"Open it and switch on please", the uniformed girl smiles at me at the airport control in the Istanbul airport. So I open and turn on my laptop. My hands tremble, as she has brought on a feeling that I'm suspected of smuggling drugs or the preparation of an act of terrorism, that even I myself don't know about yet. Turkish airport checks are very strict and are carried out before one is even allowed to enter the aiport building. And while the screen is coming to life, I attempt at least an understanding smile. Turkey is a key transit country of the middle East, across which drugs from Southwest Asia have been smuggled to Western Europe for years. For import or export of a single gram of a hallucinogenic substance or merits a sentence in Turkey from 10 to 20 years in prison, and in the case of cocaine, morphine or heroin the penalty is doubled.

    Not quite an hour later we're leaving tens of minarets behind us as the Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 heads away from Istanbul - just in passing I count almost fifty. "Americans are a friends of the Afghan people", proclaimed George Bush, shortly before commencing the military offensive against Afghanistan. "Americans will never have peace", announced Usama Bin Laden in his videotaped address. Nice thoughts for a flight and enjoying the view outside the window. But if didn't have a television at home, I would remain in ignorant bliss. I don't read the newspapers or listen to the radio. I'd watch the landscape in peace at my 10,000 meter altitude, letting my thoughts flow freely, with not an inkling of the world's quarrels. Looks like I'm going to have to toss that T.V. set sometime soon.



    Towards the end of last year, an economic crisis hit Turkey and its currency devalued approximately 90% within a single month. Upon landing at the airport I received more than 15 million Turkish Lire for my ten-dollar bill. As I stuff the bills in my pockets I wonder wether it's enough to live on for three days or three years, having no idea that already by evening the entire 15 million would be gone.

    I take a taxi to the bus station in the town of Dalaman, and had the taxi driver not re-assured me twice that there is really a bus that stops here, I would not have believed it. It as a graveled, 30x30 meter lot, covered with potholes and cracks. In vain searched for at at least a sign saying, "bus". Tickets are sold by dark Turks in a little sort of store at the edge of the gravel lot. Three of them surround me, trying to figure out where I want to go and how much money I have. Negotiations for a ticket to Fethiye, and I quickly find out that 15 million means nothing in these lands.

    It has gotten dark. The little bus is supposedly arriving in an hour, and so the Turks strike up a conversation with me. Where am I from, and what is it I plan to do here. They admire my digital camera and ask if I'm going to Afghanistan to take pictures as well. They praise hero Usama bin Ladin and insist George Bush is "total shit". And so here we go, ... what, like, do I think about all of it? They didn't get me though, because I immediately answered that I don't read the newspapers or listen to the radio, and don't really understand what they show on T.V. They laugh, and don't believe a word I say. But the political debate is thus evidently closed.

    I buy a bread cake with mixed vegetables and spicy meat from a passing vendor, and it looks like one of our pancakes, only it's over 30cm long and twice as thick. When the men see how much I'm enjoying it, they curteously squeeze some fresh lemon juice onto it for me. Excellent …!





    After more than an hour of bumping along terrible, winding roads in a minibus I finally arrive in the city of Fethiye and refusing offers of accommodation from local tourist hunters, I get on another, similar bus and head for Ölüdeniz. Another half an hour and I'm there.

    "Are you at least fucking looking forward to it?", wrote David Bzirsky, who has been living in the seaside resort of Ölüdeniz since Spring of this year, to me in an e-mail. Sometime after ten that evening, exhausted, I find David in the famous Cloud 9 bar. And what a surprise - Tonda Pallas, Vasek Motycka and some others are also here! It looks like I've arrived just in time, because it's around this hour that the resort really begins living.





    I unfortunately do not have any cans of Radegast Beer for David. My only flight bag is full to bursting with a keg of red wine, "Vavrinec", which remarkably has survived the rough handling of two flight changes. Even though the nightlife is truly exemplary, I'm not in the mood for drinking. I've been up since 2:30 this morning. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, when I can sleep in until 6 a.m.!