Dreaming Lapland

Tell me if I am being ungrateful??? During the cold winter months in İstanbul, I was constantly dreaming of Datca, sun, heat, sea and all the things related with that. And here I am and now complaing about the heat and dreaming about winter and snow.

Last winter we did not have snow in İstanbul, and the year before that while there was a snow storm in İstanbul for a full week, I was in Sri Lanka. Where?? On a beach again complaining about the heat.So I miss snow and the cozy days in the house, it brings along... And I also miss gluehwein (hot wine with spices), my tradition in the snow.

But my best snow memories are from Finnish Lapland which I have visited 7 years ago. And it was started with a funny story. The plan was to stay in Jyvaskyla at a friends house before flying to Lapland. As there was no direct flight, the route designed by my travel agency was İstanbul - Stockholm - Jyvaskyla. After using the Stockholm airport as a transit passenger for couple hours, I peacefully flew to Jyvaskyla. When I reached there it was around 10 pm and I was the only foreigner on the small plane. While all my fellow Finnish passengers quickly left the airport within couple minutes, I started to search for a single soul in the airport to show my passport and officially enter the country. But guess what ? There was absolutely nobody. No customs officer, no guard, no body. I felt like I was in a horror movie where everyone dissappeared suddenly. After waiting for 5-10 minutes for somebody to appear with passport in my hand, I finally decided to leave the empty airport.

And on the way back to İstanbul, I took a ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm. No passport control there either. So I can clearly state that up to now no Finnish offical is aware that I was in their country.

So if we come back to the main subject of this post, Lapland and snow were just great. As I was a lousy skier, I opted for safaris. My first one was reindeer safari. I still remember the cuteness of my reindeer with no horns. Do I advise a reindeer safari? Well, not really. It is very slow and after a while you are starting to freeze.
But the real deal was husky safari. It was so great. Try to do it once in your life if you get a chance. First it was really scary to be in the wild, with 9 dogs alone, for more than 2 hours. But luckily they were very smart and tourist friendly animals and also a snowmobile from the farm was checking for me at certain points. And the huskies knew their way back home and they were extremly patient with a foreigner who was trying to give them orders in English or Turkish while they only understood Finnish. On a husky safari, all you have to learn was to stand on the sledge and use the breaks when necessary.

It was an extremly cold and snowy day where the batteries of my camera were frozen. Even the owners of the husky farm thought about cancelling the safari for a while. But for my luck, they have decided against it. Whole trip was such an adrenaline rush. And on my return, they welcomed me to a small cottage with a big fire and offered some hot wine and a big slice of bread with butter and blueberry jam on it. It was so delicious..

Summer Pillows..

Thru blogging I met with so many wonderful people. With some, our friendship went beyond the internet connection. I first get to know my very talented friend Sema, thru the short stories, she wrote on her blog. Later, when we found out that we have so many similar ideas about life, we have met personally. Then I learned another creative side of her. Since then, she started to sell her wonderful creations on her new site..

You could reach Sema and her creations at www.renklitasarimlar.com

Raki

Raki is the unofficial national drink of Turkey. It is a non sweet, anise- flavored spirit, and it's fans usually drink it by partly mixing with cold water. When you add water, raki turns into a milky-white color. I dont particularly like its strong taste, but there are so many fans of it, and one of them is my husband.

According to raki lovers, it goes best with fish, and as side dishes there has to be white cheese and melon. However, for the last 7 years this country is ruled by an Islamic party, whose hidden dream is to establish the lifestyles of Saudi Arabia and Iran, here. But the name of the game is democracy so they cant play it tough. At least so far.....

So they choose to play with the available powers in their hands. So recently they banned the use of raki-fish-cheese-melon, / wine-cheese and beer-chips combinations in the advertisements. But by doing that they gave such a nice edge to marketing people. Here is one of the best ads of the raki producers. I love the satire and protest and also the photograph taken by Ahmet Agaoglu.

In a lousy translation,in the first line it says, 'my eyes can't see anything other than it' and it goes ' raki cant put their names to its mouth, however you can put their taste to your mouth.'

1.photo is from here

2. photo is from the ad of Yeni Raki..

Bordubet Bay

How was your weekend? It was extremely hot around here, however we did not let the heat disturb our short expeditions in our small peninsula. On Sunday we went to the Mediterrenean side of the peninsula, and visited some bays there, which are accessible by car. This part is rather the uninhabited part of the peninsula. So here are some pictures for you...

Rating in Almond

As Datca is still very much away from mass tourism, there are no big hotels or vacation villages around here. All you can find is small hotels or guesthouses. So when you want to rate them with the usual stars, it doesnt work here.And Datca is very famous with its almond. So what would you do? You start rating the hotels or guesthouses by giving them almond. 1 is the lowest, 3 is the highest. I think, its a lovely idea. What do you think??

Nowadays its time to eat fresh almonds. I love eating them in breakfast by peeling their skin and later dipping into honey. Delicious....

A store in old Datca..

I found these beautiful felt hats in a new store in old Datca. The owner Ozlem Suner is mainly selling 100%cotton fabrics that she has collected from different regions of the country in a lovely small shop in this street of old Datca.Although you could find her at http://www.pestemals.blogspot.com/ it looks like she did not update it regularly. As I am planning to buy some of the goodies in her shop, I promise I will bring you some more photos from her shop.

I won.....

It's been such a long time that I won something.. Right after I graduated from the university I had won USD 25.000 from the lottery. Believe me it was like USD 25.000.000 for a new graduate. But since then nothing.....Finally I am on the winning streak again... I won the collector's stamp giveaway of the very talented photographer Tim at www.stylemed.blogspot.com Thank you Tim... They will be a treasured part of my collection..