Okay, this is gonna be one of the long ones. Over the past couple of days in Antalya I was thinking about the whole dynamics of the city. See, Antalya is actually pretty fucking big. We’re talking like 2.5 million people. The thing is tho, couple decades back, it was merely a small fishermen town. It’s one of the cities that exploded super fast, literally going from like 50 thousand all the way up to this within half a century. And it all kinda works. The infrastructure is here, public transport kinda works too, you got all the supermarkets, restaurants, gyms… It’s all here. The fascinating thing to me is culture tho. How do you turn a small town (with a small city center and mentality) into a megacity? How do you culturally accommodate all the new people? How much time has to pass for all the subcultures to emerge, get established and turn the small city vibe into an an actual cultural scene? One of the evenings, we were hanging out with my sister’s friend who is based here and she gave me some of the answers. So apparently it has already started. And since it hadn’t been around when I used to live here, it’s all pretty fresh. But there is a techno club where actual techno happens. There are people doing ayahuasca ceremonies in the area. There is a cool authentic place for jazz and blues. It is slowly popping up. I feel these things are still going to take some years to get fully embedded but it’s cool knowing that the process has started. Cause at the end of the day, if you look at this many people… Even if the percentage of active ones might be small (as anywhere else), sooner or later, you gonna have enough to make some cool shit happen. No matter the location, no matter the predominant religion, no matter nothing. This family trip is neither time nor place for me to explore any of that but if I ever make it back here under different circumstances, I’ll definitely give some of it a shot.
The second point I wanna bring up is a bit darker but since it was a pretty intense experience, I’m gonna dig into it. It actually happened at the visit of my sister’s friend, too. Later on that evening, them two went to the balcony to have a longer catch up which left me and my dad alone in the living room along with my nephew and two other kids (aged like 10 and 8). Now, let me paint the picture for you. So there’s some super fast cartoon flashing on the TV making all kinds of weird sounds. You got these two older boys playing some games on their smartphones. Flash flash flash. Shit makes some fucking slot machine sounds. My nephew has his face drowned into a fucking tablet watching an infinite thread of Youtube Shorts (prior to this trip, I had no idea he knows what Youtube Shorts are and how to use them). More flashes, more sounds. Completely random. Cats, dancing people, screaming motherfuckers, gaming videos, people fighting, dressed up dogs, absolute madness...The cacophony was fucking excruciating, too. There’s a reason why they use the word “user” basically only for drugs and IT. Due to the circumstances, I was kinda forced to stay in the situation for nearly an hour and I nearly lost my shit. You just couldn’t escape the noise, you couldn’t turn it off… I tried to talk them out of doing it and suggest maybe at least watching something less aggressive (maybe something cohesive with some story line or play with toys or whatever the fuck) but no. It was like trying to take a needle from a junkie. And this is not me giving parenting advice. I’m in no position to do anything like that. This is me being absolutely fascinated by how different shit is for me and for them. For them it’s like the most normal shit to do. Their brains are hooked, they are accustomed to it, they see (or hear) nothing wrong with any of that. For hours and hours. And my fucking brain bleeds in 40 seconds. I felt physically sick (I was close to actually throwing up), my head hurt, I couldn’t speak for like 20 minutes after we left and I had to do a pretty fucking long meditation to get my shit together. And watching these youngsters with these dead stares controlled by the screens is one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen. Granted, I’m not in presence of kids too often. It gave some serious crackhouse vibes tho. Point being, that shit is addictive, it is dangerous and if the goal is to get everybody hooked, these companies are doing a great fucking job. But in my humble opinion, we need to be way more fucking careful with that. There should be more mental health education in schools. Even in terms of dopamine, it’s so much better to go for a walk, to talk to somebody, listen to some music, play with fucking Lego or some shit. Pretty much anything. Yeah, it takes more effort but the reward is worth it. And living in times when this shit is like the new norm scares the living hell out of me. It only fuels all the anxiety, depression and incapability to communicate with one another. And I don’t have a solution for this, it really just shocked me. I was mesmerized how affected I was and how much it fucked me up. It felt like we’re different species. Some crazy shit right there.
Anyways, back to these incredible stories of mine. We had a car rented for the first two days which allowed us to explore the area. On Sunday, we took it to Kemer, spent some time on the beach, had lunch and then proceeded back to Antalya. The initial plan was to go to the ancient ruins of Termessos but since we got a bit lost, we ended up spending late afternoon in this big ass park with a massive statue of Ataturk’s head overseeing the city. The day after we actually did make it Termessos which marked my second time over there (the first being ages ago during my studies) and it turned out to be one of the highlights. It’s a bit of a hike but there was barely anyone around and even the nephew was enjoying it. It’s all so beautiful over there and the amphitheater with those hills in the background is so majestic. After that we went to the old town and I returned the car.
Over the week, we also managed to hop on the Antalya cable car to check the restaurant up the hill and recreate a photo we did 11 years ago. We visited my sis’s friend (which ended up causing me the whole smartphone trauma), we swam in the sea, we walked a lot, we went to an amusment park… I even managed to go for a run twice. Antalya is where I made running a daily activity and it felt super nostalgic doing it again in the same setup. Happy I got to do that. Plus all the great food, Turkish tea... Fucking awesome. To my best abilities, I was also trying to bond with the nephew but I feel he still needs more time to be a bit more comfortable without moms and all. We still managed to spend a morning together (just me and him) and messed around the apartment after waking up most days. The guy was seriously fucking up my push-up and plank sessions.
On the last evening, we visited my dear friend who had been my Erasmus coordinator back then. I can credit that woman with sparking the idea of working for an international office of a university. When I finished my studies in Turkey, I started looking for such jobs back home and I eventually ended up working for Masaryk University for about 3 years traveling the whole fucking world while at it. Talk about butterfly effect. Anyways, her and her husband are like the nicest people ever, she cooked tons of vegan food and we had a great chat. On life, on politics, on culture. They kinda gave me the other side of this Antalya boom. Yeah, the city is growing but it’s growing too fast. The infrastructure has hard time catching up, it’s all too messy and it often seems completely out of control. And I get it… It’s very difficult to grasp this pace of the growth. Pretty interesting case study tho. And a great fucking evening. Both me and my dad had a blast and I hope I’ll get to visit Antalya a bit sooner than in another 8 years. I definitely have some kind of relationship with that place.
We left our apartment Saturday early morning, got a taxi to the airport, arrived at Budapest downtown around noon, had some lunch followed by some coffee and then caught an afternoon train back home. Which is where I’m at now. And even though there’s been some tensions here and there (as expected from a family trip), I feel positive about the way it turned out. Hope you guys are doing well too, I’m gonna talk to you soon. Sending love to everybody out there. One!
Highlights:
- Vegan House. The best restaurant food I had in Antalya. The first spot overall is definitely the home-cooked dinner by my friend.
- Successfully managing the whole thing.
- Driving in Turkey. I feel like I’m one step closer to becoming a Jedi.
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