‘One more hour?’, I asked in despair. ‘Are you sure? This can’t be! I need to get out of this train! I boarded in Diyarbakir, please, it’s enough!’
The train was going very slow, and almost arriving at a station, but again not the station of Adapazari, the destination I had in mind. The time: 1am. I desperately wanted to get …
The prospect of major disaster
Japan was prepared. As far as you can be prepared for an earthquake, Japan was prepared. The buildings swayed like they were supposed to so as not to collapse, the people didn’t panic but knew what to do and what not to do. And still, the disaster is tremendous. That makes it so hard to imagine what could happen in …
It was not for the first time that I enjoyed the beautiful landscape of Kapadokya in central Turkey. I lived there for some months in 2007, and since I have been living in Istanbul I have come back to the region often, for romantic reasons. But this time I came just for myself. The love is no more. And that …
I was exhausted after travelling, after talking Turkish the whole day and after meeting too many people. The last visit Rosarin and I paid was to yet another village family. The TV was too loud, the coffee too bad, the talk too long – and for a big part in Kurdish so I didn’t understand a word. I know it’s …
It felt like I was stepping into a painting: from an asphalted road lined with ugly shops, one step up a mostly dark green hill with wooden houses on it and woods behind it. On the grass a family having a picnic, a bit higher up the hill two children running around, laughing. I had seen this very …
Prefab houses and tents are being sent to Elazig, the area in the east of Turkey that was hit by an earthquake early yesterday morning. And in the coming months, the people affected by the earthquake will have better houses than they had before. Not built of sun dried mud bricks like before, but of solid concrete.
In all the stories …
The Istanbul municipality recently started pulling down apartment blocks in the parts of town where heavy rain caused flooding and the deaths of 32 people last September. The apartment blocks were built in such a way that they blocked the natural run-off of rain to the Marmara Sea. By correcting these city planning mistakes, the municipality hopes to prevent more …
I wished for it to exist, but I thought it didn’t. Whenever I went to a beach, there would be some ‘beach club’ where very loud boom boom boom music was played and there would be people on the beach with their private stereo sound system playing something else, also loud. I admit that I even take ear plugs when …
It snowed. Most of it has melted away again, but in the fields around the village of Ortahisar, the snow still sparkles. Even in the middle of the night. I look up and see the moon is full. I turn around on the back seat of the car I’m in to take a better look. Then we turn a corner …
I was the guest of a Turkish family for a few days. The mother of the family sometimes likes to watch Roj TV, the Kurdish channel that broadcasts from Denmark and has for ages been a pain in the ass for Turkish citizens and the government, which labels it as a PKK propaganda channel. The mother watches …
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