Skiing in Fethiye

Finally on Sunday we managed to get up to the ski slope at Erendağ.  This project was planned and talked about for so long that when it actually opened I think we hardly believed it.  On Sunday it was raining stair rods in Fethiye and, hoping that we might see snow, we set off with a couple of friends.

The site is about 80km from Fethiye, in the mountains above Kemer and Saklıkent gorge.  The road is good as far as Seki and the last 9km, though dirt road, is wide and not too steep, though we did manage to miss a sign and nearly ended up in someone’s garden.  At the turn off the tarmac road there was no snow but gradually as we climbed up there were patches beside the road.  The rain turned to sleet and then snow and suddenly we arrived at the restaurant and ski slope of Eren Mountain.

view from the restaurnat at Eren Mountain

The boys and I got fitted with boots and skis straight away – amazingly they had a pair of ski boots to fit Emre’s size 48 feet!  Kaan had never been on a drag lift before and it was a pretty bumpy ride up.  He fell off once on the way up, but managed it well the second time – even negotiating the numerous other people who had fallen off and were littering the way!

At the top of the slope it was a case of find a way down, the new snow having covered everything.  Emre, being kamikaze, headed down the steepest place he could find; Kaan and I were a bit more wary and took some time (and a few tumbles) to find our ‘ski feet’.  It’s three years since we last skied and that was on the beautifully snow-ploughed slopes of Sarıkamuş (in the northeast of Turkey).

ready to go!

In the end, we all made it down and the kids skied a bit more while we went for a hot drink by the fire.  The overall verdict is there is still quite a lot that needs doing up there, but it’s great to be able to pop up for an afternoon on the ‘piste’ and I really enjoyed just being in the snow again.

The journey home – not so much though!  We were, as usual, the last to leave.  It was dark, snowing and the car was so full of wet bodies that the windows were completely steamed up.  Suffice it to say that I was quite relieved to be back in rainy Fethiye.  And it’s still raining now.

The Prime Minister comes to town

The big news in Fethiye this week was the Prime Minister coming to town.  He was here for a couple of hours on Saturday but the visit caused quite a commotion!  All the roads in the centre of town were closed and all cars were removed.  A stage was erected in the park just off the seafront so all the boats moored on the harbour front were also moved a short way out.  The father of a boy who came for an English lesson on Saturday morning reported that ‘a hundred’ buses filled with police had arrived (possibly slight exaggeration!) and Emre reported that from the roof of Burger King he saw several snipers on nearby roofs.  There were also helicopters buzzing overhead, panzers (armoured vehicles) ready on the ground and ‘jammers’ – which I have never even heard of – to block remotely operated gadgets, particularly bombs.

I wondered if the Prime Minister at home has as much security when he goes ‘on location’?  I really don’t know, having never been present at such an occasion but I rather think that it is probably a bit more low-key.  Cem says that is because there are not so many people in the UK who hate the PM.  I think there are probably just as many, but they are less likely to act on it.  Fiery Turkish tempers make for more of a direct threat; they were even taking loose change from anyone who wanted to go into the reserved area – in case they threw coins at the PM!

Anyway, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was driven through town waving (Emre claims he waved right at him) and distributing diaries (Cem claims he threw one directly at him) before appearing on the specially-built stage to give an hour-long speech.  Like all politicians, he spent much of the time praising his party and what they have achieved in the 8 years they have been in office – roads built, hospitals opened etc.….

The one question that many people wanted to hear the answer to was whether there are plans to promote Fethiye to province status.  The answer – which he luckily waited until the end to provide – was a resounding ‘no’. I say luckily because as soon as he said that, at least half the crowd listening got up and walked out!  It is an issue near that everyone has a strong opinion on, since province status would confer prestige and financial benefits.  At the moment, we are a department of Muğla province – Muğla being a town about two hour’s drive away, now smaller than Fethiye (population 61,000 at last count, compared to Fethiye’s 70,000) but to which we have to go for a whole load of official business.  Seems silly – but that probably just shows how much Fethiye has grown recently in relation to the other towns in the area.

At Poppy we have been fighting our own little political battle – threatening to tear up our contract with one of the agencies if they didn’t pay the outstanding money from last year.  The result was a hasty visit from a sympathetic guy, a long phone-call from the boss…and a bottle of Jack Daniels for Cem (how does everyone know his favourite drink?).  Still, happy as Cem was with the gift, we are still waiting to see if the boss comes good on his promise to pay most of the money next week and the remainder in February.  I won’t be holding my breath!

How to stop time...

I was doing a bit of painting at home this week.  Being bored I put on the television – and then had to keep stopping painting to listen to the Doctor Oz show.  I don’t know if you have seen this guy.  He is very famous in America thanks to his appearances on the Oprah Winfrey show and now on his own series.  His popularity stems partly from his willingness to discuss even the most embarrassing problems, but also I think from his realistic expectations – he knows we are not going to give up all our bad habits!  In Turkey his popularity also, of course, stems from the fact that he is Turkish (at least in origin)!

So why did I have to listen to yesterday’s programme?  The subject was the effects of ageing – what they are and what we can do to minimise them in our 30’s, 40’s and 50’s.  He EVEN suggested things we can do to REVERSE the effects of time!  What a great guy – no wonder he’s so popular!  Being a bit late to be trying the 30’s stuff, I listened carefully to what women in their 40’s should be doing.  Apparently we should watch out for an increase in cellulite and age spots, we should be ensuring we get enough sleep and looking for face creams containing hydroquinones.  We shouldn’t be drinking more than one cup of coffee a day (I’ll need to work a bit on that one!) but we can smother a home-made honey and coffee grounds skin ‘tightener’ on our faces.

I was certainly feeling the passing of time this week when we celebrated Kaan’s ELEVENTH birthday.  I remember – and some of you will remember – the panic of his premature birth, shortly after the millennium New Year and the weeks spent at St Thomas’s Hospital in London.  Once we did get him home he was such a happy and easy-going baby.  He still is really.  After the excitement of Christmas and New Year, it’s hard to make a big thing of his birthday and this year he got an odd selection of presents including some books, a jigsaw puzzle and some goldfish.  Unlike the little boy on You-Tube, Kaan is very happy with his books – and even happier with his fish.  Here he is blowing out the candles on his fishy cake!

Kaan's eleventh birthday

Now Christmas and New Year are out of the way, I hope people will be starting to think of summer holidays.  For Turkey, booking flights and holidays early is the best way to get good prices; nearer the time flights are usually more expensive or actually full.  It also gives people something to look forward to during the bad weather of January.  Just to make you jealous, here is Çalış Beach in January!

Çalış Beach last week

A wish for 2011

Welcome 2011!  I hope it will be a great year for all of you and bring you health, happiness and ‘huzur’ – a lovely Turkish word that means something like ‘peace of mind’.

At Poppy, I hope it brings us plenty of new guests as well as old friends and that we are once again able to help people enjoy their holiday.  The nicest thing about running a hotel is when people tell us what a special time they had with us and there were more than ever of those last year.

But today I also made a more general wish for tourism in Turkey. It started when I saw a home-made poster in a car, saying ‘this car is running on the most expensive petrol in the world’.  Yes – it’s true!  You might think petrol is expensive in your country but I can promise you it is more expensive here.

Besides fuel, there are many things which are now more expensive in Turkey than in the UK.  We pay more for meat and cheese, alcoholic drinks, all electrical goods from mobile phones to washing machines and way more for cars.  In addition our phone bills are higher, car tax is often more (it varies by car type) and electricity costs as much as it does in the UK.  The rise in the cost of living over the last few years has caused a number of Brits who were living here to leave.

And yet the biggest selling-point for Turkey is still that it is ‘cheap’.  Where’s the catch?  The catch is that at unrealistically low prices, everyone loses out.  When a tour operator pays rock bottom prices for hotel rooms, hoteliers are making little or no profit.  But guests are also suffering as the standard of service and accommodation falls.  If restaurants are obliged to keep prices down to attract business, they will look for ways to make savings – and the food will suffer!

If we want standards to be maintained and improved in Turkey the prices are going to have to be more realistic.  It will still be cheaper than many European holiday destinations but the low cost will no longer be the USP…so this is my wish:

Let 2011 be the year when Turkey begins to be promoted by tour operators and travel agents for its REAL qualities; take your pick – and add your own – to the list below:

Beautiful scenery

Fantastic climate

Warm sea and unspoiled beaches

Friendly people

Culture and history

Great food

Adventure sports (paragliding, diving, white water rafting)

Shopping (where else can you find so many designer brands at 

 affordable prices?!)

Turkey in Turkey

The Christmas menu at Poppy….

…a large quantity of turkey; I asked Cem to get an 8kg turkey which he did – but it had an eat-by date of 24^th December!  When he went to change it he found all the large ones were the same, so we ended up with two 5kg turkeys.  I cooked them both and I think they were alright, though I stuck to my nut roast.  Disappointingly the gimmicky plastic ‘thermometer’, which was supposed to show when they were cooked, didn’t do its stuff.  Anyway, there is a lot of turkey in the freezer!

The roast potatoes were spectacular, the hazelnut and apricot stuffing was alright but not amazing and the vegetables were as they should be – though no sprouts because I hate them!  Everything arrived at the table pretty much together and hot, unlike the food at a hotel where some of my students had their Christmas meal!  There is not so much emphasis in Turkey on getting food to the table piping hot; I have often seen chips being cooked and put on the table half an hour before the rest of the food is ready and have never seen plates being warmed here.  Still, this particular meal apparently broke all records by being absolutely cold.

Many local restaurants now do Christmas dinner.  A few years ago when we had Cumba bar in Fethiye we did Christmas dinner.  When you are cooking for paying customers, you have to do the whole works (even sprouts!) and want everything to be perfect (read hot!)  It meant I spent a couple of hours of my Christmas panicking with the chef in the kitchen; maybe that’s why I find cooking for friends a relatively easy job!

the best-dressed bear in town

This week life is fairly normal, with me giving lessons again and the boys back at school.  They have a half day on Friday and will be home ready for us to do the whole big meal thing again – with pretty much the same caste of characters – on Friday night.  The big difference is that I won’t be doing much of the cooking this time so can look forward to running up and down the stairs a lot less, relaxing a bit more and of course applying myself to the wine a bit better.

Many Turkish people celebrate New Year and it seems to be getting a bigger affair each year with more presents being given, way more decorations and increasingly expensive ‘New Year programmes’ in the restaurants.  A lot of people prefer to make it a family affair, with a big meal at home and – rather strangely this – a traditional game of bingo! 

We used to do a bit of each – having a meal with Cem’s family, then sneaking out leaving the children there, to party at one of the bars in town.  These days we no longer seem to feel the need to go out – whether because of the cost or because we are old and boring I don’t know!  Our other tradition, after plenty of partying, used to be going for a swim in the sea.  The expats had a Boxing Day swim at Çalış which I am sure had plenty of participants but that was in the day when it is sunny and quite warm.  I asked Cem this morning if he was planning on swimming on New Year’s night but he replied with his usual ‘we’ll see’.  Perhaps we should move over and let the boys take over that tradition!

HAPPY CHRISTMAS FROM POPPY

The weather is a bit better and there is no longer water in the hotel- though we still have some work to do cleaning up. Last night was, I think, the longest night. It’s dark now at 5.30pm and though I know that is later than in the UK, it will be nice to have longer days again.

There are only 2 windows left on Kaan’s advent calendar, which means not much time left to get everything ready. Still I am not in too much of a panic. There is not nearly as much pressure as there is in the UK and though I will be cooking dinner for about 18 people, most of them are Turkish so they won’t really notice if something is not quite right!

I am lucky that Cem is an enthusiastic celebrator of Christmas. I never used to think this was strange but speaking to other foreigners married to Turkish men I have found that some of the husbands choose to ignore it altogether. Actually it isn’t just Cem but his family and close friends who have jumped on board and eagerly join in our celebrations. They enjoy the turkey, love the roast potatoes (not a common thing in Turkey) and are amazed by a cake that you make months (or at least weeks) in advance and feed with brandy.

Christmas is also made easier for me thanks to the hotel. Just as it made it easier to celebrate Turkish bayram with 28 members of Cem’s family, it enables us to have large numbers of people for dinner without too much stress. The kitchen is large, there are two ovens, no shortage of plates or cutlery and the mess can be left and cleared up the next day!

So, my preparations are nearly in place. I have tested a new recipe for chicken liver pate; hope it’s nice because I am taking some to some friends who we are seeing tonight. I have never made it before, but it doesn’t seem to be that difficult and with an Anthony Worral Thompson recipe you can’t – hopefully – go wrong! I have made my nut roast and it’s in the freezer. The remainder of the shopping can be done on Friday at the local farmers’ market.

I have bought and wrapped all but a couple of the presents, made a gingerbread house, knitted a few decorations and made a Santa suit for Kaan’s teddy. I think I have earned my Martha Stewart badge or - as my dear Canadian friend Fran says - my ‘Suzie homemaker’ points, for this year! Now I am going to sit back and enjoy a glass of wine and trust that by Saturday it will all be ready – and what isn’t ready, we’ll do without! I leave you with some thoughts about Santa…..Happy Christmas to you all!


From Saint Nicholas to Santa Claus

                                 Did you know Saint Nicholas was born in Patara, just a short way from Fethiye? He became bishop of nearby Myra and was known for his generosity in helping people in need. One of the stories tells of him providing dowries for girls from poor families by dropping sacks of gold through open doors and windows – making the gift anonymous.

After his death, pilgrims started to visit his tomb and many miracles were reported. He was made the patron saint of children, sailors and scholars and given the feast day of 6th January – still the main day for present-giving in some European countries.

His conversion from 3rd century Saint to the jovial red-robed character we know is the result of mass media and marketing during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In 1810, the New York Historical Society commissioned a picture of the first ‘American’ St Nicholas in which he appears as an amiable fatherly figure filling stockings hung over the fireplace.

In 1823, the famous poem ‘The Night Before Christmas’ was published, referring to Saint Nicholas as ‘a right jolly old elf’ who was ‘dressed all in fur’ and drove a ‘miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer’. Pictures showed him wearing a variety of styles and colours of dress, until the early twentieth century when illustrators started to favour the red fur-lined suit. Long-running advertisements for Coca-Cola, which began in 1931, also helped to make this the standard.

So what is left, among all the tinsel and fake snow, of the original Saint? The sacks of presents seem to mirror the sacks of gold he left, the candy canes could be a bishop’s crook and even the bags of chocolate money we buy for the children echo the legend of St Nicholas. Other connections may be more obscure so, for example, the way Santa Claus operates secretly under cover of darkness is similar to the way the Saint made his gifts anonymously. The story is a mixture of fact and fiction but Saint Nicholas is definitely a well-travelled Saint!

Floods in Çalış

So it seems we are now paying for all the glorious weather we have had until now! The weather has turned with a vengeance and the last few days have seen torrential rain together with cold.


Now some of you have seen how it can rain here! It doesn’t tend to mess around with that very British thing, drizzle. It pours down. And it has been doing so much of that in the last few days that Çalış was flooded on Tuesday. The channel near the beach was so high that some of the little jetties were washed away and many little boats sank. Even the more substantial water taxi jetty was lifted up onto the river bank.

storm coming in!

The drains on the road to the bridge couldn’t cope with the volume of water so the shops along that road were flooded and many lost stock. The channel that runs in front of Poppy overflowed its banks, pouring brown silty water and debris from further upstream into the gardens – and some houses - on the other side.

The hotel also flooded. Being low-lying, we have a system of drainage channels that funnel all the water from round the hotel towards one of two pumps which send it into the drainage system. Unfortunately, the power went off from 5am yesterday morning until about 1pm, which was enough time for the whole of the ground floor to be inundated. After the big flood several years ago, we are aware of the risk and remove much of the furniture from these rooms. Still there are always things that you forget, and we will have to wait until we have cleaned it all out to see just what we have lost.

The temperature change has been nearly as dramatic. I know those of you who have only seen Fethiye sweltering in 40 degree plus temperatures might find it hard to believe, but it really can be cold. The mountains behind the hotel (on the Antalya road) have a stunning cover of snow, while even Babadağ (‘Father Mountain’), the one the paragliders jump from, has a dusting on the summit. In Fethiye, snow is a very rare occurrence. The last time was 18 years ago, just before I came to live here, and everybody has photos to prove it.

The problem with the cold is not the actual temperature but the fact that the houses are designed to be cool in summer. Most of us don’t have central heating or wall-to-wall carpeting and many houses don’t even have damp-proofing. So, the Turkish insistence on wearing slippers round the house, which many foreigners find funny when they first move here, is actually very practical!

Cem, Yılmaz and a few helpers have been working for the last three days, pumping water out of the hotel with a diesel-powered pump that makes so much noise you can hear it half-way across Çalış! Then we will begin the job of cleaning up. I do admire the Turkish attitude in times like this which is just to get on with it. They are very fatalistic and seldom waste time complaining or asking ‘why me?’ So I’m trying to be more like them, though when it started to rain again this evening after a day of sunshine I was finding it a bit hard to be optimistic!

the clean-up at Poppy