2.a i Alanya

From mountain family to orange stealing

Skrevet af Kathrine Kjersgaard

 

Finally the day came when the English students, including myself, actually were supposed to do something school relevant: visiting a mountain family to find out how the mountain life in Alayna was different from the city life.

 

Already on the trip to the mountains we were all convinced that today was the day we all died. We drove up extremely narrow, gravel roads filled with hairpin bends. Fortunately our Turkish driver and good friend Ali tried to calm us down by saying: “No worry, very good driving”.

 

After another 50 hairpin bends and a bunch of stops on the edge of the road to look at the beautiful view, and to see Amin Jensen’s house, we arrived at our destination. It was a tumbledown house consisting of wood, plastic and blankets. Suddenly our driver just walks inside the house, and we’re all kind of choked that we’re just going to disturb a family in their daily routine all of a sudden. When we walk up to the house we soon realises that it’s just some sort of exhibition house, a so called “Antique Turkish house”. We walked up the stairs, where a woman was sitting making flatbread, and we’re welcomed by the tiniest man ever. He kind of pushed us into buying something to drink and some flatbread, and to be honest the flatbread was really good.

 

On the way down our teacher had kind of gotten the idea that we ought to pick oranges in an orange grove, so she had asked Ali to arrange that for us. While driving past a lot of orange groves, Ali spoke in the phone with a friend, pointing dramatically at the orange trees, and we all got the idea that it might not be very legal to pick these oranges. Suddenly he stopped, looked around to secure no one was watching, then he ran out of the bus, into the orange grove, quickly picked an orange for everyone and the ran back as if he had just robbed a bank.

 

After the narrow hairpin bends, tumbledown restaurant and orange stealing, we all agreed that even though nothing went as planned, it was still an amazing trip, thanks to our wonderful driver, Ali.