Turkey Tales: The Trees Have Eyes. Also, a story about a dog.

This post is really the last part of yesterday's post, but first, let's have a story about a bus trip and a dog.  It is a story from Turkey (I promise that one day we will return to stories from not-Turkey, but today will not be that day).

Anyway - this is a story about the bus trip from Istanbul to Ayvalik. 

This is Istanbul, so you can imagine it while I am telling the story.

Turkish buses are good.   They are set up like a plane; the seats are numbered and you have a little television to watch and every so often the bus conductor comes along and gives you a small snack, or a cup of tea.  

The cup of tea usually arrives as the bus is careening around a bend at Turkish miles per hour, and the bus conductor, who is young and enthusiastic and has so far hopped off the bus on three occasions to have a cigarette, lurches from side to side and pours boiling water into the teacups, and he is holding two in one hand because that is how he rolls, and all of the time he is grinning at you maniacally as if to say "my face may be the last face you see, but at least I am smiling!"

Anyway.  Two hours into the bus trip the conductor came and tapped me on the shoulder and mimed "do you have an iPhone charger".  I was using my iPad so it wasn't a particularly difficult mime.   I mimed back, "yes but it's in my suitcase which is in the belly of your bus" which was a more challenging mime.  

The bus conductor looked disappointed in me and continued down the bus and I returned to peeking at the guy in front of me's Clash of Clans village (it was not as good as my village) and I thought no more of it, and we continued on towards Ayvalik. 

This is Ayvalik, so you can imagine it while I am telling the story.

Two minutes later the bus conductor, now very agitated, reappeared and tapped me on the shoulder and repeated the mime about the phone charger and beckoned me out of my seat and up to the front of the bus, at which point the bus driver braked abruptly and pulled over on the side of the three-lane highway which didn't really have any room to pull over on and the conductor and I very quickly got out of the bus.

The conductor, very excited at this point, scooted round the side of the bus and opened the luggage compartment and I pulled out my suitcase and found my charger and looked back into the luggage compartment -

And behind the place where my suitcase had been was a dog in a cardboard box.  

The box was just the right size for the dog.  It was as if he had been purchased in the box and not fully unwrapped from his packaging.  His head was out a hole in the front, and his tail was out another hole in the back,  and he had been wedged in between other pieces of luggage to stop him bouncing around during the journey.  He looked delighted. 

I looked at the conductor and then looked back at the dog.  The conductor also looked at the dog.  Together, on the side of the highway, we stood and looked at the dog.

And then the bus driver yelled something in Turkish and we quickly got back on the bus and my iPhone cable was very useful and eventually we ended up in Ayvalik, but next time I get off a bus in transit in Turkey, I will take my camera with me, in case there is another dog.


ANYWAY.

In Göreme, Town of Fairy Chimneys, there was a tree with eyes.  It was near the Open-Air Museum, which is a collection of 10th and 11th century cave churches, and is also a World Heritage Site.  The museum looks like this: 

"please do not inhabit the artworks"

The cave churches are amazing if you are into cave churches, which I wasn't when I started, and then I was for about 45 minutes, and then abruptly I wasn't again.   Also it was too hot and I was very hungry and now I feel bad for underappreciating a World Heritage Site.

Maybe you would like to appreciate it?

Probably not what T-Pain had in mind

Right, that is enough appreciation.  

Once we were World Heritaged out, we walked back into Göreme, and on the way we passed three trees, all covered with different things.  It was like a weird fairytale where at every tree you expect a themed gnome to pop out and set you a tree-related challenge, although of course this didn't happen, which was slightly disappointing.

The first tree made vague sense. It was outside a pottery shop, and it was covered with pots:

Let us be glad that it wasn't outside a brothel.

The second tree was covered with plastic bags and made no sense at all:

THEY'LL COME IN HANDY ONE DAY LOVE

And the third tree was covered with eyes.

 The eyes are amulets called nazar, which protect against the 'evil eye'.  They're absolutely everywhere in Turkey - on necklaces, over the doors of shops and houses, painted on buses, in every single souvenir shop.   

This was the only time I saw them on a tree.

And that is the story. 

The story about the dog was better, and for this, I apologise.

All images © 2014 Ally Mullord unless otherwise stated. 

Nap-inducing

Yo! Either this is really boring or I am tired, because I read back over what I'd written just before and almost fell asleep.

We are having Italian-themed dinner tonight at my cousins' house to celebrate my sister's birthday and my aunt's birthday, which are on consecutive days or something. Anyway they were both this week and I get to spend the day shopping and cooking! Is like being on a very very slow episode of Top Chef.

I have made: 2 tiramisu/tiramisus/tiramisen; a yet-to-be-decorated chocolate cake, and antipasto platter. Am not sure how the tiramisen will taste because I haven't used the recipe before & the quantities seem a bit weird & I fucked up the egg whites. Hmm. Am also slightly worried about decorating the cake - I asked Kate what she'd like on it, being as it's her cake, and she said, "A dog! No, wait! I want you and me and Mum and Charlie!" She overestimates my cake-decorating skills something fierce, but let's see how it goes.

Charlie is currently outside barking like stink because I won't let him in - delicious warm chocolate cake is cooling on the bench, and I don't trust him not to leap up and grab it in his toothy jaws. I do not want to be part of a scene where I am trying to remove an entire cake from his gullet and he is gulping frantically in the other direction. Also he will be sick and I will have to make another cake. Bark bark bark bark.

I will take photos of cooking efforts and post them tomorrow.

This was originally going to be an instructive post with cleaning tips & tricks but then I realised that oh my God, booo-ring, and also they would all be made up (see 'wood polish is a con do not use it') and/or not helpful (see 'stainless steel polish is great because it's in an aerosol can and you can practice your tag on the fridge') and sometimes just plain inappropriate (see 'spit has powerful cleaning properties, just ask Hugh Hefner's shiny wang.')

So I don't have much to blog about. Saw 48hours film for the first time last night & it was awesome! Will link to it when it's been put on youtube and then you can all go and watch it.

3BT*

Three Beautiful Things

1. A butterfly landed on me! I was out on the porch having a cigarette enjoying the fresh air and drinking a coffee, when a buttefly landed on my wrist! Unfortunately I thought it was a bug and went BLEEURGH and shook it off.

2. I saw a babybanker at the mall! I use the term 'babybanker' to describe anyone who looks too young for their suit, and I think they're really cute. Not cute as in 'lewd chuckle people make when they're pretending to be French' but cute as in, 'aww, look at him, he's wearing a little suit! Is he in a little suit? Yes he is!' in the voice you use when you talk to your dog.

3. I had a conversation with the dog! I think. We were having a dog hug (I lie on the floor on my side facing Charlie, who is doing the same, then we wrap our front legs/arms round each other and have a hug) and he made a happy dog noise. So I made a happy dog noise. Then he made a relaxed dog noise, and I made an inquisitive dog noise, and he made another happy dog noise. Then I said "Do you want to go for a walk later?" and he made an affirmative dog noise. (If you type 'noise' enough it looks really weird and you think perhaps you might have spelt it wrong, but you haven't.)


*if you're unfamiliar with the concept visit www.threebeautifulthings.blogspot.com

Gather ye roses

Dog control man came round today - our cranky old neighbour keeps complaining about the dog barking, "particularly the small one." We only have one, and as dogs go he's on the bigger side of medium (he's a bearded collie (no, not a border collie, it's a separate breed,)) so Neighbour Lady is either mental or vindictive. Possibly both. She's decided that all of the barking in the neighbourhood emits from our back garden, and has made it her mission in life to Eliminate Our Dog. She wrote yet another very rude letter to the dog control people - luckily they think she is a nutter as well, so our dog isn't affected. But it's still annoying.

After the dog man had gone, I went out to our garden and picked a HUGE bunch of Neighbour Lady's roses, which are sort of on our side of the fence but not really. Ha ha ha, you old bat. I hope that you go to rose shows, and that your prizewinning bloom is now sitting in magnificent splendour on our dining room table.

Did anything else happen today? I went for a walk with the dog. He did a large and time-consuming poo by the side of a busy road and interrupted a teenage couple making out on the riverbank by leaping out of the river, leaping through their entwined bodies, and shaking vigorously. How embarrassing.

Oh, and Kelly left a comment on my last post saying that she loved my graphs (thank you!) and so now you all get to learn something about my daily food intake, which today went a little something like this -