Turkey's For Life First Birthday - Part 2

Well, I know the first anniversary of Turkey's For Life was a couple of days ago but the post was getting too long...and then I didn't post yesterday...and so here's a slightly later than planned Part 2. 



As it's the start of a whole new 'blogging about Turkey' year for us, we thought we should take this opportunity to point out some of last year's achievements and one of the changes we made to the blog to make it more useful to you in the future. 



The change...

New search boxes

To make it easier for you to find what you are looking for in Turkey's For Life, we have changed the search box again. In the past, if you typed a word into the box, you would have been shown all posts containing that word and you had to scroll through them all to find what you needed. A tad laborious if the post you were looking for was way down the page. Also, if we had used Turkish letters and you used English letters, the post would not appear. 



Hooray! All that has now changed! We've changed the search box to 'Custom Google Search' and there is one at the top and bottom of every page in the left hand column. So now, if you type in a word or words, you will be shown a list (exactly like Google search results) of all our posts containing that word. You can do a quick scan for the post you're looking for. 



For example, if you type in 'kayakoy cin bal', any post containing those words will show in the search results. Posts containing kayakoy or cin bal in the title will be displayed first, and kayakoy and cin bal will be in bold lettering. And, Google being Google, if you mistype a word or use English instead of Turkish letters (or vice versa), it's very good at working out what you are looking for, so the search results should still be accurate.

Fethiye - Our beautiful Turkey blogging base

Some Achievements

In our first blogging year, we...

• Took action to actually start Turkey's For Life and fortunately, you decided to read it.


• Set up a Twitter account; created a Facebook page; joined the food bloggers' site, Foodbuzz; joined the travel bloggers' site TBEX; joined the expat bloggers' site Expat Blog; set up a Flickr account and created a Turkey's For Life Flickr group, and as a result, communicated with countless people and ended up very busy on the laptop! (There are others but we'll be here all day...)

Achievements in themselves, but we are also very proud of...

• Our 'Lonely Planet Featured Blogger' badge. Some of you may have noticed that this has only recently appeared on the blog (it's half way down, on the left if you haven't seen it.) It should have been there since April but, well, it's there now. We applied to the Lonely Planet Blog Sherpa Programme in April and were really pleased to be accepted. Occasionally, we submit a post that we feel would be useful to people who are looking for information about Fethiye and other places in Turkey. Through Blog Sherpa, our post about Kayaköy was selected as a 'favourite' and featured on the front page of the BBC World website. Not bad!


• To top our first blogging year off nicely, we were voted into the daily Top 9 by other Foodbuzz users for my attempt at a Turkish dish; spicy cheese and spinach börek.

And for this year and years to come?

• Well hopefully, we will be able to keep posting and Turkey's For Life will keep improving and growing...inşallah!

Fethiye Festive Season - Photo Story

A Turkish family enjoying a Sunday barbecue in the mountains around Nif

I love this photo and as we've just woken up to the second day of Advent and the UK and much of northern Europe is covered in snow, I've taken the opportunity to use it. I'm hoping it will help us to feel more wintery and festive in a still very mild Fethiye.



I took the photo when we were part of the Fethiye mass exodus to Nif one day, two years ago. Pleasant, sunny days are not the only barbecue days in this part of Turkey. Any day is a barbecue day; especially if that day is a Sunday. The weather is completely irrelevant. The day we went to Nif (one of my best days out ever!), people built snowmen, sledged down mountainsides, threw snowballs, got very cold, very wet and then ate köfte and drank tea, grilled and heated by their roadside barbecue. 



We have to keep reminding ourselves that it's December. We should be getting organised for the festive season. Christmas cards need to be posted to friends and family. We ought to be deciding what we're doing for Christmas Day. What are we cooking? Who do we need to buy presents for? Hopefully, this snowy photo will work its magic and get the ball rolling...

Photographing The Greek Island of Meis / Kastellorizo

I don't claim to be a photographer of any description but I do love taking photographs. The Greek island of Meis (Kastellorizo) is a photographer's dream; especially at this time of year when the winter sunlight provides clear, distant scenery and more vibrant colours. 



Neither of us could begin to hazard a guess as to how many times we've chosen Meis as our Greek island visa destination. It's a tiny island but we always manage to while away the hours as we wait for the boat to take us back to Kaş on the Turkish mainland. We explore back streets, climb hills, sit on the harbour, eat pork, drink Greek Mythos beer. Whatever the activity, I take photo after photo after photo.



Today was a beautiful sunny day, the air was clear, the sea was (thankfully) calm. We were given 2 hours to spend on Meis before we had to get back on the boat - just enough time for a few photos, barbecued Greek pork sausage with home made chips and a Mythos, a quick dash into duty free and then homeward bound to Turkey. These are a few of the winter photos I took today: 

Greek Island Visit - Kastellorizo

From the top deck of the Meis Express boat in Kaş harbour, it's possible to see across to Meis

Winter sunlight on Meis means colours are more visible

Back on Turkish soil - the boat glides back into the harbour in Kaş

I've probably taken over a thousand photos of Meis over the last couple of years and they all sit idly in my laptop. I've created a Meis set on my Flickr profile and uploaded around twenty of the best ones if you would like to see more of this lovely Greek island. You don't need to be a Flickr member to view them. 

If you are a Flickr member: Don't forget, we have a Turkey's For Life Flickr group. Why not join the group and you can add photos from anywhere in Turkey? All photos will be displayed on our Turkey Flickr Photos page via a slideshow and your name and photo description will also appear if the viewer clicks the 'info' tab.

Turkish Treats

And it's another new addition to our growing blog. If you cast your eyes towards the far right tab underneath the Turkey's for Life title banner, you'll see there's a new tab called 'Turkey Books, Turkish Music & Film'. When you click on this tab, you'll see a Turkey's For Life Amazon store where you can buy loads of Turkey related goodies.

Turkey's Lycian coastline

We've been thinking about this for a long time - and putting it together for quite a long time - and we hope it complements all that we write about in our posts about Fethiye and Turkey. We've scanned and scoured the pages of Amazon for Turkish books, Turkish films and Turkish music that we like - and we'll be making more additions to the 'store' as and when new items become available.



Clicking on any of the individual Turkish books, CDs or films will give you loads more details and, in many cases, customer reviews. Hope you like it. Let us know what you think! 



If you can think of anything which Amazon offer that we've missed from our Turkish store then let us know and we'll add it in there.  

Istanbul - Istiklal Caddesi Haven - Baraka Bar

Wherever we've travelled to in our lives, we've always hunted out - or stumbled across - a bar where we feel comfortable; somewhere that feels local to the town or city we happen to be in. We're bar people (as you may know!) so we feel we know a city and it's people better once we find the right bar - that haven away from the sightseeing, getting lost and everything else that goes with being in an unfamiliar place. 



When we travelled through Eastern Europe, we were only in each city for two or three days but we have memories of our favourite bars. In Fethiye, we stumbled across Deep Blue Bar over ten years ago and well, there are a good few stories from there. I can honestly say though that we have met most of our Turkish friends either in Deep Blue or through people who go in Deep Blue. Bars are fantastic places!

The wonder that is Baraka Bar - Istiklal Caddesi

So, in this post, I'd like to introduce you to the fabulous Baraka Bar. It's the row of windows directly above the maroon canopies. You're supposed to be able to see the sign in the middle window! Baraka Bar is on Istanbul's famous pedestrianised shopping street, Istiklal Caddesi - of Robinson Crusoe's bookshop and Taksim-Tünel historical tram fame - and there's a secret to the best bars and cafes of Istiklal Caddesi...look up! 



Okay, hands up to this one. We were introduced to Baraka Bar by a Turkish friend who used to work in Deep Blue. See, I told you bars were good! She's an Istanbul girl and it's her local. Well, are two Brits really going to walk down a side street in a big foreign city, see a concrete stairwell in a building with one of those open, historical, wrought iron lifts and think, 'Ohhh, let's see what's up here!' This Brit isn't! I'm glad we were shown though. Baraka is our far-from-obvious (from the outside)  Istanbul haven.

Artwork on the walls of Baraka Bar

The owner and staff are just very chilled out, pleasant guys! Last time we were there, I commented that one of them had really good English. 'Oh, that's because I used to work in Hisarönü.' Hisarönü is a resort next to Fethiye. For such a big country, Turkey is very small!  



Apart from the friendly, relaxed atmosphere and good music, the best thing about Baraka Bar is this...

View of Istiklal Caddesi from a balcony of Baraka Bar

Istanbul has an estimated population of 15 million people and I'm pretty sure a hefty proportion of this population walk up and down Istiklal Caddesi at all times of day and night! (See photo). It's great to walk up and down there and to explore all the side streets of Beyoğlu - but it's also great to be able to nip through those unnoticed doorways (when you know where they are!), climb the stairs and enter the different world of places like Baraka Bar - high ceilings, wooden floors...and Venetian balconies from where you can look down on the masses of Istiklal, wonder where they're heading to, what they're doing...and take a few pics. 





You'll find Baraka Bar by heading towards Taksim Square from the famous gates of Galata High School for about 100 metres. Look left - and look up!

Turkish Food - Lost In Translation

The photo you can see below is minced meat encased in a minced meat and bulgur wheat shell. In Turkey, this delightful little torpedo of tastiness is called İçli Köfte. If you're familiar with Middle Eastern cuisine, you could well be looking at it and thinking it's Kibbeh. Whichever name you choose to assign to it, it can't be any better than the one we knew it as when we first came to Fethiye...the English translation!

İçli köfte - the meatball with feeling

In Fethiye there's a row of lokantas (canteen/kitchen style eating places) all selling similar Turkish cuisine goodies - including içli köfte. As Fethiye receives many international tourists throughout the year, all eating places make an effort to translate their menus into English and parts of the menu are written on boards and placed on the street outside the restaurant. This means the other restaurants can see what's being advertised and they write exactly the same thing on their boards and in their menus...



...and so we had a full row of lokantas proudly advertising that tonight's menu included 'Sensitive Meatballs.' For months, we sat in these lokantas, looked at the Turkish - içli köfte -  looked at the English - sensitive meatballs - none the wiser. How could a meatball be sensitive? What was a sensitive meatball? The years have passed and the menus - we can't actually remember what it says anymore but it's not as good as 'sensitive meatballs,' that's for sure - have changed to a description that gives you a rough idea of what is going to arrive at your table.



I guess the moral of the story is, if you're dealing with an unfamiliar foreign language, maybe you shouldn't just open your dictionary and assume all words are suitable for your purpose - especially if this is being launched on your public. In Turkish,  'Iç' means 'inside' and 'li' means 'containing.' So içli köfte is a logical name. A case containing an inside. However, 'içli' can also be used to describe a person who is within themselves - someone who holds their feelings inside - a sensitive person. 



We've never looked at içli köfte in the same way since, lest we hurt their feelings. Handle them with care, love them, eat them and enjoy them. They're good!