As soon as I saw a photo of the Odunpazari Modern Museum, I knew I wanted to see it in person. The building was conjured up by Japanese architecture firm Kengo Kuma and Associates, known for designs featuring natural materials such as timber, stone and paper. They aim to amalgamate nature and architecture to create…
On a recent trip I visited the Eskisehir Museum of Independence. Housed in an early example of Turkish first national architecture built in 1915, the museum celebrates Atatürk and the Turkish Republic through hundreds of photos, paintings and collages. It includes displays of events such as the battles of Gallipoli, Sakarya and Dumlupınar, models of…
Kim Hewett and I met in Newtown, a suburb in Sydney, Australia where we both lived for many years. We danced around each other for a long time but both of us had significant others and the timing was never right. However a few weeks after I returned from my first trip to Europe and…
Reading Carla Grissman’s memoir Dinner of Herbs took me back to my first long stay in Turkey in 1990. I was in Göreme, still a small village back then with a population of 2000 and a nascent tourism sector. Most Göremeli still grew their own vegetables on plots of land wedged between fairy chimneys, ate…
…I am short. I’ve spent most of my life being short except for one brief moment when I was 12 and was the tallest girl in the class. Had I been a boy I would have been the tallest boy then too. Over the years I’ve come to accept that I’ll never wake up with…
When I arrived in Goreme for the first time, it was high summer. Nestled in the Anatolian heartland, Goreme was a traditional farming community like any other in Turkey except for its spectacular landscape. The arid countryside, already aged and yellowed over thousands of years, glared harshly under the heat of the day. My head…