Bodrum

In Europe, Traveled places, Turquia 2002 On 22/09/2002 One comment

merg05
One of the reasons to come to Turkey was to relax on the beach on sunny days. I chose Bodrum to do that. When I got there I was homesick. I missed the white sand beaches from Brazil. There wasn’t a sand beach but a pebble one, not comfortable to lay down.

I spend a day diving. I haven’t been diving for more than a year and I really need to. The dives were great, not for what I saw but for the fact of being underwater again. This make me happy. I decided I have to dive more often. I liked to see that in the boat there were many Turkish couples diving. It wasn’t like in some Asian countries that I had been diving and in the boat there was only foreigners. When I see local people also diving I have the feeling that they are also enjoying their country, not leaving only to the foreigners.

Next day I visited the castle in Bodrum. It houses the museum of marine archeology. I imagined the archeologist’s work diving and finding objects lost 2000 year ago. It must be incredible. I would like to do such a work, even if I don’t know archeology, I could learn it…

On the beach I met Tansel, a Turkish guy from Istanbul who was spending his vacation in Bodrum. The town seams to be a popular place among the Turkish, despite the Germans of course. He complaint to me that people generalize thinking Turkish and Arabic are the same. He highlighted the differences to me. I asked about religion and polygamy (as if it was true that Turkish man that 4 wives). He said that all my preconception were about the Arabic and not the Turkish. I said that in Brazil we tend to call Turkish all the middle eastern people. We say a shop it is a Turkish shop even if we know the owner is Arabic or Syrian. Maybe because of the distance and the lack of information for us, many times, Turks and Arabs are the same. I promise him from now on I will differentiate.