FROST in FETHIYE

Well, I have forgotten the storms now as for the last week the weather has been abnormally cold here.  There has been FROST in the mornings and ICE on puddles!  I know that might not sound so awful to those of you who experience it most mornings through winter, but you have to bear in mind that we are not used to it!

Many of the plants in the garden are looking very sad.  Some will recover but some – including the banana trees and possible some larger trees won’t.  The pipes here are generally not insulated and the tanks and solar panels are very exposed on the roofs.  I haven’t seen any this time, but in past cold spells I have often seen pipes and panels that have burst, causing hot water to pour off the roof.

Worst of all – as far as I am concerned – is the difficulty of heating the houses.  Most do not have central heating and with tiled floors, large windows and no cavity walls they are designed for summer heat rather than being cozy in low temperatures.  Many people rely on air conditioning units to heat, but it is such a small heat, blowing high up near the ceiling that it often barely takes the chill off the air.  Everyone who lives here gets used to wearing slippers (yes – even the people who laugh at slippers when they first move here!) and sitting around wrapped in blankets!

The ground floor of our house is made bearable by the wood-burning stove.  I have only just mastered the art of lighting it, and it is a bit messy, but after an hour or so it definitely makes the room pretty warm and seems to warm the walls so that it is still nice when I come down the next morning.  We have even been experimenting with cooking in the oven part – here is Cem with a ‘börek’ (type of pie) we made a couple of weeks ago (learning in the process to be careful not to BURN things in the stove!)

Upstairs, though, is another matter.  My alarm clock is a flashy digital thing that shows the temperature – hence I know it was 10 degrees in my bedroom last night!  Some of you will know that I feel the cold a lot and will even sometimes be cold in the summer months when everyone else is wearing shorts and t-shirts – so you can imagine how many layers I have on at the moment.

Of course it is only on the Mediterranean coast here that we are so unaccustomed to the cold.  Parts of Turkey – including the capital Ankara - are again under snow and further east many villages are cut off by snow.  It’s school holidays next week and if we can get away we want to have a couple of days skiing somewhere.  If you ask me, that is the only good thing about weather this cold!

Kaan is 12!

Yes, it was Kaan’s twelfth birthday this week.  Can’t believe that my ‘baby’ is almost a teenager (there’s something to look forward to – having two stroppy adolescent boys around the house!)  Although his birthday is the 9th January, we didn’t actually take him ‘home’ (he was born in St Thomas’ London) until the end of February as he was 11 weeks premature.  Here is how he was then….

He is now just over 5feet tall and you would never guess that he weighed 3lb 3oz when he was born!  Here he is with his ‘bicycle’ cake…

He hasn’t been able to go to school on his bike this week, as the weather has been absolutely awful.  We have had storm-force winds, thunder and lightning and a lot of rain – so much that we were having problems dealing with it in the hotel.  As we are lower than the surrounding plots, we not only get what rains on us but also a lot coming in from those higher areas.  The system that channels the water round the outside of the pool and into the pool tanks works alright but there is also some seepage into the pool engine room and when it was raining hard the small submersible pump couldn’t get rid of the water fast enough.

Finally on Tuesday Cem bought a petrol-powered pump which can get rid of the water much faster and which will also keep going during a power-cut – the other thing which has caused us problems in the past.  This winter we seem to have had more power cuts than for the last few years, sometimes lasting a couple of hours.  That’s pretty annoying when we pay such a fortune for electricity.  Our last MONTHLY bill at home was 270tl – just about £100 – and the hotel bill, even in the winter months, is never less than about 400tl.

Actually, there has been a bit of a scandal concerning the electricity company which might (not holding my breath) result in us getting some money back.  Due to the remoteness of much of the eastern parts of Turkey and the wiliness of the residents, many people – often whole villages – do not pay for electricity but ‘steal’ it by stringing up illegal lines.  To cover their losses in those areas, the electricity board has been charging us a tax on our bills - maybe only a couple of lira for a normal household but as it is worked as a percentage of the total, it amounts to a lot of money on the huge summer bills at the hotel.  I might just about understand it if the electricity board was still government owned, but it was privatized about 5 years ago and I don’t see why we should be penalized for the fact that they cannot do their job efficiently.  One man finally stood up to them and has taken a case to court so we are hoping that he wins and we will be able to claim back this money.

And it’s not only electricity that is expensive here…I’ve just seen in National Geographic a comparison of petrol prices from last year – dollars per gallon.  Turkey is the leader IN THE WORLD, at 10.02, UK second at 8.39, while in America they pay 4 dollars a gallon.  Since in Turkey most things are delivered by road (there is not much of a rail network), this adds to the cost of all goods.  Our meat, chicken and cheese all cost more than in the UK and USA.  Electrical goods have always been much more expensive here and cars – well don’t even get me started on the cost of cars!

So how come we are still seen as a ‘cheap’ holiday destination…..?!!

New Year's resolutions

I have been very poor at blogging recently, so here is a photo summary of Christmas and New Year in the Cakir household.:

Gingerbread house…our construction skills are improving every year and this year we added trees to the garden.  Now, the boys are busy deconstructing it, which keeps them away from the Christmas cake!

                                            

Boys with the tree.  Kaan was the first to put a present under it (mine) and then counted every day to see how many more presents had been added.  Emre is REALLY hard to buy things for now and as even he couldn’t think what he wanted for his main present, it has been delayed!  Kaan had a new bicycle – his first full-size one an the first one that has come to him brand new (the down-side of being the youngest!)  He is so taken with it that he has started cycling to school this week.  I went with him on Monday morning and it was actually lovely cycling along the sea front at 7.30am, calm water, pink skies and few people around.  Let’s see how long his enthusiasm lasts though!

Cem and Murat trying to put together one of Kaan’s presents – a bird that flies.  The moral is don’t buy anything that needs constructing (unless you are good at engineering) and especially don’t buy anything with instructions in Chinese!

Two fairies for the Christmas tree….Cem’s cousin’s very cute daughters who celebrated Christmas and New Year with us.

Dinner on New Year – a true ‘fusion’ (for which read muddle) of Turkish and English with quiche, roast potatoes and cauliflower cheese (me) and chicken, liver and various starters from Cem’s mum.

My New Year’s resolution is to post a bit more often again.  In the meantime, I hope you all enjoyed a fantastic holiday season and wish everyone a healthy, happy 2012!

When is a contract not a contract?...

It’s been a while since I posted a blog. Been busy tidying up the hotel for the winter and even doing some gardening. The weather has been fantastic – chilly at night but beautifully bright and sunny in the day. I wish it could last all winter but people are starting to talk of water shortages and the farmers are starting to complain and I think we are forecast some rain this week.


Now I’d like to update you on our relationship with THE AGENCY. We have a contract with two British holiday companies. We signed a contract with one of them in July, since when they have been slowly but steadily sending bookings through. That’s not the one I want to tell you about!

The other company, as I have reported in this blog, first sent a very young guy who wasn’t authorised to make any major changes and went scuttling off when I gave him the prices for next year. We then had several wasted journeys to their office in Fethiye for ‘appointments’ that they had made and then forgotten (or couldn’t be bothered to stick around for).

Finally, a more senior guy came to the hotel. I gave him the rates I had agreed with the other company, he adjusted the details slightly – pushing low season prices down significantly but keeping the peak season price the same and we signed a contract. Finally, I thought!

But two weeks later I got an e-mail saying this contract could not be activated because their sales price was higher than the other company. When I looked at the two prices for a week’s stay at Poppy at different times through the season it became obvious why – their mark-up is consistently higher and sometimes double that of the other company.

They say they want ‘parity’ – for which read LOWER rates but firstly, I don’t see why we should treat them differently and secondly, we discussed all this already. Currently, after several more e-mails, we haven’t managed to make a new contract. To be honest, as we start the annual winter battle for payment, I am losing the will to sign. So far we have been paid for just over half this summer’s guests. And I doubt that we will manage to get much more until next spring.

And this, by the way, is a company that just had to ask lenders to come up with a rescue package.


Çalış Christmas Fair

Yesterday was the Christmas fair in Çalış. Unlike last year, the weather was glorious and it was packed with both stalls and customers. It has become a great institution here where the Christmas celebrations are few and far between, all thanks to a hard-working group of people who put it together.



mulled wine - yummy!



Sacrifices

Last week was Kurban Bayramı (Eid al-Adha), the sacrifice festival in the Muslim world.  The festival sounds a bit gruesome, and it did use to be characterized by lots of sheep appearing in people’s gardens in the weeks before the festival to be replaced by a lot of bloody carcasses as the butchers worked their way round on the first morning of the holiday.  Luckily this happens a lot less now; partly maybe because the price of an animal is so high that many people can no longer afford it, but also because there are now designated areas for the slaughter, as well as less hands-on ways of doing it.  You can now, for example, send a text message to the Red Crescent (like the Red Cross), who will deduct the money from your account, have an animal ‘done’ at the abattoir in your name, distribute most of the meat and send you a ‘taster’!

This is the point of the sacrifice – which by the way commemorates Abraham’s readiness to obey God by sacrificing his son İsmail - not to have a big barbecue with your friends, but to give the meat away.  Officially you can consume up to a third of the animal, a third can be given to family and friends but at least a third must be given to those in need.  This year the Red Crescent sent the meat to the earthquake victims in Van.

This festival is also the time that Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca.  The ‘duties’ they perform there, which might seem a bit strange if you have heard any of them (throwing stones is one of them) also represent the story of Abraham’s obedience to God.  The stone throwing, for example, recalls how he chased away the devil who was trying to tempt him to disobey.

For us, it is a time to visit family and friends.  Everyone gets dressed up and the kids are given sweets and money.  We always have breakfast with Cem’s mum (after he and the boys have been to the mosque), and visit some of this relatives.  That’s about the extent of our celebration – by the evening we were in the bar at the hotel, having some drinks with some friends!

Murat fishing

 On the second day we went out on the boat for the afternoon.  The weather was lovely.  The holiday lasts for four days, and the kids were off school until the Thursday, but two days was enough for me.  I am not good at sitting around all day drinking tea and gossiping…even after all this time in Turkey!

Emre fishing

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.....

Van Earthquake

I’m sure you have all read about the latest earthquake in Turkey. It struck last Sunday in the region of Van on the east side of Turkey. It measured 7.2 and was at a relatively shallow depth of 20km, meaning it caused a huge amount of damage.


Today the death toll stands at over 500 and over 1000 injured, while thousands of buildings have been destroyed and tens of thousands left homeless.

But it is the individual stories in the news that bring tears to my eyes. Although most of them are sad, there are also some amazing stories, like that of the two week old (premature) baby who survived for 3 days in her mother’s arms. Squashed into a small space and holding her daughter to keep her warm, this mother fed her until her milk dried up and then used her own saliva to keep her from dehydrating – a mother’s protective instinct. The baby is doing very well and both will make a full recovery, though who knows what psychological effects this woman will suffer.


Baby Azra

 Another one who will wonder if she is lucky or unlucky is the teacher who was stuck for 8 hours in the rubble of the 1999 İzmit earthquake. In Turkey, government employees are often sent to the eastern regions to work and this lady was sent to Van. She was caught again in this earthquake, again trapped under the rubble but again pulled out alive, this time after a day or so.

And then there are the tragic stories of the mother (also a teacher), found dead with her 8-month old son in her arms and buried with him. And the little boy waiting every day by the remains of an apartment block, hoping they will find his mother alive.

I can’t imagine what it feels like to be trapped under steel and concrete for hours, let alone days. Although I have felt lesser earthquakes here, I can’t imagine what it feels like to be in a building that is shaking so much you can’t find your way to the stairs, or make your way down them. I can’t imagine what it feels like to lose everything you own in a few seconds or worse, to be waiting and hoping your family will be pulled out alive.

The rescue operation and aid operations are continuing and also contains good and bad stories. When I watched the people in İstanbul rushing to donate blankets, beds, clothes and other necessities I thought how relatively little many of these people have but how willing they are to donate it to those less fortunate. But one of the army vehicles carrying aid in the area was attacked by terrorists which is disgusting.

I’m off home now to sort out some things for the aid operation. If you would like to help these people, you can log on to www.redcross.org.uk where these is a Turkish Earthquake Appeal.