:)

...

Teardrops

First teardrop
We were living in Tatavla, and I was 4 months old when suddenly one night I became pale and began to cry strangely. In the same building with us, there was a turkish couple of doctors who had their own surgery. At three o'clock in the morning and wearing their pyjamas, they diagnosed advanced dehydration, they put me a serum and in a while I was better. 2 or 3 hours later and I would have died. When my father went to pay them, they refused saying "efentim we are living under the same roof, we cannot take money". Five years later we left Istanbul for Athens. At the age of nine years old, when I visited Istanbul and went to visit the doctors, they embraced me with teardrops. Bizim cocuk. Our child. They had my photograph in their office. I looked at my mother and distinguished a teardrop on her cheek.

Second teardrop
Five years old in a taxi from Pera to Tatavla, I was talking without stopping, next to us a unsmiling Turk with a mustache. 45 years later I still remember him and his voice. "Turkce konusmak". Talk in turkish. My mother squeezed my hand. I distinguished a teardrop on her cheek. Six months later we were leaving for Athens.

Third teardrop
One year later in Nea Smirni, in a grocer’s shop. I said “Mum could we also have a bit of kaseri ?” with my heavy turkish accent. A lady behind us swispered at the grocer “our neighbourhood has been filed with Turks ”. We heard that, I look at my mother, a teardrop on her cheek.

Those three teardrops have stayed in my memory to remind me that teardrops of joy kai teardrops of pain can be provoced by both Greeks and Turks...

From Solon
(Bad) translation from greek to english made by me

Ashes

"Beware! Prejudices" by Sir Peter Ustinov

"If they were asking me to draw a prejudice, I would draw on paper a locked door, since prejudices are locked doors for rooms where no fresh breeze passes & where everything is probably covered by spider webs. Now somebody could think that any logic person that comes into this room would immediately open the windows. But some people don't even notice the suffocating atmosphere..."

The atmosphere in Greece these days is also suffocating...
64 people dead and a landscape of a country turned into ashes

But the worst of all is the media delirium after the disaster. Who set the fires? Who didn't prevent this from happening? Who's to blame? Everybody makes presumptions & has an opinion on the issue. And when people are in pain they are even more sensible in prejudices & conspiracy theories. Media are playing the game very well & the upcoming elections in 15 days make things even more complicated. For the moment there is no logic voice or fresh breeze out there to help this country be reborn from its ashes

Photo of Peloponnese from the
Nasa satellite on the last days of August

Impossible

And because nothing is impossible Καληmerhaba exists :)
And will continue to exist...from September.

Kales diakopes! Iyi tatiller :)

Passport

As we are planning with Aysegul a trip for our holidays in August, I brought out of my things my passport. I'm not the kind of person attaching importance into things, but this little piece of paper is really a precious one. And it's much more than a piece of paper...

PassePort - PasaPorte - PasaPorto - PassPort -ΔιαΒατήριο

For the ones that "pass the ports". The travellers...

For some people it's a ticket which makes them discover new places and people, different from their own and coming back into their home with new experiences & points of vue. For other people a passport is a ticket for a new life, a better one, into another country, escaping from the problems of their own. But a passport is always an identity item. Who you are, where do you come from, where have you been, where do you wanna go...I feel so sorry for the ones that do not have a passport, not necessary a real one , but a passport in their own mind...

Turkey welcomes you :)

Nowadays everybody goes on holiday. Unfortunately I have to wait for my holiday one month more. But now I try to decide where and when to go. It makes me think the places that I have ever gone. I have two places favourites; Oludeniz, Trabzon.

I went to Oludeniz with my sister in 1999. It was a gift of my big sister. My dream is to go there again and do the paragliding.

Oludeniz is a small resort village in the Muğla Province on the South West coast of Turkey on the Aegean Sea to the south and the high, steep sided Babadağ Mountain, 14 km south of Fethiye. Olu Deniz is famous for its shades of turquoise and aquamarine, and is an official blue flag beach, and is frequently rated among the top 5 beaches in the world by Travelers and Tourism Journals alike. The resort is also famous for its paragliding opportunities. It is regarded as one of the best places in the world to paraglide due to its unique panoramic views, and the Baba Dag mountains exceptional height.

I went to Trabzon in 2002 with a friend of mine. I love its nature with the surrounding greenery of the forests and the special character of the people.

Trabzon, formerly known as Trebizond (Greek: Τραπεζούντα Trapezoúnta), is a city on the Black Sea coast of northeastern Turkey. Throughout history Trabzon has been an important meeting point for international trade and cultural exchange due to its strategic location which controls the east-west (Asia-Europe) and north-south (Russia-Middle East) trading routes. Trabzon formed the basis of several states in its long history, and was the capital city of the Empire of Trebizond.

Trabzon has a typical Black Sea climate, with rain the year round and temperatures reaching up to around 27°C in the summer. Winters are cool and damp, and the lowest temperature is around 5°C in January.

Trabzon has a number of tourist attractions, some of them dating back to the times of the ancient empires that once existed in the region.

• The Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya Müzesi), a stunning Byzantine church.
• Trabzon Castle ruins, visible in the town
• Atatürk Köşkü is a lovely Victorian-era villa, which was given to Ataturk when he visited Trabzon in 1924.
• Boztepe Park is a small park and tea garden on the hills above Trabzon that has a panoramic view of nearly the entire city.
• Trabzon Museum offers interesting exhibits on the history of the region, including an impressive collection of Byzantine-era artifacts.
• Trabzon's Bazaar District offers interesting shopping opportunities on ancient narrow streets.

Within this province, the main attractions are the Sümela Monastery and Uzungöl.

The monastery is built on the side of a very steep mountain overlooking the green forests below and is about 50km south of the city. The monastery was founded in the year 386 by two Athenian priests - Barnabas and Sophronius. Legend states that they found an icon of the Virgin Mary in a cave on the mountain and decided to remain in order to establish the monastery. It reached its present form in the 13th century after gaining prominence during the reign of Alexios III (1349 - 1390) of the Komnenian Empire of Trebizond (established in 1204).

Uzungöl is famous for the natural beauty of the area and the amazing scenery. Located in a valley between high rising mountains, the lake and village at first appear inaccessible. The surrounding greenery of the mountain forests and fog, occasionally enveloping the lake at night, also add to the scenery.

Greece, the tourist land

Live your myth in Greece

Explore your senses

Aysegul, you can add the turkish tourism spots :) I need holidays!

Coexistence

A funny & sweet love story
with a couple from different countries

My favorite book: Ports of call (Les Échelles du Levant, Doğunun Limanları, Τα λιμάνια της Ανατολής, 1996)

I have read this book 3 times, and I can read again several times! I like this book because it tells about not only a life of somebody but also a piece of our history. There is a good mosaic of different races and different cultures. It is also strange because the story starts in Adana, a city in Turkey 1 hour far away from my hometown and it finishes in Montpellier, a city in France 1 hour far away where I am living now.

«This history does not belong to me, it tells that of the other one ", says Maalouf. In this book, the narrator collects in four days the life of a man, Ossyane whom he followed in the streets of Paris in 1976 having recognized him according to a photo of his textbook of history.

Ossyane, a young Lebanese of both aristocratic Ottoman and humble Armenian origins. He was given the name Ossyane ("Disobedience") and educated to be a revolutionary leader…

He goes to Montpellier to study medicine away from the burden of his father’s ambitions. World War II breaks out and Ossyane is drawn into the Resistance where he meets Clara who is Jewish. He returns to Beirut and, despite the obstacles, to a happy marriage with Clara. The Jewish-Muslim couple move to Haifa but, if one war has made a hero out of Ossyane, another, much closer to home, is destined to split him from his wife and separate him from the world and the people that he loves. In this delicate and compassionate novel Amin Maalouf brings the struggles in the Levant in the wake of World War II painfully to life. The tribulations and separations of Ossyane and Clara reflect, at an individual level, the problems that have beset the Middle East for fifty years.

Biography of the auther : Amin Maalouf

Born in Beirut in 1949, within the minor community of Christian melkites, journalist and writer, emigrated in France since 1976, Amin Maalouf gave up his first job (in particular exerted in the Lebanese daily newspaper An-Nahar, and later in Jeune Afrique) to devote himself entirely to writing. He is autor of many novels which have as a framework the Middle-East, Africa and the Mediterranean world. Among these, The Rock of Tanios brought him the Goncourt Price in 1993. In his books he builds bridges between East and West, regions Maalouf says he is part of both. "When one lived in Lebanon, the first religion which one has, is the religion of coexistence." : these words summarize well the axis of his work.

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