the seat behind in animated exploratory conversation. He’d obviously just picked her up (or vice versa). Two gangsta-looking types in chunky chains sat behind us talking not of drug deals but of share swaps. A gaggle of girls giggled at the back. The good-humoured Clapham omnibus led me down memory lane through the south London streets of my salad days. We arrived home safe, sated and sozzled.
I’d like to extend a warm hand to my guest bloggers whose sterling work kept Perking the Pansies afloat while Liam and I were gadding about in Blighty and La Belle France. It was a harvest festival of wit and wisdom, revelation and revelry rudely interrupted by substandard despatches of my own from old London Town.
My final guest post is from Roving Jay at the Bodrum Peninsula Travel Guide, your one-stop shop for what’s hot and what’s not. Jay has been a loyal pansy fan virtually from day one so I think it’s right and proper that she completes the series with a flourish.
Roving Jay
I frequently swim around the Blog-o-Sphere, following bait from pool to pool. I like to observe the fisherman from a distance, and watch them cast their lines in an attempt to lure me in. If the bait doesn’t interest me, I’ll swim out of one pool and lurk in another. But if the lines thrown in my direction are suitably weighted and baited, I’m enticed in for a nibble, and can become hooked on the content! Jack used his worm to lure me in, and I’ve been nibbling in his Pansy Pool ever since. Even though we live in a society where Facebook and Twitter are household names, the dynamics of collaboration still have a 90/9/1 split:
90% of collaborators are Lurkers, watching but not contributing
9% are Nibblers, who contribute occasionally, and
1% are the Fisherman. Fancy a nibble?
Fancy a nibble?
So! Are you usually a Lurker, a Nibbler or a Fisherman? It’s not a simple question – because is really depends on which pool you’re in. In my own pool I’m a Fisherman, but in the Pansy Pool I’m usually a Nibbler. I leave the occasional comment. I like a post on Facebook. Or I share a post on Twitter. But look at me today. Fisherman Jack has left the bank unattended and there’s a huddle of pseudo Jack’s at the water’s edge casting lines of their own. And if the words we’re casting are suitably weighted and baited, you’ll continue swimming in the Pansy Pool until Fisherman Jack returns with fresh bait of his own. In the meantime, if you fancy a nibble – there’s a comment box below.
You’d have to be in a coma or living in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea not to know it’s the 10th anniversary of 9/11. There are a number of momentous events that have characterised modern history and changed our world forever – Waterloo, the Great War, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, the Holocaust, Stalingrad, Hiroshima and then the Twin Towers. These events define the age. Almost all involved brutality and slaughter – man’s inhumanity to man. Few will forget that fateful day. Most can remember where they were and what they were doing. I know I can. I watched in silent horror. This changes everything, I thought with typically restrained British understatement. The Cold War may be over but a new ideological conflict was about to start in deadly earnest.
Not since January 1815 when 1,500 British troops attacked a thinly defended American battery on Georgia’s coast* has any foreigner attacked the American mainland. To be sure there had been terrorist atrocities before but the scale of the aerial strikes on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were of an entirely different order using two of the most potent symbols of western technological supremacy – the passenger jet and the skyscraper. It’s made America jittery and defensive. Moslems across the West are vilified as the new reds under the bed and the loose talk of jihad and crusades makes our fragile and fractious world an infinitely more dangerous place. Be afraid.
*The British then proceeded to sack the nearby town of St. Mary’s and burn its fort before departing just weeks later. The hostilities marked the last invasion and occupation of the U.S. mainland by foreign troops. The fighting was all the more remarkable because the War of 1812 (when the British tried to burn down the White House) had ended a month earlier with the Treaty of Ghent. By the time the invaders pulled out, even Andrew Jackson’s victory over the British at New Orleans – often considered the final battle of the war – was history. It had taken a month for word of peace to make its way across the Atlantic to both British and American forces.
Today’s guest post is from Dina, a Bodrum Belle of class and distinction. Delicious Dina and her partner, Aussie Dave, run a successful gulet charter business here in old Bodrum Town called South Cross Blue Cruising. Dina is civilised and erudite and Dave is, well, Australian, though he does expose his more artistic side in oils. They’re rather good. I know what you’re thinking. An artistic Aussie? An oxymoron, a paradox, a contradiction in terms, it can’t be true. But it is.
Dina
The summer of 2011 in Bodrum will be remembered as the summer of excessive ambulance sirens. Almost hourly and sometimes in simultaneous, harmonic dischord, ambulance and fire truck sirens have dominated the normal Bodrum hum of cicadas*, clinking of tea glasses, scooters and verbose neighbors discussing the latest diet fads.
Enough, already
In addition to the government operated national hospital’s ambulances, there are a plethora of private hospitals and clinics which have purchased a cargo minivan, painted the sides with red lettered AMBULANS and attached flashing blue lights with a very loud siren. The gleam in the drivers’ eyes of these newly sprouted emergency vehicles is one of sheer thrill as they weave in and out of the congested Konacik highway traffic, delivering patients with symptoms ranging from heat stroke to broken digits as quickly as possible. However, as a citizen and as a driver, I find it weary and upsetting to hear the sirens continually, as would anyone who has either had to be in one as a patient or follow a loved one in such a vehicle. A quick check on Dr. Google reveals that there are specific rules in many countries as to when lights, sirens, or both together may be legally used. When I’ve got a hangover isn’t one of them.
*A note from Jack.
I didn’t know cicadas existed here in Turkey. These fascinating insects live underground for 17 years before emerging en-masse to breed. I found this You Tube Clip from the BBC’s Life in the Undergrowth series with the incomparable David Attenborough. It’s about Yankee cicadas but you’ll get the drift.
Today’s the day we bid au revoir to our friends in Bordeaux and board the no frills flight to Gatwick, stay overnight in a no frills Sussex hotel and board another no frills flight home to thrilling Bodrum. This is a no frills post. Normal broadcasts will be resumed shortly.
This is most famous test card of all, Test Card F, still in use today by the BBC and used in 30 other countries. Designed by George Hersee and featuring his daughter Carole Hersee, it made its first appearance on BBC2 in 1967. I remember this so well, growing up before 24 hour multi-channel TV took over our lives. I wonder where she is now?
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.
Kym
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.
Urfa
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.
Stunning
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.
Feed Me!
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.
Nemrud
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.
Today’s guest post is from Yankee Erin who lives the Bohemian dream (she would say hand to mouth) existence in Berlin with teacher hubby, Ian. Very Cabaret. I first ‘met’ Erin when she interviewed me for Blogexpat. Erin writes her own blog about their Teutonic expat adventures in Back to Berlin…And Beyond, a wonderfully intimate glimpse into their lives. Today, Erin gives us a delicious titbit of their grand train journey to Istanbul and their first experience of the city that crosses two continents. Not quite Murder on the Orient Express but…
Erin
We had done it! We had lived in Europe for one whole year, just as we said we were going to. Going vegetarian for days at a time (even in cheap Berlin) to make ends meet on a teacher and sometimes writer budget, we had done it. And now it was time…time for The Trip. We were doing the collegiate run-around-europe-with-backpacks-half-the-size-of-our-body for over a month. In that time, we planned to visit 10 countries. We were crazy.
A week in (having just visited Austria, Hungary, & Romania), we boarded the train for Istanbul. Scheduled to be 18 hours, we knew it was going to be a long haul. A Kiwi couple paired with us in a sleeper and we spent long hours talking about our adventures and watching fields of crispy sunflowers roll by. Along with us on the train were some hippies from Germany (there is no escaping the Germans, I swear they seek us out wherever we travel), and a woman from Cyprus with 3 passports. One of hers literally had handwritten documentation. I was fascinated.
Night met the train in Bulgaria where we were told we would wait ‘a little while’ for a train from Serbia to meet-up. Making conversation with some of our fellow train riders, a Turkish man and his wife told us ‘Istanbul, big danger!’ They then charaded out the gestures of drugs and pick- pocketing. Oh, thank you for the advice.
The train
The hours ticked by and we realized our long train ride just got a lot longer. Finally, the two trains re-united and we were off again, struggling to sleep on the top bunks in the sweltering August heat. Screeech! Stopped again at around 4:30am, men with bug guns boarded the train, shouting at us in Turkish. The woman from Cyprus turned out to be a big aid as she spoke with the guards, and translated for us in German. ‘Kontrolle. Your passes…’ Oh- Passport Control. What a lovely welcome.
They took our passports and left the train. Don’t all the guidebooks tell you to never let that happen? We blearily followed, and forked over the money required for the visa. The Kiwi’s – those lucky bastards- got off without a fee. I see. As Americans, your country starts a bunch of wars- or wait excuse me – ‘conflicts’ and you don’t get very easy access to places.
The Blue Mosque
A whole day had passed since we boarded the train. We eagerly disembarked, ready to see a new continent, the place once called Constantinople – Istanbul! Immediately, we fell in love with the smells & sights of the city. Aggressive salesmen chanted at us ‘Spend money here, please?’ and we just smiled, happy to be swept away in the ocean of color. We found our way to our hostel in Sultanahmet and happily gazed out into the water. A little of this happiness dampened as a sour couple also on the roof top told us
‘There’s no water, you know?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘The whole city. No water’
She seemed to take pleasure at the looks of panic on our face. We had just spent a full day on a train in August. We weren’t exactly feeling so fresh or so clean. Running to the lobby we asked at the desk and the clerk apologetically told us it was true. They were running on their water tanks, but expected them to run out soon as the water had already been off for several days. He smiled sadly, ‘Welcome to Istanbul.’
Pigeon Lady
Whatever. We smelled. But we were in Istanbul! Pretzel vendors calling beneath our window, thousands of wild cats, a whole world of spices to discover…nothing mattered except that we were here for 3 magical days.
On the third day, we got sick. Call it Ataturk’s revenge (or possibly Vlad’s revenge as we had suspicion it might have come from Romania), but boy did we use those bathrooms. Struggling to maintain any ounce of dignity, we sweatily hung on as we continued to tour. It accompanied us to Kusadasi, Greek islands, all the way up Italy and through Southern France. By the time we got to Bruges we were almost recovered. A thoroughly effective weight loss program.
Time for Tea
Maybe it’s us. Or maybe it was some tough love from Istanbul. Maybe it’s best we didn’t have an easy time in Istanbul, because we really loved it, all of it. We survived the trip, celebrated our second Oktoberfest, said good-byes to all of our friends in Berlin, and flew home to Seattle. We even got married and have since returned to Berlin (I said it already – we’re crazy). But the trip to Istanbul stands out in my mind. I hate to pick favorites, but I wonder how much tickets are to Istanbul. Or maybe we should take the train.
Nowadays, who pays attention to aircraft safety announcements when fiddling uncomfortably in a cramped seat and thumbing through the glossy but vacuous in-flight magazine? Been there, done that, know the drill. We’re off on our holidays. Who wants to be reminded that we may die on the way? There’s no such thing as an atheist at 30,000 feet when the engines fail. Airlines sometimes go to extraordinary lengths to grab the attention of their passengers. Who hasn’t chuckled at the camp flying mattress flapping his arms about like a drag queen as he points out the emergency exits. Remember your nearest exit may be behind you. Pegasus, the no frills Turkish airline went one step further. It kept our attention and made us laugh.
The Turkish version is even cuter
In other words, when you hear the brace, brace announcement put your head between your legs and kiss your arse goodbye.
A Star is Born
Perking the Pansies 