I have lived in Antalya now for 6 years and always in the same apartment. Then one day the news I had been dreading from my wife came. News, that had me waking in the night in a cold sweat.
"Askim, I want a bigger apartment"
Now, my fear of moving comes from being British and how stressful those times were. Packaging everything, aranging new phone lines, internet access, swap Sky for Digiturk and I knew it was going to be a bloody hard time.
However, wether I have just been lucky or not, or wether it is just the Turkish way, but within one week me and my wife have found an apartment that we both fell in love with and fully moved.! One call to the Air conditioning people they came he next day and with no fuss dismantled it and positioned where we wanted in our new home. Digiturk, came the same day and installed. Turk telecom transferred our phone and internet access over instantly.
The removal men came at a days notice, and under the beady eyes of my wife, packed everything removed everything and unpacked it all and moved into the new apartment for 350 YTL. Jesus, I remember last time I employed a removal company in UK, I thought the price included the purchase of the removal lorry!. However was amused to hear the sounds of "bana....sana" (to me....to you), which had me whistling the Chuckle Brothers tune all day!
I went to work and returned awaiting to find something resembling a war zone, and came home to a perfectly sorted home, all clean and as if we had lived there for years.
And to top it all, have had an endless stream of neighbours with cakes, food and tea.
However, have not got off that lightly, the wife has informed me that our living room furniture does not go well in our new home. Another sleepless night ahead!!