In The Past......or Along The Bosphorous!

Yes, as predicted, I spent some time sorting out my bookshelf. And...there are many books I could re-read. A series some of which I found in Turkey but others I made a point of reading before our tour of Turkey.Yes I had read Orhan Pamuk, author of 'My Name Is Red' and winner of the Nobel Prize In Literature 2006. His book 'Istanbul...Memories And The City' left me perplexed. How can anyone feel that his city was enough for him? There was no need to travel anywhere. No need to explore the world. This I found hard to understand until I experienced Istanbul myself. Then, his constant yearning to be beside the river Bosphorous and to experience the old houses lining this huge expanse of water suddenly meant something to me too. The fact that he studied architecture and wrote poetry before he began to write novels...the creative man presented himself in total. No, not quite. His urge to write stories came to be a political duty... the creation of what Istanbul and Turkey was undergoing in its daily wrestling. I wonder what his next book will say?

The houses lining the great river as they were and as they exist now. Many sorts of restoration have allowed some to offer continual occupation. And it was in an old house like this that Ohran Pamuk's grandmother lived. Hence his childhood memories filled his yearning for these shores.

Some have been restored enough to offer the site as a  restaurant.









And Sundays are days when most people enjoy a walk along the Bosphorous or choose to dangle a line in the hope of catching some fish.

Most consider life beside the waters to be more than ideallic. A swim or two being the best way to make the most of the warm sun.




Or to live in the most charming environment offering consular advice and representing not only Germany but showing membership of NATO.







And never forgetting that the tourists are the paying customers. Is this a head to head ocean liner disagreement? Obviously the tug boat in the in the foreground is the winner. Who said size matters? Click on the photos to enlarge!