Taşucu/Alanya


Sometimes, trips don't unfold the way you had pictured them. The original blueprint for this week's vacation centered around the island of Cyprus. We were going to take a ferry from the small coastal town of Taşucu to Girne, approximately two hours away on Cyprus. About 10pm on Saturday, almost mid-way between Antalya and Taşucu, my knowledgeable classicist travelling companion and I discovered we were short one passport. Unsure whether this would be an insurmountable obstacle to completing our travels- Turks can travel between the two countries with only an ID card- we completed the journey to Taşucu. A tanned, 30-year-old tourist boat captain and silver jewellery salesman from Manavga named Mehmet sitting next to me on the bus predicted that we could make the trip with just a residence permit, then offered me a job on the basis of my being able to speak English. 500 euros a month plus hosuing working on a tour boat, hmmm.... Finally we stepped off the bus at 4am. Luckily, it was just about the easiest place to navigate around I have been in since FunTown USA theme park. The only restaurant open on the main street was Dilek Lokantasa, a tiny diner occupied by a fisherman-looking guy with a vest and a baseball cap and the university-aged fellow filling the roles of maitre'd, sommelier, waiter, cook and busboy. While sipping tea and eating bread dipped in lentil soup, I found the Jazz-Rockets playoff game on TV. A tiny village sustained by fishing and domestic tourism, on the fringe of the Turkey, in the middle of the night, had an NBA game on its satellite feed- ah, the joys of globalization.

Once the ferry terminal office opened up, the ticket seller managed to explain to us that it was impossible for foreigners to get to Cyprus without passports, but hey, since we only lived in Ankara if we caught the next bus out of town and travelled contantly for additional entire day, we might make it back in time for the ferry the next day. He wasn't even kidding. At any rate, Plan B was NOT to go spend another $100 and 20 hours travelling, but rather to explore the charms of Taşucu. And I'm very glad we did. After napping for several hours, I discovered that not only was the harbor clean and adorned by the little tea garden-park I had watched the sunrise from, but there was a beach beyond it. The beach was several hundred meters long (do you have the metric system yet back home?) and set against a promenade tiled in white and red concrete. The height of the waves rolling in never deviated more than about 6 inches over the course of a day, and the harbor was perpetually ruffled only by a wind between 5-10 knots. In the evening, families in various decades of togetherness speed-walked, tottered, waddled or strolled with the comfort of the tiles and the relaxation of the waves, occasionally interruped by motor-scooter riders of a more predictable age and gender weaving amongst them. It may have been one of the few settings from the last eight months where my wearing of shorts was not unique, but I managed to distinguish myself as the only person giving someone a piggy-back ride.

Sevgi Lokantasa was a family-run restaurant whose seating capacity quintupled (and whose kitchen capacity doubled) when the weather was suitable for outdoors dining. It was as charming as a place can be where Nasim the unshaven cook who weighs twice as much as you do takes your order himself. He had an excellent way with otherwise simple and common foods; his chicken döner was to normal street döner what a homemade cheeseburger with sauteed toppings is to McDonald's, and one of the salads had a sweet pomegranate dressing. Basically, after having eaten rest-stop cuisine for a whole day, this felt like we had ended up at the Moosewood Restaurant. The waitress was one of the most Mediterranean-looking women I have met, her skin being a very few microshades away from the color of good olive oil. She flirted with the four other young men in the restaurant good-naturedly, but wasn't strikingly beautiful to the point where I was tempted to read anything into it when she asked me later where my girlfriend was when I came back for tea in the afternoon.


Randomly, the fisherman guy who was in Dilek Lokantasi that morning was also in Sevgi Lokantasi when we went in for lunch- I think by that point he thought we were stalking him. I even ran into him a third time coming back from the beach to take the aforementioned tea, and that time he actually had a fishing pole and tackle box with him.


There were definitely elements of small-town, middle to eastern Turkey in the way the family at the restaurant operated and interacted. The women ran the kitchen for the most part, aside from Nasim grilling the meat, and the men relayed orders to them every time a customer needed something. Similarly, the surrounding cafes had only men loitering in and around them, the women being almost completely out of sight on the main street. The beach and harbor were a different story, however. There were a few bikini sightings along the sand as well as girls in shorts and t-shirts chasing and wrestling with male companions. In the tea garden, couples held hands and snuggled (although I have to say, it was very modest compared to some of the PDA we get on the green here at Bilkent, I've had to start bringing a squirt gun to ultimate games in case people get too distracted). Overall, it was a fitting metaphor for Turkey- the traditional groups and families on the inland side of things with the younger, more modern demographic facing the outside world along the coast, interspersed with ATM's instead of apron pockets, motor scooters instead of prayer beads. Don't worry Phillip Morris, cigarettes are still integral to life on both sides here.

When we went back to Sevgi Lokantasi for dinner, Nasim's cousin, Nihat, was there. Nihat gets his own section. He was 38 years old, but seemed to have no problem being friendly and energetic with those of us a decade and a half his juniors. He was a computer teacher and airline steward, and spoke Farsi, Hindi, Arabic, Kurdish, English and Turkish. He'd been working out of Saudi Arabia for an airline for a few years and had come home to teach for a while, but his next goal was to go to American and train to be an airline pilot. We didn't go into the potential problems for someone from the Middle East studying flight in the US, I couldn't bear to dampen his enthusiasm. Eventually we talked about non-verbal communication and after I gave him the finger as an example, he took his middle finger and pulled down his lower eyelid. Ah, the glories of internationalism. Nihat offered to take us out for beers, so we borrowed his cousin's car and went down to the water (it took about as much time as it would have to drive, but now I can say I've ridden in a Toros, which is very different from a Taurus). 4/20, the first full day of Passover, and a full moon all at once- what more could you ask for drinking Efes and watching the waves roll in off a brightly glinting harbor. Nihat's wife even added some comedy by calling and yelling at him for leaving her with the three kids while he was out carousing with foreigners. I tried to help by talking to her on speaker phone, but she didn't believe an American would be speaking Turkish and thought I was just one of his friends pretending to be bad at Turkish. Poor Nihat.


The next morning, I officially nominated the day as Best Monday of the Year. After a traditional breakfast whose deliciousness was amplified by TWO helpings of butter and honey (that was pretty much enough to seal the award right there), I slung my hotel towel over my shoulder and headed down the promenade. The birds were flirting noisily and flitting from one palm tree to the next- they didn't know it was Monday; they never know it's Monday. The bushes lining the walkway had the color and fragrance of a natural candy store (I don't use this metaphor lightly, a candy store or a UU Church are the only things I would be OK with them tearing down Fenway Park for at this point), with a teasingly light scent on the orange and yellow ones and a deep, satisfying sweetness lying on the pink and purple set. A little girl, accompanied in the playground by her grandfather watched admiringly as I did pull-ups on the swingset WITH MY BACKPACK ON! (Eat your heart out, Dan Hartmann.)

Even on the best Mondays, something has to go wrong (but this was NOT a case of the Mondays). I haven't really been sunburned in at least five years; that's why it seemed like maybe I could lie on a Mediterranean beach from 11-2 and not bother with suscreen. And there was a breeze, I never really felt that hot. Nothing like days and days of subsequent soreness and fragility to remind you that, David Ortiz aside, some people do burn up in April.


Leaving for Alanya, we took a dolmuş down the coast a little farther to Silifke, where there was a bigger otogar, as had been suggested by our hostess at breakfast. Ironically, once we made it on an inter-city bus coming back west, the bus made a pick-up in Taşucu- right across from the hotel we had left that morning. D'OH! On the trip to Alanya though there were an amazing amount of imagination-esque little fishing villages. Harbor after harbor of green Mediterranean water rolling over pebbly or stony beaches went by below us. These views were interrupted only by occasional inland excursions to take on passengers from farming communities, or get stopped for ID inspection by the police.

Alanya overall was not as cool as Taşucu, having about 100 times the population and being much more of a resort town. It was hard to argue with having more beach and promenade time though, and my knowledgeable classicist travelling companion noted that there was something very relaxing about being in a city full of tourists so that we didn't stick out as obviously as in most Turkish cities. I also ran into a university student from Ankara named Serkan (not a Bilkenter) while I was swimming, and we had a chance to talk about all the normal topics: how I liked Turkey, where I had been, if I sufficiently disliked Bush, etc.


Other highlights:

-Antalya had a beautiful, modern bus terminal, by far the nicest I have seen in Turkey. One of the stands inside sold freshly squeezed orange juice, and when I tried to buy two whole oranges to eat on the bus, they got confused about why someone would try to buy an entire orange instead of orange juice and just gave them to me for free. They were good oranges, too, firm and juicy.

-While we were watching basketball at 5am in Dilek Lokantasi three young men came in laughing and stumbling, obviously having been out drinking for the night. And I thought this only happened at Louis.

-The bathroom at Dilek Lokantasi was broken, so when I went out back to, um, inspect their recycling system, I could smell bread baking. Nothing says dawn in Turkey like rising bread on the first day of Passover.