Cappadocia

Cappadocia was cold. Cappadocia was freezing. Cappadocia was…snowing?
We drove past the moon rocks, all covered in snow. It was insane! April, middle of Turkey, and I was regretting giving my hat and gloves away so soon! It was early morning so we saw the balloons landing.

I spent my first day exploring. I got my beloved lentil soup and just tried to keep warm.
I decided to take refuge inside an Internet café. They kept serving me tea, which I appreciated. I found a job application for a human right-researcher in Romania and Bulgaria for Amnesty Int’l, so I decided to use my time and apply for it.
It took me six hours to do the application.

The guy beside me kept trying to talk to me! As much as I wanted to be polite, this café was quite expensive and when you’re using a computer, time is money. He was speaking to a friend in Japanese, which I think is quite rare for Turks! He told me his name was Bulent and that he used to work as a tour guide for Japanese tourists in Cappadocia.

He said he had to leave but asked if I would be there when he got back. I didn’t know, so I said "Maybe". He left.

When he came back, I was still there, finishing up. He asked if I’d like to get dinner with him. I was wary. He said the restaurant was nearby and told me he had his car in the parking lot. I told him if the restaurant was so nearby, that I would walk. He laughed but I told him that I don’t make a habit of getting into cars with strange men. He gave me directions to the restaurant (100 metres away) and we ate.

We spent all evening chatting about our families, Romania, Turkey and being a foreigner in a foreign country (he spends half of the year in Japan). His family owned the restaurant and they were all very nice.

He offered to take me around to see some sights that are normally very hard for tourists to get to without a vehicle. I felt he was a pretty safe guy, so I agreed.

The next day, he took me to some cave houses and showed me interesting rock formations. I was enchanted!

I had booked a tour with a tour agency to see some cave churches, strange rocks and an underground city, but he made me cancel it and told me he would take me to better ones. He knows my penchant for climbing all over/though things and rightfully told me that I wouldn’t enjoy the tour. Apparently, you drive to a place, get out, take a picture, and then get back on the bus.

First we went to ancient cave churches that seem more like wholes in Swiss cheese than an actual church. Nearby were the moon rocks from the Star Wars movies. You follow ancient tunnels until you reach a large room. When your eyes adjust to the darkness, you start to make out pillars and an altar. Then, when you can see normally, you see vestiges of paintings on the walls and geometric and swirling patterns decorating the pillars and windows.

These churches were so simple and humble I was almost moved to tears. Some parts were so dark I was afraid to explore without a flashlight. I saw tunnels leading to…where? I wish I had more time to look around but we had more things to see!

We drove past huge snow-capped mountains. Finally, we came up to a gorge cut deep into the rock. I think it’s the 5th largest canyon after the world. Turks call it their own Grand Canyon. We amused ourselves by throwing rocks down below. My rocks all fell piteously close to the ledge while my Bulent tried (unsuccessfully) to land his in the river down below.

We also checked out an underground city. The two more famous ones are 5 and 8 levels deep, respectively. The ancient Christians built these cities to protect themselves from attacks and were able to live quite comfortably underground without the need of emerging above ground for months at a time.

We went to the five-level one. It was humid outside but cold inside. We descended down and down. The hallways were so narrow! Rooms branched off everywhere: rooms for horses, chickens, for food, water, bedrooms, storage rooms…

It was literally an all-inclusive underground apartment building! All the rooms looked the same. Could someone get lost down there? What would happen if you didn’t like someone else who lived there?

We ended up in Avanos, a major pottery-making centre. His brother in law owns a pottery workshop so he took me there to play with clay. Many of these shops allow tourists to make their own pots so I happily got messy in clay for the next couple of hours. Even though I was covered in mud, we went out to some discos, one that was a cave disco, carved into the local rock! The music bad and the dancers worse, so we left.

The next day was quite low-key. We hung out with a Japanese girl who spoke no English and watched Blade 3 on DiVX. Bulent had some errands he had to do for his mother, so he invited me along. In the car, we spotted two old women hitchhikers. They were toothless and wearing a myriad of kerchiefs, sashes and layers of skirts and vests. They were headed to town and were too tired to walk, so we gave them a lift.

At his house, I met his mother and brother. Neither spoke English. He asked if I would like a certain type of bread that I love. "Sure!" I replied. So didn’t he call his sister and have her make some and bring it over! It was delicious, but I felt bad that she went to all that hassle for me!
Driving back to the hotel, we saw a pool with thermal water. Since I missed out on the whole Parmukkale experience, I was up for some swimming. We got some towels and jumped in!
Thermal water is way better than hot tubs. It’s warm, gentle and you don’t get that disgusting chlorine feeling on your skin. We swam until it was dark and then went home. Later, we met up with Mike, the Canadian whom I met at Ephesus and went out for dinner and drinks.

Friday was my day to explore the Goreme Open Air museum. They took a particularly select area of the rock churches and charge people 10 liras to enter. It was wonderful and worth the price. Many of these churches are restored and you get to see ancient graves and cave paintings. I also paid an extra 5 lira to see the Dark Church, so called because there are only a few tiny windows and very little light, which preserved the paintings much more so than the rest of the churches. It wasn’t worth 5 liras, but I know they need money to restore these buildings. The whole museum was crawling with Spanish students who were extremely loud and obnoxious. Didn’t they understand that they weren’t the only ones there? They pushed other tourists aside to get better pictures, yelled and screamed in all the churches and were generally the most annoying students I had ever seen. Luckily, they did the tour opposite of me, so our paths only crossed a few times. Later on, I met two Spaniards, a Portuguese and a Chilean travelling together. They mentioned they planned on going to Ephesus so I suggested Jimmy’s to them.
After the museum was done, I wandered across the street to see the non-paying churches. Kilometres and kilometres of rocks stretched before me, each possibly an ancient house or place of worship. I started at the front and worked my way back.

Most of the rocks were inhabited at some point. You could still see the marks of the trowel on the ceiling. Occasionally, the rocks would be black, signifying a kitchen, or perhaps local youth using it as a secret campfire location. Sometimes, you could find traces of ancient paint surrounding doors or, even more rarely, vestiges of ancient murals. Some parts almost made me cry. I saw an ancient fresco of Jesus covered in graffiti. Seriously, what are these people thinking? "I’m gonna leave my autograph by ruining a 1500 year old painting? I’m so cool!" Many of the names seemed non-Turkish, so I assume tourists instead of locals did it.
After a while, I got slightly bored. All these rooms looked the same! I looked back and realised I had probably walked a couple of kilometres, exploring all the rocks I came up to. I was also quite high up and dirty with mud and dust. I called Bulent to tell him I was coming home and he offered to pick me up.

On our way back to town (all 1.5 kilometres of it) we saw a sign advertising a UFO museum. My curiosity was definitely piqued so we made a detour. It was inside an old cave and consisted of English, German and Turkish newspaper clippings and pictures of alien abductions from around the world. Spooky music played in the background and as a show-stopping centrepiece, a recreation of the Roswell alien.

At night, we had diner at his family’s restaurant. They were expecting a tour group from Fez tours made up of Aussies and thought they might need some extra help. Of course, I offered my services but in the end, they didn’t need me. I heard English being spoken and introduced myself to two people around my own age. They were both Americans studying international relations in England. We started chatting about schools, international relations and internships. We got on the subject of Serbia when an older backpacker came up to introduce himself. He was from Montreal and travelling around Turkey by himself. We immediately clicked and after the other two left, spent the rest of the night talking.

Saturday was my day to do some hiking in "Dick Valley". Hundreds of rocks which all look remarkably like male genitalia. Incredible! I got some great pictures and then "headed for the hills" in search of more cave paintings.

I saw everything I could in the valley and then just kept climbing higher and higher and higher. I was literally on top of the world and I could see for kilometres around. I had no idea how I would get down or even home. I didn’t want to backtrack and besides, it would be too hard climbing down the rocks that I used to get up. I followed a well-worn path, hoping that it would eventually lead me back down. It circled all around the Goreme museum. I saw plenty of dovecotes and holes in rocks that were too high to explore. Finally, the path sloped downward and curved. Was I done? Nope, it went upwards again. Finally, I was on the other side of the museum and only a short climb down to the parking lot. Finally! My legs were killing me but it was a great hike!

I didn’t want to leave Cappadocia. I felt like there was too much left to be explored. You can feel the levels of history: Muslim-Christian-Hittite. I’m glad I ended up staying longer but I’d love to have even more time to do more exploring.

The problem with Turkey is that everything is so far apart, just like Canada. Europeans have a different idea of "far" than we North Americans. Far for a Belgian is an hour or two. Far for a Canadian is a day or so. From Cappadocia to Istanbul took twelve hours! I settled on the day bus because I didn’t want to have to deal with all my luggage in Istanbul. I got to the train station (the ancient terminus for the Orient Express) and ate dinner with a nice German man who was also waiting for a train.

I was excited to take the train back. I had my own compartment in the train and settled in for a long relaxing 16 hours (which actually turned into 20 hours because the train was late). When we got to the border, we were headed out of the train to get our passports stamped. I couldn’t find my glasses and stumbled along in the dark. I got my all-important stamp and went back to the train. One of the ticket agents stopped me and told me I needed…something. I was so disoriented I didn’t know if he was speaking Turkish or Bulgarian, not that it would have mattered as I can’t understand either language. He told me I had to go back to customs control. I showed him my passport but he was adamant. So once again, I waited in line and got another stamp. Then the agent looked at my passport and yelled at me, asking why I was getting another stamp when I already had one. I tried to explain that I was told to come back, but he just crossed out my new stamp. Hmph. I got back on the train and fell asleep until the Bulgarians came on the train.