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A Month in Antalya (Spring 2002) - Scenes of Town -
When I heard that Antalya is one of the most popular summer resorts on the Mediterranean coast, I imagined it as a noisy touristy town filled with European couples. As soon as I got there, I realized my idea was too simple. Actually, Antalya was a nice city. It was clean, sunny, and not so snobbish. It was probably a good idea to visit there before the season. The town was pretty quiet in April, and the Mediterranean Sea was calmly reflecting the light of the spring sun. There was no one on the beach yet; there were few tourists to be seen in the cafes and restaurants downtown. The combination of the distant snow-capped mountain range behind Antalya Bay and the harbour filled with transparent water created a beautiful harmony. It seemed like a real landscape painting.
Although I am a typical stay-at-home person, it became fun for me to hang around the town without a map, having felt as if I had been a local resident. Antalya was a perfect-sized town to walk around, neither too big nor too small. I was brought up in an inland town, so Antalya taught me how joyful it is to live along the sea. I often went for a walk to a seaside park. The street in front of the hotel where I stayed led to Karaalioğlu Park, going across Atatürk Bulvarı, passing by a football stadium on the left. At the end of the street, right in the front, the Mediterranean could be seen. The park was perched on a cliff, and slenderly stretched along the seacoast. The remains of ancient fortress that was situated next to the park commanded a fine view of an old Roman harbour (now used as a yacht marina.) Walking towards the yacht marina, taking a right fork at a cafe, the street led to Kaleiçi that is the old part of the city, where the old Turkish houses have been restored for tourism and many of which are used as pensions. It was nice to walk on the narrow streets of Kaleiçi, especially in the early evening. On weekends, the park area was full of people, and open-air cafes overlooking the sea were filled with local families. In the park, there was a small stand where canned juices, ice cream, Turkish sandwiches, kinds of things were sold. I liked the peynirli tost (cheese toasted sandwich) at the stand. I enjoyed people-watching sitting on a cheap plastic chair in the park, meanwhile a day passed very quickly.
The hotel where I was staying faced a street called Cebesoy Street. The language school where I went was located on the left side of the same street. Only 5 minutes' walk brought me to the school from the hotel. Diagonally across from the school, there was a city bus terminal called Doğu Garajı. Cebesoy Street crossed Ali Çetinkaya Street at the corner of the terminal. Around this intersection the street started to get busy and lively. Ali Çetinkaya Street went west and crossed Atatürk Bulvarı, a main street that a tram ran along. Atatürk Bulvarı and its surroundings were a shopping area in the city, and the palm trees lining the street created something of a tropical mood. Then, the street changed its name into Cumhuriyet Street and bent gently leading to the Republic Square in the city center.
I stayed in Antalya for a month. At the beginning of my stay, my field was limited to only Cebesoy Street for a while. There was a supermarket named "Mepaş" between the school and the hotel, and this was the place that I most frequently stopped by on my way back from the school. Other small grocery shops called bakkal were here and there in the town, but Mepaş kept a wider variety of goods besides food. It provided almost all daily needs of long-stay travellers such as nail clippers, shampoo, hair rinse and laundry detergent. Interestingly, Mepaş was a very friendly supermarket. Whenever I went there for shopping, they treated me to a cup of tea. They didn't seem to be familiar with foreign customers and especially Asians seemed to be very rare. Every time I walked around inside the shop, a middle-aged man came right over out of the blue and asked me whether I would like some tea. Sometimes it was coke, sometimes it was orange juice, but anyway it was a strange experience to have tea standing between aisles in a supermarket. On Tuesdays a fair was held on the eastern lanes at the back of Cebesoy Street. I've heard that there is a bigger market called "Carşamba Pazarı" (Wednesday Market) held on Wednesday somewhere else in Antalya, but I was happy to see this small daily market. It was fun to walk on the narrow streets jammed with local shoppers and carts piled high with fresh vegetables and fruits. There was nothing they didn't deal with in the market; they were selling everything. Tomatoes, cucumbers, egg-plants, potatoes, mushrooms, artichoke, oranges, apples, strawberries, home-made cheese, yoghurt, butter, and so on. Basically every product in the market could be tasted. The sellers had a liking for foreigners as being normal Turkish men and offered me a generous tasting, so I ended up trying all kinds of food until my fingers became sticky. It was a cook at the hotel who took me to the market. Her shopping was really dynamic; she bought approximately 30 kilograms of vegetables at once, bargaining skilfully, having an errand boy shuttle the goods to the hotel.
The first time I stepped into an unknown area off the Cebesoy Street was when I looked for a bookstore to buy a school text. If you took the closest one to the school among the streets crossing the Cebesoy, then went down to the west for a while, passing a commercial building named "Antalya 2000" on the right side, a small bookstore could be seen on the left side. A little bit ahead of the bookstore there was a small arcade turning left, and at a corner of a desolate-looking alley I found an internet cafe. A high-school aged boy was looking after the store. After I visited there a couple of times, he remembered my face and tried to talk to me, asking the same old questions like "What's your name?" "Are you working here in Antalya?" "Where do you live?" and so on. Surprisingly, at his shop there was one computer that Japanese had been installed onto. When other Turkish customers were already at the computer, the boy didn't hesitate to move the earlier user out of the seat for me in a rather rude manner.
"Excuse me mister, but this is her place. You can move to that computer."
To my surprise, after realizing that I was a foreigner, most of them were willing to change the seats without making a complaint. While he was out, his elder brother came to sit and look after the shop. Soon we got acquainted with each other. It was sweet of him to serve me a glass of tea for free, but unfortunately it didn't take long before a common "Turkish problem" took place. I hated to be asked to the movies or out for dinner or something, but I couldn't find any other place where Japanese could be used on a computer, so I couldn't avoid going there and dealing with him vaguely.
Across from the internet cafe, there was a dry cleaner's. Since I was tired of washing clothes by hand everyday in a tiny washbowl at the hotel, I was happy to become one of their customers. Fortunately they provided a good service with reasonable prices. It took only a half-day to get the laundry finished. From my second visit onward they offered me çay as well. I often stayed there unexpectedly long to send out just one blouse because I enjoyed sipping çay and chatting with the charming old owner of the dry-cleaner. I had brought only a few clothes from my country and they were getting worn down quicker than I'd expected because of the salty air in Antalya and the everyday washing. One day, I went shopping with an eighteen-year-old schoolmate. We took a bus from the opposite side of the school. The shopping center that she took me to was located in the west part of the city, near Akdeniz University. It was a big shopping complex with food court, cinemas, and many select shops. It looked quite new and seemed to be a place of recreation for the Antalya citizens, although everything there was more expensive than the clothes in the streets. My friend happily moved around from one shop to another, and chose a white cotton blouse for me at last. The front was frilled and laced-up instead of buttoned-up. It was simple but moderately feminine. Whenever I put on the blouse at home, I remembered my dear Russian friend, Alexandra, although it was worn out some time ago.
