The country where you eat sesame curls for breakfast and buy yoghurt in a bucket is both familiar and foreign to us. If you were to throw Germany, Russia, Greece, Egypt and Iran into a blender, Turkey would probably come out. The author travels through Anatolia – from Istanbul to the Mediterranean, through desert landscapes, to the green Black Sea coast, to Kurdistan and to the cold mountain regions of the East.
He visits a remote valley where the best chess players are said to live and meets the man who wants to build the largest ski resort in Turkey. He travels to the place where the apostle Paul began his Christian mission and to a village that is resisting its downfall.
Over tea, he learns what the Deep State is, why the head of government hates cigarettes, what moustaches have to do with politics and how blue glass eyes protect against misfortune. The journey ends where Turkey borders Iran and where Noah’s Ark is said to have once stranded.
On the cover of the book - probably by the publisher - a small inscription is added to the title: "Encounters in Turkey". And this is precisely what makes the book so (typically Austrian?) charming. Drißner does not lecture, he does not show the reader everything he knows about this country on the Bosporus - he meets the intellectuals with the same curiosity as the simple people from the village far away from the modern city.
Gerald Drißner is a travel journalist of the new generation. It is the antithesis of the fast-paced research that is unfortunately the norm today. Gerald Drißner moves to the country he wants to write about. Learn the language, let yourself drift. The result is travel books, such as the one from Egypt or now the latest from Turkey. Not travel guides, but sources of inspiration to understand the country you are traveling to.
Reading tip, June 2015
