Hello From Turkey

[dinosaw]

Well me and Mrs Dinosaw finally made it to Turkey, what a palaver, to anyone thinking of moving abroad while simultaneously selling a house and trying to buy a new one for when you come back my advice would be don't even think about it, still waiting for confirmation as I write that my sale has gone through today 03 . Very pleased to be here now though and hopefully the aggravation will be worth it, I have uploaded some photos of the view from our balcony which looks out onto Izmir bay, it's a pleasant 20 degrees at the moment but will get much hotter as the months go on. Had our first drink out last night at a bar which was aptly named Muppets, they must have had word we were coming , got two free shots of raki when they found out we were from England which was nice of them. Everything is a bit weird at present as we don't speak turkish and it's not a tourist area but I am trying to stretch my 20 or so words as far as they will go, we have managed to get fed and watered at least. Vegetables here are great quality and very cheap, the amount of polytunnels we saw as we flew in was amazing local cheese is also cheap, chicken is the same price and and red meat much dearer as are oats, but at least they have them so I can have my morning bowl of porridge, already have some flour and will set up my own sourdough starter in the next week or so. Tea comes in a little glass and is very bitter, you are meant to have it with a big cake I think, I ordered a little biscuit with mine and wondered why they looked at me with disgust, then I got the bill which was 50p :lol: , not much of a tip on that I suppose, coffee comes in a tiny cup with a glass of water on the side and you can only drink about two thirds before you hit the grounds. Crossing the roads is precarious even when the green man is showing and I nearly got mowed down on my first day here. It's a huge city of 4 million and we have only really explored the area around our apartment but there are plenty of places to eat and drink locally with ferries that cross the bay to the main city centre. We are two hours ahead so when you see my posts I'm not an early bird it's the time difference.

 

[Marigold]

Wow, really good to hear from you Dinosaw. When I read the heading to your post I thought we had a new foreign member. We've not got anyone from Turkey so far as I know, do they keep hobby chickens there? It sounds like a great adventure. I would imagine that the lack of local English speakers will be a good incentive to language learning, if only for personal survival! Have you yet met the people you will be working with? I don't know what you do for a living so am unsure whether you will have any problems making yourself understood in your new job.
I hope the house sale has finally gone through. It makes me realise yet again how brave (?) Chris was, not only setting off into the blue, but taking all his chickens with him. At least you don't have that immediate problem. Do keep posting on here and let us know how it's going.

 

[dinosaw]

Yes I have said before that I couldn't have done what Chris did with the move to France but what he has done is similar to our final goal, though in our case we will be heading north to Scotland rather than over the channel. Apparently people like to keep as many different breeds as possible over here I have been told as a kind of status symbol apparently but whether that is true or a load of old nonsense I don't know. It is Mrs Dinosaw who has the job here Marigold and she is hopeless with languages bless her but I believe people will speak english where she works. No corporation would keep me on for more than a couple of weeks which is why I have spent nearly all my time self employed, I can't work with other people and it is probably just as bad for them working with me. All the same I intend to get as good at the language as I can.

 

[chrismahon]

It looks fantastic Dinosaw and sounds a heck of a lot cheaper than here. Funny we are at 26 degrees today until just after sunset and you are further South? Crossing the road is weird here, now you mention it. You have right of way over traffic if you are on a marked crossing or anywhere where a crossing is more than 50 metres away (no green lights here). However, if you cross the road within 50 metres of a crossing point the traffic has right of way and you can legally be run over it seems! They don't speak English here either so I know exactly what problems you may encounter. My advice is to get a very big dictionary and keep a pocket one with you at all times. We've been on holiday to Turkey and were very careful not to drink the water. Despite that my wife was incredibly ill for weeks afterwards because, we think, ice cubes in the drinks used tap water.

Look forward to hearing more about your great adventure.

 

[dinosaw]

House has sold and we have our hands on the ill gotten gains . Yes the water here isn't drunk by the locals but mainly due to the chlorine levels so they say but a 19 litre bottle of water for the cooler is only £1.50, it's helping that the lira has crashed against the pound in the last 6 months. They eat white eggs here by the way. Have two phrasebooks but probably need a dictionary.

 

[chrismahon]

Spoke too soon about our weather Dinosaw. After a hot week temperatures are dropping 10 degrees as an Atlantic weather system pushes the Mediterranean system back. We've had two weeks of Sahara dust deposits on everything. Good news about your house. I have friends on Skye who love it there.

 

[dinosaw]

Bucketed here too last night, one of the balcony windows had been left partly open and so the whistling for the wind was terrible until I got up and went outside at 1am to shut it. Skye is very nice, we are looking for something very remote if possible, thinking about Caithness despite the long hours of darkness in winter, at least we would get the northern lights.

 

[dinosaw]

Where exactly are you in France Chris?, I know you moved further south than you had originally planned.

 

[chrismahon]

Well our original plan was to be central in the Dordogne whilst searching for property in Lot or Limousin. Dordogne has a 10% English population and is tourist driven so it's an easy intro to France -you don't have to speak French because the administration and most of the shops have someone in who is English speaking. But it's a miserable damp place 8 months of the year and it was never our intention to actually buy there. Besides, houses with useable land are non-existent. But living in that place taught us so much about housing problems and climate. Running on a retirement budget means fuel costs are a big thing. Processing wood is time and space consuming. So the sensible thing was to move to a warmer climate. Provence, above the Med coast is far too expensive, so we were advised to try the old area known as Gascony in the far South West. The centre of that is Gers Departement. No tourists, all agricultural, no English spoken. Same size as Essex but with 10% of the population. We actually found a place we would buy on Wednesday, the first, having physically viewed over 20 and dismissed hundreds of advertised. Problem is we still haven't sold in UK, so that's one we have lost probably. Beautiful views of the Pyrenees (80km South)as well, just like here.

 

[dinosaw]

When I hear Gascony I always think of the three musketeers Chris. I have heard it's very rural and very beautiful but have never been myself, I would imagine that they must speak French down there with a very heavy dialect, a bit like my lot in Northumberland. Planning for the future we had planned to use wood as a cooking and heating source with possibly some solar/wind but I agree with you processing and seasoning seems to be quite the job, I'm very interested in wind power given the constant high winds in northern scotland but it's seems very expensive to install if you don't do it yourself, we have already taken advantage of buying some arctic clothing I saw on offer a few months ago if we really need to turn the heating off. There may be some hope for you on the housing front, we found it was really starting to heat up by the time we left with houses selling down our way within a week, I know that is the SE but it will ripple outwards faster than many think.

 

[chrismahon]

I didn't realise the musketeers came from Gascony until we went to Condom Dinosaw. There is a larger than life bronze statue of the four of them in the church square. We parked up in the village square at Lupiac named Place d'Artagian, which is near where the aforementioned house is. Condom is where the locals puzzled as to why the few English tourists who got this far South kept having their photographs taken next to the town signs. I read a French regional guide that explained the situation to the locals. Condom it said, is the Anglaise for 'preservatif'. This obviously has caused some confusion in the local DIY stores with Brits actually wanting wood treatment, 'conservateur de bois'. There are some amusing stories circulating in the small English community here.

Wind turbines are not feasible here. We looked at an 'off grid' project using a 5KW Evance 9000 (seen one at an agricultural show in UK), but they can only take 124mph and that isn't enough in this area. There are no wind turbines here at all. The only one I have found that will cope is an 80W unit.

Hope you are right about the housing market. It's a stressful time for us.

 

[dinosaw]

Fingers crossed for you Chris, selling a house is a total pain because it is completely out of your control, it's far worse than buying in my opinion. We took a fair hit on our asking price, partly because the agents overpriced and partly because it suited us to have everything tied up with someone who was a cash buyer, even then we were happy with what we came away with given that the area where we lived was changing rapidly and not for the better I would add.