Travel warnings: DFAT under fire at industry forum

Many foreign workers have been kidnapped in Iraq recently. Amongst them are several Turkish people. Two truckdrivers were recently released after their company Kahramanli withdrew from Iraq. Kahramanli are headquartered in Mersin.

Today Huseyin abi and his friend Ali abi picked me in Ali’s Volkswagen Passat. We were off the the nearby coastal village of Karaduvar. Today I met Ali abi for the first time.

Karaduvar is just east of Mersin, the other side of the Free Trade Zone. Karaduvar is also the location of the Atas petroleum refinery, the sight of the fire last weekend. Today I couldn’t see any evidence of the fire as we drove past.

The restaurant, Habid’in Yeri (Habid’s place) was a 2-storey place next to the coastal road. On the other side of the road chidren were swimming in the sea. To the west the port and city of Mersin were visible. A short distance to the east was Karaduvar’s marina.

Ostensibly, the reason for today’s lunch was to celebrate Huseyin’s and my lotto win last weekend. Entreé was fried calamari with tartar sauce. Tomato/cucumber and rocket salads, toasted bread, lemon quarters, green chillis and grilled garlic and onion were also brought out. Ali abi drowned the salads in Nar Eksisi (Pomegranite sauce).

The grilled fish came later. I don’t know the name of the fish but it had a mild, white flesh and was delicious. We chose the fish from fresh the fridge upon entry. After the fish some prawns were brought out. They were okay but nothing like fresh South Aussie prawns.

The traditional drink for such a meal and the drink consumed today was raki. As I didn’t want to be in a car with a drunk driver I only drank one raki and let Huseyin and Ali go on their merry way.

The meal finished with fresh grapes, apricots, watermelon and honeydew melon accompanied by Turkish coffee and then lemon juice with soda (for digestion so I was told).

It was a great, relaxing afternoon with good food in a pleasant location and good company. Well, good, until it came to paying for the bill. It turned out to be Joe’s shout. I didn’t mind paying the 70,000,000 TL as I had a windfall last weekend. I would have appreciated if I had known this before. But, anyway, we all enjoyed ourselves.

As the sober one, I drove back to Mersin. On the outskirts of Mersin the road is under construction with large concrete pipes to be laid. I don’t know why it is happening now, I thought all construction occured just before the election period 😉

Ali abi’s Passat is quite a nice car. The braking and the acceleration from the turbo diesel injected motor made a great change from the Renault Toros I usually drive when I have vehicle access.

I went home after work on the 29th and I didn’t see anything on television concerning a bomb in Mersin. In fact, the only mentions of the bomb I have heard, seen or read anywhere were those two news articles linked to in the previous post. It is either a conspiracy of silence, the bomb did not actually happen or it was so small that it wasn’t worth reporting. Bomb blasts are generally widely reported even if no damage is done so I doubt it is the last reason.

On TV Thursday night I did see a few other things, though:

* Mersin’s weather forecast for Friday was 42 degrees C. The day felt like 42C, too!

The humidity adds to the fun of Mersin in summer (if you could call continuously sweating fun).

* The big story of Thursday night was Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s visit to Iran and meeting with Mohammad Reza Aref, the Iranian First Vice President. 3 channels, TRT 2, NTV and CNNTurk showed dedicated footage of a joint press conference. An interpreter translated between the questions and comments from Turkish to Farsi and vice versa. At first I was not sure if the meeting was in Iran or Turkey. What tipped me it was Iran were the fact that none of the 30 or so people standing behind the two politicians were women. There were several female journalists but no ‘henchwomen’.

Later, Erdogan met other Iranian political leaders. An interesting take of the meeting with the Iranian President is here. You don’t need to tell me about the bias!

Other topics:

An insight into ‘black marketing’ at the nearby Incirlik airforce base.

Flic in China has a blog! Visit it for the stories of an Australian AIESECer in China. Flic is from Adelaide and came to Turkey in late 2002 for a short traineeship in Eskisehir.