Police Brutality Extra

Turkish police...
...or Greek police? Who's more badass? Who's more oppressive? Who? WHO?

Kiosk Overload

One of the ubiquitous kiosks in Athens that sell anything and everything. In this photo alone you can see soft and hard drinks, worry beads, condoms, lighters, a heartbeat monitor and... handcuffs?

Aristotle's Lantern

This is not a hyper-exotic seashell, but a mundane part of one of the most common (and irritating) echinoderms, the sea urchin. Often called Aristotle's lantern, this set of calcium-rich jaws lie inside the animal's shell and help it scrape algae off the rocks. I think this one is from a Paracentrotus lividus, but I'm not 100 percent sure.

A Hostel in Istanbul

Last week I watched that fabulous movie, Hostel, and thought: "Damn, wouldn't it be nice if there was a hostel packed with hot chicks (but not death gangs) in Istanbul?" Turns out, there were many of them. Take a look one of the best, the Chill Out Hostel-Cafe in Taksim.

The most striking detail at the entrance is the wanton use of the brightest, the most contrasting colors possible...

...the chromatic madness not only continues, but also intensifies as you move deeper and deeper into the bowels of the place.

"In case of a fire, just jump through the insanely-patterned pink-and-black door and the resemblance of your Eurorail trip to a bad 80's music video will be complete."

Here are what the rooms look like. Small, but with heating, beds and a private bathroom. Plus, the hostel is at the thriving heart of the City's nightlife and away from all the orientalist bazaar crap on the historic peninsula. What else can you ask for?

Here are some of the people which we discovered living in those rooms. I cannot remember any of their names, naturally, but they were a cheerful bunch.

At Chill-out, I heard of some adventurous young locals posing as Italian tourists and hanging around the hostel, trying to 'join the European Union,' or retro-actively trying to seduce Turkish girls, who of course, fall head-over-heels for anything European. The Italian disguise is probably not a co-incidence since the boisterous English accents of Turks and Italians sound remarkably alike.

All the jokes and rumors aside, if you ever want to stay at this great hostel, here are some useful links:

*A guide to Istanbul's many hostels
*Chill Out's own colorblind website

"Tulum" Dance Fever

Why are these men dancing like crazy in the middle of the street?

...because their drunken friend is playing the Tulum, a bagpipe-like instrument native to Anatolia, Caucaus and the Pontus regions. Pontic Greeks have also carried it to Greece.

A Toad from Athens

We found this female Bufo viridis toad on the side of Mesogeion road in Athens. Instead of hopping, she was walking slowly among the grass, no doubt looking for a bug to eat.

Oops, she doesn't like being picked up! I could tell that she was a she because she made no sounds when handled.

Election Fever

As general elections approach on the 22nd of July, each and every street, plaza or building in the city is covered with flags and posters, of this party...

...or that.

Turkish citizens leaving the country before the election can already cast their votes on these special desks at Istanbul airport.

Vote or the children die! A local cellphone operator's ads juxtapose surreally with the last-chance election desks.

A Friendly Sea Cucumber

This weekend at Evvia, one of the largest Greek islands, I put on these uncomfortable swimming googles to dive around. I came up with this gnarly sea cucumber (Holothuria tubulosa) that looked, for all the word, like a living dildo.

Sea cucumbers obtain their food by filtering seawater for plankton and nutrients. Sometimes they ejaculate their white, sticky intestines in tremendous ammounts when picked up, further increasing their resemblance to human genitalia. Fortunately, this sea cucumber was a good friend and did no such thing.

A ventral view shows the tiny, water-vascular sucker-feet that sea cucumbers use to move around. It is this feature (alongside other details such as their embryological development, pentamerous radial symmetry, etc.) that establishes their relationship to sea-stars and their allies in the Echinoderms. Exposure to the sun and air was making our friend quite uncomfortable, so we threw him back to the sea soon after this picture was taken. Bye bye friend!

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.