{"id":2793,"date":"2015-11-01T14:02:36","date_gmt":"2015-11-01T11:02:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/?p=2793"},"modified":"2015-11-08T19:42:58","modified_gmt":"2015-11-08T16:42:58","slug":"been-busy-but-had-time-to-loaf-with-serkan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/?p=2793","title":{"rendered":"Been busy, but had time to loaf … with Serkan"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/strong>e were eagerly awaiting the Oktoberfest celebration but the week before, the horrible attack on the peace-protest at the train station in Ankara took place.\u00a0 The German Embassy decided that it would be inappropriate to have a celebration the following weekend.\u00a0 Also, Andrea Merkal arrived to pay her respect which consumes resources.<\/p>\n

My boss was in the States for about 6 weeks leaving me to be the man of the house.\u00a0 Finally, after his return, Terese and I took a trip down to Antalya with two other couples.\u00a0 One of them was the couple whose wedding we attended last year.\u00a0 She is an American and he is a Turk. The resort we stayed at was one of those which has everything inclusive.\u00a0 Pay for nothing except the initial daily fee.\u00a0 It was expensive, but we needed to get away for a few days.<\/p>\n

Now, the interesting part of this story is the Turk who married the American.\u00a0 His name is Serkan.\u00a0 Her name is Allison.\u00a0 Full of energy, he cannot sit still more than 60 seconds.\u00a0 He speaks so rapidly and often, I swear I lose weight standing next to him.\u00a0 So, what I will do is post several pictures taken during the few days to get a better idea of his personality.\u00a0 The first is him with Allison.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3318\"<\/a>\"IMG_0103\"<\/a>Quick stop at Starbucks on the way out.\u00a0 Then fuel.\u00a0 (For those who are going to comment about my smile, it’s on the inside.\u00a0 As always)<\/p>\n

\"SAM_4412\"<\/a>\"IMG_0119\"<\/a> \"IMG_0124\"<\/a>\"SAM_4445\"<\/a>\"SAM_4419\"<\/a>\"SAM_4417\"<\/a>The other couple are interesting people.\u00a0 Arturo and Rill.\u00a0 Friendly and easy to laugh with.\u00a0 I don’t know who’s worse, Terese corrupting Rill, or Rill corrupting Terese?\u00a0 But as a group of three couples, there was always something to laugh at.\u00a0 Especially with Serkan around.<\/p>\n

The last night at the resort, I was joined by Serkan and Rill as I enjoyed my cigar.<\/p>\n

\"SAM_4421\"<\/a>Serkan is one of those rare individuals who wants to stop and talk with everyone. Allison told me if he sees a flock of sheep near the side of the road, Serkan will stop and visit with the shepherd.\u00a0 So on the way home, when we took a rest top near an apple company, Serkan and Allison saw mounts of apples in the distance and went to investigate.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3342\"<\/a>That is truly a mound of apples in the distance.\u00a0 Most will be made into apple sauce.\u00a0 And yes, that is Allison in the distance.<\/p>\n

As we continue on our return home, Serkan found a small town on the side of the mountain that looked like it had some interesting things, so he decided to stop.\u00a0 I was able to get some beautiful shots of Turkey.\u00a0 Notice the aqueduct in the distance on the first one.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0152\"<\/a> \"IMG_0142\"<\/a> \"SAM_4504\"<\/a>At one point, Serkan stopped to ask an old man about the street ahead, and the two carried on a conversation.\u00a0 Afterwards, the old man gave us a couple of berries as a gift.\u00a0 May sound silly to us, but to him he was giving us a bit of the town and himself.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0153\"<\/a> \"IMG_0139\"<\/a>There are so many jokes that can be said about the picture above, but it typifies Serkan’s energy and not just his love of Life, but the thrill of it.<\/p>\n

As we continued home, we stopped at a small cafe along the road and had chai.\u00a0 Terese sat down and some little cat knew right away she is a good woman and jumped in her lap.<\/p>\n

\"SAM_4471\"<\/a>\"IMG_3328\"<\/a>\"SAM_4472\"<\/a> \"SAM_4461\"<\/a> \"SAM_4460\"<\/a>Traveling further, we stopped at a small parking area on the side of the road to take pictures.<\/p>\n

\"SAM_4492\"<\/a>\"SAM_4482\"<\/a> Turkey is an amazing country with incredible resources.\u00a0 But one thing this country suffers from, is the careless way its people treats it.\u00a0 Below is the garbage that was thrown out.\u00a0 This not an isolated instance.\u00a0 It is everywhere.\u00a0 We can look out from our apartment window and see trash strewn all over the area.\u00a0 I have seen a car pull up to a curb near some trees, and open his doors and toss out all the trash in the vehicle and drive off.\u00a0 It’s sad to see this.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3337\"<\/a>We continued on and stopped for fuel and food.\u00a0 Always good food in Turkey.<\/p>\n

\"SAM_4527\"<\/a> \"IMG_0155\"<\/a>As you travel along the highways, even small farm roads, you will see stands selling the local produce.\u00a0 A lot<\/em> of produce.\u00a0 At some places, these stands were less than a mile apart.\u00a0 We decided to stop and get a pumpkin for Halloween, and I had to take a few pictures of these amazing places.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0161\"<\/a> \"IMG_0157\"<\/a>I will forever be moved by the beauty of this country and all it encompasses.\u00a0 I was not expecting its people to be so friendly and helpful.\u00a0 They will give you anything you need with a smile.\u00a0 And they will always take compensation, but not without a smile and a heartfelt thank you.\u00a0 Just like every country I have set foot on, I take a bit of it away with me.\u00a0 We placed our bid for our next post and look forward to finding out where we will be placed.<\/p>\n

One more thing to say.\u00a0 It was one evening that we were all sitting and eating, that Serkan commented about some answer to a test he took in the States this past summer.\u00a0 What I didn’t realize, though everyone else did, he took the Citizenship test and is now a US Citizen!\u00a0 My respect was already high for this man, and now it has been elevated.\u00a0 I am truly glad he is a friend of ours.\u00a0 He considers himself not only American, but also a Texan, plus I think I got him voting Republican, perhaps to Allison’s chagrin.<\/p>\n

Serkan, I plan to stay in touch with you the remainder of my life.\u00a0 Stay genuinely happy, and since you are now a Texan, don’t hesitate to kick butt.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 D.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were eagerly awaiting the Oktoberfest celebration but the week before, the horrible attack on the peace-protest at the train …<\/p>\n

Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2tztR-J3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2793"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2852,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2793\/revisions\/2852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dknolte.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}