All posts filed under: roam

On Dreams and Husbands

THE LAND OF DREAMS | There was a huge, open-air camp. Singing plants and illuminated chilis sprouted from magicians’ hats and everyone offered dreams for barter. Some wished to trade dreams of travel with dreams of love; others offered dreams of laughter in exchange for sad dreams to release a long-needed cry. A man walked about looking for the bits and pieces of his dream, which was shattered by someone who smashed into it: He collected the shreds of his dream and pasted them together to make with them a banner of colors. The water bearer of dreams carried the water in a vessel on his back and dispensed it in tall cups to whoever got thirsty while sleeping. A woman wearing a white tunic stood on a tower and combed her tresses that reached her toes. The comb shed dreams with all their characters: the dreams were born from the hair and glided out into the air. Excerpt from _El Libro de Los Abrazos_ by Eduardo Galeano. Trans. Nathalie Alyon “But how is Nathalie going to find a husband …

The Secrets of San Miguel de Allende

“En San Miguel cada uno y su vecino es un artista,” Louis said–in San Miguel everyone and his neighbor is an artist. It was my third day in this colonial town and I had already grasped the San Miguelean spirit: drink mezcal, party hard, and make art. Hung-over from the wedding I had crashed the night before, I managed to drag my cruda self from my bed to attend my Airbnb host Crystal’s birthday BBQ in the garden. Herself a jewelry maker, among Crystal’s guests were a painter, a pianist, a graphic designer, and a gallery owner. I felt as if I had found myself in the 21st-century version of Paris in the 1920s. As Gerardo the painter poured me another shot of mezcal, the group began to speak about secrets: how they were different than lies and why we loved our secrets so much… I wondered whether a secret had to involve two or more parties; was a secret an interactive concept by its very nature or could it also be internal? “Everybody has …

Under the Rubble of Istanbul’s Urban Regeneration

This week’s post is a link. I am proud to contribute to InPerspective magazine’s first issue with an article on Istanbul’s urban regeneration and its impact on this ever changing mega-city. InPerspective is a non-profit project made up of a network of journalists, translators and readers dedicated to reporting stories that explore different subjects and perspectives from all over the world. In addition to contributing articles to this wonderful project, I will be helping them as regional editor. As a taste, here are first few paragraphs of my first article on InPerspective: ISTANBUL’S URBAN REGENERATION CHILDHOOD MEMORIES AND A CHANGING MEGACITY I grew up in Kaya Palas, a 14-story building on Iğrıp Street in the Asian side of Istanbul and as I write these words it has no roof. In its stead are machines tearing apart the building from top to bottom, floor by floor. By the time anybody reads this article, the building that was my childhood’s palace will have ceased to exist. Our apartment overlooked Fenerbahçe Orduevi, perhaps the most fancy military officer’s club in Istanbul boasting a …

Mexico City with Suruç in My Mind

Something about Mexico reminded me of Turkey. It wasn’t just the taco joints at every corner grilling what any Turk would recognize as döner: Mexicans call it al pastor, prepare it from pork, and serve it on corn tortillas. In Istanbul, I woke up in the middle of the night from an acappella of muezzins from different mosques using megaphones as if competing with one another; in San Miguel de Allende it was a mix of church bells and firecrackers celebrating each night a different Saint’s day that disrupted my sleep. The daily advances of my neighbor Carlos, who spends his days staring at a construction site atop a disintegrating 1960s Volkswagen beetle, reminded me of many Mehmets and their sweet, polite creepiness that make me smile rather than run screaming. A drawing of the face of a young student missing since the mass kidnapping in Iguala, Mexico (September, 2014), reminded me of Berkin Elvan, the boy who died from a can of pepper gas fired by Turkish police and became the symbol of Turkey’s …

So you quit your job to travel the world?

Quitting my job to become a traveling writer was not easy. While determining my premeditated roaming as yearlong provided some sort of framework, truth be told I was freaking the hell out until I finally bought that first ticket and left Israel. At this point my neurosis didn’t necessarily subside but just looked better under a tropical sun. Looking back, I think my psychological trajectory from the day I resigned until I finally became a real-life traveling bum had various clearly defined stages. The Four Stages in the Psyche of the Unemployed Traveler The state of ecstasy. That’s the moment right after you hand in your resignation letter and sit at your office desk looking at Google images of the beaches you will be lounging at and mountains you will be climbing. That is after 1-2 months, during which you must continue coming to the office and pretend to care about the job you just quit. When that sinks in begins the second stage: impatient annoyance. Things that never bothered you before like the lady that tells you …

A Taste of Colombian Medical Care with a splash of Vallenato

It happens to the best of us. Even someone with an iron stomach as myself who prides herself on having the ability to eat everything and anything, gallantly sampling all the delicacies street vendors have to offer will eventually get food poisoning or whatever it was that had me check in at a Colombian clinic in Valledupar. It wasn’t pretty. I had arrived in Valledupar for the famous Festival de la Leyenda Vallenata. A type of Colombian folk music, Vallenato is this country’s pride and joy. I met Bogotans who had travelled on 18-hour busses to attend the festival over the weekend. All hotels and hostels were filled to the brim and the town’s streets filled with Colombians in sombreros vueltiaos dancing to never-ending tunes usually played with a trio of accordion, guacharaca, and caja vallenata players. The birthplace of Vallenato, Valledupar is not much of a destination for foreigners. During my three-day stay there I frequently felt as though the few foreigners that I shared a dorm room with in Provincia Hostel were the …

America the Inspirational: Dangers of Returning Home

I almost flaked on my Advanced Open Water diving course in Taganga at the last minute. I do that sometimes. I get scared of finishing things and run away. I had already done six breathtaking dives and to complete the course I had one requirement left: the 30-meter deep water dive. The night before the dreaded deed, I read the chapter on deep diving from the PADI booklet because I also do that. My homework, that is. PADI had elaborated on quite an extensive amount of possible things that could get me killed from this really unnecessary activity that is breathing under water with fish and other aquatic life. After all I had spent all my life not diving to 30 meters as a happy and thriving individual. I was scared. “Do I have to?” I asked my instructor in the morning. By looking at my face you would think that it’s not pretty coral but rotting fish that awaited me under 30 meters. Thankfully, Tomas glanced at the death page I was pointing at …

Over Land in Parque Tayrona, Under Water in Taganga

If I were to believe the rumors I heard about Taganga, I was about to arrive in Colombia’s version of Ko Phi Phi—a once-charming island in the Andaman Sea filled with 20-something backpackers who roam the island’s trash-filled streets as they suck cheap alcohol from buckets. Needless to say, I was not happy in Ko Phi Phi. A small fishing village just 15 km from Santa Marta, Taganga is also getting a bad reputation. Unsustainable tourism, mainly the “Middle Eastern” kind as one tripadvisor reviewer wrote, had changed this beautiful cove for the worse. I was especially apprehensive about staying in Taganga since we had just spent two peaceful nights in Parque Tayrona, sleeping outside in hammocks with the sounds of the Caribbean as a lullaby. For the past two days, I had been starting my mornings with a walk on the Arrecifes Beach, which stretched for kilometers without another soul in sight. For the first time since my arrival in South America, I didn’t have to answer whatsapp messages from members of my family who seemingly …

Why Colombia? 

The hospitality I received in Barichara was not unique to this quaint little town.  All the articles from travel blogs I had devoured before arriving in Colombia were not exaggerating: not only was Colombia safe but its people golden. From my hosts in Bogotá who made me feel at home to strangers on the street, Colombian hospitality rivaled that of Turks and that’s not something I say often. I can tell you about the poet we met on a local bus from Aracataca (hometown of Gabriel García Márquez) to Valledupar, who gifted us a copy of his recent book of poetry, treated us to a bottle of aloe vera water, and waited with us under the rain until we got a cab to our hostel. Or the staff at the hostel in Valledupar, who went out of their way to help me as a serious case of food poisoning got me in a very unpleasant state I won’t detail here for your benefit. Well, maybe I will but in another post:) Meanwhile, there is one question …

Villa de Leyva: The so-called sleepy town that whipped my ass into shape

The itch to travel is a desire to be everywhere at once. It’s a mental disease but an excusable one, since human nature instilled in us a certain insatiable curiosity. Until my early twenties, I used to have this obsession with sitting in the middle seat of any dinner table, large or small, so that I could follow the conversations happening on both ends. But of course, one can’t be at two places at once, and it can be stressful to follow two (or three or four) conversations, especially at crowded dinners. After all, you are sitting in just one seat. You are confined to the space you occupy and there is no way to be on every chair at once. If you get up to the other end of the table, you miss out on all that happens in your current seat. Before embarking on this journey, I made a promise to myself to not over-scratch this itching spot–I would not be able to see every museum, climb every beautiful hill, or watch every magical sunset. …