Dear Diary,
we love the city we live in. Indeed. It has so many faces and each is uniquely beautiful. In summer Bodrum is full with tourists from all over the world, it blossoms with night parties and peculiar craft shops. In winter Bodrum is a great place to enjoy the silence and calmness and have your cup of Turkish tea sitting in the seaside café.
Of course, sometimes Bodrum faces turn sad or even angry. Like yesterday, November, 29, when Bodrum got underwater! Here’s the story that we’ve witnessed ourselves…
This Thursday started like any given Thursday: the weather in Bodrum was a bit gloomy, but the broadcast promised that we’ll have sun by the lunch time. People were rushing to reach their work places, shop owners were preparing their stores to be open, and the city was waking up. As usual, we had our breakfast and headed to the office to hit daily routine.
Our schedule on Thursdays is different: Lucia works at the office, and Arina goes to Bodrum Health Foundation to have music classes with kids. Frankly speaking, it was a bad idea to get out of the house in the beginning of the day 🙂 However, it is not a secret that EVS volunteers have a backlog of work, so Arina had to take a bus to the other part of the city in order to have a music class.
Well, everything was ok until she got on the bus. A second after a rain started. That rain was not just heavy, it was reminding the Global flood (honestly, Prophet Noah and his Ark were expected to save us all).
As a result of this rain the central part of Bodrum connecting some of Bodrum bays was filled with water. Obviously, drain systems couldn’t do their job as water was collected in a greater amount, so cars and first-floor building were flooded. On her way to Bodrum Health Foundation Arina hasn’t experience this, but she had a chance to see the situation on her way back.
All the transportation system was stuck in the middle of the city, bus drivers couldn’t promise to take passengers to their destinations, and electricity and Internet were no working. Turkish government declared the state of natural disaster in Bodrum. Water flows on the streets were crushing everything on their way: cars, buildings. It was not scary, but it was unusual and not expected at all.
We don’t have any information about potential victims; it seems like nobody got hurt. However, it made us think about our own safety, and how a simple rain can influence the functioning system of a whole city. And it taught us not to trust weather broadcasts 😉