We Thrived in Ruins and Looked for Mermaids on the Aegean Sea, Part 1
A Turkish summer of fantastical exploits and healing camaraderie
When I was twenty-two, I spent two months traveling throughout Turkey. I was called Indiana Jones during a party of belly dancers on the Black Sea and nearly died of food poisoning on the Syrian border. I was shown secret underground caves in Cappadocia for a bottle of raki by a wise drunk and slept in the back of a chocolate truck hitchhiking back to Istanbul.
But of all my experiences, the time I spent living on the Aegean overlooking a small bay and a Mermaid’s sea cave outside of Fethiye, with no other human beings except for a brilliant Aussie traveler named Daniel, was the most beautiful part of my adventures.
It was 1995, I had been living in Prague for six months and I had just traveled to Amsterdam to promote Yazzyk magazine, the art and literature magazine I worked for. Explosively hungover from the magazine’s release party where I DJed the event with the Voodoo Mambo crew at the Roxy, I was excited to board a plane and get out of the pollution, humidity, and dirty heat of the Czech summer.
I had been in constant chronic pain in Prague, and I wanted a retreat. Somewhere I could heal, get away from the pressure I felt, and the beer…
