Travelling through Europe, one clinic at a time: 2014

Turkey (76,6 milj.; 14 veterinary university colleges and schools)

Istanbul (14 milj.)

Turkish Airlines in it’s known glory. The girls want to fly around the globe twice because there are so many good films to see on the plane. Unfortunately the flight to Istanbul is only two hours long. Getting to Gizem’s house from the airport almost takes as long as the flight because as we find out, we’ve arrived during the national holiday of Bayram. For Bayram, everyone tries to get somewhere else, all over the Islamic world. Our taxi driver doesn’t really know the Asian side of Istanbul where we are supposed to go and turns out a major bridge is closed. Gizem explains something to the driver, we settle on 120 liras for the ride, and on our way we go. The driver is watching football from his phone, and not paying a lot of attention to where we’re going. Suddenly the screen goes black and the football fans go silent – the battery has run out. The driver starts to zig-zag through the streets, stops at a flower shop and the local market to get directions, we are obviously lost.

Our taxi driver, asking for directions from a flower shop

We call Gizem a few more times. As we are already very tired and don’t really know our fate at this point, we are startled when the driver suddenly stops and tells us to get out. A complete stranger on the sidewalk is also trying to convince us to exit the taxi. We have no idea what’s going on. Suddenly, Gizem’s smiling face appears next to the man and we are introduced to her father Sermet, who was sent to greet us. Gizem’s home, where she lives with her mother and father, is spacious and filled with light. There are familiar lamps hanging from the ceiling (the same ones as in my friend Anne’s house in Pärnu). Ikea – laughs Gizem. She is cheerful and warm, just like her mother Aysin, smiling and laughing assuringly. By the way, „anne“ is „mother“ in Turkish.

We sit down in the kitchen. We are given a thorough overview of what we’re about to eat and where it’s all from. It’s all definitely „Yum-yum!“ as Gizem repeats many times. Everything is just delicious.

Finally, full of great food, we roll into our warm beds. The girls share a room and I’m in another, where Ezel, the cat stays to stand watch as the other cat Kar („snow“) stays away in proud solitude. It doesn’t care about a pilgrim like me.

Ezel

Kar

In front of PatiSev Veterinary Clinic with Gizem and her mother

The next morning I go to work with Gizem. Although it’s Bayram, the clinic is open from 10. In an hour there’s a lot to do – help 2 paralyzed cats pee, let the dogs out, feed the inpatients and the cats staying in the cat hotel, clean, examine some patients, give medicine. I try to help with everything I can. Gizem trusts a tiny nameless kitten who hasn’t eaten in two weeks into my hands. They’ve tried to feed it with a syringe. I open a can of cat food and try rubbing a little food onto it’s muzzle. It starts to bite and lick my finger after a moment. I am content and happy – the magic doctor from Estonia has arrived!

Named the kitten Kiizu-Miizu

Gizem puts the cat into a cage for nebulisation because the little one has a virus of the upper airways.

Later it sits in an incubation cell

We go see some cats isolated because of a fungal infection. Practically all of the daily patients are strays, found from the streets. A home has to be found after treating or let back on the street with a heavy heart. Kind people donate money to treat them but they can only give so much.

Gizem works quickly and efficiently. Every move is thorough. I am impressed by how she avoids any spread of an infection. Washing and disinfecting this and that, all the time. This is probably the only way to join working with stray animals and domestic pets. Besides all that, she finds homes for newly healthy cats and dogs so they don’t have to live on the street.

On the 4th of October, the National Animals’ Day, a family comes in to take Bambi home.

A dog who was found on 21.07.2014 on the street and completely hairless. Gizem cured him and he is now ready to go home. A great thing to happen on this important day.

Bambi has no idea what's in store for her

Is it a new home? Good or bad? Or back on the street? Bambi just trusts people.

If only all these other strays would have the same fate – little Kiizu-Miizu who had just started eating, a dog found on the street who had a head wound and whose limp meant a fracture of the front leg. He got a cast from Gizem and a name from me – Kutsu. You could not find a more humble and thankful patient.

Kutsu's head wound is healing

But the front limb requires an x-ray

It's a fracture after all

Apart from that, Kutsu has a bad case of overshot bite

Kutsu's leg is fixed

Kutsu healed well
Now, two month later, as I am writing this I know that Kiizumiizu died in spite of our success. Kutsu was healed but unfortunately went back on the street. No one wanted to adopt him.We as veterinarias should draw more attention to "adopt, don't buy", so there wouldn't be any half-happy endings like Kutsu's, but only endings like Bambi's.

Gizem has her work cut out for her until the evening. The most difficult case is concerning a cat who fell down the balcony. The x-ray shows a thoracic spinal fracture, the prognosis is hopeless and the cat is in pain, despite pain medication given by Gizem, but the owner does not listen to Gizem and wants to treat the cat despite all this. Maybe she sees Gizem’s two cats who are happily dragging themselves around the room or lying on the chairs under the window and she thinks her cat could also live like this. But she doesn’t know that keeping a cat like this means 24h care and the fracture on her cat is located in a more difficult area and has a bad prognosis and at that moment the animal is pain, which is very hard to manage. This is the darker side of the veterinary professioon, when we have to protect the animal from its own owners and more often than not we can’t because our hands are tied. Asi s the case now – the owner takes the cat and the x-rays and goes to find a doctor who would patch up her pet’s spine. The poor animal has to suffer even more because of the selfishness and foolishness of its owner. I think in many countries an owner like that would be threatened with animal welfare.

Two paralyzed cats who live in the clinic. For the second year, they live their lives happily, using their front legs and dragging the hind legs behind, to move around.

But for them to have a more normal quality of life, Gizem or one of her colleagues has to help the cats defecate and urinate twice a day.

The staff of Atasehir PatiSev Clinic (Yigit, Aysin, Gizem) and the Estonian guests (Tiina, Silvia, Maari)

Nepal the clinic dog

After a hard day’s work, we go out to walk and have dinner. We are on the Asian side of Istanbul, which is more unknown for tourists but more interesting and definitely more inexpensive than the European side.

Last 5 - nightly views

We have a bit of raki and...

...have a nice dinner

Then we go drink some Turkish coffee

Ayşın offers to predict us our future from coffee grounds

Either I don't like it or I don't believe it

The next morning I am sick - cold, headache and probably a fever as well. I stay home alone. Gizem and her mother go to work, dad Sermet goes his own way and the girls go out on the town. I write my blog, become a bit nostalgic while watching the Song Festival video and I feel a little sad that I am sick and in people’s way. I decide that if I’m going to be sick, I might as well do it in style in a resort somewhere and I book us a very beautiful hotel Cankaya on Prince’s Island (Büyükada). In the evening I feel better, so much so that I have the energy to dance „Kaerajaan“ (an Estonian national dance) with Gizem inbetween listening to stories about Estonian an Turkish history. In fact, Gizem’s mother, who is a teacher remembered some Estonian school kids, who visited them and tought them the dance.

"Kaerajaan"

The next day we take a ferry to Prince’s Islands.

The hotel really is beautiful, new and white and the staff is very helpful and friendly.

I drink large amounts of tea with lemon and honey and wrap myself in a blanket.

The girls are surfing the web.

In the evening we go downtown to eat.

Silvia and Maari’s blog:
S: We decided to go to eat. We stayed awy from the touristy places by the sea, found some weird shack. We sat ourselves down outside. Next to the shack was another shack, where we had no intention of going, but a waiter came out from there and placed a menu on our table. We then understood that the shacks are sharing the seating area and you can order from both of them. Super! We took seafood from one and local pies from another (it might have been pizza, we couldn’t really undersand). It was tasty though. Then we went back home.

We three are very boring travellers. Basically, what we like to do is plant ourselves in some city and then walk around until we’ve seen the whole city. Therefore we have nothing much to write, I suppose.

The next day we decided that that is what we’ll do, but first we must ride with a horse carriage. Horse carriages are a big attraction at Büyükada island, there are hundreds of them. So many in fact that the whole island smells like horse poop. Very healthy for mum’s sick nose. We agreed upon a price with an old coach driver and he promised to give us a tour of the island.

The girls decided to climb up to a church on topp of a mountain, but I felt that my sick organism had had enough and went back to the hotel to sip on some more tee with lemon and honey.

The next morning I felt well enough to go back to Istanbul, so that I could spend another day in Gizem’s clinic and then to fly to Izmir (Kemer), where we would continue our journey to the Greek Islands.

We decided we would go to Istanbul through a little Island Heybeliada.

We wander around little streets and visit Ismet Inönü’s (second Turkish president after Atatürk 1938-1950) museum and one minute we realise that we can’t continue on. I am still weak from my illness and Silvia is just about to get ill – we are in no condition to traavel to Istanbul today or walk around for much longer.

Silvia and Maari’s blog

S: We go down the mountain back to this beautiful pink house, which looks like a hotel (the only hotel on the island, if I remember correctly). As it turns out, when we first passed it and I was behind taking pictures of everything, Maari was telling mum that the house looks like something out of a horror flick and they kill people there. We went there anyway and it was truly beautiful and luxurious from the inside. It had a sort of Poirot-esque glamour to it. They even had a parrot in the lounge. I think it was our most expensive hotel thus far. The room itself was normal as well, but there was a strange old-fashioned gadget right next to my bed, which was a little eerie. The room reminded me of the interior of the movie „Shining“ a little. There was an ugly, burnt house, which should have been abandoned, but somehow people were still living in it, next to our house. After all this, Maari was completely sure that we were going to die.

M: Every cell in my body was screaming ERROR ERROR THIS IS WEIRD!!! You can’t explain bad vibes, they just exist. We are the only guests in the only hotel of the whole island – it sounds like the begging of a horror movie. At least they offered Turkish tea (which we have started to drink by the gallon) and good cookies in the lounge, maybe they are fattening us up or it actually is a normal place.

S: To avoid death, we decide to go for a walk. We walk for a long time and probably see the whole island, because we are zig-zagging up and down all the streets up the hill. I actually feel awful, but I can’t let the disease win. W ego get a bite to eat and we feed the cats. One cat is stupid and can’t see the piece of food behind it. I try to be kind and show it, but the cat sees this and scratches me. What a jerk. Then we wander around some more, drink goregously good Turkish apple tea and eat cake in a litte coffee – then we go back to the death hotel.

In the evening we are drifiting off to sleep and we hear that someone is banging on our wall. From the outside, not from the hotel corridor. The banging is loud and many times in a row and then it stops. There was nothing before and nothing came after as well. Maari and I freak out, I start to lock all the doors and windows. Mum is the most calm out of all of us and isn’t bothered. Later, we calm down as well and fall asleep.

M: In the morning I wake up to the local roosters and the song prayers competing at 6 in the morning. Turkey…

S: In the morning we find out that our „calm“ mother had stayed up all night scared of a monster, hiding under a blanket and shaking all over. So much for rational Tiina. Maari and I the two chickens, slept like babies and didn’t even see dreams of monsters, but our saviour Tiina couldn’t get a wink of sleep.

Merit Halki Palace

Last 2 - first scenes from the horror movie

At first, everything is very beautiful:

golden vases in the foyer

a parrot in the bar

beautiful views

a cosy lobby

where tea is served

The staircase leads to

a beautiful, cosy room, where the view from the balcony

is this house next door. The children repeat "the horror, the horror"

Well I couldn’t tell the kids, that actually I could be the next Stephen King, if I would let all my fantasies loose. So that I wouldn’t die of fear, I never have, but when others around you (kiddies Silvia and Maari) keep on talking about such things, it is logical that that I go and check the doors and windows, I am too scared to look out the window, won’t turn off the lights and practically sleep with my glasses on, so I could see more quickly and clearly if necessary.

The next morning, however, is beautiful and after some nice breakfast we head back to Istanbul. I go back to the clinic, Maari and Silvia, who is ignoring her cold, visit the Grand Bazaar.

Silvia and Maari’s blog:

S: We head towards the Basilica Cistern, which is a basilica like building built for the underwater watering system in the sixth century. There’s water everywhere and the whole thing looks like something out of the second Harry Potter book and quite soon a basilisk will rear it ugly head. I read from Wikipedia that some parts of „007: From Russia with Love“ have taken place there and it’s an important setting in the Dan Brown book „Inferno“. M: And Assassin’s Creed: Revelations!!!! It is a very cool place indeed. We came out from there and went to the Hagia Sophia, but came to the conclusion that as w ehad both been there before, there was no point paying €30 for it.

Last 2 - Basilica Cistern

And already the time has come to say goodbye to Gizem’s family and head to the airport. The week in Turkey has flown past.

Silvia and Maari’s blog:

S: We had the impressioon that our plane goes from the Asian’s side (there are two airports in Istanbul, one in Asia and one in Europe) and we had just enough time to get there. We get to the bus stop, so that we could drive to the airport and I look at our tickets and it says the airplane will fly out from Atatürk airport. That’s on the European side and last time we came there to Gizem’s home about an hour and a half, which is the same amount of time that we have until our plane departs. Panic. Fortuntely, a taxi driver appeared out of nowhere like an angel, whi said no problem, no probleem and promised to get us there. He was a lovely man, we talked at lenghts about football and Turkish music and he fulfilled his promise of getting us there in time.

M: In conclusion we have only fond memories of Istanbul. Gizem’s family in unbelievably lovely and Istanbul is a truly aweome city. It is split to two both geographicly and culturally – European and Asian. It is like a mix of east and west. It is both modern, fast, cool and also ancient, calm and stoic. If you are visiting it, don’t avoid Asia. The areas there could be even cooler than on the European side, because there are fewer turists, the whole atmosphere is more local/real and the prices are also more reasonable. I would go back any time.

Now some pictures from Cesme, which is a lovely town and worth a visit on its own. Unfortunately, we only had half a day.

Our ferry from Cesme to Chios is in the evening, so we have the whole day to walk around. The weather is beautiful and CEsme itself is truyl lovely little vacation resort. There are bars and restaurants everywhere and as it is not the main season anymore, it is quite quiet and empty. We send postcards to friends and family back home, buy new shoes for Silvia and then it is time to hop on the ferry.