Every time I come to this city I am amazed at how
many memories have been collected here, how much time was spent working,
thinking, drinking and loving. Whenever I come here I think about how much laughter
I had with friends, of all the nights we spent walking back from bars making
stupid jokes, how many days we spent walking on the walls, talking about
everything: life, politics, love, relationships, IMT.
Somehow it is easy to work here; it is silent and
it is magical, in a way. But if you stay in Lucca for too long you forget that
there is an outer world and what happens is that as soon as you get into the
outer world, you realize that there are more inspiring things than this city.
There are certainly less claustrophobic cities than Lucca. One cannot breathe as
comfortably as one does in Istanbul, especially getting out of the plane and
smelling the air of Istanbul, that air of liberation, that air of salvation,
the smell of home even though my real home is Kayseri. As I said to a couple of
friends, I gave my youth to Istanbul and my maturity to Italy almost, almost...
whatever that means.
Lucca has been a home for me, too. I’ve met such
great people here, I made great friends and had a great time with them, we
laughed and cried. I met my love here, I met his blue eyes here in the canteen.
But before that in Pizza Felice. I
ran on the walls not leading anywhere, knowing that I cannot get rid of the
questions in my head unless I decide on what to do and where to go, and unless
I know what I should do better. Always questioning and sometimes feeling guilty
about having fun; since I had this PhD I started to feel that it is awkward to
have fun, and guilt follows cause stopping to think makes me feel that I am
choosing to be stupid. But for sure it does not have to be the case, it can be
the opposite. Sometimes one becomes more aware laughing at things that one
wants more, and what is important for him and her.
It has been almost three years since I came to
Lucca. It will be three years in February. Four months in Sheffield and before
that four months in Ottawa. Now three months in Brighton. I have lived my life
like a bird. A bird of passage as Piore calls it. But I never knew where I
would end up and who I would end up with and what I would have become. Still, ambiguities
lead my life but I can see the doors and corridors and I can see in which
palace I am wondering now more clearly, some days shadows cast darkness,
sometimes light comes inside the windows. I see the blue sky of Tuscany, the
green and tall and old trees. And the yellow buildings with their undecorated
facades peer at me. They look at the sky, they look at the streets, they look
at the patika (s). They look at each other and they are aware that they will be
standing for 100 years more and they are not willing to go anywhere. They are
all wise and in total harmony with their surroundings.
They know I am a guest, they know we are guests.
Each morning whenever I open the window, I see these houses, the balconies, so
Italian and so beautiful and I take a deep breath and I feel at peace. I see
the garden and the green and the walls. I breath.... and I thank God.
Then I go to Istanbul, I see my family, my friends,
walk in Taksim, see how things are changing, how gentrification is taking occurring.
How there are no housing policies for the poor, but that the city is being
controlled by forces that have nothing to do with people's will. And it is
controlled by big businesses and hotel builders, the rich contractors who get a
project and then risk the lives of the construction workers for the sake of
profits, as they are too busy counting their money maybe. And then as if
Istanbul needs it skyscrapers in the middle of nowhere, as if Istanbul would
not be Istanbul without these skyscrapers, they are built. It makes me sad to
think that in 2002 when I arrived in Istanbul there were trees in Taksim, they
cut them down. There were patika streets, they bought made in China cheap
stones to replace them. Everything has changed, Starbucks took the place of
nice cafes and pasticcerias. What has happened? The old cinema Emek had to
move, the traditional has been captured by the capitalist's desires.
In Brighton old, The Duke of York cinema still
stands. They say it is one of the oldest cinemas in Europe. Why do they keep things
and we get rid of things? Why don’t we respect history and the historical
buildings together with the same mentality of forgetting, destroying,
rebuilding, building like a mall?
Malls give jobs but they do not give great
perspectives, they do not give the taste of the city, they are for made-up
cities like Dubai, they are not for Istanbul and for every place and inch in
Istanbul. However, there is not much to do. The British keep their traditional
buildings, so do the Italians, but the Turks, these Turks, they do not know how
to keep and to cherish. Some friends say to keep them is not a good idea either
if they are too old. But look they stand on their feet with all their wisdom,
they are restored to their original looks. And they are unique and will stay as
such. A mall cannot be unique on the other hand.
I was in Budapest last week. I was amazed at the
beauty of the buildings, it reminded me of Rome in many ways. But larger isles and
larger pedestrian areas. Larger places for people, a city for people, a city
for parades, a city for rebellion. It amazed me. The sky was as grey as it is
in Brighton, and the weather was cold. Then I imagined Istanbul's weather and I
imagined Rome's weather... the weather in those places was much better, but
Budapest was maybe better protected than Istanbul (for Rome cannot say much as
Rome is very well protected too)... it was amazing to see that Budapest was
upholding so much history in these stone facades of the houses... At the same
time, we went to the poorer parts with someone called Janos, who guided us in
our journey. We went to the old areas where it was said to be dangerous. It did
not seem so. There too all the houses are being gentrified and it seems that
they are paying the poor to leave to the suburban towns to leave Budapest... a
place for the homeless. In the evening people go there and make a queue but if
it is full you cannot sleep there hence you have to leave the place and sleep
on the street. On the other hand, there is this bar which is called Szimpla and
it is such a huge one. Totally run down, I was thinking that it could have been
a place for the homeless but it is a bar instead. And if I was doing my
bachelor I would have liked to go there often. Such a cool place. But one
thinks... on the one hand these aristocratic houses, the other side there are
palaces and castles, rundown pubs, houses for the homeless, old houses that
were shared by many after the Soviet influence... so much history, so much to
say, so much to know. The passages that connect the city and make it walker friendly...
The bridges that tie Buda and Pest. The famous hamam made by the Turks at the
bottom of the hill, the saint that was thrown into the water by the pagans in a
barrel, the German influence, the influence of Ottomans and pashas... the city,
if it could have talked, it would have talked all night long. The Jewish
quarter is a nice part of the city and the Jewish shoes that are near the
sea signifying those who were killed during the Nazi occupation... Then comes
the Reagan sculpture, which has nothing to do with this history but somehow as
if by chance has come and settled there in the middle. It showed me how
ignorant I am about Eastern Europe and middle Europe. For me, it is middle
Europe, even if I would not follow Kundera's highly ideological thesis on this.
2.5 hours from London to go to Budapest, this is such a short journey and then
you find yourself in one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. Budapest...
and yes they have saved all, they have not betrayed history from the way it
looks. Although history has been rewritten many times and some memories
such as the Holocaust had not been given the necessary importance as one London
Review of Books article indicates, I had not had the information to make
comments regarding this aspect. Basically, everybody wants to forget their own
faults and so they just ignore what has happened.
I have to say that I did not like the aristocratic
system as before where the rich families lived in places looking outside and on
the facade but the poorer lived in the inner parts of the buildings. And it has
changed with the Soviet regime, everybody had to have the same house and
similar conditions. Compared to the previous system it sounds much better. Was
there homelessness during that time?
Another impression I have got from the city was
that the old people looked really desperate while the young people were active
and everywhere. Compared with the old in the UK and Italy, the ones in Budapest
do not seem to be taken care of, they seem to be forgotten and they seem to
have had a long past full of memories, if I could have talked to them they
would have told me about it.
It should not be a coincidence that the most
sophisticated cafe is called the New York Cafe... and it should not be a
coincidence that history is rewritten each time the ideology shifts. Yes, I did
go to the New York cafe and had a hot lemonade and I do not regret it... but as
soon as I entered there I wanted to talk about finance, buying houses, art,
history and I wanted to be pretentious. And I did succeed in that. Later,
luckily I left the place and got back to my normal self.
The Danube and the lights, the Danube
and the castle, the parliament, and the shoes... and the buildings, and the
hills... it reminded me for a moment Istanbul... nothing can be as beautiful as
the Bosporus but this was quite similar and beautiful in a different manner...
I do not know how to describe it...
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