Photos of January

This is the first installment of our announced photo of the month.  These pictures have all been taken either with a Nikon Coolpix or a Sony DSC-H55, so essentially on point and shoot pocket devices.  We really could not decide which should be the picture of the month so we have left that choice open.

Picture 1. Taken on Pamucak beach. The gentle waves of the Agean.

Picture 2. From the hills above Selcuk looking south, at midday.

Picture 3. From a dune behind Pamucak beach, flooded wetlands with the sea beyond.

Picture 4. From the Artemis Temple. The old mosque and the castle.

What do you think?

Walking in January

We took a walk along the forest road to Sirince today, it was cold, but we were well wrapped up.  The road is fairly steep for the first hour or so, quite hard work in places, not something to be done in the heat of summer.  The views back towards Selcuk as we climbed higher were spectacular.  It was fairly clear so we could make out the sea at Pamucak.

Along the way we saw the usual small birds, finches mostly.  There were also jays, various thrushes, and tits.  As usual buzzards were present.  Near the summit of the climb we spotted a falcon.  Probably a peregrine, (it is hard to tell).  The picture was taken on a pocket digicam with maximum zoom, no tripod, of the falcon on top of a pylon.

The road was very muddy in places, and there were a few patches of ice around.  The scenery along nearly all of the walk (which takes about two and a half hours at a leisurely stroll with stops) is great, there are some fantastic views into valleys, over cliffs, of mountains in the distance.

Sirince was quieter than last time we visited, which was a sunny day during Bayram, the carparks were full and the village packed.  Today it was easier to walk around and take a few photographs.  We considered having tea and gozleme, but in the end decided to get the dolmus home and have tea with baklava and homemade biscuits.

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Fresh food in January

One of the things we like best about living in Turkey is the year-round availability of locally produced, straight from the field, fresh fruit and vegetables.  No air miles to concern us – the worst we have to worry about is tractor miles and we do try to favour strictly local produce.  It is also extremely cheap – there were tomatoes on the market today at 2 lira a kilo – they look very good and are almost good enough for salad (we are fussy about our tomato salads).  They are juicy and fine for cooking.  The spinach and the sprouting broccoli are currently at their finest.  We think the cauliflowers might get better again by Wednesday.  There were strawberries on some stalls claiming to be local, but we didn’t try them.  We were more tempted by the lovely blood oranges.

On the market we can also buy very cheap eggs (not had a bad one yet but we go a bit upmarket at 3 lira for 11), locally produced honey, cheese of several kinds, thick yoghurt, olives, herbs and spices, and all manner of dried fruit and vegetables.

We do believe that it’s possible to eat very cheaply here – provided one does not eat a lot of red meat and provided one enjoys cooking.  We do spend quite a lot of time preparing olive oil dishes (which last in the fridge for 3-4 days provided you don’t eat them all up before then).  It is true that red meat is expensive.  We miss affordable lamb, but the dana et is good and the chicken excellent (and so cheap they almost pay you to eat it).

Just Like Brent Park

Many things are different about living in Turkey as opposed to living in the UK.  Ikea is not one of those differences other than a few changes to the instore cafeteria menu, and being less crowed throughout.  There are 5 branches in Turkey, two in Istanbul, one in Ankara, one in Izmir and one in Bursa.  The Izmir branch is located in Bornova Forum, a retail park with Kipa (Tesco), fashion, electronics, and other stores.

Inside it is the same layout, the showroom with all the same stuff in it, then the warehouse and the huge aisles piled high with goods.  The same yellow bags, the same children’s play park outside, the same catalogue, the same on-line shopping, the same pencils.

We went earlier this week; we wanted a few bits now that our stuff had arrived from the UK.  We had brought some cushions with us, the covers packed tightly, and the foams used to protect delicate stuff.  The frames they fitted on we had abandoned in the UK so needed replacing.  Needless to say we got a few other bits and pieces as well, but we got out in one piece, without losing each other, and without buying things we did not need.

Today they delivered our shopping.  We were initially told the delivery would be Sunday, yesterday we were phoned, advised that it would be today and we would be called again neared the time.  They called again this afternoon, said they would be with us in half an hour.  Soon afterwards they arrived.   We now have our Poang chairs with black leather cushions and footsools.  We have plenty of Ikea pencils and plenty of Ikea allen keys

Health Insurance – Part 2 – the saga continues

There has been some talk for the last couple of years about Turkey introducing compulsory state health insurance.  We have been keeping an eye on developments, at times it seemed we would be allowed to join, at times it appeared not, at times there were rumours it would be compulsory.  From our perspective it seemed a fairly good scheme one that we would be willing to join as and when we either could or had to.

Because it was unclear whether we could join or not and we were both aware that we need health insurance of some sort we took out a local private scheme.  We knew that we may end up being doubly insured and that we may at a future point leave the private scheme.  We may well keep the private scheme anyway since it gives health insurance when travelling outside of Turkey and now that we are living here we are not, when visiting the UK, really entitled to NHS outside of emergency care.

More recently matters came to a head, with as usual a great deal of uncertainty and confusion, and in various discussion places a great deal of rhetoric.  We were about to get copies made of various documents and shove them into a file with various other notarised and translated documents, and head off to the SGK office in Tire.  The plan being to attempt to join and see what happened.

Now it (quoting the words of the British Embassy in Ankara) appears we do not have to.  The Embassy has given guidance that it appears that once a non-Turkish resident completes one year of residence in Turkey, they must apply to join the scheme.  We note the word appears with interest, but for now are going to take it at face value and at the same time continue to monitor for future developments.

Sooty and Sweep

For more than a week we have been having problems with our soba.  It started smoking due to a semi blocked chimney and it seemed that pretty much everything we tried failed to solve the problem completely.

We cleaned out the chimney removing lots of soot, we got a rotating cowl, we burnt a pack of the chimney opener stuff in the soba, but no matter what we did, nothing seemed to solve the problem.  The carbon monoxide issue was solved, a very good thing – the alarms remained silent, but it remained smoky and did not seem to be drawing air.  It had become a source of much frustration and we had become quite guarded and anxious about using it.

This morning we took it all apart again and discovered that despite all the attempts at clearing the chimney it was partially blocked again, and with what appeared to be big granules of soot.  At first we were at a loss to explain how this had happened, we had only been burning wood, it was cleaned out a week ago.  The explanation could only be the chimney opener stuff, that what it does is turn fine grains of soot into loose larger crystals which are meant to then fall down the chimney or be easy to sweep out.  With us having a long horizontal piece of chimney it could not fall out and instead formed into large lumps.

Having discovered this (and after a walk and tea with a friend on Pamucak beach which was lovely in the winter sun) we got some more cleaning tools and set about getting the chimney clear.  We got covered in soot and had to do a lot of cleaning up afterwards.

We can now report that we have a properly functioning soba, and despite outside being a chilly 4°C at 7.30pm and due to drop further overnight, we are comfortably warm and looking forward to a snug night at home.

A Madhur Jaffrey moment

When we left the UK we gave away many of our cookery books, brought what we considered essential with us and consigned those we did not want to part with to storage and shipping.  The essential included Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden a book that we cannot do without, Jamie Oliver’s Naked Chef, and some Turkish books.

Browsing through the recently arrived books was an inspiration, and we ended up having a Madhur Jaffrey moment, whilst contemplating Latin American stuff and how to get our hands on leaf coriander and limes.  We had beef and spinach using her lamb and spinach recipe from Illustrated Indian Cookery along with sour chick peas from the same book.  Both were absolutely delicious.  We have a load of the chick peas left over so will be diving back into her book for another evening.

It does bring to mind what is not available here, and possible creative solutions.  Lavaş will suffice for chapatti, although chapatti are not hard to make, and for flour tortillas.  Lemon can in most instances be a good substitute for lime.  Corn flour for tortillas is not going to happen, and getting hold of leaf coriander is going to be very difficult, we have some seeds but leaf production is never guaranteed.  We can at times get fresh ginger here and we have been freezing it with reasonably satisfactory results.

On the positive side we are fortunate enough to have wonderfully fresh local produce and an abundant market.  It’s just that, having lived for 15 years in the midst of one of Europe’s largest Punjabi communities, there are tastes we have missed – but no longer!

Fifteen boxes

On 18^th June we took out a small storage room in Big Yellow, Hanger Lane.  We got fantastic service from them – we were very impressed indeed.  It cost us about £60 a month for the room and insurance.  What we stored were books, CDs, DVDs, boardgames, kilims, clothes – and a few biking bits.  We were in and out of there on a fairly regular basis as we transitioned from one address to another due to selling our home, finishing the day jobs, and tying up various loose ends.  In late July we packed some huge bags with what we would initially bring with over with us in preparation for flying out early August.  The rest was left at Big Yellow, with a plan to have it shipped later in the year once we had all the necessary documents.

Late October we returned to London and took out another couple of suitcases full of things – clothes, pictures and games for the most part.  On November 3^rd we vacated Big Yellow and consigned the 15 remaining boxes to Soyer’s chosen London agents – Dolphin Movers.  Our boxes waited in Enfield until enough boxes belonging to other people had accumulated to fill a container.

We’re not quite sure when our stuff arrived in Izmir, but we were told by Soyer it would be 28^th or 29^th December.  We already posted about our hastily arranged trip to Greece overnight on the 23^rd and 24^th December, a trip in wild and windy weather necessary because we needed a stamp in our passport showing that we had entered  Turkey no more than 30 days prior to the arrival of our goods.

A little over a week ago we went to Izmir, the plan was to meet with Soyer to get our stuff cleared through customs.  It went smoothly enough at first, we met, did a load of paperwork, drank tea, had stuff translated and notarised, and headed to customs.  So far, so good.  We hung around for a while and then were advised to go for lunch, come back in 3 hours – which we did, this was also an opportunity to go and look at motorcycles.  Back at customs in the afternoon we hung around for a while, there was some sort of issue going on, not with our stuff but with someone else who was arguing with customs officers.  As a result (or maybe for some other reason) our stuff did not get cleared.  We were advised us to go home, Soyer kept Hilary’s passport and said they would deal with everything the next day and then organise to get out stuff shipped from Izmir to Selçuk.

On 18^th Jan at a little after 10.30 a truck drew up outside, Hilary got her passport back and we got our boxes of stuff.  Exactly 7 months to the day from when we took out the storage at Big Yellow and a little over 5 months from when we first moved out.  We thought it would take about 6 months, Ashley said right from the start that they would arrive in January, so pretty much as expected.

We have now unpacked.  Everything has arrived in great shape – nothing bashed about, missing or broken.  So, whilst this was not an express service, it was relatively cheap (total cost of shipping, not including our storage costs before consigning the boxes to the shipper but including all customs costs and delivery to inside our house was just under £1,500).  More importantly we had excellent communication and customer service at all points along the way.

Selçuk camel wrestling festival

We went to the Selçuk camel wrestling event.  This was much larger than the one in Belevi, and was preceded by camel related events in town over two days including a best dressed camel / beauty contest.  There were TV crews, radio crews, photographers and reporters, various dignitaries including members of government and the mayor of Izmir.  There was a great deal more organisation, along with more Jandarma and traffic police, necessary given the crowds present.  It was difficult for the friend who gave us a lift to find a place to park, it was difficult to find a place to stand and watch – not possible to get the kind of uninterrupted view we had at Belevi.

Unlike Belevi there was no alcohol for sale, although there was a great deal of raki being consumed.  There were some stalls selling food and snacks, less than at Belevi, more people seemed to have brought their own supplies.  There was also a great deal of gambling going on.   The whole event seemed a lot more formal.  The sound system was high quality so it was easier to follow the commentary.  Fewer camels ran out of the arena with people chasing them.  It was fun, but a different sort of fun.

The sky was grey but at least the rain held off.  It was cold and muddy, the sort of cold wet mud that saps heat through boots at an alarming rate.  As a result we did not stay long, long enough to watch some wresting, eat some sucuk in bread, get a load of photos, and generally catch the atmosphere.

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Soba Drama

Last night, shortly after having been lit, our soba started to smoke alarmingly.  We opened windows and doors, used fans and, after Ashley hit the pipes with a poker and increased the air flow the smoke dispersed and was seen coming out of the chimney.  We were not at this stage sure why air was not being drawn, obviously there was a partial blockage somewhere.

This happened several times over the course of the early evening and then, as we were eating dinner, the carbon monoxide alarm went off.  We threw everything open and left the building till we were pretty sure it had dispersed.  You can’t just turn a soba off.  You have to wait for the fire to die down enough to take the burning bucket out of the house.  Which we did.

The portable gas heater was brought through from the back house so, at least, we were warm.

This morning we headed for town to buy some of the stuff you burn to clean the chimney (not to be used till the blockage is definitely gone), a mechanical chimney cleaner (a ring of metal with a spring wrapped around it mounted on a stick) and some gloves.

We cleaned what we could, got a load of soot out of the chimney and could see more beyond our reach.  We phoned a man with a ladder to do the last offending blockage.  As you can see from the photo, this full length ladder was only just long enough to reach the bendy bit.  The bendy bit was full of tar.  It has been dripping tar onto the road under our terrace for about a week.  We initially thought this was oil from someone’s engine which is why we didn’t realise we had a flue problem.  We ended up buying a new bendy bit and it was not easy to fit.

We then spent some time reassembling parts of the chimney flue, cleaning out the soba, and using a vacuum cleaner to get rid the soot.  Fortunately we had managed to confine the soot to a relatively small area having been able to get the bulk of it straight into a big plastic bag.

Right now we are hoping this clean-out will have solved the problem.  It should do, there is no blockage to the air flow.  We won’t, however, know for sure until we try to light the soba this evening.

There is a moral to this story.  Every year in Turkey people die, poisoned by their sobas.  We will keep our chimney clean and continue to use our carbon monoxide alarm.