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| View during breakfast |
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| Breakfast |
Lots of things going on both exciting and scary, but adrenaline-stimulating
nonetheless! I took over a month of vacation, which started with skipping
Christmas by flying with my best friend to Antalya, Turkey. It was certainly
different spending the 24th and 25th of December at the
beach and in a country that didn’t celebrate Christmas. In Turkey, these days were like any other days, all
businesses were open and people went on with their lives without recognizing
that the Western world was celebrating this most-special Holiday.
The experience there was great, not many tourists; it
actually often felt like we were the only tourists there. I realized after the
first day that I couldn’t just speak German to everyone like people had
suggested, so that night I learned 10 or 15 phrases in Turkish that made the
next 3 days a bit easier. We wanted to
see the Turkish country side and rented a scooter with which we had two
near-death experiences, mainly due to other drivers (a bus and a truck) not
caring about a small scooter that they could just easily drive off the road.
Despite this, we did see a big part of the real, often-poor Turkey. In
retrospect, I think it was one of the craziest things I have done, once I
became confident with the scooter I was driving in the Turkish freeway/Autobahn
at over 120 kmph with my best friend riding on the back (she definitely had
also a lot of courage and literally trusted me with her life); definitely a
huge adrenaline rush. 
Turkish people were extremely nice and definitely avid sales
people, I was literally manipulated into buying way more stuff than I intended
to. The food was better than expected and often I went to bed so full and
swearing that I would never eat that much again, of course until I repeated the
same cycle the next day. Surely a highlight of the food was the breakfast that
was included with our hotel package, especially the cheese and honey, and more
than anything the fact that we had breakfast at the age of a cliff overlooking
the Mediterranean and across the snowcapped Beydaglari mountains. Our hotel was
right in the heart of the old city or Kaleiçi, which is accessed through the
Hadrian gate that was built for a time when this Roman emperor visited Antalya
when it was then part of the Roman Empire. The really well preserved ruins,
houses, narrow streets and alleyways appeared to have remained stopped in time
for several hundred years. The Kaleiçi had several mosques in it and waking up
to the 6 AM morning-prayers on the loud speakers was a very spiritual
experience. Opposite to the Hadrain gate at the other end of Kaleiçi was the
Antalya port and only access to the sea. At this port we spent a lot of time
seeing the fishermen come every morning with their daily catches, and watching
them play backgammon in their small boats. Everybody, everywhere in Turkey when
not working was playing backgammon, I sure need to learn how to play it. At
this port there were also many people fishing off the pier next to a very large
sign that forbid fishing off the port. In order to assimilate the culture we
bought tackle, line and some weird bait from a vendor next to the pier and
joined in on the fishing; both Rachel and I successfully caught one fish each
(definitely not sea monsters) in a span of 20 to 30 minutes and then gave our
equipment away to a local kid with whom we struggled to communicate. 
We ended our amazing time there by going to a 700 year-old
Turkish bath, where 2 really old men scrubbed us, exfoliated us, gave us a
bubble bath and bubble massage, then some tea and fresh fruit before finishing
with a spectacular oil massage. Needless to say, Turkey became one of my
favorite countries in the world and I will make sure that I visit it many more
times.
