From Ankara to Istanbul and Back

The road from Ankara to Istanbul...

...and the road that goes from Istanbul to Ankara.

The Hagia Theodora

Unless I am mistaken, this is the church of Hagia Theodora, at the center of Thessaloniki.

The Nightlife of Bodrum

Now that summer is in full swing, many young people in Turkey's big cities are preparing for the annual migration towards Bodrum; a southern holiday town that resembles a Greek island that accidentally crashed into the Anatolian mainland. To give you a better idea, here we go with a selection of photos of Bodrum's hidden nightlife.

Here, you can see my friend Neco sitting in one of the mini-buses that carry people from their far-flung hotels to the more central Bodrum town. Operating non-stop for 24 hours, these mini-buses constitute a unique socialization venue on their own.

People are drinking and enjoying themselves in the shadow of the popular bar, Adamik. Aside from Adamik, the nicest places (in my opinion) are Tower and Körfez, all of which play the same God-forsaken 80s/90s rock hits.

If the bars are too boring of pricey, you can always... drink in the streets!

These posh girls probably had no interest in drinking in the streets, but I took their picture anyways. They were probably headed for more glitzy places like Halikarnas, posters of which you can see on the light pole on the right.

Drinking in the streets where Herodotes walked: These are my friends Özge (on the right) and... and... damn, I've forgotten her name.

I don't know these young anarchists, but they were a match made in heaven.

The ultimate price: Yellow, green and orange puke stains dot the streets of Bodrum like craters on the Moon.

Of course, these scenes of messy entertainment are by no means the only thing Bodrum has to offer. In fact, such immature activities are probably the least interesting thing about this place. This happy man on his motorbike is probably tasting finer pleasures of life than Bodrum's nighthawks can ever imagine.

At Kiffisia

Sparkling shops and beautiful buildings are everywhere in Kiffisia, one of Athens' better-off neighborhoods.

A Turkish Gecko

A tiny Hemidactylus turkicus (Turkish gecko,) an ubiquitous sight across the Mediterranean.

Piscatorial Trophies

To give a more "fisherly" feeling, seafood restaurants around the Aegean sometimes try to supplement their decoration with pieces of dried-up sea life. Here, you can see an unfortunate angler (Lophius piscatorius) and the barbed tail of an unknown Dasyatid stingray, probably Trygon pastinaca. These poor guys are from Bodrum.

Another fish restaurant, this time in Istanbul, preserves the head of a large fish (Thunnus thynnus ?) like a safari trophy.

Buildings Seen From the Train

Historic Ottoman buildings and ultra-strange houses line the sides of the railroad that leads from Istanbul to Thessaloniki.

From Station to Station

A view from the dreary-but-happy days when I'd take the bus to Ankara almost every weekend. To avoid traffic in the cities, bus companies always drop their passengers off in distant, scary, Silent Hill type locations in the outskirts.

A Building in Cihangir

A lovely ex-Greek apartment building in Cihangir, Istanbul's expat capital. Before its gentrification and the current wave of affluent, trendy, foreign urbanites, Cihangir was full of peniless Kurdish immigrants, a sizable community of transvestites, anarchists and local punks. Before even them, it had a Greek population that held on until the 1970's.

Festival Fever, Circa 2006

Since last weeks's post on the Radar Live festival got so many views, I decided to dig into my hard disk to bring you one of the largest Turco-festivals of last year. Here is the 2006 incarnation of Rock'n Coke, which is not a festvial of relentless cocaine orgies. Instead, it is a three-day gathering of musicians and fans on a vast, muddy field, organized by Coca Cola of Turkey. Last year's line-up included Placebo, Muse, Kasabian and load of other bands I didn't care about. Here, my cousin and my brother are lining up with their tents and supplies at the entrance of the festival.

The long queues at the entrance were pretty annoying, as these two girls can attest.

When bag-men attack: A brief shower in the first day forced everyone to don their hoods and wallow around in mud for the next two days.

Yet the view inside wasn't so bad when you got used to it... What's that strange red blob in the background?

Oh, it's a big red balloon you can ride up and down to ease the boredom of standing around, doing nothing!

If you can't stand waiting in another queue for the balloon, food, drinks, toilets or any other human need, why not make your own fun by dancing around in the mud like a rasta-swinging shaman?

The dancing goes on to the night as the tired masses huddle under a great big techno tent for warmth, protection and a chance to meet girls like these.

These guys had the best costumes I'd ever seen in any festival in Turkey. Despite the many dissapointments, Rock'n Coke 2006 was actually a good time.

The Gumbets of Bodrum

A gumbet; one of the tiny, dome-shaped water cisterns native to Bodrum and surrounding regions in the Eastern Aegean.

Another gümbet, this time near Ortakent, Bodrum. This is an even older one. Such structures may also be seen in some of the Greek islands.

And here is the beautiful view of the Ortakent bay from the top of the gümbet's dome.

The TUBITAK Headquarters

A crashed airplane? The headquarters of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) is one of the most infamous modernist landmarks of Ankara.

My Old High School

Two weeks ago, I visited my old high school to help my brother register for the next year of classes. Except from its distance from the city, I believe that the American-curriculum Koç High School is among the best in Turkey.

An Aliens-esque glass pyramid pokes out of the school's center. This structure wasn't built when I first started Koç. Instead, there was a courtyard full of trees, bushes and benches.

The same pyramid, seen from the inside. It's like a Turkified O.C. in there!

Walking the Cat

Probably the only time I've seen someone take a cat out for a walk.

Beth Shalom

Possibly the best architecture I've ever seen in a Synagogue, this is the Beth Shalom in Athens. On Friday, 23rd of March, 1944, German troops surrounded the Synagogue and assembled all Athenian Jews they could find, between 700 or 1000 people. Some of them came to the Synagogue on their own accord, so that they wouldn't be separated from their families. Within fifteen days, they were bound for Auschwitz. Today, the Synagogue is only open on weekends, attended by a few old people who still live there.

Radar Live

Seeing that other blogs such as the City on Earth have covered it, I felt obliged to post about the recent Radar Live festival that took place in the Black-Sea coast village of Kilyos. This was by far the largest of the recent series of Turkish camp-in music festivals, with a line-up including Marilyn Manson, Juliette Lewis and a shitload of other artists I've never heard of. Here is a shot from the hour-and-a-half long drive from the City to the festival, as we pass through Byzantine aqueducts that still carry water.

My friend Derya was waiting patiently at the entrance for a free ticket, while I dished out the equivalent of €45 for two days of concerts. Damn.

Captive audience: Entranced with the artists, she did not notice the impending shutter... of Memo Pervert Style!

I don't know how our children will be able to forgive the current trend of enormous, bug-eyed glasses. My friend Ayşe and distant relative Gözde are waiting for their boyfriends to replenish their beers.

... One of the visions that greeted electronica fans at the festival's techno stage / chill out lounge next to the beach. These are my friends Burcu and Inci.

While all of this was going on, this daddy-longlegs spider (family Pholcidae, possibly Pholcus phalangioides) was happily sitting on its web in the men's room, completely oblivious to the carnage of music and hominid sexuality around it.

Who will take them home? For those who didn't sleep over in the festival's tent city, the hours-long trip back home was particularly arduous. I still find it preferrable to a night in the tents.

Onwards with day two! This monday's Marilyn Manson concert was the climax of the four-day-long event, and attendance was in record levels. To complicate things further, the take-off site of the festival shuttle was blocked to all traffic due to a meeting organized to remember the victims of the Sivas massacre in 1993.

This sad event took place when religious fundamentalists burned thirty seven poets, singers, writers and artists alive during a cultural festival in the eastern Anatolian city of Sivas. Fourteen years on, no one's getting burned alive and many young people have sadly forgotten this tragedy. I took this picture as the festival crowd was made to walk about two miles through abandoned streets to an alternative pickup point. I also wanted to slap some young punks who kept complaining about "that stupid protest" that "ruined their day."

Young Mansonites: Three fans are waiting for the bus to arrive. Are they discussing who's more hardcore?

Young Mansonites: A pubescent couple whining about the heat and the Sivas protests. If they only knew...

Young Mansonites: Fashion and alt-culture spreads in waves, like a stone tossed into a pond. The early-2000's wave of gothic platform boots has only hit Turkey recently.

Oops, the water is too cold to swim! No problem, I'll just kick around and flail my arms up and down like a baby! My friend Sila took these photos.

The rest of the festival was fun, but exhausting. Especially those who tried to "sleep over" in flimsy tents found themselves exposed to extremes of heat, cold, hunger and drugs for four days. This guy was probably in the deepest sleep (or coma) of his life.

What will... become of us? Tired party people at the last day of the festival. The events ended in a chaos of organization, no one new where to go, or how. Still, except for the poignant co-incidence with the Sivas events, I really had a nice time.