Saturday was a gloomy day, perfect for a museum visit, so we chose Santral Istanbul Energy Museum on one of the Bilgi University campuses as it is free and even has a free service bus from Taksim Square. "Santral" comes from "central" and refers to the power station that it used to be. Matti was the only one of us that had been before (twice) and described the place as "a factory where you could look at machines that don't work any-more , so we weren't expecting too much. Walking inside is wonderful. No surfaces have been restored and everything is stripped back and exposed. Machinery and infrastructure, including the functioning of escalators and air conditioning, are visible to the visitor. Lighting is minimal and atmospheric. The space is a group of concrete levels with metal walkways and stairs between them and huge machines on platforms, all suspended on the top floor of a high building. Thankfully, there are safety nets between each platform! The vast control panels are reminiscent of Doctor Strangelove, and the kids loved pretending to send electricity (well, actually explosions!) around the city. On the lower level there are interactive experiments in electricity, everything from generation through transfer and transformation to end use. There is even a musical instrument based on electrical currents. Next to the museum is "Papaz" (priest) restaurant, giving you the opportunity to spend all the money you have saved in the free museum on delicious food.

Parenting note: You may work out from these pictures that we are more concerned with talking to our kids than combing their hair! We are aware you can do both, we just don't seem to manage it.

Photography note: On July the 1st this year I started a photographic journey by switching my camera to manual, starting a 366 project and imposing certain limitations on myself. I had read about how Indian and Pakistani drummers before being allowed to touch drums would have to learn to vocally reproduce talas, i.e. rhythmic patterns. I decided to do one year without allowing myself to do any editing so that I would start by doing all I could in camera. Numerous photos were scrapped over the first half year, rather than breaking the self-imposed rule. Today, however, Ville suggested that because the odds were so against me in this gloomy cavern of a building, that I from now forward allow myself to just use brightness and contrast to edit photos, and then successively introduce other elements. It was exciting to see pictures improve.

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