Monday 28 June 2010

Bill Bryson + Bridget Jones = Kusadasi


I remember reading few years ago The Lost Continent (Travels in Small Town America) by Bill Bryson and finding it extremely amusing - especially when its author dwells on stories of childhood holidays / trips with his family... his father driving them to some remote destination, his mother making sure everyone had a sandwich ready. In the book, Bryson stresses how dreadful and hopeless these holiday attempts always were - with everyone getting tired, irritable and bored out of their mind...and small town america as a glorious backdrop.


The way you travel as a child - I agree with Bryson on this one - somehow stays with you throughout your life. I think of this every time I pack my bag to go somewhere and picture my father and mother quarelling while picking a destination, bickering while loading the car with bags, complaining during the whole trip and having spats all the way through the family break.


My mother had the secret talent of making it impossible to let anyone enjoy anything - she hated packing and usually overpacked, loading bags with useless items; she hated being away from home; she despised pop music being played in the car; she found flaws in any kind of service she was given - at the restaurant, in the hotel room, with any of the staff trying to sedate her. She even insisted on fussying over the fire escape plan posted behind our hotel rooms' doors - she would point to any (alleged) mistake in its english and french translation, much to my embarassment.


She would be short with any hotel staff, especially waiters - something i dreaded and found horrible to say the least.
I found her tedious. Some years later i read somewhere that the way you treat a waiter or a waiteress is exactly how you are going to treat your spouse after ten years of marriage - something i have grown to acknowledge as exceptionally true.


Being doing a lot of packing and travelling recently - hence the childhood memories.

Luckily I am someone who is happy at the mere idea of "going somewhere" - especially if that includes a couple of days spent at the sea. Give me some sun, swimming and plenty of time outdoors and I turn into an enthusiastic 8 year old.




We have been spending few long weekends here and there and I must say the coast close to Izmir is beautiful. The weather keeps on being amazing and it takes very little time from the city to reach lovely spots.


Some of them are less touristy - or, to phrase it better - more popular with the "in crowd" from Istanbul (places like Cesme or Alacati). Others (like Kusadasi, Bodrum and Marmaris) are packed with English tourists - flown in weekly, if not daily, with charter flights.

Just got back from Kusadasi and had a taste of "hols" in a resort populated by mainly Britons and Eastern Europeans. At a first glance it did look like the backstage of a Ken Loach movie - with faces and accents that gave away more geographical and social indications than a very detailed census on the state of the nation. Apart from the beer loving Anglic crowd - there was also a huge number of Eastern Europeans - mainly young couples with two or three kids in tow. The resort was swarming with children and toddlers - you could not help but smile seeing so many tiny people with blonde hair and round faces.



Turkey has quickly become a dream destination for many English families. They come here on crowded crusades helmed by all-inclusive kings like Thomas Cook and love it: it is cheap, beautiful and happy to help with drink binges. A lot of people may well look down at these uncouth, over tatooed, over pierced, over weight and under educated tourists - but to be honest, after sharing some time / sea and pool side with them I am prone to do the opposite.



My mother would certainly cringe at me saying that... But in truth to me they seemed deliriously happy - perhaps in a a bit of a crass, unelegant way... but I am always partial to genuine expressions of happiness seen in others. And English people, I find, have a bit of a talent about that... They somehow never seem to grow up. Give them football, a party with 70's and 80's music, allow them a tan and a nice beach with few extra beers and they will be expressing contempt and joy like children when you give them candy and a new toy.

After all - I must say I have grown to find unbearable the blunt elitarianism of the holiday style now so popular in Europe...with masses of people trying to show off the fact they are travellers - not plain tourists; educated souls, not low-cost faring types; spiritual specimens cultivating eco-friendliness, aware of multiethnicalities and prone to exotic culturalism. I simply think Bruce Chatwin died a long time ago and that most of us grew up and out of childhood holidays closer to the ones Bryson describes so disarmingly well - lacking intellectual acumen perhaps, but with mothers packing sandwiches and fathers angrily cursing behind the wheel.



Also...

While lounging around the tiny pool where my 3 year old was happily splashing about I noticed how relaxed and funny English mothers can be with their little ones. There is something incredibly refreshing and real in how self deprecating and sloppy they accept to be. I could never imagine an Italian mother acting like them - being as sporty and silly as they are.



... back to Izmir now... back to school ... back to the usual swing of things...

looking forward to the next long weekend away...

(and wishing long life to Thomas Cook!! -

as well as to the rather adorable army of bridget-jonesy mums!! never prone to even bothering with the bloody fire escape notice...)

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