Turkish Delight

One of the most multi-talented Dutch artists, Jan Wolkers, died tonight at the age of 81.
He was a writer, painter, and made sculptures. His Auschwitz monuments were several times vandalized.
Probably his most famous novel, which was made into a highly successful movie, was: 'Turkish Delight' which shocked the Dutch society in 1973.
The director of this movie was Paul Verhoeven who became later world famous with movies such as Basic Instinct, Robocob and Showgirls, and camera man Jan de Bont, well known by the movies: Speed, Twister, and Die Hard, and Ruther Hauer, the lead actor in Turkish Delight and later in movies such as Blade Runner, Blind Fury etc.

Bathroom talk: Antalya Turkey.

As some of you know, last weekend was a long weekend for me in Antalya, southern Turkey.
I am not into this fabulous concept which the Turks introduced in 1999: a 5 star hotel/resort, with full pension: unlimited eating and drinking, which attracts a lot of people. Lucky that this was a decent hotel in Kemer. And it was fun to drive a car for one day in the area. Antalya as a city depressed me. Looks like Praha 4, 5, 6 etc. for people who ever went to Prague.
But it was fun driving on a non-pavement road into the mountains which are named after me...)
15 kms up, on a narrow path...Ozlem was scared to death...))

Anyway, the first day I had an interesting encounter in the bathroom of the hotel. Just finished lunch, and since my metabolism works very fast, had to rush to the bathroom (in Europe called WC or toilet, in Turkey, tuvalet, but in the USA 'the bathroom').
Anyway, I was sitting down, and since the Turks have 'the cowboy bathroom doors' like in the USA, you can hear everybody. But it was quiet. Until 2 girls, with a huge 'upper class' Dutch accent entered the bathroom. I thought: 'girls, this is a bathroom for men only'. But no way. They started talking, and talking while one was using the toilet, and the other talked about men in the hotel. I must say, they were happy with some French, Israelis and Dutch men, but were not pleased by the Turkish men. Both were blonds (discovered that later).
Anyway. I heard every detail about their plans for the next week..)) And I was still thinking: 'Hello, this is the men's bathroom'. Then a French girl came in and she talked in the same way as these two Dutch girls. Were they in the wrong place or was I? Finally, when it was silent, I sneaked out of the bathroom and saw that I was in the bathroom for Women Only...)
But I know now at least how Dutch women think while they are on an autumn break...

Common sense prevails...

The EU emerged from a 2-year institutional crisis. In the end, everybody got what it wanted: Bulgaria, Italy, the UK and Poland were battling for extra demands.

It's obvious that when a small country, like now Portugal, holds the EU presidency, there is more chance that progress can be made. We saw that in the past, especially during EU presidency of the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The new reform treaty is significantly different than the Constitutional Treaty of 2004 which was rejected through referendums held in France and the Netherlands.

Here you can read the differences.

Day opening - October 19

Chinelo dancers, Mexico