Parasite Wasps of London

Parasite Wasps of London: Two species of unusual wasps I encountered last month in the British capital. This first one seems to be a male ichneumonid wasp of some kind. These wasps are notorious for rearing their eggs inside living caterpillars.

This second one, on the other hand, is probably an Eumenid potter wasp. They are called "potter wasps" because these insects construct special mud nests for their offspring.

If you find one such nest and open it, however, you would only find a paralyzed insect or caterpillar inside. The actual larvae of potter wasps live inside these hapless victims, feeding on their torpid bodies like the xenomorphs from the Alien movies. Gross? Yes. Cool? You bet!

Two Vans

Two brilliantly colored vans from the streets of Istanbul.

I saw these vehicles around Besiktas and Cihangir, respectively.

One Year Old!

Over the last week, I realized that my blog had quietly passed its first anniversary without anyone noticing. But the truth is, my attempts to record my adventures date back to far older times. Before blogs, me, my brother and our friend Necdet would take pictures and paste them in "adventure folders" complete with swashbuckling annotation.

What better way, then, to celebrate the overdue anniversary of Snapshots from Nemo Ramjet with one such "adventure folder" I dug up from our basement?

This specific "adventure folder" belongs to a recent trip to Buyukada, or Prinkipo. Dating back to the first months of 1999, it is gloriously titled "The Buyukada Expedition Journal by Interpid (sic) Adventurers Memo and Neco and Photography Assistant Kaan." (These are all mega-sized pictures so you can click on the images for a zoom-in.) One of the most striking aspects of such "adventure folders" is their invariably boisterous language and contrived poses, which, years later, leave me wondering whether I should laugh or cry. Also note the "blood samples" on the cover, another sign of juvenile self-aggrandizement.

"The challenging wilderness looms ahead."
"Our heroes charge boldly into the anarchy of nature!"
The "anarchy of nature", of course, is only a public forest that is visited by thousands of people every week.

"Our heroes conquered a steep slope at first sight. Kaan fell and almost broke his legs."
"While admiring the scenery, explorer Neco almost fell down."
Ooh, the excitement.

After a bit of fooling around in the trees, we arrived at a park that we dubbed "the park of horrors" because it was "...rudely built inside the forest."

Soon after entering the park, we encountered a pile of rubbish that offended us greatly as self-appointed protectors of "nature." The second photograph purportedly shows a smoldering fire, but now I have to confess that the "smoke" is nothing else but an over-exposed shot. We did clean the rubbish, though.

"Disturbed by this mess, our heroes were commanded by expedition leader Memo Kosemen (back) into the forest."
"Back in the wilderness, the Great Expedition progressed swiftly."
Humility wasn't among our greatest virtues back then.

"In the untamed wilderness, our heroes went boldly where no man had ever gone before, and discovered strange artifacts such as a footprint and a bird's nest."
In the fine tradition of amateur journalism, pointing fingers and confusion-reducing circles are everywhere in these photos.

This was among the stranger episodes of the "expedition." We found some random bones, possibly belonging to sheep or other BBQ leftovers. We put them together to resemble a dinosaur leg and photographed it, pretending it was a "strange fossil." As you can see, it's probably the most bogus dinosaur fossil ever forged.

"The photographer then noticed an unusual and possible abandoned old building nearby."
This "unusual" building is the famous Greek Orphanage, one of the largest wooden structures in the world. It is indeed abandoned today, but plans are underway to restore it as a five-star hotel.

"Upon arrival, our heroes were confronted by an ancient stone wall. They quickly scaled it and sneaked inside. The disturbing sight of a dog house discouraged them, however, and our heroes were forced to retreat."
I have to confess that everything in this page is a lie. We never came close to the Great Orphanage, and the dog house and the wall were photographed at completely unrelated locations.

This photo, however, is true. We did climb to the top of one of the peaks and snapped this fascinating vista. Here is what this view looks like from the sky.

And here is the Epilogue: "After their unforgettable avdenture, the tremendous trio spent the rest of their time playing computer games."
Sure it is cheesy and loaded with megalomania as any 15 year old's dreams can get, but I really love these old "adventure folders" for the memories they preserved. This particular adventure dated back to the beginning of 1999, what I like to think of as our last innocent years.

Later that year a great earthquake shattered our lives and we began to grow up for good. The quake also created a lot of panic about a fault line lying just off the Buyukada coast and the house we stayed in during that particular "expedition" was sold off by its owners. I wouldn't return to Prinkipo/Buyukada for almost nine years afterwards.

Fish Lures

The sheer visual spectacle presented by the multitudes of fishing lures in a sports store from London. It is doubly interesting to notice the multitudes of different "species" that emerge upon closer inspection.

More Slugs from London

After barely missing the last train downtown to watch one of my friends DJing tonight, I snapped some pictures of the local nightlife instead. Turns out, the multitudes of slugs that live on the moist pavements around my house are almost as interesting as London's clubs.

Most slugs around my house were of this greenish yellow variety, perhaps of the species Limax flavus. (I'm not 100% certain on this identification.)

I saw perhaps a dozen of these slugs, all with an individual pattern of spots and color shades.

Some of them, as this picture shows, were giants. This particular titan had one eyestalk smaller than the other.

Here is a close-up of Old One-Eye. I wonder which unknown calamity claimed his eyestalk.

This reddish-brown slug certainly belonged to a different species from the greenish L. flavus I'd seen everywhere else.

Slowly going back home, I saw this gristly scene literally on my doorstep. A garden slug of some sort had been stepped on and a Limax had promptly arrived on the scene... to devour the remains of its dead cousin. Notice the presence of an opportunistic isopod next to the slug, cheerfully sharing its meal. The bastards.

Partners in crime? Isopods and slugs are established accomplices in all sort of dastardly deeds such as stealing cat food, eating each others' slime and generally huddling together in inappropriate ways.

Having taken my last pictures, I went back home and with nothing to do for the rest of the night, posted them here on my blog. This was not, however, my first encounter with British slugs.

A Trip to Karaburun

Last summer, I was lucky enough to take a ride through the hills and valleys of the Karaburun peninsula, near beautiful Smyrna...

Karaburun stands right near Cesme, a popular holiday center that gets crowded every summer with up to a million visitors. In stark contrast to Cesme, however, Karaburun is nearly depopulated, and its beautiful hills are dotted with a myriad abandoned or semi-abandoned ex-Greek villages.

Most of these villages are scantily populated, and have numerous ghost buildings left over from the departed Greeks.

In some of these villages, we saw extremely well-crafted mosques, the likes of which were hard to see even in big cities like Istanbul. Particularly interesting in their minarets was the presence of wrought-iron "flags" that pointed the way to Mecca. The locals say that these mosques were probably the work of bygone Greek or Armenian architects.

One of the most beautiful villages in the peninsula. This one is still inhabited, almost all the houses were in use.

However, Karaburun is not exclusively made up of such isolated villages. The peninsula also houses one large town of the same name, which has a distinctly Fellini-like charm and surreality. We stopped at the "Mermaid Cafe" for a few drinks.

Having seen our fair share of wonders, we then departed Karaburun through the ever-winding tangle of roads that led back to Cesme.

Mystery Coat-of Arms

For numerous years, I've passed by this unusual blazon that stands embedded to the walls of the famous Galatasaray high school in Taksim.

Placed on a wall that was later partially demolished to make way for the school's side gate, this unusual symbol defies all attempts to decipher its secrets. Who made it? What is its purpose? How old is it? It might be a symbol from one of Istanbul's old Levantine families or the remnant of a bygone Peran church, but none of these examples are backed by any kind of evidence.

Perhaps the most fantastic, but eerily plausible theory of its origins hints to the followers of Sabbatai Sevi, who referred to their messiah as "the King." But why such secretive people would construct such a visible mark for their idol remains a mystery, and in any case no evidence supports this hypothesis either.

A detail of the intricate reliefs surrounding the mystifying blazon.

Here is what we do know: The Galatasaray High School was founded in the late 15th century as an Ottoman "university", but its current incarnation goes back to the 1830s, when it was re-constituted as a Westernized college. This school has massive doors that were once used for its main entrance, but since the 1950s these stand locked and a side entrance is used instead. It is this add-on side entrance that has changed the wall this blazon is on into this ramp.

Do YOU know what on earth this sign is, or what it means? I'd like to find out before a random act of gentrification destroys this mystery too.

Two Mosques

House of Peace: A magnificently restored Ottoman mosque still serves the tiny Turkish community of Rhodes. I am not Moslem, yet even I find it peaceful and inviting.

House of War: This ramshackle "mosque" with cracking walls, shapeless features, shoddy exterior and a last-minute minaret made out of a steel pipe, serves only as a rude "retaliation" to the Hagia Triada in Taksim Square.

Hardly any people go to pray in it, yet its loudspeakers are turned up so high that it hurts your ears to be around this mosque when the call to prayer is sounded. A sad reminder of how badly populism, politics and nationalism have corrupted this "religion of peace."

The Spiders of London

With spring in full swing, everywhere in London is crawling with tiny, strange spiders of unidentifiable (for me) kinds. Here is one I saw in the living room of one of my friends, around Camden.

While I saw this small, longish, yellow one in the grass outside my school in New Cross Gate.

But the most interesting arachnid encounter of recent weeks has to be this teeming cluster of baby spiders, probably from a family of orb-weavers. Most spiders are fiercely antisocial and will gladly eat each other given the chance. This makes these gregarious younglings even more remarkable.

A Dead Seagull

A seagull's skull I found last summer in Alacati. Notice how lightly it is constructed, with sheet-like bones and many hollow "windows" for reducing mass.

Mystery Structure

Mystery structure! This incomprehensible, windowless stone "building" sits silently among modern apartment buildings in the Acibadem district of Istanbul.

No one I know seems to have any clue about what this building is, how old it is, or who built it. (Postsrcipt: Not anymore, the building is almost certainly a "water balance"- read below.) It is quite old, perhaps Ottoman or even Byzantine from the looks of it. Pieces of even older buildings stand out among the mystery structure's walls, suggesting that its stonework has been scavenged from ruined masonry. It has been neglected for quite some time, and now has trees growing from its top.

Some residents say that this place is the tomb of some "holy man," but it is just too large and strongly built to be a tomb in my opinion. My guess is this thing is either part of an old wall, or one of the "fire towers" used to watch out for potential fires in Ottoman times. My guess, of course, is as good as any other.

Do you know what this structure is, or might be? Please let us know in the comments.

UPDATE!

Many of my on-line viewers pointed out that this structure was actually a Byzantine "water balance", a tower that maintained even water flow and pressure across the aqueducts that carried water to Chalcedon, now known as Kadikoy. Thanks for the help!

Alevi Outsider Art

The ghost of Jean-Michel Basquiat must be alive and well in the streets of Istanbul, painting signs for local shops.

Nalbur means "hardware store" in Turkish. Man, check out that Opel logo!

Eventually I followed the arrows and actually found the "Nalbur" in one of the side streets. It was a pretty ordinary store, except from the awesome examples of naive art on its walls.

The store was owned and run by a couple of brothers who were Alevis, members of an indigenous Anatolian religion that borrows from Sufism, Shamanism and Eastern Christianity. Alevism has a special emphasis on mankind's mystical link with nature, and we can see this connection reflected with a charming simplicity in these walls. The figures, in their multitude, sort of "become one" with the mountains and the trees.

More details from the tree/people figures. Notice the delightfully drawn turtle and the mushrooms.

The highlight of the walls was this portrait, which the store owner explained as "Ali's tears turning into wine." Drinking wine has a special significance in Alevi rites.

Almost as impressive was this figure, which the store owner told me was the "tree of life." The guys running the shop were very friendly and enthusiastic about the photos I took, so I made a silent resolution about buying all of my future hardware needs from their shop.