Aksu, Düzce, 20-22 Kasın 2015
Bir zamanlar, the glorious İTÜ Mağara Araştırma Kulübü went out to seek some adventures at the countryside of Düzce, in the caves of Aksu
Thanks to the hard working fairies, who in advance had spent their time with organising, doing the shopping and other preparations, all the little cave-fairies could happily come together on Friday (20th November 2015) on a mild autumn evening. They packed the last things while having some fairy-talks, playing basketball and getting excited for the upcoming weekend.
In the night at about 1 am the fairy-transfer-bus picked them up. When all the luggage, sleeping bags, pots and food was loaded, they hit the road and picked up the missing 4 Boğazıcı fairies from their university. In total there were 41 fairies on the way to the caves of Aksu…some of them falling asleep immediately and others spending the journey watching „Interstellar“.
When they arrived in the morning at about 5.30 it was bitterly cold and dark. But you shouldn’t forget the most important thing: They were cave-fairies! And cave- fairies are made for coldness and darkness, as this is exactly the way a cave is like! They had to walk the looong distance of 700 m from the bus to reach the camp site. After setting up the malzeme çadırı the first shift entered the cave to döşemek. Meanwhile all the other hard working, caliskan fairies went to collect some odun. Ama bir sorun vardı. Some new fairies didn’t know the difference between dal and odun. So the ustabaşı fairy Uğur gave a lecture.
Lecture 1: Dal does not warm up cavers! We need odun, not dal, odun! This is odun! This is dal!
Sonra he told them where to get the odun. Mission accomplished!
Having all this nice odun, they were able to cook makarna. After that, they cooked more makarna. And then they cooked makarna again and again and again 🙂 until every cave-fairy was full of lezzetli makarna.
At every camp there is a mysteriously appearing loyal companion: köpek! Rumours aroused about the isim babası. People said that it might be fairy Emre. They say he whispered in the dogs ear: “Doggy, Doggy, Doggy!” so his name was Doggy. Poor Doggy was really hungry for love but he only found ekmek. He ate too much of it and started licking the dishesö so fairy Ozan had to interfere and pet him, walking with his new Doggybuddy around on a leash.
After spending the night sitting around the campfire and later on having a good night sleep, sunday morning came. While some groups went ınto the cave pretty early, there was a shift leaving at around 11 am…and also, there was little sleepy fairy Olaf, who – punctually as can be 🙂 – appeared at 11ç Still not really awake, he realised that the other fairies, who already were set with suit, helmet and malzeme, were his shift-members and that he wants to join them as well. So, after finding him some boots, some batteries, etc. and having a quick coffee- breakfast, the 11 o’clock shift, including sleepy fairy Olaf, could take off for Aksu cave. Harika! Wunderbar!
Looking for some competitive action Serhat and Ozan invented the soğan ve domates olympics. The game works similar to baseball. You need: A fairy holding a sopa, another fairy throwing the soğan. And when the sopa hits the soğan, there is a delicious smell of fresh soğan paha biçilemez. If there are no soğanlar left, you take domates instead. A different version of domates game is much easier, because you only need to shoot somebody with domates. To make the game more sophisticated, the target is allowed to run away, also long distances are allowed.
As all good things come to an end at some point, there also came sunday afternoon, which meant: cleaning up, packing and leaving. When sun set, they reached the bus and set off back to Istanbul. But there still was the question: Where shall they do their fairy-caving-afterparty? After some discussion they came to the result that none of them had a house which was big enough for all the fairies. So, what to do then? Of course – calling Melih!! Serhat made the phone call and all the fairies where his energetic supporters to convince poor Melih that they all need to go to his house. In this case, there was no escape for Melih 🙂
Karin Schulz, Denise Cappel, Ozan Akın
