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The Hotel
The guy at the hotel the last couple days is evidently the owner. He really does his best to communicate with me. That is one nice
thing about a place where tons of foreigners do not hang out: the people still have some interest in talking to silly Americans who can only speak a little Turkish. The guy told me a bit about his family, though I can't understand how he can put two kids through college on his salary. There must be something more to this hotel. He said the building is like fifty years old, which I guess is pretty old for this area. Despite the long history of this area, modern Turkey only goes back 75 years. A lot of concrete buildings and asphalt roads have been built in that time, but a lot of it is in need of repair already. The owner told me that this building will be replaced in 2000, though I don't know who is going to rebuild it.
Pasoglu Museum
After a little stroll around and some interneting, I visited this 19th century mansion just up from the center of town. Although the building is not so old by some standards, it is something special indeed. It now houses an ethnographic museum which shows a day in the life of a wealthy family from this time. This is a time when Islam was stronger and Turkish was still written in Arabic letters. There is a statue of the much revered Ataturk upstairs, though. He stands next to the sofa that he supposedly took a rest on when he visited Ordu in the twenties. That was the beginning of a new era for Turkey, and the people will never forget him. Almost every store, house, hotel, whatever, has a few slightly unnerving pictures of this man staring down at everyone.
Mavi Jeans
Another part of the modernization of Turkey was, of course, the change in dress. Women were no longer supposed to cover their heads. Men would adopt the western suit, unlike businessman and
politicians in some other Middle Eastern countries. Then there was the importation of jeans: Levis. I still have not found anywhere where it would be profitable for me to bring in Levis to sell. However, their popularity is no fiction. In order to balance the scale a bit, I decided to buy some Turkish jeans last time I was here. Mavi is Turkish for "blue" and it is the name of a fine clothing company.
After three years of waiting, I decided it was finally time to get some new Mavi Jeans. There is a store on the strip here that sells nothing buy Mavis. I stepped inside and tried to communicate a bit with the storekeepers. There just happened to be a Turk who lives in Austria there. He has learned English in school, so he offered to translate for me. An avid Mavi fan himself, Fatih convinced me to buy two pairs: one a sort of baggy American style, and one of the new (old) style bell-bottomed types. They weren't cheap, but they are comfy.
Fatih
After helping me make my big purchase, Fatih invited me to dinner. We decided on a little pizza place right underneath my hotel. He proceeded to tell me about his eight siblings who all have Austrian citizenship, although half of them were born in Turkey. Every summer the family comes back to Ordu to spend some time in their second home. Father picks some hazelnuts in the countryside while the kids play in town and at the beach. Many people seem to have these month-long summer retreats. Not bad.
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