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!!

It's raining, it's pouring

It’s raining.  It WAS pouring down – the sort of rain that pours off your umbrella soaking you just as much as if you didn’t have one.  Now it has calmed down to be just a gentle pitter-patter.  It is a sound we haven’t heard really – apart from a few drops – since May.  It means I don’t need to water the garden – hooray!  But Kenny is on the boat and Poppy the puppy is rather alarmed as she has never seen anything like it.  She decided the sofa in the bar would be a good place to sleep -  until she got turfed out.  She was lying there so quietly the other night that she got shut into the bar – for the night. When I arrived in the morning she was howling at the door!

Poppy looking for a comfy place to sleep

I’ve got a few lessons going now and have set up the room opposite the bar as my classroom.  Most of last year’s students are starting in the next couple of weeks, plus I have a few new ones.  I have wondered before about setting up a web site for people wanting to learn turkish.  I have so much stuff that I have prepared – and at the moment it doesn’t seem as though it will become a book (though I can’t say I have really tried that hard to get it published).

The hotel is winding down – though I had a new booking through this morning arriving in 3 days time!  Hope the weather holds out – it is showing sunny again from tomorrow and I guess even a little bit of rain is going to be better than the UK.

We had a great day with Grant and Dawn on Saturday.  We went up Babadağ – the mountain that stands above Ölüdeniz.  It rises from sea level to just under 6000 feet and it is where the paragliders who land on the beach take off from.  It is supposed to be one of the best jump sites in Europe – and you certainly would have to look hard to get a better view.

Ölüdeniz - the lagoon

The road up is a lot better than last time I went up, though eventually they are hoping to have a cable car going up there.  The last bit is above the tree level – this is where it gets a bit scarey because you can see the drop at the edge of the road – but we went up in a minibus and some people were even going up on scooters!  When you get to the top, the air is clear and clean and the views of Buttefly Valley, Ölüdeniz beach and lagoon, St Nicholas Island and Fethiye Bay with its scattering of islands is spectacular.  There is a cafe up there now and we had breakfast and sat for a couple of hours watching the paragliders take off.  Some make it look very easy, some make your heart jump as they appear to just get off.  The ‘pilots’ who carry passengers are obviously very experienced and know what they are doing.  I remember from when I jumped that they tell you to wait until they say run – and then run.  Some of the passengers are so keen their legs are still ‘running’ long after they have taken off!

Take off!

 We also saw eagles up there which was nice.  They have nests on the mountain and it really looked as though they were showing off their flying skills.  The mountain apparently also has wolves and jackals, though I haven’t ever seen any.  There are some lovely upland pastures – small flat areas among the wooded slopes that the nomadic people use as summer grazing for their animals.  Being that high up, you really feel like you are on top of the world and I would recommend anyone to go up there.  At the end of this month there is the air festival at Ölüdeniz when hundreds of paragliders from all over the world come here to display their skills.  I am looking forward to that. 

breakfast with a view!

Talking of excellence...

Into October and the season is finishing.  The two rooms that came in yesterday are our last arrivals – unless there are any more last minute bookings.  It is early – some years it ticks along through October and there are usually a few rooms in for the last week when there is a half-term holiday in the UK.  But this year, whether due to economic situation, the ridiculous price of flights or what, October is very quiet.

The weather is still glorious – 30 degrees or so in the day and only a little cooler in the evenings.  Even I haven’t worn my jeans or a jumper yet, and only put on a cardigan to go to Dalaman at 3am to collect Grant and Dawn.  They had a bit of a delay on their Thomas Cook flight – not as bad as the Andy, or as bad as the flight they had in March when the plane turned back to Manchester after nearly 2 hours in the air!  There was a rep at the airport greeting customers with a screeched ‘Thomas Cook!  Anyone travelling with Thomas Cook?’ which got rather irritating after half an hour.  I also felt like pointing out that they had all been travelling with Thomas Cook which was why they were two hours late!

They arrived with the usual piles of things for us, including four pairs of trainers I bought from Sports Direct (including two pairs of size 14s for Emre), chocolate for me, cheese for Cem, sliced bread for Emre and doughnuts for Kaan.  The diet starts next week!  It’s funny the things people miss when they live away from home.  I know some people who have heaps of stuff brought over, although it’s possible to buy many things here now as there are shops selling all those things that Brits might be looking for including bacon, sausages, scampi, bisto, marmite, Heinz beans, Weetabix, custard powder and much more.

Turkish people living abroad will miss their favourite dishes.  We have several times travelled to England with ‘food parcels’ of stuffed vine leaves, pastries and other home-made offerings for friends living over there.  It’s OK, but they tend to be large, heavy bags full and you get some funny looks at customs!

The situation on the border with Syria is bad at the moment with Turkish forces shelling in retaliation for attacks by Syria which have killed a number of civilians.  I feel sorry for the people trying to carry on their daily routines in the area and for the troops moved there – some of whom will be young boys doing their National Service.  On a selfish level, I hope it doesn’t affect tourism in Turkey; the border is more than 1,000km away from Fethiye (roughly the same distance as London to Prague) but we know from past experience that the press at home like to talk up any bad press about Turkey.

just another sunset!

 But to finish on a lighter note – I laughed a lot yesterday when I went to my post box and found that we have also received a ‘Certificate of Excellence’ from Trip Advisor (see last post).  This DESPITE the recent bad comment.  So let’s just take a look at this……

Trip Advisor posts comments written by people who could have NOTHING in common with you, who can write a pack of lies which will never be checked, who may never even have stayed at the hotel; the apparently all-knowing but completely unreachable staff at Trip Advisor will pull comments that THEY believe are invented (we experienced this – they weren’t!) while unscrupulous people will demand a free stay or cheap rates at a hotel with the threat of a bad review if they do not get it (I read about that in the newspaper).  Do we think it may have outlived its usefulness?  I am grateful for all the guests who have written lovely things about us and I hope that we can continue to make some people happy on their holiday..... but I rather fancy getting my certificate framed and hanging it in the toilets!

Animals galore

September has been – as usual – a nice month – full but without the rush, or the extreme heat, of August.  The weather is lovely, even a little chilly in the evenings – though I realise that it is nothing compared to the UK where I hear there have been frosts.  And it’s not even October yet!

We have had many returning guests – and some very nice new ones.  Also one not-so-happy guests who I put in the roof apartment and who has written complaining about it on Trip Advisor.  I might put a reply on – though I prefer not to get too involved.  But his view is just that – I have several guests who like to have that apartment every time; not to mention that the guest immediately before him and the one immediately after both loved it.  He (apparently – I haven’t read it myself as I get too stressed) says you would need a megaphone to communicate from there.  Why would you need to communicate from your room?  And actually the guests before him got very friendly with the ladies in the apartment opposite – from talking to them while he sat on the balcony.

More importantly this guest NEVER came to me and said anything.  The only communication I had with them was to greet them when they first arrived and one morning when I gave him a lighter to light the cooker; other than that they went in and out without speaking to anyone.  Had he asked me, I probably could have given him an apartment on a lower floor. As it is they moved out 2 days early, trundling their cases up the road and no doubt already composing what they were going to write on Trip Advisor!  He has even commented that I spoke to Emre in Turkish and assumes I was saying something about him.  Most people laugh at the way the boys and I speak a mixture of Turkish and English and many of them have sussed that I usually use Turkish when I am telling them off for something, but quite honestly this IS Turkey and what language I speak with my children is really not a subject for complaint.

Kaan is back at school – and the school day now starts at 7.30am, and finishes at 12.30.  In the afternoon a second set of students use the classrooms.  This used to happen quite a lot when there weren’t enough places in schools for the growing number of pupils, but recently it has become much less common and my two have never had to do it before.  Now it is the result of the government making changes to the education system, without really having the facilities in place first.  I am not happy about it; Kaan, though he complains about having to get up early, of course is happy to get the whole afternoon off!

I had a lovely day in Kalkan on Friday visiting my sis and brother-in-law who are on holiday there.  Their hotel is very nice with great views and a lovely pool area and we had a fantastic meal out.  I stayed in a small but clean and neat little pension.  It had a framed certificate on the wall saying it has a five-star rating from Trip Advisor which made me smile.  Though I was quite happy with the room, I could, if I were that way inclined, write a comment that I couldn’t lock the balcony door (despite being pretty experienced with tricky turkish doors), the light above the bed was too weak to read by, the sink was cracked and there was a pretty bad smell coming from the drain in the bathroom.  Needless-to-say I am not going to!

Have been feeling a little like I am running a zoo as the number of animals round here seems to be increasing.  The little black kitten that has been hanging around for a couple of months is now a half-grown, very hansome cat who is missing Matt who fed her sausages all last week!  The puppy who turned up a few weeks ago is growing fast; I am trying to find her a home, but most of the guests think she will still be here when they come next year.  She is very sweet, but getting naughtier as she settles in; she barks at the tortoises and can even flip them over, the other afternoon she cornered the rabbit and she has run off with the solar panel for the garden lights.  But it’s hard to stay cross for long with something this cute….!

More sneaky tricks

I am beginning to get suspicious that Hotels4u – part of Thomas Cook and a company you would trust to play fair – are not!  If you read my blogs in the winter you will know that we had a lot of trouble with this year’s contract.  Having spent a couple of hours discussing and agreeing prices and other details, they then said they wouldn’t honour the contract because they were working out more expensive than their rival company (despite the fact that I had given them the same prices).  We did agree a new contract but I still think they are not happy with the price for peak season.  Their solution – tell people Poppy is full and flog them something else that is cheaper for them.  I can’t prove this, but I have had several families who have previously stayed with us pop in and say they tried to book for Poppy but were told it was full.  At first I didn’t question it as since my return from the UK (mid July) we have been full from 11th September for a few days.  But the latest group said they were trying to book back in MAY.

Having just done my accounts for August it seems a bit surprising that Hotels4u made 17 reservations in June, 12 in July and for August – just one booking.  The other company we work with – Low Cost Holidays – booked 12 rooms for July and 15 for August.  It certainly makes me wonder….and gives people another reason to book direct!

I am trying to ignore the mess and noise coming from outside the gate.  I am very happy that the electric company are putting our cables underground which will make the supply a bit more reliable, not to mention getting rid of the ugly telegraph pole next to our entrance.  I am not so happy that they felt a need to do it in the middle of the season! I arrived at 8am the other morning to find a digger and lorry right outside the gate – no chance for anyone in that side of the hotel to have a lie-in.  They also managed to hit a water pipe – turning the trench into a moat (we already have the drawbridge to get out – see picture) and have broken our telephone/internet line twice so far.  I am gritting my teeth and thinking of the end result.

work in progress!

 Actually on Tuesday I just went out for the day with some friends who are staying.  A quick trip to the market, then up to Kaya village.  We had a short walk around the deserted village but spent more time just sitting in a ‘köşk’ (platform with cushions) with cold drinks, enjoying the views and the lazy feel of the place.  Even the camels were collapsed in the heat (see photo)!

camel at Kaya

 Then we went down to Ölüdeniz – this time to one of the small sandy beaches at the back of the lagoon which are a great place for children to swim. Not that their kids – aged three and a half and  not-quite-two are frightened of the water.  I have never seen any child throw themselves with such abandon into the pool – baby pool, big pool, shallow end, deep end – as Maddie, the younger one, does.

Lots of lovely guests in - but we were especially happy to see Jan and Graham.  Here they are with Rachel and her birthday cake.  

Rachel's birthday

 And finally here is ME in the water  - when I went diving a few weeks ago.  I like this picture!