Traveling can be rather unusual at times. Constantly on the move, it often just feels like an bizarre blending of different cultures and peoples. Experiences begin to merge into a strange passing of place and time. Things from a month ago suddenly feel like faded memories, but then there’s also small things like a handshake or nap in the shade of a particular tree that stick like vivid pictures in the mind.
You’re neither here nor there, and the longer you travel the more that becomes reality. Home becomes distant, and foreigness becomes normal.
That’s why I think it’s difficult to say that I’ve had a favourite place I’ve travelled through. Perhaps though, in it’s passing, it is the place you remember most. And if that is the case, then Turkey would probably be it. It’s the kind of place your mind imagines living in.
The many picnics on patches of grass with children playing loudly, their father’s making huge meat dishes over smoking fires, their mothers pouring endless chai. Soccer games enthusiastically cheered by passersby. Tight alleys lined with old men engaged in games of dominos. Coffee conversations in broken English. Bustling markets at two in the morning. Couples eating ice-creams, dipped in chocolate and sprinkled with nuts. Strangers sharing watermelon, more red than pink, with hardly any seeds. Friendly smiles on trains and buses. The kind park robber who returned our passport…
These are things I will remember.
