In Buenos Aires, where I can never sleep well and wake up in the morning to the hot and humid weather, I take to the streets hoping to find a cool corner. I search for a secluded corner in the shady streets of the Palermo neighborhood where I am staying. I dream that maybe I will find a café or a bar that I haven't discovered in the neighborhood I've been wandering for days, and I'll crouch in the corner, work a little and watch Argentinian people. As I take 2 steps, I’m already starting to sweat. I decide that someone should tell the Argentinians that the weather in Buenos Aires, which means "good weather," is not that nice in summer.As I eat my empanada, the South American pastry, at the buffet I go to every morning, I think about my first visit to the city. Why do I love this city so much? In fact, considering the misfortunes that befell me from the very first minute, Baires, as the locals abbreviate it, could even be considered inauspicious for me. However, this city, which sometimes gives the impression that time stopped there 20-30 years ago, made me feel good every day I was there, and quickly became my favorite city on the continent.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/7/2/1660032695678.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="1.34" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">In the streets of Baires, the wall of the house where Borges spent his childhood<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">Why is Buenos Aires so beloved?Is it the Mediterraneanness brought by Italian immigrants who flooded the city in the early 1900s, is it the nostalgic feel, or my good friends who live here? This city makes me dream of retiring as an urban elderly who moves slowly in the streets, wakes up late in the mornings, reads newspapers, and sips wine in cafés in the afternoons. I wouldn’t miss musicals or plays, and wouldn’t eat before 9 pm.After the thoughts pass through my head like lightning, I remember getting lost and drifting through the streets that inspired a genius like Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges&nbsp;Acevedo. I visualize spending a day following his footsteps, discovering his childhood home a few blocks away, walking up and down the street trying to step on the same places he did. Then the rain starts, and I walk through the majestic buildings on the city's wide Libertador Avenue and arrive at the National Library.I want both to escape the rain and to enter the library where Borges was once the director and breathe in its air. As soon as I enter through the door, the curious gaze of the attendant turns to me. My broken Spanish meets his broken English. We get along.When I turn my head, I realize I hit the jackpot: Borges' handwritten texts are on display in the exhibition hall. I rush to the elevator and enter the exhibition hall, a little wet and a little sweaty. The air conditioner is blaring, I feel cold.I approach the glass cases: long A4 pages are written in Spanish. My eyes are not on the texts. I get excited when I see the familiar signature just below the texts. It's as if I'm seeing a rare creature I've been watching in documentaries for years. It is as if Borges, in whose labyrinths I have gotten lost, in whose pampas I have wandered, is in front of me.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/7/2/1660032880091.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="1.34" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">Kerimcan in front of Borges' house<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">Where is the childhood home of Borges?As I eat my empanada, I feel as if I am reliving this wonderful day. Despite the heat, a thrill runs through me. I finish my last bite and decide to go back to the beginning of this route, to the house where Borges spent his childhood. As I walk through the streets of Palermo like a preying lion, I move quickly toward a single target without caring about anything else around. I arrive at the same street I arrived on exactly 2 years ago. The street is the same, the address is the same.I walk up and down about 3-4 times from the spot where the old two-story red brick house should be. But the house I know so well is nowhere in sight. "Have I come to a parallel street?" I wonder, and then I remember that the name of the street is Borges. "There must be a mistake," I say, and go back home.A few hours later, I turn on the computer and start checking the address on Google. I can't believe my eyes about 15 minutes later when I see that the building was demolished shortly after my visit and a modern apartment building was built in its place.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/7/2/1660032904742.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="1.52" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">🕵️ After the Google search<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">I feel like I have lost one of the pieces of my connection with the city. It hurts me that the home of the man who took me away from the world and took me to other places with his words no longer exists. Maybe I can't digest the fact that the destructiveness of the world is confronting me in one of my favorite cities. It annoys me that the rapid transformation I experienced in Istanbul is repeated on the other side of the world. Maybe I am not ready for the destruction of my hopes for change.I think about the fact that the legacy of this man who whipped me up with the exquisite paragraph he wrote at the beginning of his&nbsp;Atlas describing his travels is not being taken care of. I decide to leave the house and go to El Ateneo Grand Splendid, the most beautiful bookstore in the world, where I always feel good. I wander around the shelves of El Ataneo, which resembles Borges' description of paradise consisting of a giant library, and collect a few books. Then I sit on one of the wooden chairs of the café that used to be a theater stage.I try to calm my nerves by immersing myself in books about Patagonia, the southernmost part of South America. Despite everything, the beauty of discovery haunts me. One progresses as one discovers not only the beautiful but also the wrong. "Maybe Borges made me realize this today," I think - the lines Borges wrote in Atlas come to mind:<blockquote fr-original-style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); border-color: rgb(255, 206, 20); border-width: 4px; font-style: italic; padding-left: 10px;" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); border-color: rgb(255, 206, 20); border-width: 4px; font-style: italic; padding-left: 10px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; border-left-style: solid; box-sizing: border-box;">“To discover the unknown is not a prerogative of Sinbad, of Eric the Red, or of Copernicus. Each and every man is a discoverer. He begins by discovering bitterness, saltiness, concavity, smoothness, harshness, the seven colours of the rainbow and the twenty-some letters of the alphabet; he goes on to visages, maps, animals and stars. He ends with doubt, or with faith, and the almost total certainty of his own ignorance.”</blockquote>

Ruta

☀️ A morning in Buenos Aires

We are sheltering in a minibus stop on the road from Fethiye to Ölüdeniz. According to the Mediterranean climate, the weather should be around 18-22°C,&nbsp;partly cloudy and clear in early April. The weather that breaks in the afternoon proves how accurate it was that we kept postponing the start of the Lycian Way hike for an hour each time due to the laziness brought on by the sunny weather in the morning. Laziness sometimes prevents lightning from striking one's head, enjoying the balcony of the pension increases one's chances of survival.Hailstones fall from the sky as if they would break the ceiling of the bus stop where we take shelter. Usually, we could walk to the motel in Ölüdeniz, but now, it doesn't seem like a wise decision. The hail that shakes the bus stop falls diagonally and sometimes parallel to the ground with the effect of the wind.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/6/2/1658219646922.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.80" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">A bird's eye view of the Mediterranean<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">When no one comes around for a while, I stretch out my arm from inside the stop and start hitchhiking. Since the tourism season has not started yet, there are few vehicles on the road. Luckily, after about 5 minutes, a pickup truck takes pity on us and stops and says it can take us to our hotel in Ölüdeniz (literally&nbsp;the Dead Sea).&nbsp;When we arrive in Ölüdeniz, we cannot believe the view we see. The sidewalks are white as snow by the hail. Streets with poor infrastructure have flooded with this sudden rainfall. "We are one of the very few people in the world who can see snowy sidewalks in Ölüdeniz in April," we think as we look through fogged windows.As we enter the hotel and dry off, we talk among ourselves about the importance of being in the right place at the right time. Realizing our helplessness in the face of nature, we list the alternatives of what would happen if we came across such weather in the middle of the course. It is a good lesson that we pay only by getting wet.The morning after the evening, we dry our clothes with the air conditioner and blow dryer, the Mediterranean climate is back. The gray clouds shrouding the blue sky are gone, and the sun is not overhead. In all seriousness, it is working overtime to warm us to the bone. The turquoise waters of Ölüdeniz gently meet the beach. We return to the point where we were caught in the flood the day before.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/6/2/1658219773543.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.80" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">On the road<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;"><h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">Now it's time to enter the racetrack</h2>Like every hiker, we take photos in front of the Lycian Way sign. There are puddles of yesterday's hail in the shadows on the left and right. The dirt road is still not softened because it is early in the morning, but it is hard because it has been covered by the frost of the night. After a while, the ascent begins. We ascend to the foothills of Babadağ through ancient roads cut between the rocks almost 2000 years ago. As we ascend, more hail accumulates on the ground. It is as if we are not on the Lycian Way but a high mountain hike.To rest, we occasionally turn back and look at the view of Ölüdeniz in the distance. "A place where the most beautiful shades of blue in the world can fit into a single frame," is how I can describe the view. The unique dark blue of the Mediterranean Sea was broken by sand and pebbles into the most beautiful shades of turquoise and light blue. After ascending, we take a long break. The snow and ice are now on the Ölüdeniz side.&nbsp;"We are the rare people who walk the Lycian Way in snow,"&nbsp;we laugh.Illegal structures: Apart from the exquisite view we climb up and encounter, another thing that greets us is the illegal buildings. There are large and small constructions in the region, which do not have a building permit. "Only in this geography," I think, "could such a bunch of dugouts be erected on one of the most beautiful hiking routes in the world."As I walk, I think of harmful caterpillars with cocoons on the red pines. We are like those caterpillars that dry up the tree they burrow into and move on to the next one, somehow harming all the creatures in nature that are infected by them. They look like a part of nature from the outside, but they do a lot of harm like us.For lunch, we reach a Yoruk village on the way. A simple but delicious pancake is accompanied by a pomegranate juice that rockets our energy. We spend time watching the goats in the village. The price of the deluge the day before is to finish the 2-day trail in one day. Small for the 535 km Lycian Way but an enormous distance for us. Passing through nature, illegal constructions, and villages, the road finally descends to Faralya. In between, we come across carob trees.<img src="https://images.aposto.com/2022/6/2/1658219889447.jpeg" style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px; border-style: none; position: relative; cursor: pointer; padding: 0px 1px; box-sizing: border-box;" width="550" ratio="0.80" fr-original-style="display: block; vertical-align: top; margin: 5px auto; text-align: center; width: 100%; max-width: 550px;" fr-original-class="fr-draggable">Blue of the Mediterranean &nbsp;<hr fr-original-style="" style="height: 0px; overflow: visible; border-bottom: none; clear: both; user-select: none; break-after: page; box-sizing: border-box;">We end the approximately 19-kilometer walk at Aktaş Beach. Our knees ache, and the muscles in our legs are tense. We both know there is only one solution. We leave the weight of the entire path to the buoyancy of the water and throw ourselves into the blue arms of the Mediterranean. I evaluate the day in the slightly chilling coolness of the April sea.On the Lycian Way, at first, you think, "Why am I walking on this mountain slope?" Then one realizes that the real struggle is not with the slopes, the sun, the wind, or the rain, but with themself. They see their limits and enjoy pushing those limits. As we walk, the road digests the human, and the human digests the road. The labor in every step makes that path even more memorable.Walking teaches that every road has an end if one perseveres and sets out on it and that the joy of arriving is in the ordeal of the road. Then, while thinking about these things, one realizes that the trail is over, and the kilometers that grew in one's eyes have melted away. I thank the Lycian senate for bringing us this unique work.I think of a poet's lines that are very much identified with the Lycian Way:<blockquote fr-original-style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); border-color: rgb(255, 206, 20); border-width: 4px; font-style: italic; padding-left: 10px;" style="color: rgb(9, 9, 9); border-color: rgb(255, 206, 20); border-width: 4px; font-style: italic; padding-left: 10px; margin: 0px 0px 1em; border-left-style: solid; box-sizing: border-box;">Don't be sad if you can't find me,You will find my things.The stones I cut,The paths I have opened,You will find the statues I carved.And you will see,Thousands of years away,Our fingertips will touch.</blockquote>

Kerimcan Akduman

Lycian Way

<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;"> ID </h2>My nickname is: Kevin is just fine, if I’m lazy making a reservation over the phone in Istanbul I’ll use the name Kerem to avoid spelling out Kevin.My last cocktail was: A picante of course, at Soho House.I’ve eaten most recently: I had some çöp şiş&nbsp;from Canım Ciğerim in Asmalı Mescit.I have been busy lately: Doing the interview right now on a boat from Capri to Napoli, where I came to create cocktails for the art fair NOMAD. Before this, I hosted a dinner and cocktail pairing in Cappadocia for the music festival Echoes from Agartha, which was fantastic.I live in:&nbsp;Çukurcuma, my favorite slice of the city.I think I am from: the Mediterranean. In my past life, I was running a wine bar in the Mediterranean. I’m most relaxed when I’m by the sea.<h2 fr-original-style="" style="margin: 0px; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.85); font-weight: 500; padding: 0px; box-sizing: border-box;">SHOOT THE BREEZE</h2>You are familiar with Istanbul after almost a decade of living here. How have you experienced city life throughout this period, can you give us your observations as an Istanbulite?I think Istanbul is always changing, some can argue that it’s changing for the worse, but there are always some constants in the city that make it feel like home. I’ve been in the city a long time and grew up here, and grew up with Istanbul as well, so I’m happy to adapt to the city that has always been so welcoming to me.Working in Istanbul has been one of my biggest advantages since I interact with so many Turkish people in the hospitality industry. I can always get advice on where to eat and drink, and I can connect with the best chefs, bartenders, wine-makers, and food historians when it comes to creating new cocktails or planning new events. That network that I have grown over time has made the city feel much smaller, more familiar, and fortunately less chaotic.You are well informed about the cocktail &amp; food culture in the city and the changes taking place around it. In one of your GQ Türkiye pieces, you dwelled on this subject and argued that Covid-19 has radically shaped and transformed Istanbul's f&amp;b culture. How do you foresee its future?Unfortunately, I don’t see much hope in the near future. I think a combination of the pandemic as well as the economic fallout, has pushed people away from investing in the hospitality industry. Young chefs will find it harder to open their restaurants, and promising bartenders will struggle to make the leap from mixologist to bar owner since Istanbul’s bureaucracy does not favor the cocktail industry. Of course with tourism, larger hospitality groups and hotels will continue to pop up across the city, such as Galata Port, the most recent one. But I’m not a huge fan of these places. I think talented young chefs and bartenders would prefer to work abroad and unfortunately, that will drain the food culture and identity of the city for a long time.Speaking of the future, what do you think about the MICHELIN Guide’s arrival in Istanbul? How will it effect the bar scene in Istanbul?I’ve rarely met someone who would list a Michelin-starred restaurant as their favorite restaurant. I think it’s cool the guide is coming to Turkey and that chefs who have worked hard in the fine dining sector will achieve some deserved recognition, but otherwise, I’m quite indifferent. I don’t think Michelin is particularly interested in cocktails or bars, and I like it that way. Rather than being for the elites, I prefer cocktail bars in Istanbul that remain for the people of the city.

Aposto Istanbul

Ages ago, maybe you met Kevin in his cocktail bar, Külhanbeyi or you've heard that name somewhere. No matter what, let's meet Kevin Patnode, again or for the first time. 

Mediterranean ile ilgili hikayeler