"We all are the children of Ataturk"

In Trabzon I was captured by these girls who escaped from the school to hunt the tourists. Their purpose is simple - they want to practice English. I have never saw such brave, curious, nice and smart kids. We enjoyed their company very much and spent about 2 hours talking.

 Meanwhile, I clarified two questions which are very important for me. Firstly, religion. Here in Turkey some girls wear a veil, some doesn't. Medina (the girl in the right) explained me that it's her oun choise to wear the veil and her parents don't insist. Even more, other female members of the family don't wear veils. (Maybe somebody thinks that 15 years old kid can't chose for him or herself but I wouldn't agree. Don't think so bad about young people.). She said, it's rather common and it happens seldom that the family insists on hijab.

The second question was the cult of Ataturk. For me, it reminds Lenin's cult in USSR (and I was told since the childhood that Lenin and Stalin are not very good guys, so I'm against any kind of personal cult, including some religious ideas). So, firstly I was very frustrated when they said "We love Ataturk!", "We all are the children of Ataturk", "We know a lot about him but can't say it in English" ect. But later I thought that I'm trying to apply my country's experience to another totally different country. It's not right to feel bad about Ataturk's cult just because Lenin's cult didn't work for Russia. I have to use the international scale. Those kids are happy, healthy, funny, open, protected by their families and the government, they have dreams and plans for future. That is good, the system works and that's the main thing. And if they need Ataturk to make it working, I support this for 100%

Trabzon elevator

It works simple - if you have a store on the first floor, you can send down a basket with your shopping list and money and the shop assistant will put everything inside. That's what we saw...
The basket came down..

 The man took the money and put the bread in

 And the basket went back=)

Laundry washing at the mill in Agnanda

Hi! This is a post about mill-laundry in Agnanda and about wonders that can be waiting for just around the next corner.

Agnanda is a tiny town in Peloponnese close to Pramanda where the Horizons Unlimited meeting took place (see the previous post about it). We found Agnanda ocasionally, just wanted to buy some food in Pramanda but shops were closed due to siesta. So we decided to go to the next city.

In Agnanda we found a minimarked full of different small items, placed in the shelves withoun any order and price. The shop accistant didn't know the prices himself and he called for his mother to tell us the cost of this and that. This is his mother, a very nice lady. She lived in Germany for a while and wanted to talk to Alex. So she invited us to drink a beer and gave a slice of some kind of special pie, made of bread, eggs and cheese.

And then she invited us to have a look at the mill that they have in the town. The mill is broken but water is still running. Volunteers made this place very nice looking and comfortable.

This is the mill itself on the top of the hill

This is the water that comes down from the mill

The Greeks found a usage for free clean fresh water: they wash their carpets and blankets here

And then dry it right on the rails

Next day we came there to  wash our clothes but the grill was closed. It was 13.30 and he locals close it usually at 14.00 but that day the man who has the key decided to go to the next city and didn't open it at all. So we tried to wash without opening and our clothes just has drawn somewhere in the dark water...

I tried to save it and I failed

Then we opened it in a very simple way..

While washing we met this nice ginger guy, he was happy and sung us his song: pur-pur-pur

 And one more picture...

So if you go to Agnanda, find the old lady and say hello from us!