Turkey Part 4 - No Serenity for You!

(Note: This is NOT an actual photo from Le Jardin, but it could have been.)

One day at Le Jardin, while I was waiting in the reception area to register us for a special dinner, I noticed an electronic sign above the entrance that showed photos of the resort with single words to describe various features. One photo showed a woman stretching before exercising, and the word shown was “serenity.”

Serenity?

While the resort had many nice features, serenity was NOT one of them. The hotel is listed as having 308 rooms, and in August – the height of the tourist season – I suspect there is never an empty room in the place. There were many families there, so if you figure an average of three people per room, that’s around 900 people on the property at one time.

That’s hundreds of people crowding the dining areas, the pools, the beach, the garden, the bar, and other places. Hundreds of people grabbing lounge chairs and trying to get the best places. Hundreds of people walking or running by as you try to relax in your spot or walk from one area to another. Hundreds of people talking, laughing, yelling, screaming, and – yes – smoking.

Noise

Besides all the people, there was a constant beat of music, some of it nice, but most of it rather annoying due to the high volume and overuse of bass. Sometimes the music would be muted and fairly peaceful, and it wasn’t bad. But then, without warning, the volume would get turned up (along with the bass beat), for some kind of announcements or events around the pool.

And sometimes it wasn’t music at all, but that appalling bane of real music lovers everywhere: rap.

Accompanying the loud music was an even louder MC yelling into his microphone in multiple languages. At 10:00 every morning they broke the relative peacefulness for a repetitive “Good Morning” song followed by more loud music and a bunch of announcements (most of which were, admittedly, helpful). Then the volume would get pumped up at various other times of the day.

And there was competing loud music and other noise from neighboring resorts (they are all nestled rather close to each other). Each had its own programs and events, and they wanted to make sure that their people could hear their sounds over those of the neighbors. Depending where you were on the property, the result could be an aggravating cacophony of noise.

All of this would go on from mid-morning until late evening.

So much for “serenity”!

Droned Out

The sea was mostly calm, with almost no surf. So we didn’t have the soft thunder of waves pounding the shore, that inspiring sound of the power of an ocean. But there was one enjoyable, natural sound in the garden area, and this was the chirping of cicadas in the trees. All day long they made a never-ending chorus that could become mesmerizing as you sat on your lounge chair and let your mind wander. But most of the time, the song of the cicadas was drowned by the manmade noise all around us.

It occurred to me, however, that without the human noise, the sound of cicadas could have been a perfect mantra to induce great meditations. I would love to find a spot someday where all I could hear was the song of those little bugs in the trees.

Giving Customers What They Want     

Probably I am just a grumpy old guy for wishing to have peace and quiet, and the ability to get lost in my thoughts in a beautiful, natural environment. But I understood that that was how it was, and I adapted.

Most likely the management of the Queen’s Park chain of resort hotels has researched their customer base and concluded that the music and other noises are what their visitors want. They have probably determined that their program provides a feeling of excitement and fun for most of the guests. And they are probably right.

So I don’t really bemoan the practice of keeping the place pretty noisy. It comes with the territory of such a resort, and you should understand and accept that if you go there. And I did – mostly. After a while, you become able to tune out most of it, and you hardly notice it at all while you are swimming in the sea.

There were moments, when trying to relax on a lounge chair in the garden, when the pumped-up volume was a little annoying, personally. But if the great majority of guests liked it that way, then the feelings of a tiny minority – perhaps of only one – don’t really matter. And that’s how it should be. I get that, and I enjoyed my time at Le Jardin immensely, nevertheless.

Seeking Serenity

Still, I came away from that vacation realizing that real serenity, perhaps even some natural solitude, is something I sorely need. I need the opportunity to spend time in a natural environment, without a lot of people, without unnatural sounds, without Internet or other distractions. I need some serious alone time, not in my city apartment, but with the peaceful energy of nature around me.

In January, I wrote about the need to get away, and at about the same time, I wrote about the beauty and necessity of having silence from time to time. In “Getting Away,” I wrote about how, at times, a person needs to get away from daily routines and all the problems and issues in his or her life and just be.

There are times when we need to forget our daily concerns and replace those thoughts with the feeling of just being a part of nature, of being one with the universe. We need to find some peace for a while and let the accumulated stress drain out of our cells. Then we can start to come back and address the important issues with a mind toward making the right decisions going forward.

This is something I need very badly. I have decisions to make, and probably changes to put into place. I am not equipped to do this properly now because I haven’t given my soul a chance to speak through all the mental noise. I need to get away.

At Le Jardin, I did not think about work at all, and it was nice. I did relax to a point, and I enjoyed swimming immensely. But I was not able to find real serenity, and I was not able to expunge all my current life concerns. Even at such a resort, certain thoughts and issues continued to dominate my thinking, and at times, it made me less than an ideal companion. It was not good. So while Turkey was a great vacation, it wasn’t exactly what I needed.

So now I am thinking about another vacation, perhaps soon. It would be nice to go someplace far away where there truly is serenity in a natural environment. Somewhere in the mountains would be perfect. Perhaps I need to go alone.

What I don’t know at the moment is when or where. Summer is coming to an end, and autumn will be upon us soon, so there is not a lot of time. And autumn is an important and busy time for English teachers. I don’t want to spend a lot of money on travel for a while, after already having taken three trips out of the country in 2015. I need to save up for future plans. Maybe Western Ukraine is an option.

At any rate, as I said in closing the post, “Getting Away,” I know what I need, the trick is figuring out how to make it happen.

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