Seductive Stay – A Life In Fethiye (Istanbul & Everything After #30)

I find myself asking the same question at every place I visit while traveling abroad. Could I live here? It is one thing to have a travel experience, quite another a living experience. I would prefer to stay more than a few days at most places. A week, a month, a lifetime, all are distinct possibilities. The more I like a place, the more my dreams of settling there expand. This is the stuff that my dreams are made of. Love at first sight has never happened to me with other people, but it has with places, I have fallen in and out of love with countless places.

If I love a place, my mind starts working on the logistics of what it would take to live there. This thought experiment has been mostly left to my imagination, except back home. The results were immensely satisfying. I have been lucky enough to live on the High Plains, Missouri River bottomlands, and Black Hills, all in South Dakota. The Sonoran Desert in Arizona, on the edge of a massive canyon in Montana, astride the Overland Trails that can still be traced across Wyoming. These were the places where I made my dreams a reality. The same kind of dreams have been stimulated by my visits abroad. The power of place attracts me.

Entrancing - The Power of Place

If I love a place, my mind starts working on the logistics of what it would take to live there. This thought experiment has been mostly left to my imagination, except back home. The results were immensely satisfying. I have been lucky enough to live on the High Plains, Missouri River bottomlands, and Black Hills, all in South Dakota. The Sonoran Desert in Arizona, on the edge of a massive canyon in Montana, astride the Overland Trails that can still be traced across Wyoming. These were the places where I made my dreams a reality. The same kind of dreams have been stimulated by my visits abroad. The power of place attracts me.

I am of the belief that our characters are shaped as much by places as people. Inhabiting and interacting with a place are two of the most enlightening aspects of travel. This was my experience in Fethiye, a city along the Turquoise Coast of Turkey. Hemmed in by rugged terrain, Fethiye faces outward towards the Aegean Sea. The natural beauty of its setting is seductive. Fethiye has a combination of shoreline, sea, and mountains that is hard to beat. There are 12 islands within day tripping distance of the harbor. Some of Turkey’s best beaches can be found only a short distance from Fethiye. The Aegean glitters in the sunlight. I imagine the same thing happens when a full moon shines in a cloudless sky on clear summer nights. Fethiye tugged at my heart strings with its beauty, romance, and vivacity. After a few days, I wanted to stay forever.

I am always looking to fall in love with places. ?Even though I know it will inevitably lead to a premature breakup. Love them and leave them can be habit forming. There is no other way with foreign travel for those who do not have the financial means to purchase a golden visa. I have learned to live with the satisfaction of knowing that a place can inhabit my imagination long after I have left it. Physically I must leave, mentally I can stay as long as I want. I knew that would be the case with Fethiye. The city was not quite love at first sight for me, but it would not take long.

Romantic Endeavor – The Greatest Attraction

When our bus first entered Fethiye, we were met by the usual welcome tourist towns in Turkey give visitors. The traffic was suffocating. Fethiye was a small city where it seemed like everyone was attempting to drive a car, bus, or lorry. Add in pedestrians and it was a recipe for gridlock. This led to the usual hurry up and wait situation which defines Turkish traffic jams. Lots of honking horns, exasperated expressions, and the potential for fender benders. The traffic was nothing more than mildly annoying by the standards of Istanbul. I found it irritating because we were going to be spending several nights in Fethiye. A respite from the road could not come soon enough. The constant start and stop nature of our previous days’ travels had worn me down. Fethiye offered three days of relaxation with optional half-day trips on the sea and to nearby historic sites. This sounded like heaven, but Fethiye offered the greatest attraction.

Our accommodation in Fethiye was excellent. The rooms were spacious and inviting with hints of optimism. A genteel exoticism pervaded the place. I was on the edge of Asia and beginning to really enjoy it. Unlike Kusadasi, which was daunting in scale and filled with impersonal concrete block buildings, Fethiye was on a much more human scale. Part of that had to do with Fethiye’s location which made it feel quainter. The city had been built to fit the natural environment. That was imperative since Fethiye had suffered widespread destruction caused by an earthquake in 1957. Fethiye was not exactly brand new, but close to it. One of Fethiye’s most appealing attributes was the Turkish part of town. This felt more real, local, and alive. Tourism and Turkish life existed side by side. They were different, but not mutually exclusive communities. They complement one another.

Pledging Allegiance – The Turquoise Coast

In the days to come, I explored Fethiye more in-depth. This included walks in the neighborhood where my accommodation was located, I soon realized that Brits were everywhere. Fethiye was obviously a well-regarded retirement destination for them. They had transferred their allegiance to affordable seaside settings from Spain to Turkey’s Turquoise Coast. The Brits were almost all pensioners who had retired to Fethiye because it was safe and sunny, cheap and beautiful. What more could anyone want? Later in the evening, I would walk past several restaurants where the pensioners were having dinner and drinks while watching English Premier League football.

I am no lover of European football, but the camaraderie of these expats fascinated me. They might as well have been in Folkestone instead of Fethiye. Living in Turkey had done nothing to curb their love for a pint and the daily match. At that moment, Great Britain seemed not so far away. Watching them, I thought that could be me one day. Life in Fethiye with the comforts of home was an appealing prospect. Judging by the many apartments I noticed advertised for sale at real estate agencies in the city center there were plenty of options for westerners. The appeal of Fethiye was calling to anyone with the ambition looking for a new home and quite possibly a better one.