Well, I finally took the new camera out for a test spin, and I have to say, I’m strangely intimidated. Even as gadget-prone as I am, oddly I’m the last person on earth to have a digital camera, and I’m a little overwhelmed by the easy point-and-clickness of digital. You can take a million photos if you want and throw most of them away, but in my 20th century head that would be a waste of film, so I still find myself waiting and waiting for the perfect shot. I’m sure I’ll get over it soon. In any case, I got on a bus today and took a few photos, just things I thought you might not be familiar with if you don’t live here.
Turkey, where you can have your car in any colour you want as long as it’s white.
Now this is creative— it used to be an ice cream truck, now it’s used to tow a boat.
You can buy your vegetables at the supermarket, but people rarely do because the vegetables at the corner stall are nicer-tasting and fresher and much less expensive. And the guy generally tips the scales in your favour.
Next door to the fruit and veg man: the fish guy. Again, you’ll find no fresher. These were swimming in the Med this morning.
In Turkey, we don’t have piped-in gas for stoves or heat, so if you want gas in your house (which you do, because running an electric stove would cost a fortune), then you call up the gas man and he brings a canister of gas to the house and hooks it up to your stove. It’s basically just a larger version of the gas canisters used for camping, and when it’s all used up you just call for a refill and they come again and trade it out. The cost is 35YTL (today: $26, £13, €20), and we have to refill ours about twice a year.
So there you have it, five photos of daily life in Antalya. Next time I’ll try to be a bit more free with the trigger finger.