The first message I received from Aşkın Öztürkmen came from Australia on 6 May 1998. It was a short email:
“I saw your hotel on the internet. I liked it very much. If I come there, I would like to stay.”
Today it may look like an ordinary message of only a few lines. But in 1998, someone living in Sydney, Australia finding our small place in Karaburun on the internet and contacting us directly was a good example of the early years of Mimas Garden.
About two and a half months after that first message, the place Aşkın had seen on the internet was no longer just a few photographs and lines of information on a screen. He had come to Karaburun with his wife.
His guestbook entry, dated 19 July 1998, completes the story in his own words:
“I found you on the internet in Australia. I liked your hotel and your town, so I wanted to come here. And here we are together with my wife.”
I especially like this sentence today because it continues the story that began with his first email. “If I come there, I would like to stay,” sent from Sydney in May, had become “Here we are together with my wife” in Karaburun in July.
From his guestbook note, I can see that they liked not only where they stayed but Karaburun itself. He especially mentions the sea and the view, and writes that it was a place he could recommend to people he knew.
Another part of the note matters even more to me. Aşkın wrote how pleased they were with the warmth we had shown them and ended by thanking us and hoping that we would meet again.
This is something I often find in the guestbook entries from the early years of Mimas Garden. People first contacted us to rent an apartment, but when they left, they often wrote less about the apartment than about the relationship that had developed between us.
I took the photograph I still have of Aşkın and his wife at the bus stop on the day they were leaving Karaburun.
Behind them is a bus marked Mordoğan. Even though their luggage is not visible, I remember clearly that the photograph belongs to the end of their journey. Two people who had arrived as our guests only a few days earlier were now about to leave Karaburun.
Looking at the photograph again today, the bus in the background interests me almost as much as the people. The picture has become not only a memory of Aşkın and his wife, but also an unintended document of travelling from Karaburun, its buses and the atmosphere of the small bus-stop area in 1998.
Three things remain from this story: a short email sent from Australia on 6 May; a guestbook page written in Karaburun on 19 July; and a photograph I took at the bus stop as they were leaving.
Placed together, they tell the whole journey. First, a place is discovered from far away: “I saw your hotel on the internet.” Then the place is actually reached: “Here we are together with my wife.” Finally, there is a farewell photograph at the Karaburun bus stop.
Looking at these documents together today, I am reminded once again of how the internet entered our lives during the early years of Mimas Garden.
In 1998, the webpage of our house in Karaburun could be found from Sydney. Someone we had never met could send us a few lines by email and, two and a half months later, arrive at our door with his wife.
Perhaps Aşkın Öztürkmen’s story is best expressed by the distance between two short sentences of his own:
“If I come there, I would like to stay.”
and, two and a half months later:
“Here we are together with my wife.”
There were thousands of kilometres between those two sentences. The internet crossed that distance in a few lines; an actual journey and a few days in Karaburun completed the rest.