Election week and I'm off!

There was a general election in Turkey yesterday.  It was the second one this year, the first being in June and leaving the winning party – the one that has been in power since 2002 - without enough of a majority to form a government.  As none of the other parties would enter a coalition, they had no choice but to call a second election.

The result?  They took more votes – up from 41% to only just under 50% - and enough seats to form a government.  Not in the Mugla region though (the area that includes Fethiye, Marmaris and Bodrum) where the CHP (Republican People’s Party) increased their vote to 48% which I think is the highest of any region.

One of the amazing things is the turnout.  In both elections, this has been over 85% - compared to 66% at the 2015 UK elections.  The last time there was a turnout of over 80% in the UK was the 1950s!  But people here are interested and passionate and even when they know the result won’t be the one they want, they still see voting as a right and a duty.  At the school where we voted, this was obvious: families came carrying children and cars pulled up at the door bringing the sick and elderly to vote.

Halloween cupakes

Halloween (see pictures) means the summer season has finished.  The last guests left yesterday which meant for the first time in six months my alarm didn’t go off at 6 this morning.  Needless-to-say I am back in the hotel now, sorting things out and putting things away.

It has been a good season for us – thankyou to all who visited Poppy!  The only difference I noticed was that there weren’t so many families in peak season – presumably because of fears over security.  The guests who come early and late in the summer are mostly regulars who know the situation and are less influenced by media scare-mongering.

Halloween a few years ago (the boys will hate me for this!)

I am hopeful too for next season, barring any further international crises.  We have already signed contracts with Hotels4u and Alpharooms.  The other agency that we have been working with, who shall remain nameless, have so far only paid for May and June’s guests and as we have had this problem with them for the last two years I am not very keen to re-sign. We are also on Booking.com site which has the benefit that control of price, availability and booking terms are all in our hands and can be changed instantly.  Sometimes it is a juggling act trying to fill the hotel but not be overbooked, especially when reservations are coming in from several sources and the agencies require a couple of days’ notice to stop selling.

Anyway I don’t have to worry about this for a few months.  Now that the season has finished, we have started to take in monthly renters, mostly Turkish people who are working in Fethiye.  One group are running an illegal ‘gambling den’ where they play – wait for it – bingo!!  Unlike the Mecca Bingo Hall, it is drawing mostly male clientele and opens from about 10 at night until 3 in the morning.  The way they talk, you would think they had invented the game, but as a novelty here (previously, as I have mentioned before, bingo was something that children played on New Year’s Eve) it is apparently very popular.  Who would have guessed!

view of Fethiye from the rock tomb

And finally - I am leaving the country (but not because of the election results!)  I am going to Canada to visit a friend and I am so excited about it.  We used to work together in London but since she moved back to her native Toronto with her husband and son I haven’t seen her.  We are not even very good at keeping in touch with mails and skype –life just seems too busy sometimes.  So, wish me luck for the ridiculously long flight – actually 3 flights each way (and some of you know how much I hate flying!) and if I don’t manage to post while I’m out there, I will be back…..

Some local wildlife

Those of you who have visited Poppy certainly know about our tortoises and many of you have also seen one or more baby tortoise – not to mention the baby-making that goes on constantly (much worse than the rabbits) and involves much bumping of shells and some ridiculous face-pulling and squeaking on the part of the male (I know there is a joke here…)

But during the heat of summer the babies – and even the larger tortoises – are often hard to find.  At this time, when they need to soak up all the sun they can get, you can hardly walk in the garden without treading on one.  The other day, I found these FOUR gathered together– for a baby tortoise play-date?....

Baby tortoise gathering

And today I found the smallest one I think I have EVER seen…..

People sometimes ask me questions about the tortoises and I can't always answer them so I have now done my homework and here is what I have learned….

They are spur-thighed or ‘Greek tortoises’.  They lay up to about 6 eggs at time in a nest dug by the female, after which she has nothing more to do with the nest or the young, which take about 10 weeks to hatch out.

Even these little tortoises can apparently live well over a hundred years.  So can you tell their age by counting rings?  Sometimes, but some rings rub off while if the tortoise has plenty to eat all year round its shell may not develop distinct rings as it grows.

Star Agama

Here is another little guy I saw while I was in the garden – again most of you have seen these popping in and out of holes in the stone walls round the hotel.  He is – apparently – a Star Agama and is capable of changing colour – mainly lighter or darker.  He is territorial – and sometimes one male may have a ‘harem’.  The head-bobbing which I have noticed they often do when sitting on top of the wall, is apparently a sign of aggression.  Unfortunately it isn’t enough to stop Poppy the lizard-eater.  We rescue them whenever possible but she sometimes gets herself a tasty snack.  Luckily, the article I have just read says they are not considered endangered at all!

Poppy looking innocent - don't believe it!

In contrast, the loggerhead turtles which nest on the beach at Calis as well as at Iztuzu beach in Dalyan, are officially listed as endangered.  There seem to have been more sightings of them this year.  I have had several guests saying they virtually swam into one while swimming in the lagoon at Oludeniz and others who saw them swimming just off the beach at Calis.  Early this summer, we saw several swimming close to the beach late in the afternoon when there were lots of swimmers around.  I was surprised that they would come that close to people.

I have just been looking for any information about how many nests there have been this year but couldn’t find any figures yet.  What I did find was a research paper that suggested that even with all the efforts at conservation, the attempts to protect them (for example making the boats add protective guards to their propellers) and the hospital and rehabilitation centre at Iztuzu, the numbers are still thought to have declined to around 25% of the level of 1995.

And don't forget, turtles and tortoises as a group have been around for more than 100 million years and shared the earth for some 40 million with the dinosaurs!

The lazy blogger returns!

I have decided to stop being lazy and start blogging again!  With two more weeks to go before the season finishes it is generally quiet round here and I have time to write.  Then, after we close the hotel and I start giving Turkish lessons I will just have to organize my time a bit better.

Yesterday, I left Kaan in charge of the hotel and had a lovely day off with a friend.  We went to Patara and walked round a small part of the ruins.  Patara was the main naval and trading port of Lycia, as well as the birth-place of St Nicholas.  During Roman times, it became the home to the Government of the Lycian League and the Assembly building has been excavated and repaired in recent years.  Although towns in the League acted autonomously on smaller issues, they came together by sending representatives to this Assembly to decide issues that affected the whole region, such as trading terms and security.  The city of Telmessos, situated where Fethiye is today, was a medium-sized town with  two representatives on the council; Patara, as one of the largest towns, had three. 

Close to the National Assembly building is the theatre and the main street but the ruins cover a huge area and include many temples and baths, and a granary built in 131AD during the visit of Emperor Hadrian – he of wall-building fame.  Excavation of Patara is an ongoing process, but when you look around at the visible remains and imagine what else is hidden beneath the ground you understand that it won’t finish any time soon – and this is just one of hundreds of such sites in Turkey!

Patara

Our niece, Yagmur, is studying archaeology at Konya University and has spent the last two summers with a group of her peers and their professor, working at Knidos, near Datca.  Knidos was a Greek city located on a promontory where the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean and was well-known as a centre of wine production.  I used to think I should have studied archaeology, but I’m not sure I have the patience for it!  Nor do I fancy working as she did moving barrows full of earth in temperatures of 40°C.

Anyway, after our bit of history yesterday we went down to have a drink on the beautiful sandy beach of Patara, then went on to Kalkan which is one of my favourite places for a day out.  We had some lunch, then browsed the shops.  Kalkan residents are very good at taking care of stray animals and my favourite shop is always host to a variety of cats and dogs who take advantage of the warm welcome.

Kalkan has stunning views and some great cafes and restaurants; I always used to think it had much nicer shops than Fethiye – boutiques selling lovely clothes, art galleries and shops selling tasteful souvenirs (rather than stuffed turtles and fez!).  These days, however, I must say that Paspatur – the Old Town in Fethiye – is just as nice.  The buildings have been done up, there are some fantastic shops and even the streets have been improved with attractive overhead lighting.

Paspatur (Fethiye Old Town)

Did you know?  They say that if you drink water from the spring in Paspatur you will return to Fethiye.  Well, there are many people who return year after year, but I think there is a little more drawing them back than the water!

Today the digital display in Fethiye showed 24 degrees and it really felt like the start of summer.  It has been sunny all this week, but there was something different about today, people seemed to have discarded their coats and to be really enjoying the sunshine.  From now to June is the best weather – then it starts to get seriously hot.

Grant and Dawn have been here for a week and were very lucky with the weather – it was pretty much straight sunshine until they left yesterday, then it poured down for a few hours!  As they had to fly into Antalya (no flights to Dalaman at the moment) we decided to have a couple of nights in a hotel there.  You can get very cheap deals to the large hotels there in winter when they are not full.

We went to Club Sera Resort Hotel on Lara Beach.  Some of my students stayed there a few months ago and recommended it.  Having left the car with the concierge, we walked into the ground floor lobby/reception area and were wowed by the ‘bling’ everywhere – gold chairs, chandeliers and several layers of swag curtains.  Our rooms were in the main building – with large balconies looking towards the sea and beds so large you could have got lost in them!

The hotel stretches over a large area, right down to its own beach and salt water pool.  There area number of bars and restaurants, though at this time of year there was just one restaurant, the lobby  bar and a bar with pole-dancing girls open.   We stuck with the lobby bar!  The food was pretty average but the choice was so huge that you could always find something.  The cocktails were very good – we tried quite a number in the name of research!  Altogether, it was a great deal and we had a fun couple of days.

Cem at the aquarium in Antalya

Back in Fethiye, we went out on Friday night to celebrate Dawn’s birthday.  There are several new (well newish- mostly opened some time last year) restaurants along the sea front in between Fethiye and Çalış.  As with so many things, you get different opinions from different people with some people raving about one restaurant and others saying they had been disappointed.  We decided to try one of called Deniz Yıldızı (Star Fish).  It’s not very big and was a bit chilly inside but the food was good and the kitchen was open to viewing and very clean.

Aside from the weather, now that our visitors have gone I feel like it is time to focus on summer.  I want the divans recovered if possible and have been looking at suitable materials.  A little man (the cleaner’s husband actually) has been working every day for nearly 2 months now, doing bits of plumbing, tiling, filling and generally tidying up round the hotel.  With some plastering and painting (areas in need) the rooms will be ready, which is good as the first guests arrive on 3rd April - already less than a month away.  I shall enjoy my last month of going to sleep without wondering if I have forgotten anything/anyone or if anything untoward will happen in the night!

Kaan and Poppy

What's in a name?

I thought I would share one of the things that keeps me amused out here – names.  Turkish names – Christian names, surnames and even place names  often have me chuckling.

While most English names have a meaning if you dig into them, it isn’t often immediately obvious.  The exceptions are ‘hippy’ style names like River and some of those used by eccentric stars – Apple and Peaches spring to mind.  In Turkey, these sort of names are common; Rain (one of our nieces’ names), Leaf, River, Stream, New Moon, Tulip, Love and Wish are all popular girls names, Iron, Soil, Eagle, South, War, Peace and Lion for a boy.

just a nice sunset the other day!

Some of these are very pretty names – both in sound and meaning.  But there are some whose meaning seems to me just weird.  Why would you call your child ‘Enough’? Our second cleaner last summer went by this rather strange name and readily admitted to me that as the fifth child her parents had chosen it for her to show they wouldn’t have any more children – and then gone on to have two more!

For a boy, what about ‘Help’?  In my book of children’s names it says that as well as meaning ‘one giving help’ it is – like ‘enough’ – a name given to a (planned) last child. As in ‘god help me’? Honestly!

Here’s another one that makes Cem laugh on a frequent basis.  An affectionate shortening of the name Mehmet is ‘Memiş’ (pronounced Memish), now used as a name in its own right.  Unfortunately ‘memiş’ is also a common word for breasts – a bit like boobs.  Cem knows a man who is quite an important civil servant who goes by this name and every time he calls, Cem starts quietly sniggering and I know it is ‘boobs’ on the phone!

Surnames, having been made compulsory by Atatürk, were often chosen to highlight the character of the namee…which makes you wonder why people chose things like ‘Madaxe’, ‘Blackpants’, or even better ‘Without pants’.   Sometimes it is the combination of the two names which makes it funny.  We know a family with the name ‘Fox’ who chose to give their son the name ‘Strange’:  ‘Strange Fox’ – sounds more like a Red Indian than Turk!

Finally place names.  Just before we got to Uludağ where we went skiing we went through the small town of ‘Grasshopper’.  Here are some other good ones:  the villages of ‘Mad’, ‘Useless ones’, ‘Calf’, ‘Son of a Goat’ and ‘Mad Ali the servant’.  And one for Frank….’Bald ones’ village!

I suppose you could have the same fun with some of our place names and even surnames  - Cem thought Winterbottom was pretty funny when he first heard it.  Talking of which, I have a funny story about names.  The first time Cem and I were in England together we were renting a car.  As it was being brought to the house, I checked on the phone whether Cem as a Turkish licence holds would be able to be listed as a named driver.  They said fine, as long as they could understand his licence.  As the Turkish driving licence has everything written in English under the Turkish we didn’t think there would be a problem.   However, the not-so-bright man who delivered the car took his licence and looked long and hard at it.  I started to show him how under ‘Sürücü Belgesi’ it said ‘Driving Licence’ and under ‘Soyadı’ it said ‘Surname’ but he still looked puzzled and eventually said:

‘But his name is foreign – how do I translate that?’

And now....watch the cat and the rabbit!

The joys of pet ownership

Some of you will know that despite my usually sensible approach to stray animals (that is we have enough already and they should go to the animal sanctuary to find a good home), this summer, mainly thanks to our guests, we acquired a second dog and a cat. The dog (Poppy) now lives at home with our other dog – sometimes playing happily together, sometimes squabbling. She is very big and can jump onto the garden wall, from where she towers over people walking up the road (which is lower than our garden) and probably frightens the living daylights out them, particularly Turkish people who can be frightened of even the smallest, quietest dog.


The cat – also called Poppy (I did try to find another name for at least one of them but somehow the name had stuck to both of them) – lives at the hotel. There is also a very fat white rabbit which lives in the hotel garden. When the cat is in a frisky mood she stalks the rabbit, who seems quite unconcerned and just hops off in disgust but no particular haste. I actually think in a fight the rabbit would probably win.

When we got back from our ski holiday, the cat was walking on 3 legs. The fourth was so fat and twisted that I thought she must have broken it. We took her to the vet where she amazed me by purring her head off while on the nasty metal table in the vets, obviously in some pain. Must be a sign of nerves – either that or she’s stupid! Anyway the good news was it wasn’t broken but she had a nasty cut that had got infected and I had to give her medicine twice a day for a week (liquid antibiotic squirted into her mouth – surprisingly she drank it without a fuss).

As there are a number of other cats that visit the hotel and having just dealt with one lot of kittens I also had her booked in to be ‘done’ last week. So a few days later she went back in the box, back to the vets and had her op, after which she had a rather fetching bandage wrapped round her middle which pulled her fur and made her walk sideways.

The following day I was at the hotel when the boys called me to come home quickly. When I got there I found the puppy Poppy had been stung by something and her nice pointy snout had swollen to three times its normal size. She seemed not in the slightest bit bothered by this, even though she could not shut her mouth properly, but she looked both ugly and very funny at the same time. Into the car and another trip to the vet- unlike the purring cat, this large dog quivered with fright and had to be held down while he gave her an antihistamine injection.

dog with a fat lip

I have threatened them all with the dogs home if they cause any more trouble. The only one that isn’t a problem is the rabbit, and she is in trouble with Cem as she has eaten his pomilin (a type of oversized grapefruit) trees.

'Make sure you win - or you'll be the sausages next time!'

To add some larger animals to the picture, we went to watch the camel wrestling on Sunday. It was in one of the villages on the edge of Fethiye and was very popular with locals – with a sort of market set up outside and stalls selling things to eat (including camel sausages – is that a threat to the competitors?) The camels were very well turned out with coloured rugs and beads and bells. Five or six of them are in the arena at the same time and two are encouraged to ‘wrestle’ which they do by pushing each other with their necks. The one who goes down first – or runs away (which was the case with a couple of them) loses. There is a bit of pushing but nothing too violent and some of the participants actually didn’t look that interested in fighting. They do produce a lot of foamy spit though, and it is wise to duck when they shaking their heads in your vicinity.  By the way, these camels are kept because of the prestige - and cost up to about £100,000 if they have good form!

WATCH OUT FOR THE SPIT!!

Actually we missed the best sport of the day. The ‘mayor’ of the little suburb it was in wanted to ride a camel. One of the beasts was duly prompted to lie down so he could get on; unfortunately as it stood up – as gently as a camel can – he lost his balance and went head first onto the floor. Nothing damaged but his pride – and it was shown on national news the following day so I don’t suppose he’ll forget that in a hurry!

Skiing in Turkey

I am a very bad blogger – it has been so long since I blogged. As a partial excuse my laptop got slower and slower and finally ground to a halt altogether a couple of weeks ago. Emre’s best efforts to revive it had no effect so it has gone to have a complete overhaul and hopefully will be back tomorrow. In the meantime Emre’s own laptop has died too; what is it with these computers?


Having smugly thought that I had completed my duties in the fields of present-buying and cake-baking, while taking down the Christmas tree I suddenly remembered it was Kaan’s birthday that following week. I really don’t recommend having a baby in January – it just seems such a lot of effort to go to so soon after Christmas and New Year! And I always feel guilty because Emre’s birthday is in August and there are plenty of people around to help celebrate with him.

Oh well, Kaan is stuck with us, grandma and a couple of friends. I made him a cake and – despite him telling Grant he got nothing – he got a mask for diving and a few other bits and pieces. He is thirteen now – a teenage in training. I hope he doesn’t learn too well, though he has the best teacher in Emre!

School holidays begin here this Friday but we decided to go away before the holiday as we wanted to go skiing and it gets expensive and busy when school is out. We looked at lots of options including Bulgaria and Macedonia but finally decided to try Uludag – the oldest and probably best-known ski resort in Turkey.

Uludag is near Bursa, abou 200km south of Istanbul. We drove there – a journey of about 650km which we did through the night, arriving there at about 9 in the morning, It might seem like a long journey but it isn’t especially long for Turkey where people jump in the car and drive from Fethiye to Istanbul without much thought or planning. Also away from the major cities there is a lot less on the roads than there is in the UK and the roads have improved hugely in the twenty years I have been here.

So, we drove slowly up the road from Bursa into the mountains, stopping for breakfast and to put chains on the tyres on the way. We arrived and found the weather was a bit extreme – overcast and strong winds but plenty of snow. The resort was not as big as I had imagined – though there are plenty of runs – and the hotel we had picked was just 50m or so from the nearest lift.

The weather was not perfect, with fierce winds at the top of the mountain (actually blew me along the terrace of the cafe) and a near-blizzard on Saturday; of course on Sunday when we only had a half-day skiing it cleared up and the sky was a brilliant blue. But it didn’t stop us skiing and we were all happy to get on the slopes again after several years. The boys leave Cem and I behind now – but any of you who have facebook have seen that from the photos Cem put on!

We got back to Fethiye on Monday and the weather has been all over the place this week. There was a big storm on Thursday night. The awning from the front of BusStop bar blew off, damaging the wall it was bolted on to and putting a hole in the roof where it landed! We went to the hotel at 4am but everything was OK there. They have actually given flood warnings again for tonight. As we still haven’t quite got our claim together for the last flood I really don’t want another one!