Cevelanname-Ülkeler,Şehirler,İnsanlar

Back Cover Text (From the Promotional Bulletin)

I spent my childhood in a remote mountain village with travel dreams. The travel and adventure books that filled two shelves of my small school library were my only companions during the endlessly long and boring summer days I spent chasing animals up and down the mountains. These books became my gateways to the world; they set my heart on fire with the excitement and passion of seeing distant countries and open seas. Before textbooks, I got my first impressions about the human and natural landscapes of the world from them. As I learned that this world had coal-black blacks, bronze-colored Indians, squinting-eyed Chinese, elephants, lions, pythons and many other strange creatures, my heart overflowed with the desire to see and know them.

In short, books became the messengers of a huge and colorful world outside this small village cocoon in which I lived. The colors and shapes, the lands and seas of this second world were as attractive to me as the bright stars in the sky that I watched from the garden where I lay on my back on hot summer evenings, but they were also as distant. I could only transcend the borders of this small village in my dreams and fantasies. I guess our destiny also follows the dreams and fantasies of our childhood. When I set off on the road to Paris for the first time in years with a huge suitcase in my hand, it was as if my head had reached the stars and my hand had touched my dreams. The four months I spent in Paris were my first serious experience of the world beyond our borders. At the end of those four months, I returned with a filled travel journal and a small photo album in hand.

In the years that followed, when memories turned to ash and images faded, these pictures and notes became my corridors opening into the past; they made me relive what I had seen and experienced. When I looked at these notes of the past, I realized this: Only what we had written down remained of what we had experienced; the rest was flying away. Then one door opened, acquaintances and friendships connected and expanded, and travels followed travels. Sometimes for touristic purposes, but more often to participate in scientific meetings, I have had the opportunity to see and travel to many countries many times in the last 20 years. I recorded what I saw and experienced in short notes. After returning home, I took up these short notes again and expanded them as much as my memory allowed and put them on paper.

This book, which covers Asia, Europe, Africa and the Balkans and covers twenty countries, tells us that at a time when advanced camera images that bring all the intimate landscapes of the world to our screens have destroyed written culture, there are still some things that the camera cannot see;  üit draws attention to the cultures, people and human relations of countries and cities rather than their physical descriptions.

Number of Editions : 1st Edition

Year of First Printing : 2018

Number of Pages : 416

Sizes : 13.5 x 21