May 15, 2005
The Traveller Next Door: My Friend Carol - Expert on Turkey and GreeceMy friend Carol, a wonderful and unique woman in her early 50s, is a high school math teacher, a gifted painter, a very decent piano player, and what else - a world traveller. I only really met her about a year ago or so, but once I found out all the places that she'd been to I knew I had to do an interview with her.
Carol has been travelling since the 1970s, and she has forged some amazing connections with 2 countries: Turkey and Greece. She lived in Turkey for close to 8 years and has made life-long friends in what she calls her "second country". And she's also developed some close ties with people in a special little village in Greece. Here's her story:
1. Please tell us a bit about your travel experience in general. What places have you visited?
It started with my first trip to London, England, to visit my uncle when I was 16. That trip changed my life and opened the world up to me. I basically led a sheltered life in Scarborough (a suburb of Toronto) and really had known nothing else. The trip to London gave me this travel bug that has never left. I backpacked Europe the summers of 1972 and 1973, that’s when you could do “Europe on 5 $ a day”. Greece was the cheapest – we managed on 2$ a day!
The next summer I went out east to P.E. I. and the next summer out west to Victoria.
After university in 1976 I took a few years off to travel. My sister joined me for the first year. We started in Paris, visited our dad in Communist Czecholosovakia, hit the beaches of Yugoslavia – Makarska, and then on to Greece. After Greece we flew to Israel to work in a Kibbutz. I had to see what was going on in that country that was so much in the news. I stayed 8 months and then went to be an au-pair girl in Paris for 11 months. Back to Greece followed by a great trip to Turkey, Jordan and Syria in July 1978 and then back to real life in Toronto.
I always made shorter trips back to Greece once I became a highschool teacher. And to the States to visit friends I had met on my travels. A wedding on top of the World Trade Center, a friend in Memphis besides the memory of Elvis, and a friend in San Francisco where I fell in love with the Golden Gate Bridge and another in Manhattan.
I quit my full-time highschool teaching job after 4 years and went on a trip to Tokyo, Hong Kong and Thailand. The timing was close – we were in Tiannanmen Square one month before the massacre of May 1989.
From 1989 to 1999 I worked as high school teacher in Istanbul, Turkey, coming home twice for one year and once for half a year. My love affair with Turkey began. Before I came back to Canada for good in 1999, I had the pleasure of visiting Australia, a great country with the friendliest people.
2. You have a very special connection to a village in Greece called Parga. Please tell us about your first encounter with the village of Parga.
The first time I went to Parga was in 1976. I had been working at the O’Keefe Center [a famous concert venue and theatre in Toronto] and an usher there had told me about this wonderful village in Greece he used to go to in the summers. He produced a postcard with a beautiful beach and uttered the word “Parga” as if it were magic. He couldn’t speak much English so I didn’t even know where it was located in Greece.
In September 1976 on my big trip with my sister, having just come from Yugoslavia, we were staying on Corfu. Corfu seemed too touristy to us, so we wanted to visit another place in Greece. My idea was Crete. It seemed far but on the way to Israel. We couldn’t decide so I just opened a map of Greece and my eye went directly to “Parga” (a tiny village in the northwest of Greece, so small it is sometimes not even on the map). Parga!!!!! Then I remembered that magical word uttered by the usher. “Let’s go”, I said, and fortunately it was close to Corfu. The travel agent was surprised we were asking directions on how to get there. It wasn’t too popular with foreign tourists yet. And she added, “the young men are beautiful”. Well, that did it! We left that day.
A ferry trip 2 hours to Igomenitsa, and a 2 hour bus ride south. We arrived in the evening and we found a room for the night and walked along the waterfront of the village. It was beautiful – 2 small islands in the port with a church, a castle on one side on the hill, and mountains behind.
We ate “brizola” (pork chops) and than sat at the café “Parga Bar”, discussing our plans which included not talking to any young men for a week because we were tired of the men in Yugoslavia who came on too strong. At that moment one of the most beautiful men I had ever seen walked up to us with his friend who spoke English and asked if he could sit down. My sister said “No”, I said “Yes”. I was mesmerized. They both had rooms to rent, one above a disco, and one just in the building beside us. One for a $1 a night and one for $2 a night. We picked the second one not above the disco. Lefteri looked like a Greek god or like a young Marlon Brando. He had a friend, Camille, a Canadian woman who was in Parga for the 3rd time. He brought her to the table and we became instant friends.
To make a long story short, we stayed for a month in Parga, having the time of our lives. It was a small unspoiled fishing village then, only 3 people spoke English and there were very few tourists in September. And the young men were beautiful!
Lefteri, Camille, and many of the young men who are now in their late 40s and 50s, my sister and I are still friends who reminisce of the good old days of the summers of 1976 to 1979.
3. Since your first time in Parga, your relationship with this village and its people has evolved. Please tell us a little about the human connections.
I have always gone back to Parga for my holidays, unfortunately it is too far and too expensive to go every year. In 1976 my sister Elaine made friends with a teenager by the name of Christos, who was at the disco every night, dancing up a storm and was one of the three people who spoke English. He invited us to have coffee with his mother, a remarkable mother, who extended her hospitality to us (“ksenis”). Foreign women were not looked on favourably in the village at the time, and probably even today, as it seemed we were there to take the young men. I remember the first female tourists who married and stayed to live in the village. That was 1976. Now there are at least 40 of these marriages. (Maybe the local women’s paranoia was justified).
Gia, Christos’ mother, became my Greek mother. Either she “adopted” me or it was the other way around. How many hours I spent in her tiny house with 2 rooms, the tiniest kitchen, and the most magnificent view I have ever seen. She fed me, kept me company, taught me Greek and slowly we communicated. She had a wonderful husband Vagelis, who I had coffee with every morning down in the village. And 7 children, mostly grown-up by then – 6 boys and 1 girl.
Christos and Lefteri came back to Toronto with us in 1978. Christos had never slept in a bed until then. Lefteri went on to visit his brother and sister in Chicago, Christos stayed with us for 4 months and saw snow for the first time. He now lives with his wonderful partner, Jo (from England) in Brussels with 3 beautiful children and he still loves “patates” (French fries).
Lefteri still lives in the village with his wonderful young Greek wife Marilena and 3 beautiful children. He used to run 2 discos and the “bouzoukia” in the olive grove. He has had a restaurant now for many years. Who knows where he learned to cook….
Many of the young men I used to know from the 1970s still live and work in Parga. Most have families of their own. Some are still single, many have their own businesses.
4. What is your favourite memory of your stays in Parga?
I have many favourite memories of my stays in Parga. I’ll mention 3. One is always there and will always be there every time I go. I can always count on it. It is the moon, especially when it is full. The full moon rises at one side of the village, it makes its way across over the beach and finally sets on the other side above the monastery. There is nothing to match it. Everyone there knows I love the full moon – “panselino” it is called in Greek.
My other favourite memory was a bar called “Stavlos”, run by Giorgo and Angelo from Veria. Giorgo started it on a shoestring in 1978 – the best bar ever! A bottle of Retsina (Greek wine) – 17 drachmas (50 cents)! And ‘toast’, like a grilled cheese, for a dollar. And usually you could make it yourself as Giorgo was too absorbed with his girlfriend at the time. My sister and I were his first customers, many hours were spent there watching the people walk by. He seemed to be always open, even after the discos, at 4 am. A great atmosphere! How many glasses we washed (we helped him out)….
Giorgo became my Greek brother and unfortunately he had to close down after a few years due to rising rents. I followed him wherever he worked – the islands of Paros, Santorini and Kos, and his hometown of Veria near Thessalonika. He married a Danish woman who has also become a very good friend of mine. They now live in Denmark and have 2 beautiful children. I have been to visit them 3 times. I love Denmark!
My 3rd memory is my connection with the Avloniti family, Christos, his mother, his father and siblings. They made me feel a part of their family. Vageli passed away 12 years ago and sadly Gia passed away last year. Parga will never be the same without her and neither will I. Finally though, after 5 years, I am going to see Christos, Jo and the family this summer in Parga at the end of August.
5. You also spent a significant amount of time in Turkey. Please tell us where and how did that come about?
The first time I visited Turkey was July of 1978. My travel companions were two gay friends, one from Jordan and one from Britain. We took various buses to Jordan from Athens and stopped in Turkey and Syria on the way. What a trip! It was the year “Midnight Express” came out, a movie that didn’t show Turkey in a favourable light at all, and Turkey did not seem the most desirable country to go to.
I knew nothing of Turkey, and imagined a country of “swarthy mustached barbarians”, the typical stereotype. How wrong I was!
Back in Canada I eventually became a highschool math teacher. After 4 years I had enough and quit. I wanted to work in Greece for a year, but there was a problem with work permits. A friend phoned me in March of 1989 and told me he saw an ad in the Globe and Mail for English and Math teachers in Istanbul. I applied because I figured it was close to Greece. I was hired and off I went to Istanbul with 13 other Canadians to work in a private high school. Little did I know that it was in the far suburbs of Istanbul.
We were given apartments by the sea, with a view of the Princes’ Islands. But we were isolated, no TV, no telephone, no English newspapers in our suburb. Work was difficult: 38 students in each of our 6 classes. And nothing to do at night.
I almost came home in March of 1990. But I started to be enamored with Istanbul during that summer and decided to come back and work in the center of the city. After one year back in Canada I did just that and stayed until December of 1998.
6. What was it like living and working in Turkey?
Living in Turkey was hard at first because of the language barrier. It became easier once we found our way around and learned some Turkish. I discovered many of the teenagers did speak English. And then it became very easy, because the Turks were so helpful. I never worried about finding my way. If I asked there was always a Turk to show me or take me where I wanted to go. Even when I didn’t ask and looked lost. Turks really like foreigners. My neighbour sometimes looked at me as if I were from outer space. But my last neighbours were the best I ever had, so generous and kind.
Because I couldn’t afford expensive apartments I lived many times without central heat. I wasn’t used to being so cold in the winter. Now though many apartments have gas heating. Also in 1993, there was a water shortage for 400 days! More than a year! Our water was shut off most of the time, except every second evening and morning, and was never on during the weekend. We had to save water in containers. I had a lot of watermelon, hot dogs and pizza.
Electricity cuts were also quite common. One day we went for 3 days straight without any electricity. All the food in the freezers got spoiled.
A lot of things didn’t work right, but a lot things did. It was easy to get anything fixed, for example. There were repair shops everywhere since the poor couldn’t afford to buy new things.
Istanbul had a few malls, and lots of stores, but I bought many things from the vendors on the streets, trains and ferries. There was action everywhere. There were few beggars, the very poor held shoe-shining jobs, sold tissues, balloons, chicklets, lemonade, cold water, cucumber pieces, watermelon - anything to make a buck. I especially liked the pickle vendors.
You could also shop from your home, on the street a different vendor would walk by and utter a special call announcing his arrival, for example the plumber, the guys who collected old metal, the yoghurt man, the tomato and vegetable man, the used furniture man, the potato and onion man who came in a horse and cart, a man who sold a special millet drink in the winter. His call sounded like the word “boze”, which he sang in a special melody, which I loved.
Another thing I loved were the movers. If you needed a pick-up truck, you just went to the intersection where they congregated and bargained a price, no booking ahead required.
Teaching in Turkey was a bit different than teaching in Canada, for the first years we only taught 3 ½ days of the week. This was fantastic. Then the Turks got “smart” and realized no other country did this.
I found teenagers to be the same everywhere. The students were no different really than here. The 11 year olds – my favourite group – were “younger” in maturity than here, which was nice to see. They seemed to grow up more slowly there. No drugs in high school. Many schools had a system where the students did an extra year after Grade 6 to learn English intensively for a year.Now they learn from kindergarten.
The system of testing was a bit different and more bureaucratic. Each class had 6 big common tests per course, which were taken during the regular school time. One thing I thought was very strange, was that the foreign teachers had to go to the general meetings which were held in Turkish.
I taught in 3 different high schools, my second was a charity-funded boarding school for children without fathers – wonderful kids. My last school was in the center of Istanbul and I had the privilege of working with an excellent team of English teachers, both foreign and Turkish, of which many have become friends. I was there 4 years, it was hard to leave then, but I visit now every year.
7. What can you tell us about the mentality of people in Turkey?
The mentality of the Turks is a whole topic within itself. Most Turks are poor, although there is a slowly rising middle class. They must work hard to survive, there is not much time for play. Turks tend to live for the moment because of this. When they are asked to do something, they tend to say what they think will make you happy, whether it is true or not. That took me a long time to get used to. Eventually they do get things done, but not at “your” time.
They are not a country to protest, I guess because of their politics. They are a quiet people who spend a lot of time waiting or lining up for things. It seems they have resigned themselves that if they are vocal still nothing will happen. One exception to this is their love of honking when driving. But still nothing much happens. My head of department waited 14 years for his home telephone. Now that’s patience! That was a long time ago though and the world of technology has changed. Ironically Istanbul had way more bank machines than Toronto in 1989. And now everyone has a cell phone.
Because it is a poor country, my wallet was stolen 4 times and my TV and pay-TV decoder were stolen once from my house while I was sleeping. If you plan on visiting, watch your wallet.
8. Turkey is primarily an Islamic country. How does that manifest itself in day-to-day life? How did that affect you as a foreigner, particularly as a female expatriate?
Being an Islamic country, you hear the calls from the Mosque several times a day. So when looking for an apartment – beware! Don’t locate too close to a Mosque. I can’t say I missed this cacophony of sounds when I got back to Toronto.
Ramazan (the Islamic holy month of Ramadan) affected our daily life since the Turks who fast can only eat before sunrise and after sunset, the best time to take a taxi in Istanbul was during those mealtimes. You didn’t have to wait in traffic. Also the streets were empty while a soccer game was going on – Turks are soccer fanatics!
Since Turkey is secular, women do not have to cover their heads, and definitely not their faces. A lot of women, originally from Eastern Turkey, did wear scarves, though. Students are forbidden to wear scarves in school. There are definitely more completely covered women in Toronto than in Turkey.
I was surprised to discover that none of my adult students from the language school I taught in part-time had ever been in a Mosque. They told me mostly the elderly go to the Mosque for something to do. Apparently they do not actively practice their faith.
Of course a lot of people go to the Mosque during holidays, as Christians would go to Church during Christmas. Good muslims must be kind and helpful, especially to the poor. I found this was definitely the case and I was surrounded by kind and helpful people.
Being a non-Muslim in a Muslim country did not really affect me. The Muslim religion is accepting of all religions. One thing that did bother me was that in many areas only men or couples went out at night. The single women now though are beginning to go out. I am not sure if this comes from the religion or culture, or maybe both.
If I was out late at night, I had a very safe feeling, that all the men were watching out for me to make sure I wasn’t bothered. Of course, I was no spring chicken any more anyway.
9. What is your favourite memory of your time in Turkey?
My favourite time in Turkey was when a group of 25 people from my school went on a trip to South-Eastern Turkey, organized by the geography teacher. It was about 6 days long. I called this the “Magical Mystery Tour” and it was exactly that.
We took a plane to “Gazientep” (famous for pistachios), then we went off on a mini-bus. We saw the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, crops of lentils, chickpeas, nuts, bridges and monuments thousands of years old. We went to Urfa, said to be Abraham’s birthplace. It seemed time had stood still for at least 2000 years. I thought we were back in biblical times.
The trip ended at Nemrut Mountain – 4 hours of driving up into the mountains to walk another ½ hour to a wondrous site of statues in the middle of nowhere. The clouds opened up to let the rays of the sun through, they call this “the hands of God”. Spectacular!
10. Through your various travels you have connected with people from many different countries. Please tell us about your international circle of friends, how did you meet them, where are they now, how have these relationships evolved?
I now have very close friends all over the world, thanks to my travels – close in heart, far in distance. I have more friends outside Toronto than here and I love them all dearly.
My Australian friends are all from when I taught in Turkey. Also my friends in England and one in Toulouse, France. My European friends are mostly from my stays in Parga, they now live in Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy. I have friends in Tunis and Paris from my days as a nanny as France.
All my Turkish friends are still mostly in Istanbul and many of the foreign teachers I worked with are married to Turks. One of my closest friends, a Swiss woman now living in Athens, married to a Greek, met me in Toronto as a tourist herself. My friends in Memphis recently moved to Florida from the Kibbutz and of course there is Camille from Parga, who is originally from Vancouver and now lives in Orlando.
If I were given one wish, I would wish them all here to be here close to me. The Internet has almost made this possible.
11. What are some of your most moving human experiences that you had as part of your international connections?
An extremely memorable experience was related to my friend Taha, who I had met as a young au-pair in Paris in 1977. He was from Morocco and a friend of the family, one of the nicest men you could possibly know. At the time he told me that 3 of his brothers had “disappeared” for political reasons in Rabat, Morocco, 5 years before. The police had come to the door and they were gone, never to be seen again. No word on where they were or if they were alive or dead.
Years went by and I kept in contact and I met Taha in Aix-en-Provence 9 years later. He was to be married to a Tunisian woman. We still kept in contact and then I lost him for 5 years. Desperate to find him, I contacted my au-pair father in Paris 20 years later. Thank goodness he still had the same telephone! I found out Taha was living in Tunisia with his wife and 3 young children. I phoned him and he wanted me to come and visit as it had been about 10 years since I had seen him. So I flew from Istanbul to Tunis in January of 1997.
Taha met me at the airport and we went to his beautiful house in Sidi Bou Said, a suburb of Tunis. Wow, I had known Taha when he was poor, where did he get this windfall I asked? He told the incredible story of his 3 brothers who had been released from a Moroccan prison 17 years after their capture and he and his brothers had received substantial compensation from the Morrocan government.
Taha was living in Paris at the time when he got a call from a friend in Morocco who gave him the news. He had not heard one word from his brothers for 17 years. He assumed they were dead. Well, they were alive and coming to Paris!
After a month of being treated in a Moroccan hospital they arrived and the family was reunited. I get goosebumps just thinking of it. The miracle is that the 3 survived and were all sane.
I returned to Istanbul after a week and one month later Taha told me that one of his brothers, Beyazid, was coming to Istanbul. Taha asked me to show his brother around. It was my pleasure and honour.
But the story doesn’t end there. The first night of arrival Beyazid told me he had to go to the airport the next morning. I thought he was coming by himself to Istanbul. No – he was meeting his friend and lover Maria who he hadn’t seen in 25 years since his capture. Maria had heard that Beyazid had been freed and they had been looking for one another for 5 years. They finally found each other and decided to meet in Istanbul.
I met Maria that afternoon, a stunning now 50 year old woman. It was my job to find a place where they could reunite and we could celebrate under the motto “bien manger, bien danser, bien nous amuser’” (to eat and dance well and have fun), as Beyazid said in French. He wanted to go to a place with a female Turkish singer. All this was a tall order for me since it was to be to be a very special celebration.
I found a place and we spent the most magical evening and the most magical 2 weeks in Istanbul. Maria and Beyazid reconnected as good friends and became as close as ever. It was like we were characters in our own film, almost surreal. Beyazid has become my friend and I have also met another brother of his in Paris, Midhat, who had also been in prison. The 3rd brother lives in Texas and they all stay in touch frequently.
When I see Beyazid, a man full of life, who seems to have forgiven those who took his life away for 17 years, I find it hard to complain about any little or even big thing for that matter. Nothing could be worse than what he and his brothers endured – a living death.
Beyazid – you are my inspiration….
12. How do you still stay in touch with Turkey and what are your upcoming plans to visit this very special country?
I still visit Istanbul every year. 8 years of friends and contacts is hard to leave behind. It feels like it is my second country. I dream of being near the Bosphorus, the waterway that connects the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, and the nexus between Europe and Asia. I never tire of it.
I will be there this August and somehow I will also get to Parga at the beginning of September. Now though I like to be home in Toronto at the end of September, beginning of October.I missed so many autumns in Toronto and never realized it was such a nice place to be.
Yes, it is nice to call Toronto home.
Thanks for your time, Carol. I have really enjoyed your stories.....
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