A grey and lazy day sitting at a table outside JoSiTo’s restaurant. It begin to fall the first drops, it becomes drizzle, pensive and drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette it comes to me the beautiful smell of the wet Mediterranean forest. I don’t know what to do. “How do I kill the time?”. – I wonder -. Suddenly comes Jörg, a German which who I always play chess with. Spielen wir? -asks me-. I didn’t want to, I was tired, but I played anyway. He slaughter me mercilessly. You have to know that Jörg has a laugh which you can recognize amongst a million people, very distinctive, sometimes annoying –at least that evening-, sometimes funny but, most of the time is a kind and friendly loud laugh, don’t forget the loud, very piercing and open. The dusk was on us, on me, on the forest, crying raindrops from it’s cloudy dark face. Only the light of a row of bulbs from tree to tree and a couple of candles tucked in one of these cheap small glass houses illuminated that moment, that forest, my thoughts.
Alone again, missing, lost, nor in a place or another, there, but without being… “Jordi! What are you up to? How is it going?”. -appears Öztürk smiling-. “Good. Thinking” – I answer-. “Hey, let’s go to Baranak to make wine. Volkan, Murat, Ismet and more will be there, are you coming?” I stand up from the wet wooden bench, “Heide!” – I say motivated-. I take the yellow raincoat from when I worked as a sailor in the Olympic Port in Barcelona, the camera, the microphone, the helmet and the bike. Öztürk had already started his. I follow him full gas thru the sand path towards the main road, at full throttle we get into another sand road, skidding, making roar the metal beasts that drank gasoline; it was not raining but it was completely dark, only the eyes of our machines illuminated the road full of ditches. The forest, at both sides of the path, was echoing our mechanical sound. We arrived at Baranak where Murat was already at work…
The phone rings, with eyes half open and a terrible hangover I answer. “Ei Jordi, today we bottle the pomegranate wine, come!” – was Öztürk-. “Are you still sleeping?” – says – “Yes, Yes, I come now”. -I say with a head like a drum-. With a shattered stomach, a horrible breath and the resentment of the dozens of shots of Whiskey and vodka and the beers and wine from last night, I look for the underwear and trousers, dress myself, slowly, and get out of the tent. Last night was a party in the Ridocamp. The birds sing and flap their wings and the Sun, through a clear and blurry fog, dazzle me with it’s rays… “Ahhhrg, bollocks” – I murmur-. Pissed off and stumbling through the Woods I make my way to Murat’s. I arrive just in time for the tasting and bottling of the wine that was squeezed a month ago.
Besides that making alcohol is fun and you can meet with your friends and enjoy the day or night or time, in Turkey the alcohol taxes are very high. Being a secular country, young people who do not agree with the present Government and its laws, look for possibilities to be self-sufficient, to have to rely the less possible of that authoritarian Government from which they are not identified with.
