At Bodrum

With summer in full swing, I, like many other people in Turkey, am having daydreams about being in Bodrum, the country's Mediterranean glory hole.

As things are, I am not in Bodrum yet. So here is a selection from last summer; a collection of rare sights from the convoluted (and vomit-stained) alleys of that beautiful holiday town.

Tequila shots costing as little as 2 Euros are advertised on this beautifully hand-drawn street sign. You guessed it right, a lot of drinking goes on in Bodrum.

This handwritten ad, on the other hand, seems to be composed by the screenwriters of Borat. "We also Happy here, Bodrum Turkey OK ENJOY TIME!!!"

Moving on to more serious, but no less interesting things, this mural shows Nazım Hikmet, the celebrated leftist-romantic poet. As with many other liberal places in Turkey, Bodrum has a local political stance that combines leftist ideals with...

...a frenzied love for the nation and its leader, Atatürk. A pretty weird and sometimes ungainly combination, but it works well enough to guarantee a liberal, secular lifestyle. The place seen here is the Bodrum branch of the Turkish War Veterans Association.