Half of the nail
Turkey is a beautiful country; nature has provided her with everything. In mid-October while Central Anatolia is freezing cold you can go swimming along the shores of the Mediterranean.
By car we started from Ankara, driving on the Konya-Akseki road and easily reached Manavgat. The Ankara-Konya road has a double lane. Along the highway there are radar controls. All drivers are obliged to drive carefully.
My cousin Bülent was driving my car. But as he mixed up my car with his he thought he was driving at 90 kmh where in fact he was traveling at 127 kmh. And of course radar control caught him.
“I don’t understand this car’s speedometer. In my car when I’m driving at this speed it shows 90 kmh but in this apparently it becomes 130 kmh,” he tried to explain to the traffic officer to no avail. Listening to him all of us started laughing.
Konya seems to have solved most of her urban facility problems, but tourism and the service sector is another matter. One day during the bayram holiday several tourists came to the city looking for food. Restaurants were everywhere but service was a problem. None of the restaurants were organized or equipped to serve so many people.
Seeing my Istanbul license plate several tourists from Istanbul approached us. Don’t expect to be served food. They are hopeless. The waiters don’t know how to handle the service.
We didn’t believe them and entered one of the restaurants. After waiting for an hour without being served we tried another one next door. The same happened there. At the third restaurant we were successful. When we told the bow-tied waiter we were pressed for time he got nasty. “What do you expect me to do more?” he snapped.
Climbing the Taurus Mountains toward the road to Manavgat we passed through pine forests. Once upon a time these mountains were called, “the mountains of no return.” But today it is sheer pleasure to travel through them. Probably now they should be called “the mountains of always return.”
During the three-day holiday period all the hotels were full. At all-inclusive hotels, you pay the fare in six-month installments. Otherwise nobody will be able to have a good vacation in Turkey.
In holiday resorts or holiday villages all the time you have to queue. Queue at the döner stand, another queue in front of the omelet stand. It goes on and on. Here is real democracy. You live it along with bathing suit clad tourists. Nobody gets differential treatment.
Even at the a la carte restaurant you have to wait a long time to get served because the off-season has started and the number of waiters has dropped. So much delicious food at such a cheap price is really amazing. Half of the food goes into the dustbin without being eaten. I learn that every establishment here makes good profit when they sell an all-inclusive room for more than 30 euros. This is really incredible.
Foreign tourists, especially Russians, are still swimming in the sea even in October. But if you compare the temperature in Moscow with that of Antalya, it is very warm here.
Temptation
The worse dangers here are first, forgetting about your diet and second forgetting your age. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? At this age you still have a roving eye for young girls,” a woman at the next table was scolding her husband. I was just going to intervene saying, “nothing will happen from looking at them,” when I saw her expression and changed my mind. She wasn’t in the mood to understand a joke.
The all-inclusive system doesn’t benefit shopkeepers. Also the rent of shops in tourism areas is very high. A very small shop, the size of a cubicle costs 3,000 euros a month. Shopkeepers are not in a good mood around here. I entered a pharmacy. The owner scowled at me asking what I wanted in a curt manner.
I remember Istanbul and the Grand Bazaar nostalgically. Having dinner on a seashore restaurant in Side across the sea it is as if you see Istanbul. I am looking at a developed, big city. But unfortunately the infrastructure is not developed yet. Maybe the worst problem of the municipalities in Turkey is undeveloped infrastructure. As infrastructure work doesn’t have any political returns, all municipalities are looking for the central government in Ankara to help them.
This summer Ankara was stinking. It is the same here in holiday resort places. There is a funny anecdote I remember. “Look son, if you hammer a nail you should pay attention to have half of it show above the surface,” a seasoned mayor used to say to a fledgling one.
Even to feel the priceless value of Turkey’s coasts is very important.