Another favourite...

One of the highlights of our trip back to Australia was being able to see an exhibition of my great grandfathers work on at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Before moving to Turkey, Senol and I spent many weekends with my Dad framing prints of my great grandfather's work. It was a wonderful time for us - up in the mud brick studio, which is surrounded by gum trees and garden, far away from the noise of the city where we spent our weekdays. The only sounds would be the birds calling out, the occasional possum on the roof or the classical music that would usually be on quietly in the background. Senol would cut the glass and prepare the backing boards, Dad would make the frames and I would cut the mounts. We would spend time together deciding which frame would suit a particular painting and which mount would bring out the colours of the artwork. And of course there were plenty of coffee breaks.

Now every Sunday we go down to our favourite coffee place and I love that they usually have Mozart playing and I think of Dad and miss our weekends framing together.













After spending so much time framing prints it was wonderful to see so much of great grandfather's work 'in the flesh'. The vibrancy of the work is what struck me most. And I was able to see many paintings that I had never seen before. I also loved seeing the development and change in his work when he started painting the Flinders Ranges.

This is the little summary from the Gallery's website:

One of Australia's greatest artists, Hans Heysen (1877-1968), is celebrated with the first major retrospective of his work in three decades at the Art Gallery of South Australia. The Hans Heysen exhibition features more than one hundred works created over the artist's seventy year career.

Born in Germany in 1877, Hans Heysen emigrated to Adelaide, South Australia with his family at the age of seven. After four years studying in Europe, Heysen embarked on one of the most successful careers in Australian art, becoming synonymous with the Adelaide Hills town of Hahndorf, where he worked and lived.

The Art Gallery of South Australia holds the largest and most representative collection of works by Hans Heysen, including more than two thousand drawings, oils and watercolours bequeathed by the artist himself. Included in the exhibition are many of Heysen's greatest oil and watercolour paintings, alongside rarely-seen
preliminary sketches and studies.

Testament to Heysen's national standing, the Gallery has borrowed masterpieces from every major collection in the country as well as from many regional and private collections, to tell the story of Heysen's art. In addition to his iconic ‘gum tree' paintings, the exhibition takes a fresh look at Heysen's lesser-known themes. Hans Heysen traces the artist's development from early student days painting in Europe from 1899-1903, including images of Paris and Venice, to the revelation of barren
landscapes and ancient mountain forms in the Flinders Ranges from 1926.

The exhibition will be touring Australia for about 2 years, including going to the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Australia.

PS. Recently Sharon, creator of the website Expats Moving and Relocation Guide, contacted me about putting one of my stories about living in Istanbul on her site. The end result - 'Manyak Misin?' - a post I wrote after one of my early driving experiences here is now on her website. Sharon sounds like she has many interesting stories to tell as well - she has been an expat in the US, Venezuela and Canada.

Some favourites

My favourite photo from the trip:My second favourite restaurant from the trip (am planning to post about my favourite very soon): Libertine - French dining in North Melbourne. Mmmm, the lavender creme brulee - so delicious.


Favourite new recipe: This delicious watermelon and marinated fetta salad my Mum made on Christmas day. The mint makes it taste so fresh.

Was there a dressing on it Mum?

I will definitely be making this one in Summer here. Watermelons are sold from the back of huge trucks here in Summer, and of course there is no problem getting fetta here!

Hello! Remember me?

Just dropping in quickly to let you know that we are back after a gorgeous three weeks in Australia. Here are a few photos to give you a taste of what it was like (although it was actually a little cold some days - Melbourne weather is like that!). I am just getting settled back in around here but will be back with more news and photos very soon. And yes, things didn't quite go as planned with the posting while I was away... but I am excited to be back (and sad to have left Australia again). I have missed this whole blogging world and am looking forward to catching up on all my favourite blogs and to hearing from you all again!

Nerd indicator #2: Don't be evil

To keep up the nerdy image (thick rimmed glasses and all) I just finished reading The Google Storyand I totally nerded out about it. I couldn't put it down!

The book starts with the development of the system and technology of the search engine while the Google duo (Sergey Brin and Larry Page) were at Stanford and then goes through the rise and rise of the company. The book claims on the back cover that "This book was not created, authorized, or endorsed by Google Inc." But they wouldn't really have anything to complain about and I totally wouldn't be surprised if they funded the whole thing. The author even attempts to make the whole computer/software/business story a little risque and sexy (attempts not succeeds) with a chapter called 'Porn cookie guy', another called 'Playboys' and another about the 'burning man' festival with mention of getting naked around a burning effigy. He also quickly argues himself out of the small amount of criticisms he makes and provides many favourable comparisons with 'evil' Microsoft. And despite the obvious bias I still bought in to the whole 'don't be evil' Google mantra wholesale! It makes Google look like the cool guy from the Apple Mac ads and Microsoft the PC guy.

I loved getting info about how the ranking of search results works, the conditions at Google offices (massages, time to work on your own projects, free ice-cream days etc) and the floating of the Google stock which made many of the employees super rich. There is even a whole chapter on the apparently legendary chef who cooked up nutritious organic food for all the employees.

And now that I have finished with Google I dipped into Sacre Cordon Bleu: What the French know about cookingand I am already addicted. It starts with the burning of recipe books by celebrity chefs and then Micheal Booth, his wife and two young children are off to Paris so that he can study at the famous cooking school - Le Cordon Bleu. By the time Madame Raffarin shows them around the Parisian apartment full of shelves of dusty antique books, vast oil paintings and fading velvet curtains with views of the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower (and then they excitedly spy the boulangerie and chocolatier on the street below) I was hooked! I am already dreaming of moving to Paris or at least having an extended holiday there.

And a little more from Sweden

Just wanted to post one last thing about the trip to post...well actually I just wanted to show you a few of the cute little things we picked up in Sweden.

We went all out on the souvenirs ;) This is a packet of crisp bread - love the packaging and we discovered Yashar loves chewing on it. And then there are the tins of 'Makrill'...which lucky brother in law will be getting those in their Christmas stocking?? (hehehe).



And a cute little wooden helicopter for Yashar of course.

One of the locals we met while in Sweden said that 'this is Stockholm at its best'. And it was beautiful while we there. Although it was very cold in the mornings and evenings, we had some beautiful days. The sun was shining and the leaves were starting to turn golden. Stockholm is fairly peaceful and we spent a lot of time at Djurgarden, a gorgeous tranquil island with woods, gardens and museums.

One day we stumbled into the Nordiska Museet, which I really enjoyed. It wasn't a 'wow, you have to go there' type place, but it had a lot of exhibits that were just the sort of thing I liked. They had a exhibition on shoes (what's not to love about that!), Swedish homes, Swedish interiors (a history of Swedish interior design), a gorgeous dolls houses exhibit and another with amazing examples of folk art - all that work done by hand that is really worth the description 'art'.

The carved wooden sculptures exhibit was inspiring. This is a huge wooden sculpture of King Gustav Vasa -the first king of a united Sweden. So many of the characters and creatures looked like they were just waiting to be in a children's story. A story with snow and forests, bears and mittens and warm cocoa by the fire.

We are back from Sweden and glad to be home. Actually I was discussing this with Senol in the taxi on the way back from the airport - about whether it feels like he is coming home when he gets back to Istanbul - and, strange as it may seem, we both agreed that it was like coming back to our second home. Australia (Melbourne to be exact) still rates above Istanbul for that coming home feeling even though Senol was born and grew up in Istanbul.

Stockholm was refreshing. It made me think about and compare the positives and negatives of Istanbul. So if I had to generalise -ok I don't have to but I will anyway! - I would say that Stockholm is more organised, has way less traffic, has cleaner streets, lots of bikes (yay! Sweden is very environmentally friendly as far as I could see) and excellent education. Stockholm also has a ridiculous number of tall, thin well dressed people in that very Swedish, thick rimmed glasses, designy, slim pants kind of way. Do you know what I am talking about at all here??? So cool.

But there was one thing I really missed about Istanbul - it was all the love and attention Yashar gets from everyone. Here in Istanbul every time we go out and about Yashar gets smiles from everyone. If we go to have a coffee the waiter or waitress will come over to say hello to him and play a few little games with him and will often pick him up and carry him around to say hello to all the other staff and customers! We are stopped on the street every single time we go out by people wanting to say hello and tell me what a cute little boy he is. In Stockholm, it was kind of sad to see him waving away at people as they went past, his eyes bright with anticipation, and often they would give him nothing back. Of course there were some lovely people we met in Stockholm that were friendly with him, but it was no where near the kind of attention he gets here. Children are truely adored in Istanbul.

Stockholm is a gorgeous city, made up of many small islands so that beautiful water views are intertwined with the city streets. This post is starting to get essay like though - so more on what we got up to next post!

Yashar update

Yashar loved the water, having swims every day in Edremit. A little water baby! And we've now discovered that he loves to push his stroller along - very funny!

I have also included a few more shots from Edremit. There were lots of different fruit trees, vines and lots of crickets! It would be so fantastic to have a garden that produces all sorts of delicious things (instead of the bare balcony we have at the moment). At the place we rented there were grape vines covering the terraces, pomegranate trees (that's a pomegranate tree behind the pink gate), nectarines... so good to stand barefoot on the grass on a warm summer morning, pick a nectarine and eat it on the spot.








We discovered this little friend one morning on Yashar's little floaty thing. I think it looks like a little alien, don't you?

One idea I stumbled on while we were away that I loved were the rosemary hedges lining so many of the holiday houses. In the evening, while I was pushing Yashar around in the stroller trying to get him to sleep (yes still having trouble with that!) I would skim my hand along the top of the hedge . It smelt delicious and reminded me of roast lamb. Mmmmm....

Rosemary is pretty tough and usually doesn't need too much water so perfect for Australian summers and my gardening style! I don't know how they kept them looking so green and bushy though. And I wonder how long they take to grow.

Ok, so obviously I'm just an armchair gardener at the moment. I've already managed to kill my only pot plant here. But I have high expectations and aspirations. Rosemary hedges are definitely going on the list for my dream home/garden, along with chickens, a day bed and fruit trees. I want a garden that would be the perfect setting for these little cuties. Is it wrong to love babyGap?

Olive Groves and the Aegean Sea

Enough relaxing already! Back to the sticky Istanbul heat. We just got back from a beautiful place on the Aegean Sea in the midwest of Turkey. The area is close to Edremit and is about 7 hours drive, 5 near misses, 2 crying episodes and 1 Iskender Kebab from Istanbul. It's well off the beaten track for foreign tourists but is popular with Turkish holiday makers, many of whom have a holiday house there.


What I loved most about the area was the olive trees. They were everywhere! On the beach and and back into the hills as far as the eye could see. Their trunks were so wide and twisted and their branches heavy with hundreds of olives. I can't even guess how old they were.


Yup, they are all olive trees on all of those hills.

So of course I was hoping to find beautiful olive oil soaps and creams, but wasn't quite as successful as I hoped. We did pick up a huge block of olive soap from a stall on the side of the road which was definitely handmade but I have to admit that it looks and smells pretty feral! I did have one great find though on the long road trip back which I will share with you as soon as they are washed and cleaned!