The season ends

The summer season is over and the beach front in Çalış is quiet, the sunbeds stacked up and many of the restaurants closed.  Though the last holiday-makers have left Poppy (and the pool is beginning to take on a green tinge) there is still plenty of activity.  Kenny is here for another two weeks, and a few people have moved in for the winter.  We also had a couple of guests at the weekend so I suddenly found myself cooking for 10 and more again.  Cem did the honours on Saturday night, making meat and peas (doesn’t sound good in English but everyone assures me it’s delicious).

The end of the season brings mixed feelings.  Many people are looking forward to having a rest and I have to confess I enjoyed a long lie-in on Tuesday morning.  Some are worried that there is not so much to do in winter; I saw an English guy who lives here the other day and he said he is bored already.  For others, the hard part of winter is the fact that they are not earning any money and have to make what they have earned over the summer last the next 6 months!

Last week Ölüdeniz held its annual air festival.  Thousands of paragliders come to compete in the competition and many more come to give displays of all things aeronautical.  We went down there on Saturday and watched a lot of paragliders, some freefallers (who launched with the paragliders from the mountain then baled out), a display of microlight flying and – the best – a hot air balloon.  I have wanted to go up in one since I was a child watching them fly over our house.  This one was tethered and only went up 15 or 20m but that was a start.  I didn’t realise how close the burner is to the basket – making it pretty hot in there.  I would still like to have a proper flight, preferably in Cappadocia (the region of Turkey with the weird ‘fairy chimneys’) where the conditions are perfect for it and the landscape worth seeing.

Monday was Halloween…there were a few parties going on in the bars frequented by expats.  I remember when Emre was small and I dressed him up and made a pumpkin lantern and everybody thought I was nuts!  Even Kaan is too big to dress up properly now – though he did wear one of his scary masks.  We also made a good jack o’lantern - and delicious pumpkin soup with the bits we scraped out.....