Moving to Antalya Turkey

in three hours it will be exactly 60 days that i have been here in antalya turkey and i'm inviting you for a cup of tea to just hear what i've done what i've accomplished and what i've learned here in turkey in just 60 days okay number one turkish tea is sacred three four five times a day and when somebody offers you tea you take it and you accept it you enjoy the moment and you learn how to slow down and just breathe okay number two means welcome and they really mean it when someone says hush godziness they offer you anything and everything they've got and whether it was foddy my taxi cab nice people now you're living in your kind yes i you know food and oranges and chamomile tea we just got the cutest surprise dropped off at our door and this is walnuts turkish figs which are famous and homemade fig jam and it was from our taxi cab driver bari from last week and he did mention that he had a little farm and he had all of these things and he wanted to invite us to meet his wife and all of that and it was just so heartwarming and it's truly beautiful to see the generosity of the turkish people he or our doorman or who gave us food and knitted crocheted socks and the list goes on and on everything you've heard about turkish people and being welcoming and kind and loving is absolutely true we've barely touched the surface of what turkey has to offer we've been to olympus and some of the other southern areas like melania antalya but we haven't even touched the surface and already it just is so captivating in the could even do a lot of justice to it but truly it is magnificent for the eye and you know again i mean i come from laguna beach california one of the most beautiful places in the world as well and still this is truly just captivating so yes the landscape is incredible so a couple of the things that have really shocked me along the way is as i've been purchasing things for our home i was shocked that so many things are actually manufactured here in turkey my first shopping experience in turkey metro it is just like costco what impressed me the most so far is how everything has a digital display so if you see that everything is digital so their infant inventory control is actually even better because everything is up to date until the last minute [Music] and i started taking pictures of everything that i could see that was actually manufactured and there is an endless list and it really made me think of how sad it is right now in america that so few items are actually manufactured in america and so that sense of pride no longer exists in america [Music] so [Music] okay so color pencils made in turkey amazing okay so buying a house um everybody's been asking me like what are you doing in turkey what are you doing well okay this is it i'm going to answer the questions um things became really hard in america and we all know you know the economic the political the strife the division that's been going on in america and for me my soul my situation in my life right now i needed peace i needed calm i needed just quiet time to get away from all of that strife and i felt that turkey was the place to do it because of the natural the natural landscape the beauty of the the culture and of course there are so many of my people circations that are here and you know it's estimated that six to eight million circadians um are here in turkey we have been running into them everywhere we go whether it's you know on the street shopping for household goods or swimming in the mediterranean sea like i literally swam into somebody who was circasian so it is just really nice to be able to do that so anyway going back to buying a house um it was far more affordable and you know buying a three-bedroom house in antalya you can easily do it for less than a hundred thousand dollars and get a really nice place that you feel comfortable and safe in um you know there's struggles along the way but it was really easy for us like we literally bought the house within three days and we had the money wire transferred and it was really easy and shockingly easy because it was just a matter of you know getting the wire transfer directly to the developer the next day we went to the benedictine where you know they give you the title of the home and all of the details and like you literally can stand there with the title of your home within a day like there's no escrow there's no complication that was just like mind-blowing to be able to buy a house within 24 hours and the following day i went with our real estate agent binad and we went and we connected the electricity we connected the water all of the utilities at each of the government offices and that literally took half an hour to an hour at each office so it was not very heavy with bureaucratic you know obnoxious you know waiting in lines and things the most complicated thing was actually buying a car and buying that car was way more complicated um i think because the turkish government is really focusing on public transportation and minimizing the amount of the environmental impacts of cars and whatnot there is a huge tax on cars so whether you decide to bring your car into turkey or you purchase a car here you can expect to at least pay 60 to 70 percent over value of what your car would actually be and so that was a shock and you know i was thinking of bringing my honda pilot to turkey but that particular model is not available here so if i needed parts or anything like that that wouldn't have worked out and i was thinking of like piling up all of my stuff in my car and getting it transported here um to save the money on shipping my stuff but again the taxes would have probably evened out but long-term maintenance would not have worked out for me so i ended up getting a car from northern turkey which is in trabzon and um again helped us with finding the car on sahih bin den which is kind of like the all to go to where you want to purchase sell anything and we were able to buy the car from there and then bilal flew into istanbul to sampson to trabzon and then drove it like 12-14 hours back yeah okay so we've got the circasian music going on [Music] i've got this we're acting like it's a circadian wedding that i got a a groom and here it is all the way from trafford turkey the next really hard thing was actually getting on the road and driving in turkey and um wow what an experience that was and i did it and i did it on christmas day of all days and it happened to fall on the weekend and there was no traffic because of corona lockdown and i convinced my mother who was totally against it and she was like no no no no and what if there's pirates on the roads and they kidnap us you know me i don't live in fear so we are just entering the area of the saint nicholas church as far as getting work done in the house i am really really proud of something and that is that from the very get-go from our first real estate agent um i had chosen bilad because he was circasian and contractors workers [Laughter] [Music] delicious [Music] [Music] so can i just go back to driving one more time um i spent a month or so actually almost a month and a half looking for a map and i couldn't find one again began to the rescue he did get me this map but the funny thing is is that it's completely worthless because um street signs are literally like this big like big street little sign so even if you're driving there's no possible way for you to see what that street sign is and know that that's where you're going to turn right or left so how do you drive and then um following the gps is not easy because um the street sign doesn't match what the gps voice is telling you and when she says chadesi whatever that's not what is mentioned on the sign so basically you're just going to be driving around and around and around and eventually you do get where you need to go like that's all there is to it so just trust in the motion of things [Music] so worthless okay so one of the other reasons of coming to turkey was of course to reconnect to my spiritual self and hearing the adan five times a day has been a reminder how easy it is and how frequent it is that we can stray off the straight path so easily and it just takes a few hours to really start thinking the wrong way or feeling the wrong way about things and wow so that then the call to prayer five times a day is definitely something that is an adjustment and it's just kind of like this wake-up call constantly like okay so once again i have completely um failed in my own measurement of time distance depth and my own capabilities i really did imagine myself where i would be speaking turkish by now and um it's been hard and i am a language person and i am someone that connects and really enjoys languages so much and i'm not speaking turkish and it's so frustrating and i wish i was more patient and i'm not um i mean i have the turkish lessons going on day and night night and day i don't brush my teeth without you know the sound of turkish vocabulary going on in the background and it's still the light has not clicked on for me and i don't know what it's going to click on but been hard and turkish is an easy language another thing i've learned about myself is that um i need my english-speaking friends i can't just be in a new country without having someone to understand my inside jokes and you know my pop culture my sarcasm oh my god um you cannot be sarcastic in a country and rely on google translate don't do that trust me it already cost cost me a couple friendships because i tried to be cute and sarcastic and no no so as far as that's concerned i started a little writer's group from a facebook group of expats so it was just a few people that wanted to do some writing and i invited them to the beach so this is my writing group i've only waited 45 years for this moment and we finally we're here we're in antalya and we're so excited because we're starting a journey together of writing and yeah and it was of course the thing about resistance okay everybody today is really exciting this is our third meeting of the ontalia writers group and interesting story just happened just developed literally a couple minutes ago ailin just told us that two weeks ago she read ikena's book the children's book and that inspired her and she just wrote her own children's book and she just gave us the news right now so literally two weeks ago two meetings ago and one of our other writers wrote a children's book and now island did so we want to capture this moment island we are so proud of you right camilla yes [Laughter] i'm a little bit shocked but i felt her energy about waking up so i'm not surprised thank you very much so island exactly like what was it that inspired you to write this book this group and i want to say thank you to all and things some sometimes just started like that just give your decision and start it just snowballed in four weeks so even though i've only been here for less than well 60 days in two hours maybe um we were already able to build a little community and we really enjoy our time together and every week marina brings beautiful little flowers and a candle and incense critique each other's work we really get into them and emotionally center each other and then we just throw the flowers into the ocean with like a you know a sense of gratitude and we go on our happy ways and then we do our writing and then we come back the following week and it's just become this cute little family and i need them and i love them already and from this group another group has stemmed stephen decided to create a public speaking group and we just met last week and i took my little cousin nariz who was a syrian refugee six years ago she was 18 years old and she came and she's very shy and she just you know only came because i begged her to come and out of nowhere in the public speaking group she agreed to speak and she got up and she spoke in front of complete strangers and so i have been asking myself for a long time i was a patient person or an impatient person actually i don't know until now i don't know [Music] so that happened and so you know you get to witness something so beautiful out of something that triggered something that triggered another something and so good triggers good good people motivate others and the inspiration continues on and on so wherever you are you know you could be in a really tough place or you know a sad situation or whatnot but you know you can create your own community you can create your own new family and that's what i did here as well and even though they're not turkish but i needed them because i needed to have someone to connect and communicate with in my language in english and we did it and so that was something that was wonderful that i learned about myself that i can create my own community and network wherever i am and that was very very empowering okay so what are the three hardest things that i've experienced here in turkey um obviously missing home you know missing my girls and taco tuesday if you know me you know what that means you know that i will do anything for taco tuesdays and um i haven't had any tacos in turkey um second hardest thing is definitely not having a garbage disposal i know that's so random that they don't have garbage disposals and that is definitely something that is really hard i know that's random um okay so the really the hardest thing and this hit me two nights ago i was talking to someone online here in turkey and it hit me because i was just about to tell them a story about my past back in america and like something pretty extraordinary that i had done back in the states and then i realized that this person doesn't even have the capacity to understand what that meant based on it being relevant in the united states like there it was a big deal here it's not a big deal and that's when i realized that so much of who i am and what i've been and what i've lived you know i've lived so many lifetimes there has no meaning or value or relevance here in some kind of like invisible way so once again i find myself in a weird predicament that the past doesn't really matter and it's just being in the present and so who i was there has no significance here whatsoever and at first that was really painful you know my ego was bruised a little bit and i'm like but but i want to tell you this great story but it had nothing of value to this person so why would i even take the time to get google translate to to help them understand that so that's when i just kind of backed off a little bit and i realized you know what what i packed in my suitcases is really what i have to share and i was kind of a little bit you know hurt that i couldn't share the story and then i said that and i said i'm a bit sad that i can't share who i am and who i've been back there and i've lived such an extraordinary life and that person said maybe your more extraordinary life is just beginning here and that's what i was like wow okay so that's what i learned in turkey is um maybe the best is yet to come so 60 days thanks centalia

Channel: Suhein Beck

Views: 38,595

Rating: 4.887218 out of 5

Keywords: Suhein Beck, Circassian, Moving to Turkey, Moving to Antalya, Antalya, Expats in Turkey, Expats in Antalya, Buying a property in Turkey, Adighe, Cherkas, Circassian Women, Adiga, how to buy real estate in turkey, real estate in turkey, retire in turkey

Id: 8o_Lc4FfMuQ

Length: 23min 1sec (1381 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 26 2021