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.

Multi-Lingual Street Signs

Istanbul is getting to be such a cosmopolitan (!) city that even the warning signs for rubbish dumpers are getting subtitled in English.

At Riddim Bar

Nope, these are not scans from one of H.R. Giger's amazing books.

"If not, then what?" You might ask. Well, these pictures are all on walls.

And the walls belong to one of Istanbul's largest and oldest rock bars, Kemancı.

These murals were painted here by one of the students of Galip Tekin, one of Turkey's most famous fantastic comic artists, who ran this place as a "hobby." Some hobby!

Kemancı used to cover three whole floors, with different concerts and music on each. These intricately copied paintings decorate the stairs between different floors.

They are all reproductions, but these pictures were so good that a local legend soon grew, that Giger had painted them himself, and what's more, these pictures were the originals!

Of course, something later happened that put these images slightly out of context.

That "something" was R&B music. As hardcore rock and metal music lost its audience in Turkey to newer genres, Kemancı became an unsustainable venture. The establishment first sold one, then two, then all floors off to a new R&B club called Riddim.

In the initial days of this partition, a slight tension grew between the heavy metal fans and R&B revelers that went to the different clubs in the same building. The Kemanci crowd obviously hated losing ground to what they saw as their polar opposites and played only ultra-hard metal hits to annoy Riddim. This, of course, only hastened Kemanci's demise.

So now Kemanci is Riddim, and sizzling rap hits echo off the same walls that once rang with Metallica and Slayer. The beautiful pictures have been left untouched by Kemanci's new owners, so now people like me can enjoy the doubled pleasure of grinding with hot chicks while admiring quality reproductions of top fantastic artworks. Rock on!

Mystery Beetle

Sorry for the silent week, dear readers. I'm rather busy now on a new film project, and it is taking up all of my time. Still, here's a new post to keep you busy.

I saw this metallic green beetle in Old Street, London, on the day Turkey beat the Czech team in last month's Euro 2008 craze.

Although this critter looked like a Tiger Beetle with its large eyes and large-ish jaws, certain differences in its body and wings led me to think it was something else... but what?

I frankly do not know. Speaking of London and insects, however, one of my friends has also started a new photoblog about the invertebrates and other wonders she keeps finding in London and elsewhere. Please pay Fez's blog a visit!

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.