Covid Turkey. Part three
To be continued. Start here >>>
I love to leave the building of a foreign airport and breathe in a different air. Other flavors. The smell of other cigarettes, a different smell of perfume, even gasoline smells different. You immediately understand: you are abroad. Rest has begun. Good!
Even the inconsistencies of the first day did not upset me. The transfer driver, who was supposed to humbly wait for us with a sign saying "Coca", was running around somewhere and constantly calling me. What for? Unclear. He did not know English and Russian, and his excited voice was heard in the receiver: Shashly, Kok's bashly, babajan osmanly. But I found it, in the end!
And for my wife's friend the room was not ready and she spent the first night with us. Well, what is it? Cheerful, curvy wife's friend is never superfluous. (and she also had a liter of Dutik Cointreau with her).
This is how our covid vacation began.
The children were immediately told that there would be no water park, no sailing on crowded excursion ships. The children were not very upset. Not because they understand everything. They asked me what would be instead of these entertainments, and I, making a mysterious physiognomy, announced to them that we would have carts without creatures, greyhounds drawn by internal pressure, so the colossus floats in the air, the man sits on them, so that man-made wings would beat air in the image of flying birds*.
The Anatolian funicular was the machine that floated in the air.
For people who are afraid of heights, extreme entertainment is enough. But cool. And inexpensive. And antique. The temperature was taken twice. At the entrance to the parking lot and when boarding the cabin.
The wagons without creatures were three-seater electric rickshaws ($5 per hour):
A great way to move around lazily. It was very interesting to travel around the usual, non-tourist quarters of Kemer and give the children a tour. To tell that the great king Pepin the Short** lived in this castle.
And in this house is the brave knight Godefroy de Bouillon***.
And those exciting tales that I told the children were more true than the nonsense that talkative, uneducated gidёnki pour into their ears on excursions.
During these evening chariot rides, there were quite a lot of interesting discoveries and meetings. It turned out that more than half of the hotels did not open this year.
The spectacle is a bit sad and unusual.
One of the meetings was especially memorable. It was a dedugan who welcomed injured cats and very, very old dogs. Here is the courtyard of his villa in a quiet area of the city.
He didn't allow himself to be filmed. We talked to him and he told us that electricity was installed in Kemer only in 1980. That is, in the USSR, the Olympics shone with lights, and the current sparkling Kemer then learned how to screw in light bulbs and sent kerosene lamps into the closets with a sigh.
By the way, about sparkling Kemer.
If you compare it with Alanya, then the comparison will not be in favor of Kemer at all. If Alanya has become a beautiful, respectable Mediterranean city, then Kemer is stuck somewhere in the late nineties. Yes, it is clear that the original town-planning jambs are difficult to fix. And the Alanian imposing and comfortable seaside promenade in Kemer is now impossible to cut through, but the rest of the infrastructure... If in Alanya all the main marketplace is grouped in one or two blocks, and in the places of festivities there are mainly cafes and restaurants, then in Kemer on the central pedestrian street of restaurants , two and miscalculated. But there are plenty of shops in the style of "Leather-shmoja, hookahs-malyans and alopecia spices". But this is just my opinion.
I also took the children to the Gavnyuk National Park and there I paid for them to fly on cables through the gorges. I tried not to look at this nightmare.
And here is a journey into the past. This building used to be the Berkay Hotel:
Most recently it was purchased by a large chain hotel company and they didn't open this year either.
In Berkay, which then had one star, my wife and I spent our honeymoon.
God, what memories! We celebrated a modest wedding on the site of a still unfinished house, and the next morning, accompanied by two cheerful friends and their young wives, flew to Kemer. In shorts and T-shirts, but in a veil and a bow tie. On the plane we were first congratulated by the crew commander. Then congratulated the whole salon. The host of the program "The director himself", who was sitting in the next row, gave us money, which was not superfluous at all. The stewardess, out of excitement, poured coffee over me, apologized for a long time, wiped it off, and then, out of excess of feelings, knocked over the whole coffee pot on me.
At the hotel (one star! ) our balcony outside was decorated with garlands of flowers, and many rose petals were scattered on the floor and on the bed in the room. From that time on, I fell in love with low-star hotels.
Here's another funny story from that trip. Our friend Dranopotam**** was very fond of (and still loves) beer. But he didn’t have money to visit bars then, and he considered drinking beer in a room to be redneck. And he went to a stall, like this:
I took half a dozen Troy beers and sat on the curb with this beer. And he started drinking. There are people who dance beautifully, there are people who sing beautifully. Dronepotam beautifully drinks beer. He examines the bottle in the light, then puts it on his plentiful belly, quacks, shakes his thick hair up to the elbow, and, throwing back his head, drinks the longed-for drink. The owner of the stall brought him a chair. The next day Dronapotam sat there. On the third day there were already 4 chairs and there was a small table. On the fifth day there were already three tables on the grass. On the seventh day there were 10 tables, a coffee machine and a fresh juice machine appeared. And all the chairs and benches were occupied. When Dranopotam asked the owner of the stall, for some reason in German Bitte schö n. Wo cann ich pissen? The touched owner answered him in good Russian: "Piss? You? My dear, you can go anywhere!!! ".
A year later, this place was a restaurant. Three years later, a good-quality hotel with a restaurant. Now Dranopotam is a solid doctor of sciences and in general the luminary of Russian science, but the ability to drink beer and a mane of hair have remained unchanged.
I'll tell you about my happiest day in Kemer.
Every morning my wife's friend went to bathe.
I went with her. I didn’t swim, but just sat, smoked and watched the sunrise. Just in case, I write: in the mornings on the city beach, changing rooms and toilets are closed. My wife's friend changed clothes in the open vestibule of the toilet and I covered her with a towel. (Well, I peeped, of course. Yes, she was not shy). Only on the third day did we realize that there was a surveillance camera hanging in this vestibule.
And here I am sitting one of the mornings and do not expect anything magical. And suddenly at 7.30 I hear some noise. I see a group of young people coming. For twenty years. Three girls and three guys. One of them has a hefty speaker on his shoulder, from where this music yells. Judging by the music, these guys are Ukrainians. You can see that they are heavily drunk. But drunk people are not drunk, but well drunk. Fun drunk. One of the girls screamed: "I got a second wind! ". That is, they roamed somewhere all night and did not go to bed yet. And they don't even go. They are dancing. And one couple goes and waltzes. And the guys are clapping. And the other two girls are also not walking, but dancing. That's good! Here is happiness! And do not care that they woke up half the city with their column. It's time to get up anyway.
I walked and smiled all day afterwards.
Here is the worst day ever.
We went to Antalya. I love wandering around the old center. This is not Turkey. This is Venice.
Cafes. Antiques. Shops.
And then I saw this - it's hard to see, but archaeologists work there:
And they don't brush dust off old amphoras with panicles. They pound the rocky ground with pickaxes. And in the shade +42. I felt bad and sat down in a shady bar.
Although there was another day of dreams come true. I was allowed to bring and sit in an authentic Volkswagen Beetle.
All my life I dreamed. But the bastards didn’t give it for rent. Although he was on the move.
That's about it.
Here are some tips.
My son's phone is broken. I went to a repair company and they told me to pick up the phone in the evening. In the evening I was told that the breakdown was serious and the phone was taken to a cooler repair company and that I should come to this company tomorrow. Tomorrow in this company they told me that they could not fix it and the phone had to be transported to Antalya, where a certain telephone guru would fix it. For 4000 rubles. I refused. Upon arrival, this phone was repaired for me at the Mitinsky radio market for 500 rubles. So don't fix phones in Turkey.
Second advice. Don't shop for cheese. The Turks do not know how to do it. I'm not talking about ordinary shepherd's cheeses. It's possible. But all sorts of brie and other delights are absolutely impossible to buy. And don't be fooled by the image of Danish flags and Dutch girls on the packaging. In any case, it will be the most terrible taste of khryuchevo, against the background of which Russian palm oil cheeses look like a delicacy.
Tip number three. If your hotel does not have everything inclusive and you are too lazy to drag yourself to a restaurant, then do this: go to the restaurant that you like, take a picture of the menu, and when you want to dine, go to the porter of your hotel and ask him to order you dishes with delivery from this restaurant. You will dine on your own private balcony without getting dressed, and takeaways can be as much as forty percent off. Food is delivered in five minutes. With all the sauces, flatbreads and side dishes.
P. S.
* wagons without creatures, greyhounds are drawn by internal pressure, so the colossus is floating in the air, the husband sits on them, so that man-made wings would beat the air in the form of flying birds. Quote from Umberto Eco's novel "The Name of the Rose".
**Pipin Short. King of France. Founder of the Carolingian dynasty, which succeeded the Merovingian dynasty. Father of Charlemagne.
***Godefroid de Bouillon. The leader of the first, most successful crusade. Title - Baron and defender of the Holy Sepulcher.
**** Dronepot. The author of a breakthrough doctoral dissertation for organoelement chemistry on the topic "Synthesis of conjugates of polyhedral boron compounds with phthalocyanines and nucleosides". In the future, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Nobel Prize winner.
Next, just a few photos.
Found a graveyard of classic cars. It's good luck!
The classic Volkswagen T2 was nicely carved up. Instead of a windshield - an aquarium.
Ford Fiesta. $45 per day. Convenient for passengers, uncomfortable for the driver.
Seat Ibiza. $40 per day. Perfect for the driver. Passengers are cramped.
This is the same dog that is in the first photo of the first story about covid Turkey. Everything is fine with her. It just looks kinda. So she and her friend went for a walk in the surrounding shops and restaurants. The compassionate people buy them sausages, but the dogs do not eat them. Well-fed. Yes, and hot.
And finally. The daughter said: Dad, let me take a beautiful picture of you. With corn, a mattress and under an umbrella. Photographed.
