A little bit of toast – Day 12

I felt guilty. But in truth I was close to giggling. One ventilator incident after another. Was I finally getting a fan following? 

Outside the sun was shining and the wind had dropped a bit, but you still needed a sweatshirt. I went to pat one of the local guard dogs. They would bark at any stranger until they approved of you. The locals were at pains to make friends with them or they’d have their scooters chased all the way out of town.

The road soon headed inland from the coast and again the landscapes got big.

From time to time I was noticing what looked like balled-up kleenex bouncing around on the road. But it was too light and floaty for that. After a toll booth I came up behind a giant lorry. Two storeys high and domed over with a massive tarp. Out the sides little balls of white stuff were appearing and bouncing off my windscreen.  I thought it must be that squiggly worm stuff that’s used for packing. But later, as the motorway became a dualled road, I started to see cotton growing.  Small-holdings at first. Then huge acreages of it. Pretty to look at.

Then the farms gave way to salt pans. Mauve and translucent blue hues that were very soothing on the eye.

We continued on the dual carriageway but eyes front…! A tractor and trailer crossing. A pair of dogs trotting along the barrier. Then, coming the other way, a horse and cart. The horse rearing at the oncoming traffic.

Ayvalik. Not  my kind of place really. Nice enough in an old fashioned  kind of way with cobbled streets making everyone walk like drunkards. It was the Turkish coast of my youth. Narrow alleys strung over with vines and coloured lanterns. Windows dressed up with all kinds of painted bric-a-brac. I had found it charming then but a bit kiss-me-quick now. Most of the waterfront had been nabbed by hotels. 

It was still a centre for olive oil production. I had seen stalls everywhere along the roads. But the old chimneys of the pressing plants – dotted all over the town –  were  derelict. Everything happened in big factories now. The olives here were grown in very large numbers. Not like the small collectives you see elsewhere.

At night it calmed into a much less frenetic, traffic cramped sweat box. 

I wandered half-heartedly in search of the famous toast. I’d  heard that this was the ultimate street snack. A toasted sandwich that would definitely hit the spot. The kind of thing Rick Stein would be in raptures about. But it was hard to find. Reaching darkness on the edge of town – that dates me – I approached what I thought was a bus station. Instead it happened to be toast central. A collection of twelve toast-selling outlets all with their charming girls or pressurising boys.

At ranked tables at least 500 people were chowing down on this toast. Basically a kebab – with the works – in two slices of doughy bread that had been pushed under a salamander. 

Most people were opting for the full enchilada. I wandered the rows until accosted by Abdullah. The toast looked good. He was persuasive.  But I just couldn’t do it. Sit in a refectory eating a sandwich with all those other people in their coats, bent over and swivelling their heads at other tables? Too school dinners. My good Lebanese friend ran a sandwich shop that would beat anything here. I wondered what he would have made of it.

Wandering back I met a couple from San Diego. He was wearing a bandana and she beads. I took a chance and asked if they were hippies? ‘Absolutely!’ said Rainey. You could see her sparkle of youth. She was seventy-five but looked mid-fifties. Obviously life was agreeing with her.  ‘Why are you here?’ I asked. ‘Well our dog died’ I commiserated. ‘Yah…well we had no ties so we took a two year trip. He’s from Istanbul.’ pointing at her partner.

I didn’t get his name but he too was charming. Slightly grizzled in a rock and roll way. He’d been back to see a sick sister-in-law and had been called up to do national service when he arrived. He’d been dodging it in California for decades. ‘They made me do four months in the “Grandad Regiment.”..not so bad’

I asked what he had done for work. He’d been a chef, or at least worked in a restaurant. ‘People used to ask me when they found out I was from Stanbul how we prepared the food. I’d always told ’em it was outtakan. ”Ottoman?” they’d say. No!  out a can!’

Jackdaws were roosting noisily and clattering about in their usual gregarious way in the trees. I stepped out in the road to avoid their droppings.

Later I found a pleasant wine bar. A large fella was singing traditional songs. A kind of one man band with guitar, bells on one foot and a sort of tabla on the other. Not my kind of thing normally but his singing was so impassioned, I stayed for two hours.