The future and the past

I have just received a booking from Hotels4u for next year – nice try but as we haven’t signed a contract with them yet I wonder why they are taking reservations?!  It is strange thinking of next summer already when I am only just recovering from this one.  Still, I am glad that some people are starting to think of next year’s holidays.  The general view over here is that this year was a terrible one – there were visitors here (Poppy was full at least from June to September) but they were not spending much.  This is understandable given the current economic situation at home but it affects the restaurants and tour companies particularly.  The Turkish Tourism Board’s new advertising focuses on all the attractions of Turkey – the history, beautiful sea and beaches etc – in an attempt to move it away from just a low-cost destination.  The current forecast is that 2013 will be about the same but 2014 will be a boom year.  That would be nice!

theatre at Pınara

 I took myself off to visit one of the local attractions last weekend – the ruins of the Lycian town of Pınara.  It was built a bit like a ‘new town’ to take some of the overflowing population of Xanthos.  It became quite large itself, having 3 representatives (the maximum) on the council of Lycia – Fethiye, for example, only had two.  Now, it is just a pile of stones in a deserted forest on the lower slopes of a hill.  I say deserted, though while I was there rather strangely a group of about 30 foreign walkers came striding through with their backpacks and walking poles – rather surreal!

The theatre is in tact and though not huge, quite impressive.  On the other side, there are interesting heart-shaped columns that were part of a temple dedicated to Aphrodite.  There is also a stone with a rather interesting phallic symbol which seems to have been part of the temple (see photo right)!  And then there are the tombs.  The mountain behind the main settlement is 450 m high and a sheer rock face – yet it is riddled with rock tombs.  I really can’t imagine how they carved them but assume they must have hung down from the top rather than climbed up from the bottom – and given that the settlement was founded in the fifth century BC they are rather impressive however they were made.  It was a beautiful day when I went there and the views to the Ak Dağları or White Mountains  - already with a dusting of snow on them – were stunning.

I put an ad on facebook (actually Cem put it on for me – I am still not facebooked up!) for Turkish lessons and have had a lot of responses leading to 6 new groups of students.  I am pretty much ‘full’ now in terms of lessons – 3 a day 4 days a week is about as much as I want to do.  Some of the new students have done lessons with various different teachers already but – without wishing to criticize anyone – they seem to come away with lots of stuff written down but unable to put together even a simple sentence.  I hope that I will be able to remedy that!

The kittens are getting bigger and walking around – though still a bit wobbly.  They are also getting very noisy and as they are in the room where I give my lessons they can be a bit of a distraction!  The puppy (Poppy) has also grown a lot and can now jump onto the garden wall (at home).  It isn’t very high from the inside, but from the outside it is about 6 feet above the road; it must be quite alarming for people walking past to see this dog perched above them – and even sometimes jumping down in front of them.  Unfortunately she hasn’t worked out how to get back in so sits outside the front gate until we notice her – or a kind neighbour lets her back in.

I have been busy designing an album of our digital pix.  It is a bit fiddly but a very clever system and it makes you look through all your old photos and remember nice times.  As so many of our ‘nice times’ take place at the hotel, many of our lovely guests feature in it.  Here’s a few photos – with love to all the people who have given us happy memories…

Turkey remembers

Atatürk, the founder and first President of the Turkish Republic, died on 10th November 1938 at 9.05am.  No, I haven’t been studying for a citizenship exam or researching for a book about him; it is impossible to live here and not know these things as every year on this day he is remembered all over the country, firstly by a siren which blasts for two minutes starting at 9.05 – and stops even the traffic on the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge in İstanbul, then by all manner of ceremonies and performances.  This year, for example, a few thousand people queued in İzmir hoping to be selected as one of the 2,400 people who would create a ‘living portrait’ of Atatürk. 

The strength of feeling, both pride in his achievements and sorrow at his untimely death (at the age of just 57), is amazing with even young children proclaiming their love for him.  It used to seem strange to me the extent to which he is remembered so long after his death;  that was before I knew very much about him.

Actually the strange thing is how he has been ‘forgotten’ in other countries.  Here are some of the things said about him:

‘The name of Atatürk reminds mankind of the historical accomplishments of one of the greatest men of this century’              JOHN F KENNEDY 1963

‘During a conversation with the Foreign Affairs Minister of the Soviet Union, Litvinov, I asked him who was, according to him, the most valuable and remarkable statesman of Europe. He replied that, the most valuable and interesting leader in the world was the President of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.’

FRANKLIN D ROOSEVELT 1928

‘The death of Atatürk, who saved Turkey during the war and revived the Turkish nation, is not only a loss for his country, but it is also a great loss for Europe .’

                                                                       WINSTON CHURCHILL 1938

To put it simply, without Atatürk there would be no modern Turkey.  As the Ottoman Empire declined, the weak leadership sided with the Germans in the first World War.  After their defeat, the Turkish people were desperate and demoralised and the Allies were ready to take control of the area.  Atatürk, who after distinguishing himself as a military leader had resigned from the army in disgust at the direction the leaders were taking – escaped from British- occupied İstanbul to Samsun (on the Black Sea), from where he began his campaign to rally the masses to fight for their lands.

After victory and the formation of the Turkish Republic, he became its first President.  The vast range of political and social reforms he implemented include creating a secular state where religion and politics were quite separate, giving women equal rights (in the mid 1930s 18 women were elected to parliament) and changing the alphabet (from Arabic to Latin).  Here are a few more facts about him:

·         He led the 9th division to victory over the Allied Forces at Gallipoli in 1915

·         He adopted a number of children (though he was married for a short time he had no biological children) including Sabiha Gökçen who became the world’s first female fighter pilot

·         He was fair-haired and blue-eyed and was a very stylish dresser

Atatürk was by all accounts a charismatic and visionary leader.  Too bad there haven’t been many more of them in Turkey since then!  But  I still wonder why he didn’t get a mention during my 16 years of education in Britain.  Oh well…here’s the new statue of him in Fethiye (in the ceremonial square in front of the cultural centre).

Into Winter

Yes – we have officially started our winter season, though you wouldn’t guess it from the weather which after a few wobbly days is back to being glorious.

The last guests left on the 25th October and Kenny left on 26th.  However it didn’t immediately quieten down as Cem’s family were down for the bayram holiday (known as Eid in the UK) – 15 staying at the hotel and another 10 or 12 visiting.  They were here partly to celebrate the holiday but also because one of his cousins was getting married on 28th.  This is a busy season for weddings in Fethiye as people take advantage of the good weather.  There are few indoor wedding venues and even fewer that can accommodate the several hundred people invited to most weddings.

some of the family!

 I went shopping for gold with Cem’s mum – you probably know that rather than buying ‘presents’ they usually pin gold or money on the bride and groom.  However even I hadn’t seen the latest way of buying it.  Traditionally the gold was either bangles (village women particularly like to wear these to display their wealth – though they can also be cashed in at the jewellers any time) or sovereign-type gold coins, which can also be traded in for money any time.  The new version is a credit-card sized piece of plastic, with a piece of 24 carat gold (that is 100% pure gold) of your chosen weight- one gram, 5 grams and up.  I suppose it is practical but not very romantic – I prefer the old system of gold sovereigns myself.

As well as having a lot of guests, I had temporary charge of 4 alsation pups – the cutest things you can imagine but requiring a lot of feding and cleaning up after.  I nicknamed them the ants as they swarmed around my legs whenever I went out to them, making it hard to even fill their food bowls without stepping on them.  They finally went to their new homes on Friday.

how cute are we?

I still have Poppy the dog – the puppy who walked into the hotel in September and decided not to leave.  She is now living at home, growing fast, playing rough-and-tumble all day with Holly, though she won’t follow Holly into the sea when she goes swimming.  She is still very gangly and quite clumsy, falling over her own feet quite often.

And then there is Poppy the cat (named by guests) who we have renamed Zeytin (meaning olive).  Some of you know that despite being not 6 months old and not fully-grown herself she has been expecting kittens.  The last couple of weeks she looked as though she had swallowed a football and was waddling round, especially walking up and down the stairs.

However she is now back to her slimline self since as I arrived this morning she started to give birth.  I held her paw as she pushed out first one and a bit later a second black and ginger stripey baby – just checked again and there are three! She seems to be doing her motherly duties in washing and feeding them, despite being so young herself.

Apart from that, it’s been pretty quite round here!!