Back from KOS..

Well, our short trip to Kos - Greece was actually a mid summer get away from one hot place to another. Although our original plan was to visit couple more Greek islands from Kos, we postponed this idea to cooler months, maybe end of September or October..

A short ferry trip from Bodrum to Kos is taking about 40 minutes and waiting right under the sun at the Greek customs office is taking another hour. Town of Kos is full of daily tourists coming from Turkey. Ferries are working all day long.

We chosed to stay at the town of Kefalos which is right at the other side of the island. When we left the town of Kos, we started to realize how hard the Greeks hit by the recent economic crises. All the lovely beaches were empty except couple British tourists...Kefalos was like a semi ghost town during the evening. Some of the tavernas did not  even open for the season..It was rather sad..

However we enjoyed lots of good seafood and local wine. Prices were much cheaper compare to Turkey.

Tough Life !!!

Well, as you can imagine life could be so tough on the sea....

but, thank God that there are plenty of cold drinks waiting when you reach the land...especially this mastic cocktail..

Although I keep posting about our Crimea visit, our tough(!) life at the beach has already started..Photos taken yesterday and tomorrow we are leaving for another short trip to couple Greek İslands.. I have so much to post but these lazy summer days are killing me...
Have a great week...

Crimean Tatars and my grandparents

Hubby and I jokingly tend to blame all our good habits to our strong characters and all the bad ones to our genes or more precisely to a lousy great grand parent who had been forgotten long time ago..

However when it comes to certain issues, I think that, this great grand parent blaming theory of ours is quite true. In my case it is about forced emigration..

Up to this time I have lived a fairly comfortable and secure life and chose to live in houses and places where I really love.  It was always my wish and later the decision to move from one place to another, but whenever I see people on TV or on the news who are forced to leave their homes, a deep melancony wraps me and I usually cant stop myself and shed couple tears. The same thing is also true with poems, songs, movies, that are telling about that beloved country that has never been forgotten and missed deeply everyday until the assigned days in this world are over.

Well, I believe that this emotional state of mine and all those sorrow coded to my genes long time ago.. Once upon a time both my maternal and paternal  great grandparents were living in Crimea..The dates are not very clear but my maternal grandparents had to leave Crimea about 150 years ago when the land was occupied by Russians and emigrated to Romania which was Ottoman Empire at that time. Then in 1935 when my grand mother was a young woman with 4 children, they again had to emigrate to Turkey and this time escaped from communism. Among all my grandparents, I only knew my maternal grandmother who had lived close to 100..She was an extremly strong lady and built a totaly new life to her family. However it was a strange feeling for me to watch her in her last years while she was under the influence of dementia and lived in her mind as a young girl in the house she raised in Romania. It was so heart breaking to listen her daily routine and detailed and loving description of the house, its garden and the surrounding fields. She never had the chance to return to her beloved Romania..

The other side of my family my paternal grandparents forced to leave Crimea after the Crimean war as young teenagers.They left everything there and came to Turkey with very few possessions as they mainly had to walk..They came from the villages of Bakhchisaray, a wonderfully green and lush place, to the large and empty steppes of Anatolia. It should be a very traumatic experience..
As I wrote before their sorrows coded to my genes as well as their great survival skils. I am always proud of my adaptation skills as well as appreciating about the things and people in my life and my ability to find small ways to be happy under almost every condition.

look at the shapes of our eyes:))

During our Crimean visit we had the chance to attend circumcision and wedding ceremonies of Crimean Tatars.The photos in this posts are from those celebrations. The older generations lived the terror of Stalin and deported from Crimea to Uzbekistan on a single night -May 18,1944. Many died during the train journey where 100s were filled to a single wagon designed to carry the cattles. Unfortunately world knows much about the atrocities of Hitler but not Stalin. Today the survivors of that generation as well as their children are slowly finding their ways to home and starting all over again.

 a different generations of Tatars- my mother on the right and my aunts

and finally a happily dancing hubby with the Tatar tunes...

Simferopol - Crimea

Well, I have to admit that I have been cheating on my blog with my new Kindle a lot recently. I have so many books to read which were pretty hard to get before..But I am also willing to show you some of my photos from our recent Crimean trip. So I will start will Simferopol today..

Simferopol is the capital of Autonomous Republic of Crimea in Ukraine and you have to stop there as the only airport of the region is located in this city. As it is a rather small country we stayed in a hotel in Simferopol in the first 4 days of our stay and made the daily trips to the different part of the country from there..

I do not know much how it was during the communist period, but I had a strong feeling that not much has changed since then....buildings, cars, roads and even people. Most of the people working in the service sector are quite rude and acting as they are doing you a great favor when you ask something as simple as your room key.And beware of closing hours of the stores..As soon as the clock tics, they are not hesitating you to lock inside the store..It happened to me twice...

All the Tatar population in Crimea deported to Uzbekistan in a single night with the orders of Stalin on May 18, 1944 . After the collapse of the Soviet Union, they mainly returned to Simferopol area and trying to establish a new life at the outskirts of the city. They are struggling hard to establish a new life in their old lands without obtaining any of their previous rights. More on them later...

Champions are back !!!

Yes, we are back from Crimea...Today its all about de-packing and re-packing. Tomorrow we are leaving for our beach house. Photos of our trip are coming soon..

Flying

In a couple hours of time, we are flying to Crimea- the land of my ancestors. They never had the chance to see their beloved country again, that they had forced to emigrate, during their lifetime. I believe they all died with great homesickness...Now I will see that country with my own eyes. Promise to post if I find any internet connection..See you all soon...

photo: from a statue in Tashkent-Uzbekistan

Old and New İstanbul (2) - Historical tram in İstiklal Avenue

İstiklal Avenue on the European side of İstanbul is probably one of the most well known pedestrian street in İstanbul. It is full of old Ottoman buildings and an old tram runs back and fort all day..Lovely place to spend a day. So here are two tram photos from the unpublished National Geographic archives,I mentioned on my last post.

Photos are dated 1928 and taken by Maynard Owen Williams

Trams started to operate in İstanbul at 1871 and the one on İstiklal Avenue became active at 1883. Until 1914 all the trams were pulled by horses. Later they were all electrified..

and today..