You have to imagine that. After you’ve succeeded in exchanging your reservation for a real paper ticket–and it is the last airline which, one day before the general introduction of electronic tickets throughout Europe, still sticks to paper–after you succeeded, you find yourself at a gate in İstanbul Atatürk Havalimanı marooned with a bunch of elderly Germans. Generally this is not the worst that can happen (thinking about being marooned in Jurassic Park, for example, with the electric fences being switched off). But, anyway, it’s a mild shock after a week without Germans to see beige and light grey dominate the view. “Also in unserem Hotel war das Essen gar nicht so schlecht.” “Aber diese Türken, sind schon…” Snatches of conversations. In the aeroplane two third of the seats are empty. So, everybody has three seats, except the couples, of course. This prevents people from engaging in discussions about the space you have between rows. There is hardly any, so that you have to sit with slightly tilted legs. One seat to sit, the next to put your feet in front of. I imagine the charter flight being booked up: this would be a mess. Half of the people ending up with bruises round their knees. A very special highlight is the dubbed version of the comic style instruction video.
Obviously, there is an awareness of regions. We are flying to Berlin, so they choose the respective soundtrack. What’s also striking is the food. I had never believed that something that disgusting might actually exist on a plane until I saw it.
["The Meal": Some lettuce leaf, fortunately not dirty but washed, put into a plastic dish, together with the water. Into the water, in which the leaf floats, they put a slice of boiled ham, obviously pork (Or something else with pork flavour--which would probably be the better alternative.). On top, some cheese, after being served, also moistened with the dishwater. Just think about the Turkish employees, being forced to pack pork into the dishes for the Germans... (I must admit that the pineapple was actually not that bad. Well, a bit like straw in terms of taste and consistency. But this entire lack of any taste was a good contrast to the rest.)]
New Series: Turkish Delight
In this new series of photographs and comments, I will share some impressions of my trip to Anatolia. Being invited by my Turkish friends in Sivas, I spent some time there travelling around Eastern Central Anatolia and also to İstanbul. I thought a while about the right way of presenting the photographs I took on the journey but have not come up with a satisfactory conclusion, so that I thought why not just start somewhere and present the images on the blog. Let’s see if I can find a way of organising the material in another way later on…
