A Place of Gathering

One of the places of worship (Cemevi) used by some of Turkey's ten to fifteen million Alevis. Despite the prolonged struggle of Alevi activists, the Turkish Ministry of Religion refuses to acknowledge these buildings as official places of worship, relegating them to the status of "cultural centers" instead.

Parasites!

Parasites! Parasites! Parasites! More than four months ago, I visited the Natural History Museum's Darwin Center in London to see their collection of parasites.

Housed in a vast and seemingly endless series of carefully maintained cabinets, thousands of jars contained millions of preserved parasitic worms.

Here is a jar full of nothing but tapeworms. I couldn't record what species they were.

I particularly regret not being able to recall what these things were. Whatever they are, these chunky, thumb-sized maggot/worm things were some of the most awesome things I'd seen. Mrs Eileen Harris, who guided me on my tour, told me they were retrieved from the liver of a horse.

More parasitic goodness: This worm had been preserved as it was emerging from its host fish, Alien-style.

Here is a jar that's full of nothing but parasitic nematodes. They were all collected from people, whose guts they particularly like to infect.

Parasitic nematodes come in all sizes. The ones you saw above were pretty small. Here is a bunch of medium-sized ones, as long as chopsticks.

And finally, giant nematodes as long as someone's arm.

But even that is far away from the largest parasitic worms can get. The jar you see here contains one worm. That's right, one, single, frighteningly long worm. It was collected from a killer whale and measures more than forty meters long. That's longer than some whales are, you know? This giant worm is the crown jewel of the NHM Parasitology collection and was even exhibited to the Queen of England!

Aside from tapeworms and nematodes, the collection also had numerous flatworms (like the one shown above,) eyeball-clinging copepods and parasitic catfish that attach themselves to... to... well, perhaps you could watch my latest documentary on the subject to find out.

If you like this kind of stuff, I strongly recommend visiting the NHM. This, by the way, won't be the last you'll see of this place in my blog.

At Arnavutköy

I was lucky enough to stay over at a friend's house in the beautiful neighborhood of Arnavutköy earlier this month. As I wandered out in the morning, I embarked on this short photo-odyssey through the district's breathtaking Greek neighborhood. Yes, that's the Bosphorus in the background.

Arnavutkoy, like each and every beautiful place in Turkey, used to be a predominantly Greek area. Although some Istanbulite Greek families still live here, many have fled after the brutal pogroms of 1955, and their houses stand deserted like so many ghost mansions. Here is one.

Despite the withering effects of time, the building's door still retains its elegance.

This fancy door handle still bears the traces of an era when people didn't need to lock their doors most of the time.

I poked my flash through the boarded-up windows to snap these pictures.

These pictures really broke my heart. An elegant house, full of cultured, civilized lives, has been reduced to a sleeping ground for dogs and beggars through the pressures of nationalism and xenophobia.

Of course, not every story from Arnavutköy is that depressing. Take a look at this mansion, beautifully preserved and restored. Unusually among all buildings in the neighborhood, it was covered in sculpted sheets of tin.

Occasional abominations like this mosaic-covered house aside, Arnavutköy is still a beautiful place to stroll through.

Old Books and Videos

Shady arcades! After my visit to the biggest one in Kadikoy, here we are with one of its counterparts on the European side of Istanbul.

Such places are havens of cultural detritus from past decades. The stores in such arcades are loaded with old records, past issues of every magazine imaginable, kitsch posters, broken down toys, VHS tapes and the like. If you are one of those indie people who find this kind of stuff cool and trendy, then you will feel like you are in paradise.

This video store, whose name translates into "Lightning Video", is one of the last remaining video clubs in Istanbul, which used to be as common as coffeehouses during the golden age of VHS in Turkey during the 1980s. The guys working here stock copies every obscure, unknown and cult Turkish movie you can imagine...

...and some you cannot.

Here is a close up of one of Simsek Video's shelves. The titles include gems such as "We Need Husbands," and "Three Angry Warriors."

Other places in this bazaar of trash include this shop, which had the poster of an ultra-nationalistic film about the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. Titled "The Eagles of Victory in Cyprus," this forgotten film's poster has each and every gun blasting forth flames like so many ejaculations.

The same shop also sold numerous Turkish "science" books from the 1960s and the 1970s. This one, called "Universe/Evolution and Spiritualism", was one of the most interesting. Written by two people called Davut Targan and Güner Ünal, it apparently tried to reconcile science and especially evolution with something like Sufism.

I still regret not buying it, which is why, some day, I hope to return to the depressing confines of this interesting place.

Blowing Out the Candles

You might have noticed that I haven't posted anything for almost a month now, but don't worry - that is about to change as I have returned from my summer vacation. These pictures, on the other hand, have nothing to do with my summer.

These two sweet wall paintings are on the famous "Little Beyoglu" street in Pera. I have no idea who might have done these, but their level of sophistication is seldom matched in the streets of Istanbul.

London Graffiti

With bookstore shelves bending under the weight of crappy "world-graffiti" books and a search for "Old Street graffiti" turning up more than 300.000 hits, presenting this post on London's graffiti artists loads me with a certain level of populist guilt. Nevertheless, here are some pictures from that city's bohemian center, Old Street.

Above, you can see a statement and counter-statement played out by nameless stencil and marker artists.

"B," on the other hand, is an artist who has traveled to London all the way from Greece. I was familiar with this artist's trademark style since my last survey of Athenian street art.

I don't know if this was intended as street art or an ultra avant-garde poster for a show or a concert.

Stencils...

...as well as political pieces are quite common.

While in London, I "discovered" a certain street artist named Natty, obviously a twist on the famous and overblown Banksy. He (or she,) places one such signature beneath each and every one of his works.

There's one. This was one of the most atypical of the "Natty" works and might not even belong to the same artist.

That's more like it.

This one might also belong to someone else...

Why do I have to write a particular comment for every piece? It's just graffiti!

Again, by "Natty." Pictures like these sure look good, but they are among the most shallow forms of human expression when it comes to original subjects. Sticking it up to the man, yeah. I wonder when street art will focus on works created purely for wonder and joy, instead of contrived attempts to "protest" something.

A Giant Scarab

I found this giant scarab beetle outside my house last week, shortly after a freak summer rain.

This was not the first time I'd found horned scarabs outside my garden, but this particular beetle was probably the largest I've ever seen.

So heavy! The giant scarab compared to my hand. I think this is something of the genus Orcytes, perhaps even an O. nasicornis like the one I'd found before, only a female. Of course, one can never be too certain...

The Nightlife of Bodrum, Again

After my last post about Bodrum, here is a a follow-up on certain aspects of the nightlife of the ever-popular holiday location.

A detailed discussion of Bodrum's thousands of bars and clubs, of course, will be patently impossible and pretty boring. Instead I want to tell you about the places that mattered to me, my close friends and the 1000-2000 other young people that frequent them.

This, for example, is the infamous BBC club, the only place that played rock and alternative during my adolescence in the early 2000s.

We were struck down with grief when the old BBC closed down to become one of the omnipresent "holiday discos" found throughout Bodrum. In 2007, however, it reopened as a rock bar, with the original trashy decoration meticulously "restored" to evoke the old days. However, people had moved on...

...to other places, Bodrum's labyrinthine streets among them. Here is my brother and his friends during last year.

They were busy preparing and drinking vast amounts of a notorious concoction called "Karışım," which was made out of beer, wine, vodka and tequila, among other things. Naturally disgusted by alcohol, I could only fathom one sip - which tasted like stale oil.

If the streets are not to your liking, you can always try the real bars that lie around Bodrum's landmark castle.

The first, and the most popular of these is called Körfez, which is always crowded to the brink and has not updated its playlist of songs since 1999.

These factors, however, do not deter people from having a good time, as this couple I shamelessly spied on can attest.

Other good places to go apart from Körfez include the newly-opened Tower,

...and the ever popular Adamik. If you spend your holidays in Bodrum, chances are your nights will be spent tracing infinite triangles between these three bars, and... nowhere else!

All of these pictures were taken last year. I wonder what this summer will bring? By the way, this is not my first post on Bodrum's nightlife. Check this out for the last report!