nhawi

aydin & hale at the wooden beach

one of the great things about staying in smaller places for a siginificant amount of time when you are travelling is that you meet people you would otherwise never cross paths with. aydin & hale menguç live in istanbul – but we would never have met them in the 2 weeks we spent in a city of 17m people!

here, they are staying in one of the apartments for a month and we have moved from polite ‘hellos’ to a real friendship and socialising. yesterday afternoon they joined us for a few beers and nibbles at our table under the grape vine and I actually recorded the conversation because they are such an interesting couple and i wanted to capture their story.

aydin is 95, born in 1920, 3 years older than the Turkish Republic! hale is a younger and sprightly 88! they have been coming to bozburun for 30 years and staying with the Ünlü family that own the apartments we are staying in. they will have been married for 65 years next week – on the 1st of july. they swim nearly every day, and are pictures of health and happiness. both aydin & hale speak perfect english and are both sharp as a button mentally.

aydin went to school in istanbul and went on to do law at istanbul university, he graduated after 4 years and then did a further 2 years study before becoming a judge in the turkish magistrates court, eventually he became chief judge in the supreme court and later the senior public prosecutor. he spent a year living in london during this time where he was sent to study the british legal system. after some years working as a judge and public prosecutor he retired and became a lawyer.

meanwhile hale had started work as a librarian for TUSLOG (the us logistics group), part of the NATO operations, as a result of a chance meeting at a party at hale’s work he met an american captian who was a judge advocate for TUSLOG and they needed a legal advisor so aydin became the chief legal advisor to the american forces, he started this role in 1963 and worked for them for the next 28 years, until his retirement at 72 years of age.

hale has held many interesting jobs also, as well as a librarian, she was an english teacher and a swimming teacher. she also worked as a technical interpreter for the building of the bridge over the bosphorus joining european istanbul with asian istanbul, the bridge was designed by the british hence the need for an interpreter.

aydin’s father, feyzi was a four star general, he fought and was wounded at canakkale (what we call gallipoli), and later became chief of the general  turkish staff and a personal friend of eisenhower’s. i found an amusing anecdote about him HERE

(click the play arrow and wait, to hear aydin talking about his father.)

their love story and marraige of 65 years started when aydin travelled to istanbul for his sister’s wedding, he ended up falling in love with his brother in law’s sister – so brother and sister married sister and brother! its a beautiful thing to see a couple so obviously in love with each other after such a life together, their passion for life, energy and enthusiasm with a very positive outlook on life must be a contributing factor to such longevity – both individually and collectively.

(click the play arrow and wait, to hear aydin & hale talking about how they met.

i think we are very privileged to have met them and to have aydin and hale share their life story with us, they are an inspiration and I can only hope that i am still swimming at 95 – as well as enjoying a few cold beers and a lengthy conversation with youngsters like us!

aydin after his morning swim!

there was much more conversation last night of course, but hopefully these words paint a small and simple picture of this amazing couple and their interesting life. its surely a big part of why we love travelling.

bozburun harbour

i figure i better split this into two posts, one about the village of bozburun and one about the specific place we are staying, so here is the bozburun post!

i first heard about this town when researching for our drive down the south west coast of turkey, i came across a mention somewhere that alluded to the fact that bill gates had rated it as one of the world’s most beautiful spots. now as an apple man, and someone who regards windoze and M$ as the work of the devil incarnate, i wouldnt normally take any notice of what bill gates says.

lets face it though, if you were worth a rough $80b, you should have some idea of where the good spots are on this planet (and a few others in nearby solar systems), and hence my interest was piqued.

when we discovered we couldnt get the ferry from bodrum to kalymnos to visit the gove cafe because it doesnt run until the summer season after mid-june, we decided to skip bodrum and head to the next spot on our list – bozburun – based on no more than the hearsay opinion of one of the planet’s richest individuals.

it proved to be an inspired decision, this is truly one of the planets best spots. there are so few places like it. it has everything you need, ATM’s, fast internet, supermarkets with all the day to day essentials, local restaurants at local prices, fresh produce grown locally, BUT, almost no one knows about it, no big hotels, no masses of holiday homes (even the turks dont know about it.).

the locals still own and run the place, the owners where we are staying are a turkish family born and bred in bozburun, their son, fadil, married a french girl, laetitia, and she told us that as far as she knows she is the only local not born here!!

so the locals own the restaurants, bars, bakery, butcher, shops, pensions, boats and everything else. i cant think of anywhere other than nhulun that has this level of services and yet almost no tourism.

we are about 150m from the center of the village and right on the water, we can walk about 1.5km along the water front in one direction, back to the boat building yards the village is famous for, and in the other direction we can walk about 2km to another little boat harbour on the outside of the peninsular.

we actually just walk out the front door of our cottage, walk 10m across the front patio, under a grape vine and across the ‘street’ to the ‘wood beach’ and the waterfront.

anyway, enough about bozburun, next, the perfect little french cottage that has become our new home!