As written down by Amanda and remembered by all of us...in no particular order...
1. Drinking from the same water glass
2. Sheep following us into the cave in Cappadocia
3. Never getting menus at restaurants
4. David’s napkin fiasco (under galata bridge)
5. David getting kissed on both cheeks after spilling tea in his lap at doner stand
6. Cheetos having weird flavors (beef, yogurt, etc.)
7. Mehmet, pilav man
8. Smily, Scowly, and Dad (doner guys)
9. Fake ID (PVC stands)
10. Tiny washing machines and no dryers
11. Power going out night before two week travel, and lantern expedition
12. Robin fiasco (not saving beer and food; emailing Freidrike)
13. Climbing the walls, literally
14. Magnum ice cream
15. Calisthenics with the Turks
16. Rushing Taksim, and the place in Cannakale
17. David getting hit by the car during EuroCup celebration
18. Poisonous plant experience with Emily in Cappadocia
19. David scaring Amanda to death in the darkest cave in the world in Cappadocia
20. Underground city claustrophobia
21. 95 stairs to our flat
22. Lavender shirts, unbuttoned to the sternum
23. Just a minute, loading
24. Emily’s comfy pants
25. Turkish hairstyle
26. No cell phones on the bus
27. Where's William?
28. Ferry to Bursa? Wtf
29. BURSA in general
30. Miscellaneous Turks of all kinds
31. Sabanci University after like three hours on the road
32. Marco Polo map (aka Mini Tours of Turkey, copyright 1978)
33. “Your face looks like George Bush” – to Kelly
34. Black shirt creeper on gay cruise (aka the ferry) and the bus
35. Wine and Gazoz
36. Selman drinking it out of a bowl
37. Edward leaning out window to get fresh air
38. Amanda’s head lamp and dry heaving
39. Chain smoking Turks
40. The broken squatty toilet
41. Kelly’s toilet rating system
42. Hamam in Bursa: the boys and their jammers; girls needing to break out of the penitentiary
43. New variations on old classics
44. Being told not to waterfall at Darkness
45. Scouting out the transvestite club
46. Dartying in the sleeper car
47. Dartying in the cave
48. Not drinking during the call to prayer
49. Group pics everywhere
50. Senior pics : )
51. Breaking the bed
52. Dia % dogs
53. Cat gangs located across the street from said Dia dogs
54. “So I see you have some su in the yogurt tub…” – kitten
55. Mehmet picking his nose
56. Aygaz truck waking us up every day
57. Nobody knows.
58. Mulan “Be a Man” as our theme song
59. Singing in general, karaoke style
60. Swimming across a crater lake
61. Kristina’s camera stuck in customs
62. Every mode of transportation possible
63. Emily’s rhyme game
64. “Emily what do you hit with a hammer?” Answer: "Snail."
65. Akbils
66. Mustafa the bus driver
67. Fortune-telling bunnies
68. Cappy hour
69. Sultan Su
70. Scavenger hunt game
71. “umm I dunno…” - Clayton
72. Bon Qui Qui skit being sung by Clayton to get Amanda down an Aztec-ish ruin
73. Jumping off a ridiculously tall boulder in Egirdir
74. Edward naked jumping off, William getting ready to take a pic
75. “Ohh no” David
76. PowerTurk being ridiculous
77. Euro Cup
78. Emily’s videos in general
79. Trying to skinny dip in Pamukkale
80. Efes
81. Cheese with the fur
82. "Mm hm" - Emily
83. David's bathroom in the village being in the stables across the street on the second floor
84. Myes
85. Esenler - the village
86. “It's like a deer rubbing its antlers against a tree and scraping the bark off” – Yekta
87. Mystic Turks calling Kelly 25 times
88. Picking apricots off a tree from hot air balloon ride
89. Looking for shooting stars from top of caves in Cappadocia
90. Darty
91. Terrace in general
92. Joja jola light
93. C’s being sneaky ass j’s
94. Sitting on the side of the ferries
95. Frogger
96. B.O on the tram
97. Clayton and his kittens
98. “Hello!” - the woman in the Hamam taking off Kristina’s top
99. Having someone else give you a wedgie
100. “Are you ready for this?” - William, about his tattoo
101. Chicken-fighting in the Aegean
102. David and Amanda drowning each other in the Aegean
103. Humpback whales in the Aegean
104. Americans being the exclamation of choice to rally the group
105. Bunny-hopping Murat
106. Techno dance clubs
107. Hokeypokey with Turks
108. Finding all the blacks in Istanbul
109. Energy ball dancing catching on like wildfire
110. Plants growing on peoples roofs, especially in Konya
111. Mussels and lemons being sold on the side of road
112. Roasted chestnuts
113. Corn in cup (misc. toppings such as lemon, pomagrenate juice, honey, mayo, ketchup, etc.)
114. Kumpir
115. Waffles
116. "Hello, my darling."
117. "I saw you on facebook last night."
118. Goose in Kadikoy
119. Ortakoy
120. Greek village by Selcuk
121. Man cherries
122. Very sour erik
123. "That woman cherry tree just bitch slapped me!" - Edward
124. Getting on the train to Syria
125. Simit guy dropping said simit and putting it back on stand
126. Hande
127. "Sarap!" sounding like "Shutup!" when Kristina said it to Hande
128. Cave crumbling around us
129. Cave being freezing and damp
130. Turkish coffee, stuck in teeth
131. Rhombus room
132. Farmers' tan
133. Gross quicksand shite in crater lake
134. Turks carrying loads of shite
135. Three pebbles in Amanda's foot
136. 1 YTL doner
137. Food poisoning
138. Dinners at the profs
139. Breaking shite at the profs
140. Catch phrase at the profs
141. "Eww stink" - Edward
142. Yekta translating for the mufti
143. Orange shirt guy being annoying during meeting with the mufti
144. "Wait, where’s Zoe?"
145. David's kilim
146. Turkish showers, with toilets
147. Toilet paper shields
148. TMT
149. "Wooph!"
150. No central air
151. "Is this a joke?"
152. Turkish mystery
153. Turkish breakfasts
154. Goldella
155. "Japon?" - always directed at Edward
156. The twins - David and Edward
157. Edward = Erol in Turks' minds
158. Dawud
159. Leopard and gunshots in national park
160. "WC X!" (on the train, the X was the fork and knife for the dining car)
161. BBC interview in dining car
162. “And so I can say...” – tour guide
163. Tourguide and Turko being the names Fez tour guide Amanda called our bus driver
164. Uncomfortable Fez bus
165. Kristina’s misc. bruises
166. Amanda’s black eye via Clayton
167. All the sales pitches, especially from restaurants
168. "This is ridiculous!" - David
169. Cucumber stands on the side of the road
170. Changing clothes outside at the calcium deposits in Pamukkale
171. Speedo guy under waterfall the at calcium deposits
172. Swimming in the raki pool
173. Communal shower in Egirdir; hair washing circle
174. Getting as many people in a cab as possible to save money
175. Clayton’s mouth being agape when he learned who Leslie Pearce’s advisor was
176. Amanda: “I think Yekta knows something we don’t.” Clayton: “Yeah, the language.”
177. Clayton having his shoes shined unwillingly
178. Sweetie is that really what you want - song from Cappadocia
179. "What's this little gem?"
180. "Oh hey Cappy, tasting delish."
181. “Well, ya'll have fun redoing the back bedroom!” – Amanda
182. ANTI-SPASMODIC!!!!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
The Last Week
After sleeping the morning away on Tuesday, I awoke feeling better but still not at 100%. The rest of the day was spent recovering, catching up on blogging, and planning out what all needed to be done for my project on women’s dress in contemporary Turkey with Kristina. That night we had a delicious pasta supper cooked by Edward and Kristina, which worked great on my stomach.
The next morning, Kristina accompanied me to buy a painting from the artist we stumbled upon in Sultanahmet a few weeks ago and to ask the woman if she would allow us to interview her for our project. After looking through a number of paintings of Istanbul, I settled on the perfect one, which I can’t wait to get home and frame. Once I paid, we ventured in asking the young woman for an interview. With a bit of difficulty getting lost in translation, we settled to come back later in the day with, of course, our handy translator Yekta.
We looked around at some hotels for Kristina to stay in with her boyfriend and then rushed back up to Prof. Sarah and William’s flat for a group discussion. We reviewed our two-week adventure and talked about our projects.
Then it was back to our own flat for some R&R until Yekta finished up helping Clayton and Edward get their “Turkish haircuts.” We headed out around 4:00 p.m. and with Yekta’s help had a great interview with Elif, the artist. Elif wears a headscarf, but not for traditional Islamic reasons. She gave us a lot of things to ponder over, such as the fact that she takes off her headscarf whenever she goes to art shows because of other people’s judgment. We also found out her whole family paints and her father is a pretty famous artist in Istanbul. The painting I actually bought was done by her brother.
Then Kristina and I wondered around checking out hotels, getting lost deep in the Sultanahmet neighborhood. In the process we got shot at with water guns by little boys…somebody didn’t teach their children any manners. Eventually we emerged unscathed and made it back to the flat by about the time night fell.
Thursday was a pretty big day. We had an appointment at the American consulate at 3:00. We walked, took a metro, a dolmus, and a taxi to get there. I think we thoroughly impressed the people at the consulate with our traveling abilities. The consulate is a relatively new building; it had previously been pretty close to us in Beyoglu, but they decided to make it a bit more inaccessible.
The consulate literally now looks like a fortress on a hill with walls that surround its grounds. It illicits mix feelings – one, it’s obviously secluded and standoffish; two, I’m happy it looks pretty impenetrable.
We had quite an in-depth discussion with the people at the consulate. They essentially told us not to repeat what they said as we asked questions on the AKP, American-Turkish relations, and other such things. It was interesting and I think we made a good impression. Afterwards, it was back to the flat to do some work.
Friday was all about the 4th of the July and the party we were hosting. Unfortunately, most of our guests, professors and other such people who have helped us while in Turkey could not make it, but we were not going to let that deter our spirit. After all, our Social Chairs (Amanda and Edward) had carefully planned the event down to dividing us into subcommittees to prepare for it. Meat and Cheese subcommittee for said party (Clayton and I) had potentially the hardest task of all – finding good cheese and something that resembles ground beef. With our skills though, we managed to obtain both. Victorious, we returned to the flat, where it was back to work on various things that needed to be done for our program.
Later, Kristina and I headed to Kanyon Mall, a great postmodern structure with numerous stores in an already ritzy area of town. We were originally going to be interviewing a woman there for our project, but she had to cancel and we decided we wanted to check it out anyway. After browsing around, figuring out how to use Turkish payphones, and enjoying a chocolate-chip cookie, we figured we needed to head on back because both of us were on food prep for the party.
Knife in hand, I cut apples and watermelon without managing to injure myself, and I carefully crafted our mystery meat into burger patties. We had a pleasant party with sparklers included and spotted some fireworks in the distance. We also met a Bogazci University student who would be studying at UNC in the fall.
On Saturday I woke up with a sense of finality. I still had two days left, but time was quickly slipping away.
Kristina and I conducted another interview and then headed back to the flat to due some work for the program. That night was my last real night in Istanbul, so I was up for a little celebration. We went back to our old haunt that Murat, our neighbor before he mysteriously disappeared, took us too our first week. Of course, a little dancing was included even though some of the group left for various reasons.
Waking up Sunday was bittersweet for obvious reasons. We met Prof Sarah and William at the Byzantine basilica cistern for once last touristy thing and then took a boat up the Bosphorus where we held our last group discussion. That afternoon, after a short nap and packing, I managed to find the Nadal-Federer Wimbledon final (now considered epic – go Rafa!) on TV and lingered over it before getting ready for supper that night.
Prof Sarah and William were taking us to a pretty famous restaurant for our last meal together. The food was delicious, but the company was even better. Our Turkish teacher, Hande came with us as well. We relived a lot of stories and ate way too much, but as all things this past week, time passed by way too quickly. Prof Sarah and William each presented us a gift, finding the perfect thing for each of us – a Galatasaray football jersey for me – and quite a number of toasts were given.
That night, once arriving back to the flat, we had a special treat. All throughout our stay, there has been singing and one of our favorite songs to sing together was “Be A Man” from Disney’s Mulan. Though we didn’t have the DVD for it, Kevin managed to download it online and we all gathered around his laptop to watch it. A nice way to put an exclamation point on the end of our trip.
Then came the goodbyes. Kevin and Zoe were first to leave as they had a 5:30 a.m. flight. Kelly and I said our goodbyes to the boys as neither of us expected to see them tomorrow morning when we left.
Kelly woke me up this morning as she headed out the door and now, I’m preparing to leave in just a few minutes. My flight from the airport is at 12:30 p.m., not all that of a bad time, but, of course, I feel the need to leave four hours ahead of time.
Expect one more blogpost soon on reflections and whatnot. Nostalgia and hilarity will ensue.
The next morning, Kristina accompanied me to buy a painting from the artist we stumbled upon in Sultanahmet a few weeks ago and to ask the woman if she would allow us to interview her for our project. After looking through a number of paintings of Istanbul, I settled on the perfect one, which I can’t wait to get home and frame. Once I paid, we ventured in asking the young woman for an interview. With a bit of difficulty getting lost in translation, we settled to come back later in the day with, of course, our handy translator Yekta.
We looked around at some hotels for Kristina to stay in with her boyfriend and then rushed back up to Prof. Sarah and William’s flat for a group discussion. We reviewed our two-week adventure and talked about our projects.
Then it was back to our own flat for some R&R until Yekta finished up helping Clayton and Edward get their “Turkish haircuts.” We headed out around 4:00 p.m. and with Yekta’s help had a great interview with Elif, the artist. Elif wears a headscarf, but not for traditional Islamic reasons. She gave us a lot of things to ponder over, such as the fact that she takes off her headscarf whenever she goes to art shows because of other people’s judgment. We also found out her whole family paints and her father is a pretty famous artist in Istanbul. The painting I actually bought was done by her brother.
Then Kristina and I wondered around checking out hotels, getting lost deep in the Sultanahmet neighborhood. In the process we got shot at with water guns by little boys…somebody didn’t teach their children any manners. Eventually we emerged unscathed and made it back to the flat by about the time night fell.
Thursday was a pretty big day. We had an appointment at the American consulate at 3:00. We walked, took a metro, a dolmus, and a taxi to get there. I think we thoroughly impressed the people at the consulate with our traveling abilities. The consulate is a relatively new building; it had previously been pretty close to us in Beyoglu, but they decided to make it a bit more inaccessible.
The consulate literally now looks like a fortress on a hill with walls that surround its grounds. It illicits mix feelings – one, it’s obviously secluded and standoffish; two, I’m happy it looks pretty impenetrable.
We had quite an in-depth discussion with the people at the consulate. They essentially told us not to repeat what they said as we asked questions on the AKP, American-Turkish relations, and other such things. It was interesting and I think we made a good impression. Afterwards, it was back to the flat to do some work.
Friday was all about the 4th of the July and the party we were hosting. Unfortunately, most of our guests, professors and other such people who have helped us while in Turkey could not make it, but we were not going to let that deter our spirit. After all, our Social Chairs (Amanda and Edward) had carefully planned the event down to dividing us into subcommittees to prepare for it. Meat and Cheese subcommittee for said party (Clayton and I) had potentially the hardest task of all – finding good cheese and something that resembles ground beef. With our skills though, we managed to obtain both. Victorious, we returned to the flat, where it was back to work on various things that needed to be done for our program.
Later, Kristina and I headed to Kanyon Mall, a great postmodern structure with numerous stores in an already ritzy area of town. We were originally going to be interviewing a woman there for our project, but she had to cancel and we decided we wanted to check it out anyway. After browsing around, figuring out how to use Turkish payphones, and enjoying a chocolate-chip cookie, we figured we needed to head on back because both of us were on food prep for the party.
Knife in hand, I cut apples and watermelon without managing to injure myself, and I carefully crafted our mystery meat into burger patties. We had a pleasant party with sparklers included and spotted some fireworks in the distance. We also met a Bogazci University student who would be studying at UNC in the fall.
On Saturday I woke up with a sense of finality. I still had two days left, but time was quickly slipping away.
Kristina and I conducted another interview and then headed back to the flat to due some work for the program. That night was my last real night in Istanbul, so I was up for a little celebration. We went back to our old haunt that Murat, our neighbor before he mysteriously disappeared, took us too our first week. Of course, a little dancing was included even though some of the group left for various reasons.
Waking up Sunday was bittersweet for obvious reasons. We met Prof Sarah and William at the Byzantine basilica cistern for once last touristy thing and then took a boat up the Bosphorus where we held our last group discussion. That afternoon, after a short nap and packing, I managed to find the Nadal-Federer Wimbledon final (now considered epic – go Rafa!) on TV and lingered over it before getting ready for supper that night.
Prof Sarah and William were taking us to a pretty famous restaurant for our last meal together. The food was delicious, but the company was even better. Our Turkish teacher, Hande came with us as well. We relived a lot of stories and ate way too much, but as all things this past week, time passed by way too quickly. Prof Sarah and William each presented us a gift, finding the perfect thing for each of us – a Galatasaray football jersey for me – and quite a number of toasts were given.
That night, once arriving back to the flat, we had a special treat. All throughout our stay, there has been singing and one of our favorite songs to sing together was “Be A Man” from Disney’s Mulan. Though we didn’t have the DVD for it, Kevin managed to download it online and we all gathered around his laptop to watch it. A nice way to put an exclamation point on the end of our trip.
Then came the goodbyes. Kevin and Zoe were first to leave as they had a 5:30 a.m. flight. Kelly and I said our goodbyes to the boys as neither of us expected to see them tomorrow morning when we left.
Kelly woke me up this morning as she headed out the door and now, I’m preparing to leave in just a few minutes. My flight from the airport is at 12:30 p.m., not all that of a bad time, but, of course, I feel the need to leave four hours ahead of time.
Expect one more blogpost soon on reflections and whatnot. Nostalgia and hilarity will ensue.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
The Final Stop: Ankara
We left Cappadocia at 8:00 p.m. on the Fez Bus and still feeling the effects of traveling and hiking, I nodded off to sleep in the cramped quarters after a bit.
We were supposed to arrive in Ankara around midnight, at which point our group would get dropped off and the rest of the Fez Bus would continue onwards. I snapped awake sometime around midnight only to witness the sign for Ankara wiz by on the left as we took the highway on the outskirts of the city under the Istanbul sign. Prof. Sarah was sitting up front at this point and she turned to tour guide Ket asking if our bus driver, Mustafa, knew we were supposed to be dropped off in Ankara. Ket assured us that Mustafa had been informed, or was supposed to have been informed, but before long she started to get a little panicky as Mustafa kept heading down the highway.
As Ket and Prof Sarah kept telling Mustafa to go to Ankara, he got angrier and angrier, shouting in Turkish and taking his hands off the wheel to gesture. By this point, the front half of the bus was awake, and as Ket began making phone calls as Mustafa continued driving along, the rest of the bus awoke.
Mustafa kept passing exit after exit, even slowing down to just 50 km/hr for some reason. I eventually decided to go wake up Yekta who was asleep in the back of the bus around 12:45 because, you know, she spoke Turkish fluently. I was in kind of that antsy, excited state that drove Kristina, sitting beside me, crazy as I couldn’t sit still. I was a little worried, but not overly so even as Mustafa kept shouting as Yekta, Prof Sarah, and tour guide Ket kept trying to tell him to turn around to Ankara.
Ket finally got Mustafa to turn around after calling his boss, but then I got really worried as Mustafa deliberately took the split of the highway to Konya when the other side was clearly marked as Ankara. Then Mustafa decided to back up on the highway, which is a bit more acceptable in Turkish driving than American, but still not the norm as you can imagine. Eventually Mustafa stopped to ask directions to a taxi driver and we took our chance, jumping off the bus and grabbing our luggage. We yelled good luck to the rest of the Fez Bus as we immediately hailed four taxis on the side of the highway at 2:00 a.m.
With Yekta’s translation, we eventually came to the conclusion that Mustafa didn’t go to Ankara because he didn’t know it and as a solution, decided to skip it entirely. Yeah, okay, that logic obviously works.
So here we were, on the side of a random highway in Ankara at 2:00 a.m. Don’t worry mom and dad; everything was under control after we got off the bus and weren’t possibly being kidnapped by an angry Turk with a grudge against Ankara. In the taxis, we headed to Bilkent University where we were staying. Luckily we were on the side of Ankara where Bilkent was, so the drive wasn’t all that long.
Unfortunately, the taxi drivers of course had no idea where each individual dorm was that we were staying in for the next two nights. So we had to stop a fair number of times on campus and ask directions to random students. Good thing it was a Saturday night and a university campus is a university campus no matter where you are in the world. My favorite was when the car I was in, which was the first of the four, pulled right up next to a couple that was getting cozy on a bench to ask directions. My automatic reaction was, “no way is the cab driver going to ask this couple,” but he got out of the car and strolled right up to them like nothing was wrong. I can only imagine what they were thinking as four cabs pulled up next to them with twelve Americans peering out the window.
We eventually found the boys dorm first, and then the Prof Sarah and William found theirs. So after dropping off the boys, we consolidated into two taxis. Luggage and Prof Sarah went into one, while six girls plus the cab driver went into another. I ended up on Kelly’s lap in the front seat with no head room, so I quickly asked for the window to be rolled down so I could hang halfway out and have room. Don’t worry mom and dad, it was a short drive to the dorm and there weren’t any other cars out.
We finally got to crash, split between two rooms, at 3:00 a.m.
Prof. Sarah luckily didn’t have to wake us up until 10:00 as our original guide’s daughter was sick. So without any immediately plans we decided to head out to Gordian - Phrygian ruins and an excavation site run by UNC Professor Ken Sams. The Phrygians were best known for their King Midas, who by legend has it, had everything he touched turned to gold. And Gordian itself is known for the famed Gordian Knot that Alexander the Great cut into two with his sword to fulfill a prophecy. Professor Sams was the second excavation leader of the site since 1957, which was the longest running American excavation in Turkey.
Anyway, we took taxis from Bilkent to the bus station where we loaded up on a, you guessed it, charter bus. We made it to the city close to Gordian with no problems and then, in the process of figuring out which bus to take to the city center where we could catch taxis, a mystic Turk appeared. Before I knew it, said mystic Turk led us to an empty charter bus where the 12 of us loaded up and we were off to Gordian for 100 lira. Along the way, mystic Turk driver (on his cell phone and driving!!! – see previous post about Turks belief on cell phones and brakes) opened the door and one of his buddies jumped on the bus with us.
I can only imagine that conversation:
“Hey, I’m heading out to the middle of nowhere with a dozen Americans so they can look at some ruins; want to come? I’ll let you drive the bus.”
“Sure, I’m on the street corner.”
“Hang on, I’ll be right there, you can just jump on.”
Yekta later affirmed that’s essentially how the conversation went.
Professor Sams gave us a great in-depth rundown of the site. I love archaeology I really do, I find it fascinating, trying to piece together history from whatever ruins and artifacts ancient cultures have left. Archeology is a sister to history; where history is learned from texts, archeology teaches you from artifacts and ancient signs of life. Ideally, you need both to complete a full study of ancient life, but for sites that date back to the B.C. you mostly just have artifacts from which to piece together people’s lives. Despite this however, I don’t think I have the kind of love for it that it takes to toil weeks at a time on one site in the hot sun for just a little money. Of course, that just ups my respect for people like Prof Sams.
I think this is a good point to talk about all the different cultures that have made up Turkey and Anatolia. Here’s a brief rundown of the major empires that have existed in Anatolia and that we’ve encountered in our past two weeks traveling.
-Hattian
-Akkadian
-Assyrian
-Hittite
-Phrygian
-Troy
-Lydian
-Persian
-Hellenistic
-Roman
-Byzantine
-Seljuk
-Ottoman
-Republic
And that’s just to name a few. Turks are confused about their identity with all these different things and to add to that confusion they like Hittites and don’t like to acknowledge the Hellenistic stuff unless if it’s for tourists. We don’t quite have that same complication of empires in the US.
After walking us around the site, explaining what they think the Phrygians lives were like, Prof. Sams took us to Midas’ Tomb. Or it’s possibly Midas’ Tomb; they now think the dates are more suited to Midas’ father. The tomb is inside a burial mound that reminds me a lot of the Indian Mounds near Macon, GA where I grew up, but those Native Americans used mounds in their daily lives instead of just as important burials. The tomb is made entirely of wood and, dating to the 8th century, is the oldest surviving wood structure in the world - seeing something organic that old and still completely intact is pretty amazing.
Then after running around the onsite museum for a few minutes we were back on our empty charter bus and back to the small bus station to catch an actual charter bus to Ankara. After a relaxing ride that ended up in Ankara’s very large and busy bus station, we left Yekta to visit a friend and Prof Sarah and William to figure out how we were going to make it back to Istanbul the next night. Fez Bus was not an option after the Mustafa-fiasco. We headed down into the center of Ankara for some strolling of the streets and for food, considering we hadn’t really eaten anything all day besides snacks.
We sat around at a cheap Turkish fast food joint for a long while watching the people pass and talking amongst ourselves. Some of our group went to visit an internet café while the rest of us got accosted by some of the Turks working there after sitting there for an extended period. When I say accosted, of course I mean just attempted conversation. They held a conversation mostly through Clayton who somehow, seems to mystically understand mystic Turks. They eventually figured out we wanted to go see Kocatepe Camii, the supposedly largest mosque in the world. It’s relatively new and, interestingly enough, now somewhat of a symbol for Ankara.
The Turks found some friends to direct us to Kocatepe for some of the way. After we left them, we stumbled up the straight they pointed out to us and then tried to figure out where to go from there. Luckily, we were rescued again by more Turks, this time two women (uncovered), who asked us if they could help. This was the first time we had been purposefully approached by women. Turns out these two university students were on their way to Kocatepe so they would take us. I love coincidences.
Kocatepe is pretty imposing. On top of a hill and designed to look like Sultanahmet in Istanbul, it was twilight when we approached, giving it a mystic glow. The two women took us inside, but unfortunately we were short on headscarves and the mosque had run out as well. After I took a look around, I gave mine over to Kristina so she could go take a look and play photographer. I sat outside a few minutes before one of the women came out and gave me her headscarf. She ushered me inside and in broken English told me that she had a friend that would show us Kocatepe.
The friend was another university woman who had just come down from praying. Unfortunately we got a bit lost in translation, but they were an interesting bunch. Just observing their behavior in the mosque was curious. They weren’t submissive in any sort; talking at a normal level and approaching the front of the mosque.
After a bit we got ready to leave as the EuroCup final between Spain and Germany was approaching rapidly. We said our goodbyes and I tried to give the headscarf back to the woman outside. She insisted it was gift however, and so I still have it as a testament to my time in Ankara, their amazing hospitality, and as a reminder as to what modern Islam can be.
We wandered our way back to the area we were in before and found a good bar to watch the game. I was pulling for Spain much to David’s disdain. Our group was split between Germany and Spain, but luckily Spain pulled out the win – they’re first major tournament win in 44 years.
Unfortunately during this time, Kristina was slowly going under and by the end of the game, she looked pretty miserable. We made our way back to the metro to begin our journey back to Bilkent by taking the metro to the end of its line at the bus station, but unfortunately none of the toilets there were open. Edward went with Kristina as they dashed back to the surface to find a toilet while the rest of us anxiously waited for what we thought was the last metro of the day. We were forced to board without them as they still hadn’t made it back as the metro pulled up to its stop.
Luckily, we were wrong and the real last metro was after the one we took, which thankfully Edward and Kristina caught. Somehow things fell together and as I waited at the metro’s entrance to the bus station with Amanda for them, Clayton somehow organized a dolmus to take the group of us from the bus station all the way to the dorms at Bilkent. Remember, a dolmus is a lot cheaper than a taxi and with nine of us, it just made it easier as well.
We managed to get Kristina who was only getting worse onto the dolmus and the driver who turned out to be a great guy got us to the dorms. We gave him a massive tip for waiting, stopping, and finding our dorms. As us girls rushed off to the dorm to get Kristina inside, the guys stayed behind and also managed to get the driver’s number to call him for transportation in the morning.
Most of the girls went to bed pretty quickly. Kristina was still feeling horrible and, seeing as we are constantly roommates, I was a bit worried. I stayed up a bit to blog in the suite lounge only to watch her repeatedly get up to make it to the bathroom. By 3:00 a.m., I couldn’t even keep my eyes open and so making sure she didn’t want me to call anybody, I went onto bed. I was asleep pretty quickly and woke up only once to see a figure that I later found out was Prof. Sarah in our doorway. Turns out, Kristina called Prof at 5:30 and when I woke up a bit before 9:00 a.m. I found out from Amanda that Prof Sarah came and took Kristina to student health that morning.
With Kristina taken care of and staying behind with Prof to sleep, we began our final day of the trip. Yekta called the dolmus driver and he appeared with his perpetually constant cigarette to take us off to the train station where we would drop off our stuff for the day. For you see, instead of taking Fez Bus, Prof. Sarah and William had got us three cabins on an overnight train to Istanbul. Perfect.
We stuffed our luggage into lockers and William led us to Anit Kabir, Ataturks’ massive mausoleum. Mid walk, I felt a couple of uncomfortable rumblings in my stomach but ignored it for the most part. After all, we were going to visit The Man, The Father of the Turks, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk and well, all things Turkish Republic.
If I could buried in similar style to Ataturk, complete with all the military guards, the national park, the long walk-way, and the giant columned-building with gold that actually housed my sarcophagus --- that would be perfect. I guess all I have to do is take a crumbling Empire that’s about to be divided up among European forces and turn it into a Republic after winning a couple of great battles and then pass a bunch of reforms to lead the country into the modern era. I better get started.
Yekta’s grandfather led us through Anit Kabir, imparting anecdote and information along the way. He’s a pretty interesting man as well; a lawyer and a politician, one of the guard’s at the museum actually came up and shook his hand upon recognizing him. I swear, Yetka’s family knows everybody in Turkey.
After watching a procession at the tomb – I love how things seem to magically fall into place on this trip – we moved on to the museum where we reviewed what we knew about Ataturk thus far and learned much, much more. Such as what kind of pajama’s the man wore. And that he owned a working rifle disguised as a cane. And that his dog was stuffed put on display in the museum.
But seriously, the museum had information on anything Ataturk even remotely touched during his life, from personal items to each thing he changed and affected in his new Turkish republic such as tourism and women’s issues.
Afterwards we gathered in the café where Yekta’s grandfather treated us to juice and some snacks. I drank a bit of juice and at a small cake, but the rumblings in my stomach increased so that’s all I managed.
Then we jumped into some taxis and headed up to the Museum of Anatolian Civilization. We then did some searching for a lunch place, but I was decidedly not feeling hungry. I didn’t eat and Clayton was in the same boat. I had to visit the bathroom and when I asked the lady working the small restaurant she affirmed my fears that the shoddy little lunch place didn’t have a restroom. Instead she grabbed my wrist and dragged me down a block to a butcher’s shop. She led me inside talking to the workers and showed me the bathroom. I felt a bit better after my bathroom break, enough to laugh at the absurdity of my visit upon returning to the others, but this only lasted briefly.
Clayton and I decided to leave the lunch place early and went back to the grassy area near the museum. We found a shady spot and Clayton laid down next to some stairs, quickly earning a reputation as a homeless man as I kept watch over him and for the others.
After a bit, the others found us and then we waited for Kristina and Prof. Sarah to join us. Kristina still desperately needed some sleep and not in tiptop shape when they joined us so Sarah found her a bench inside the museum. I took another bathroom break with some of the others and in the process made some friends with some high school girls from south of Ankara. Their English was surprisingly good and we had quite a pleasant conversation. While our guide, Prof. Zimmerman, talked to us outside the museum’s entrance, they came up to me again introducing another friend and some more members of their group. I talked with them for a few minutes as my group disappeared.
Here’s some of our conversation:
“Emily, how old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“Are you married?”
“No (displaying my ringless fingers and noticing their shocked looks). I don’t have time to be married.”
They giggled.
“Do you girls have boyfriends?”
More giggles; then…”Do you like Turkey?”
“Of course!”
Anyway, I wished I could have talked to them longer, but I had to catch up to my group and a few of the high school boys were staring predatorily at the edges of our conversation.
The museum was a collection of amazing artifacts taken from many of the sites we have visited (excluding Hellenistic ones) on our trip. We also possibly saw a depiction of the oldest sex scene ever in a series of images on a giant clay pot – I think all the boys took a picture.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember much of what Prof. Zimmerman told us I was increasingly not feeling well during the tour. My stomach was bothering more and more and I was really cold.
With Kristina still not feeling well, Clayton getting worse, and me not in the best of shape, and a dinner engagement nearby and no where to put us, Prof Sarah decided to rent a hotel room for us to crash in.
I told the group to wake me up for supper as I figured I should try to eat something, but Clayton and Kristina remained behind. Unfortunately I couldn’t manage much besides bread and cheese at supper and that didn’t stay in me for very long. I guess I was due for some stomach problems after all this time.
Feeling kind of shoddy, I don’t remember much from supper or the time before getting onto the train and crashing into my bed. I do remember being in a really bad mood though.
The sleeping train was amazing. Amazing as in once I was asleep in my top bunk, I didn’t wake up till the others told me we weren’t all that far from Haydrapasa Station on the Asian side of Istanbul.
Finally we were back in Istanbul and, unfortunately, my last week in Turkey.
We were supposed to arrive in Ankara around midnight, at which point our group would get dropped off and the rest of the Fez Bus would continue onwards. I snapped awake sometime around midnight only to witness the sign for Ankara wiz by on the left as we took the highway on the outskirts of the city under the Istanbul sign. Prof. Sarah was sitting up front at this point and she turned to tour guide Ket asking if our bus driver, Mustafa, knew we were supposed to be dropped off in Ankara. Ket assured us that Mustafa had been informed, or was supposed to have been informed, but before long she started to get a little panicky as Mustafa kept heading down the highway.
As Ket and Prof Sarah kept telling Mustafa to go to Ankara, he got angrier and angrier, shouting in Turkish and taking his hands off the wheel to gesture. By this point, the front half of the bus was awake, and as Ket began making phone calls as Mustafa continued driving along, the rest of the bus awoke.
Mustafa kept passing exit after exit, even slowing down to just 50 km/hr for some reason. I eventually decided to go wake up Yekta who was asleep in the back of the bus around 12:45 because, you know, she spoke Turkish fluently. I was in kind of that antsy, excited state that drove Kristina, sitting beside me, crazy as I couldn’t sit still. I was a little worried, but not overly so even as Mustafa kept shouting as Yekta, Prof Sarah, and tour guide Ket kept trying to tell him to turn around to Ankara.
Ket finally got Mustafa to turn around after calling his boss, but then I got really worried as Mustafa deliberately took the split of the highway to Konya when the other side was clearly marked as Ankara. Then Mustafa decided to back up on the highway, which is a bit more acceptable in Turkish driving than American, but still not the norm as you can imagine. Eventually Mustafa stopped to ask directions to a taxi driver and we took our chance, jumping off the bus and grabbing our luggage. We yelled good luck to the rest of the Fez Bus as we immediately hailed four taxis on the side of the highway at 2:00 a.m.
With Yekta’s translation, we eventually came to the conclusion that Mustafa didn’t go to Ankara because he didn’t know it and as a solution, decided to skip it entirely. Yeah, okay, that logic obviously works.
So here we were, on the side of a random highway in Ankara at 2:00 a.m. Don’t worry mom and dad; everything was under control after we got off the bus and weren’t possibly being kidnapped by an angry Turk with a grudge against Ankara. In the taxis, we headed to Bilkent University where we were staying. Luckily we were on the side of Ankara where Bilkent was, so the drive wasn’t all that long.
Unfortunately, the taxi drivers of course had no idea where each individual dorm was that we were staying in for the next two nights. So we had to stop a fair number of times on campus and ask directions to random students. Good thing it was a Saturday night and a university campus is a university campus no matter where you are in the world. My favorite was when the car I was in, which was the first of the four, pulled right up next to a couple that was getting cozy on a bench to ask directions. My automatic reaction was, “no way is the cab driver going to ask this couple,” but he got out of the car and strolled right up to them like nothing was wrong. I can only imagine what they were thinking as four cabs pulled up next to them with twelve Americans peering out the window.
We eventually found the boys dorm first, and then the Prof Sarah and William found theirs. So after dropping off the boys, we consolidated into two taxis. Luggage and Prof Sarah went into one, while six girls plus the cab driver went into another. I ended up on Kelly’s lap in the front seat with no head room, so I quickly asked for the window to be rolled down so I could hang halfway out and have room. Don’t worry mom and dad, it was a short drive to the dorm and there weren’t any other cars out.
We finally got to crash, split between two rooms, at 3:00 a.m.
Prof. Sarah luckily didn’t have to wake us up until 10:00 as our original guide’s daughter was sick. So without any immediately plans we decided to head out to Gordian - Phrygian ruins and an excavation site run by UNC Professor Ken Sams. The Phrygians were best known for their King Midas, who by legend has it, had everything he touched turned to gold. And Gordian itself is known for the famed Gordian Knot that Alexander the Great cut into two with his sword to fulfill a prophecy. Professor Sams was the second excavation leader of the site since 1957, which was the longest running American excavation in Turkey.
Anyway, we took taxis from Bilkent to the bus station where we loaded up on a, you guessed it, charter bus. We made it to the city close to Gordian with no problems and then, in the process of figuring out which bus to take to the city center where we could catch taxis, a mystic Turk appeared. Before I knew it, said mystic Turk led us to an empty charter bus where the 12 of us loaded up and we were off to Gordian for 100 lira. Along the way, mystic Turk driver (on his cell phone and driving!!! – see previous post about Turks belief on cell phones and brakes) opened the door and one of his buddies jumped on the bus with us.
I can only imagine that conversation:
“Hey, I’m heading out to the middle of nowhere with a dozen Americans so they can look at some ruins; want to come? I’ll let you drive the bus.”
“Sure, I’m on the street corner.”
“Hang on, I’ll be right there, you can just jump on.”
Yekta later affirmed that’s essentially how the conversation went.
Professor Sams gave us a great in-depth rundown of the site. I love archaeology I really do, I find it fascinating, trying to piece together history from whatever ruins and artifacts ancient cultures have left. Archeology is a sister to history; where history is learned from texts, archeology teaches you from artifacts and ancient signs of life. Ideally, you need both to complete a full study of ancient life, but for sites that date back to the B.C. you mostly just have artifacts from which to piece together people’s lives. Despite this however, I don’t think I have the kind of love for it that it takes to toil weeks at a time on one site in the hot sun for just a little money. Of course, that just ups my respect for people like Prof Sams.
I think this is a good point to talk about all the different cultures that have made up Turkey and Anatolia. Here’s a brief rundown of the major empires that have existed in Anatolia and that we’ve encountered in our past two weeks traveling.
-Hattian
-Akkadian
-Assyrian
-Hittite
-Phrygian
-Troy
-Lydian
-Persian
-Hellenistic
-Roman
-Byzantine
-Seljuk
-Ottoman
-Republic
And that’s just to name a few. Turks are confused about their identity with all these different things and to add to that confusion they like Hittites and don’t like to acknowledge the Hellenistic stuff unless if it’s for tourists. We don’t quite have that same complication of empires in the US.
After walking us around the site, explaining what they think the Phrygians lives were like, Prof. Sams took us to Midas’ Tomb. Or it’s possibly Midas’ Tomb; they now think the dates are more suited to Midas’ father. The tomb is inside a burial mound that reminds me a lot of the Indian Mounds near Macon, GA where I grew up, but those Native Americans used mounds in their daily lives instead of just as important burials. The tomb is made entirely of wood and, dating to the 8th century, is the oldest surviving wood structure in the world - seeing something organic that old and still completely intact is pretty amazing.
Then after running around the onsite museum for a few minutes we were back on our empty charter bus and back to the small bus station to catch an actual charter bus to Ankara. After a relaxing ride that ended up in Ankara’s very large and busy bus station, we left Yekta to visit a friend and Prof Sarah and William to figure out how we were going to make it back to Istanbul the next night. Fez Bus was not an option after the Mustafa-fiasco. We headed down into the center of Ankara for some strolling of the streets and for food, considering we hadn’t really eaten anything all day besides snacks.
We sat around at a cheap Turkish fast food joint for a long while watching the people pass and talking amongst ourselves. Some of our group went to visit an internet café while the rest of us got accosted by some of the Turks working there after sitting there for an extended period. When I say accosted, of course I mean just attempted conversation. They held a conversation mostly through Clayton who somehow, seems to mystically understand mystic Turks. They eventually figured out we wanted to go see Kocatepe Camii, the supposedly largest mosque in the world. It’s relatively new and, interestingly enough, now somewhat of a symbol for Ankara.
The Turks found some friends to direct us to Kocatepe for some of the way. After we left them, we stumbled up the straight they pointed out to us and then tried to figure out where to go from there. Luckily, we were rescued again by more Turks, this time two women (uncovered), who asked us if they could help. This was the first time we had been purposefully approached by women. Turns out these two university students were on their way to Kocatepe so they would take us. I love coincidences.
Kocatepe is pretty imposing. On top of a hill and designed to look like Sultanahmet in Istanbul, it was twilight when we approached, giving it a mystic glow. The two women took us inside, but unfortunately we were short on headscarves and the mosque had run out as well. After I took a look around, I gave mine over to Kristina so she could go take a look and play photographer. I sat outside a few minutes before one of the women came out and gave me her headscarf. She ushered me inside and in broken English told me that she had a friend that would show us Kocatepe.
The friend was another university woman who had just come down from praying. Unfortunately we got a bit lost in translation, but they were an interesting bunch. Just observing their behavior in the mosque was curious. They weren’t submissive in any sort; talking at a normal level and approaching the front of the mosque.
After a bit we got ready to leave as the EuroCup final between Spain and Germany was approaching rapidly. We said our goodbyes and I tried to give the headscarf back to the woman outside. She insisted it was gift however, and so I still have it as a testament to my time in Ankara, their amazing hospitality, and as a reminder as to what modern Islam can be.
We wandered our way back to the area we were in before and found a good bar to watch the game. I was pulling for Spain much to David’s disdain. Our group was split between Germany and Spain, but luckily Spain pulled out the win – they’re first major tournament win in 44 years.
Unfortunately during this time, Kristina was slowly going under and by the end of the game, she looked pretty miserable. We made our way back to the metro to begin our journey back to Bilkent by taking the metro to the end of its line at the bus station, but unfortunately none of the toilets there were open. Edward went with Kristina as they dashed back to the surface to find a toilet while the rest of us anxiously waited for what we thought was the last metro of the day. We were forced to board without them as they still hadn’t made it back as the metro pulled up to its stop.
Luckily, we were wrong and the real last metro was after the one we took, which thankfully Edward and Kristina caught. Somehow things fell together and as I waited at the metro’s entrance to the bus station with Amanda for them, Clayton somehow organized a dolmus to take the group of us from the bus station all the way to the dorms at Bilkent. Remember, a dolmus is a lot cheaper than a taxi and with nine of us, it just made it easier as well.
We managed to get Kristina who was only getting worse onto the dolmus and the driver who turned out to be a great guy got us to the dorms. We gave him a massive tip for waiting, stopping, and finding our dorms. As us girls rushed off to the dorm to get Kristina inside, the guys stayed behind and also managed to get the driver’s number to call him for transportation in the morning.
Most of the girls went to bed pretty quickly. Kristina was still feeling horrible and, seeing as we are constantly roommates, I was a bit worried. I stayed up a bit to blog in the suite lounge only to watch her repeatedly get up to make it to the bathroom. By 3:00 a.m., I couldn’t even keep my eyes open and so making sure she didn’t want me to call anybody, I went onto bed. I was asleep pretty quickly and woke up only once to see a figure that I later found out was Prof. Sarah in our doorway. Turns out, Kristina called Prof at 5:30 and when I woke up a bit before 9:00 a.m. I found out from Amanda that Prof Sarah came and took Kristina to student health that morning.
With Kristina taken care of and staying behind with Prof to sleep, we began our final day of the trip. Yekta called the dolmus driver and he appeared with his perpetually constant cigarette to take us off to the train station where we would drop off our stuff for the day. For you see, instead of taking Fez Bus, Prof. Sarah and William had got us three cabins on an overnight train to Istanbul. Perfect.
We stuffed our luggage into lockers and William led us to Anit Kabir, Ataturks’ massive mausoleum. Mid walk, I felt a couple of uncomfortable rumblings in my stomach but ignored it for the most part. After all, we were going to visit The Man, The Father of the Turks, Mustafa Kemal, later known as Ataturk and well, all things Turkish Republic.
If I could buried in similar style to Ataturk, complete with all the military guards, the national park, the long walk-way, and the giant columned-building with gold that actually housed my sarcophagus --- that would be perfect. I guess all I have to do is take a crumbling Empire that’s about to be divided up among European forces and turn it into a Republic after winning a couple of great battles and then pass a bunch of reforms to lead the country into the modern era. I better get started.
Yekta’s grandfather led us through Anit Kabir, imparting anecdote and information along the way. He’s a pretty interesting man as well; a lawyer and a politician, one of the guard’s at the museum actually came up and shook his hand upon recognizing him. I swear, Yetka’s family knows everybody in Turkey.
After watching a procession at the tomb – I love how things seem to magically fall into place on this trip – we moved on to the museum where we reviewed what we knew about Ataturk thus far and learned much, much more. Such as what kind of pajama’s the man wore. And that he owned a working rifle disguised as a cane. And that his dog was stuffed put on display in the museum.
But seriously, the museum had information on anything Ataturk even remotely touched during his life, from personal items to each thing he changed and affected in his new Turkish republic such as tourism and women’s issues.
Afterwards we gathered in the café where Yekta’s grandfather treated us to juice and some snacks. I drank a bit of juice and at a small cake, but the rumblings in my stomach increased so that’s all I managed.
Then we jumped into some taxis and headed up to the Museum of Anatolian Civilization. We then did some searching for a lunch place, but I was decidedly not feeling hungry. I didn’t eat and Clayton was in the same boat. I had to visit the bathroom and when I asked the lady working the small restaurant she affirmed my fears that the shoddy little lunch place didn’t have a restroom. Instead she grabbed my wrist and dragged me down a block to a butcher’s shop. She led me inside talking to the workers and showed me the bathroom. I felt a bit better after my bathroom break, enough to laugh at the absurdity of my visit upon returning to the others, but this only lasted briefly.
Clayton and I decided to leave the lunch place early and went back to the grassy area near the museum. We found a shady spot and Clayton laid down next to some stairs, quickly earning a reputation as a homeless man as I kept watch over him and for the others.
After a bit, the others found us and then we waited for Kristina and Prof. Sarah to join us. Kristina still desperately needed some sleep and not in tiptop shape when they joined us so Sarah found her a bench inside the museum. I took another bathroom break with some of the others and in the process made some friends with some high school girls from south of Ankara. Their English was surprisingly good and we had quite a pleasant conversation. While our guide, Prof. Zimmerman, talked to us outside the museum’s entrance, they came up to me again introducing another friend and some more members of their group. I talked with them for a few minutes as my group disappeared.
Here’s some of our conversation:
“Emily, how old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“Are you married?”
“No (displaying my ringless fingers and noticing their shocked looks). I don’t have time to be married.”
They giggled.
“Do you girls have boyfriends?”
More giggles; then…”Do you like Turkey?”
“Of course!”
Anyway, I wished I could have talked to them longer, but I had to catch up to my group and a few of the high school boys were staring predatorily at the edges of our conversation.
The museum was a collection of amazing artifacts taken from many of the sites we have visited (excluding Hellenistic ones) on our trip. We also possibly saw a depiction of the oldest sex scene ever in a series of images on a giant clay pot – I think all the boys took a picture.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember much of what Prof. Zimmerman told us I was increasingly not feeling well during the tour. My stomach was bothering more and more and I was really cold.
With Kristina still not feeling well, Clayton getting worse, and me not in the best of shape, and a dinner engagement nearby and no where to put us, Prof Sarah decided to rent a hotel room for us to crash in.
I told the group to wake me up for supper as I figured I should try to eat something, but Clayton and Kristina remained behind. Unfortunately I couldn’t manage much besides bread and cheese at supper and that didn’t stay in me for very long. I guess I was due for some stomach problems after all this time.
Feeling kind of shoddy, I don’t remember much from supper or the time before getting onto the train and crashing into my bed. I do remember being in a really bad mood though.
The sleeping train was amazing. Amazing as in once I was asleep in my top bunk, I didn’t wake up till the others told me we weren’t all that far from Haydrapasa Station on the Asian side of Istanbul.
Finally we were back in Istanbul and, unfortunately, my last week in Turkey.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Cave Dwelling
After a brief lunch stop in Konya on Wednesday after leaving our village, we met back up with the Fez Bus and tour guide Amanda. Thankfully it was Amanda and not Bridgette (who we had once before and was kind of unpleasant.) We loaded up and found some of our old friends, most notably the two Kiwis who crack us up. Clayton can especially do a great impression of them.
We stopped briefly on the road to Cappadocia at an old kervansaray (Caravan Palace), which was intact and restored to great condition. We spent some minutes exploring its massive trading room divided up by columns, and then it was back on the Fez Bus.
We arrived in Cappadocia around 6:00 thrilled to find out our hotel had cave rooms. Okay, I know what you’re thinking, “Cave rooms? What kind of hotel are you staying at?”
It’s hard to describe Cappadocia and thus why we were thrilled to stay in cave rooms; it’s really probably the strangest place I’ve ever been. First of all, Cappadocia is more of a region, not a city or town. The Cappadocia region is situated between tectonic plates and volcanoes dot the area. The ash from hundreds of thousands of years has built up forming a soft rock type surface that’s very irregular. It’s kind of a tan color and is very crumbly. We joked that you could take a spoon to it and probably carve out a room. Because of its composition and irregular formation, it has been used for a few millennia as a place of residence. People over these last few millennia have carved out their homes in the rock. Even today, there are plenty of people who live in the rock whether if its in standalone style almost ice-cream cone buildings or built into a cliff.
It’s all very absurd sounding, and believe me, it’s very absurd looking as well. In our trek over Cappadocian valleys, we would look up and see ancient windows that have been carved into the rock. We explored many out of the way caves to find the walls blackened from centuries of fires. Pigeon holes decorated many of the areas and near them you would often find some sort of arched window or door that opened up into midair.
Cappadocia is greatly known and pushed as a Christian and Hittite settlement. Part of this, as we have discussed among ourselves, I believe is draw in Western tourists with Western money, but in truth, it was a great early Christian center. Thousands of small cave churches can be found; many of them decorated with frescos of the life of Christ; various saints, and of course, the Virgin Mary.
Cappadocia is really more like a moonscape with earth, trees, and rivers splashed in between. Though there are plenty of signs of life from over the years, it’s hard to imagine people actually living in them and using them as part of their daily life. We saw plenty of Cappadocians still living in the soft rock during our stay and it was always gave me a pause when I would look up and find a rock formation with a satellite dish sticking out of a window.
So there was plenty of reason for us to be excited about the possibility of staying in cave rooms. Unfortunately, our little inn only had two cave rooms. Drama ensues.
In the end, the smaller cave housed four people and the larger one housed six. We moved a few mattresses and after a bit of arranging, everybody sort of settled in.
We gathered at 8:00ish for supper served by the people at the inn. It was a tasty affair, but pressed for time, I didn’t quite get to enjoy my baklava desert like I wanted too. David, Edward, Kristina, Kelly, Amanda, and I ran out of the inn to catch our ride to go into Goreme, the town in the valley below where we would watch the Turkey-Germany semi-final EuroCup match. Tour guide Amanda came with the Fez Bus driver to get us and took us to a fun little bar.
We settled in and got great seats. Turkey’s miracle run ended unfortunately with a 3-2 loss. However, after a few down minutes in which both Turks and tourists mingled around the bar in melancholy, a celebration of Turkey’s success in EuroCup got started. This celebration included some great music, some weird music, some drunken Aussies, some sparkler-wielding Turks, some fire and the jandarma (military police), and me asking the Kiwis if they ate kiwis because it seemed a witty way to ask if the kiwi was good for anything.
Their response was, “Do you eat eagles?”
Lots of laugh of course.
The next day was full. Four of our group set off for hot-air ballooning at the early hour of 5:00 a.m.. I would have loved to gone as Cappadocia is suppose to be one of the best places to go hot-air ballooning, but it was a bit more than I wanted to spend. We started at 11:00 for our hike down from Uchisar where we were staying to Goreme. Our inn proprietor led us, exploring through abandoned caves and hilly paths to get an up close and personal at the strange, strange landscape that was Cappadocia.
We crashed down for lunch at Goreme sometime around 3:00 and after grabbing some ice-cream, it was off to the Goreme Open-Air Museum for a tour of a collection of churches and dwellings inside the soft Cappadocian rock. Armed with my trusty Cappadocian guidebook, I took to exploring the area by myself. The frescos inside the churches are a colorful collection and it’s interesting to compare the ones from iconoclasm to iconophile. The number of small churches is an interesting phenomenon too. However, I have to say that the biggest impression these strange dwellings gave me was that these people were small. Or there was some messed up restoration; but most of the caves built into the soft rock, free standing or in a cliff, was found as it was.
Oh, and I can’t forget the game of how many Asian tourists can you fit into a small cramped space at one time? Trust me; it’s more than you think.
After the Open-Air Museum, draining a can of Lipton Ice Tea in the space of sentence as I chatted with William, and catching a ride back up to our inn in Uchisar, it was time for supper. I stayed up with David to watch the Spain-Russia semifinal match before crashing.
We met at 10:00 a.m. the next morning to go to one of the underground cities that Cappadocia boasts. It was a bit underwhelming unfortunately because it does sound awesome. Not much of it has been excavated and apparently it is supposed to be huge. It got a little claustrophobic as the passageways were all one-way and tour group after tour group filed in. The worst was when we made it to the bottom-floor after a long trek down a tiny staircase and couldn’t make it back up because more and more tour groups kept coming down. As typical of Turkish monuments, there were no real safety measures. I stayed mostly calm, but all I could think about was what would happen if the already sketchy lights went out. Of course, I only made things worse for some of the others when I announced that we should immediately jump to the walls to avoid getting trampled by the crowds if the lights did go out.
Luckily no trampling was involved and we tail-gated behind a large tour group to make it back up to a wider section of the excavated underground city. With a bit of exploring near the exit we found a sort of an out of the way monastery that we got mostly to ourselves.
Details on the underground cities (there are at least four, I think) are sketchy whatever you may here. No historian is really sure if people permanently lived in them, just used them to escape invasion, or if they were vacation homes.
Okay, maybe we can cross out that last one. In any case, I can’t imagine living underground for an extended period of time. It’s damp, dark, and small. Again, my biggest impression coming out of the sight was that the people who used the caves were small.
After our adventure underground, we got something to eat, and then got dropped off at one end of a canyon after driving out a ways.
This was a legit canyon. The land around it was flat and bare, and then all the sudden, the earth opens revealing that the ground your standing on is more of the soft volcanic rock. In the canyon, which was probably about half a kilometer to a kilometer wide in most parts, it’s all forest with a river running through the middle of it.
It was quite a hike and I, for one, really enjoyed it. At times we would leave the path by the river, and with a bit of climbing, check out the cave dwellings built into the side of the cliff. We eventually got separated as some of us continued on while others explored the caves more extensively, but we all knew that we were to stay to the left of the river. At one point, I was with Amanda, Clayton, and Kristina in front of the rest of the group and as we climbed down over a few rocks, my arm brushed against this one plant growing alongside the path. It only took a moment for my arm to start burning. I jumped to the river as quickly as possible to splash water on it, but the skin where I had brushed against the plant was already bright red and a thick rash appeared. It hurt pretty badly, especially on the sensitive skin of my underarm, but it was hard to be in too much pain when Prince Clayton was fighting for his meter-wide peninsula kingdom against an army of two frogs armed only with pebbles.
As I had a word or two with the plant that gave me the intense burning rash just for brushing against it, we decided too wait for the others. For the rest of the trek we stayed mostly together, encountering cave churches and dwellings, farming in a national park, a random lonely outside café setup in the middle of our trek, and a donkey that Kristina and Kelly rode across the river to name a few things. There was definitely some singing involved as well and maybe, just maybe, a mystic experience.
Though I kind of got to the point, a long with some of the others, that I would only make the hike away from the river to see a church if, in Amanda’s words, Billy Graham came out of it.
We victoriously made it to end with only a few scrapes and bruises, ready for some refreshments and some swimming. The refreshment need was easily fixed and our driver took us to a nearby lake for swimming. The lake was in a crater of sorts not all that far from the canyon. As a few of us pulled a car change into our swimsuits, the rest headed down to the lake. After wading through a somewhat gross bottom and making fun of everyone as they freaked out, we were all relieved to put our feet up and float. Of course, this wasn’t good enough for our group after a while and before long, a number of us were swimming the rough kilometer in width to the other bank. It was quite exhilarating as I’ve never straight swam such a long distance before, but knowing that I could just float if I needed to rest helped ease any lingering doubts. It still probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do considering that we lacked a boat or any sort of floating device, but hey we did have a trained lifeguard.
After two long days of exploration, followed by a night in which Kristina and mine’s bed broke, we were ready for a restful day on Saturday. I gradually got myself together, had lunch, and discussion with Prof Sarah about our stay in the village and our insights into the type of life there.
Then a number of us headed out with the inn’s proprietor again for one final bout of exploration. This involved a jungle, a burning-hot metal ladder, dank caves, and a random Turk in the middle-of-nowhere with fresh-squeezed orange juice. The highlight of this trek was the large cave church. It was amazingly spacious compared to what we had seen in other places and relatively untouched with the stink of thousands of tourists like the ones we saw at Goreme.
We made it back to Uchisar to gather the others and our luggage and all pile into a van only slightly larger than a normal seven-passenger van. We were pretty impressed by the load as we all squeezed in and began our journey to Ankara.
We stopped briefly on the road to Cappadocia at an old kervansaray (Caravan Palace), which was intact and restored to great condition. We spent some minutes exploring its massive trading room divided up by columns, and then it was back on the Fez Bus.
We arrived in Cappadocia around 6:00 thrilled to find out our hotel had cave rooms. Okay, I know what you’re thinking, “Cave rooms? What kind of hotel are you staying at?”
It’s hard to describe Cappadocia and thus why we were thrilled to stay in cave rooms; it’s really probably the strangest place I’ve ever been. First of all, Cappadocia is more of a region, not a city or town. The Cappadocia region is situated between tectonic plates and volcanoes dot the area. The ash from hundreds of thousands of years has built up forming a soft rock type surface that’s very irregular. It’s kind of a tan color and is very crumbly. We joked that you could take a spoon to it and probably carve out a room. Because of its composition and irregular formation, it has been used for a few millennia as a place of residence. People over these last few millennia have carved out their homes in the rock. Even today, there are plenty of people who live in the rock whether if its in standalone style almost ice-cream cone buildings or built into a cliff.
It’s all very absurd sounding, and believe me, it’s very absurd looking as well. In our trek over Cappadocian valleys, we would look up and see ancient windows that have been carved into the rock. We explored many out of the way caves to find the walls blackened from centuries of fires. Pigeon holes decorated many of the areas and near them you would often find some sort of arched window or door that opened up into midair.
Cappadocia is greatly known and pushed as a Christian and Hittite settlement. Part of this, as we have discussed among ourselves, I believe is draw in Western tourists with Western money, but in truth, it was a great early Christian center. Thousands of small cave churches can be found; many of them decorated with frescos of the life of Christ; various saints, and of course, the Virgin Mary.
Cappadocia is really more like a moonscape with earth, trees, and rivers splashed in between. Though there are plenty of signs of life from over the years, it’s hard to imagine people actually living in them and using them as part of their daily life. We saw plenty of Cappadocians still living in the soft rock during our stay and it was always gave me a pause when I would look up and find a rock formation with a satellite dish sticking out of a window.
So there was plenty of reason for us to be excited about the possibility of staying in cave rooms. Unfortunately, our little inn only had two cave rooms. Drama ensues.
In the end, the smaller cave housed four people and the larger one housed six. We moved a few mattresses and after a bit of arranging, everybody sort of settled in.
We gathered at 8:00ish for supper served by the people at the inn. It was a tasty affair, but pressed for time, I didn’t quite get to enjoy my baklava desert like I wanted too. David, Edward, Kristina, Kelly, Amanda, and I ran out of the inn to catch our ride to go into Goreme, the town in the valley below where we would watch the Turkey-Germany semi-final EuroCup match. Tour guide Amanda came with the Fez Bus driver to get us and took us to a fun little bar.
We settled in and got great seats. Turkey’s miracle run ended unfortunately with a 3-2 loss. However, after a few down minutes in which both Turks and tourists mingled around the bar in melancholy, a celebration of Turkey’s success in EuroCup got started. This celebration included some great music, some weird music, some drunken Aussies, some sparkler-wielding Turks, some fire and the jandarma (military police), and me asking the Kiwis if they ate kiwis because it seemed a witty way to ask if the kiwi was good for anything.
Their response was, “Do you eat eagles?”
Lots of laugh of course.
The next day was full. Four of our group set off for hot-air ballooning at the early hour of 5:00 a.m.. I would have loved to gone as Cappadocia is suppose to be one of the best places to go hot-air ballooning, but it was a bit more than I wanted to spend. We started at 11:00 for our hike down from Uchisar where we were staying to Goreme. Our inn proprietor led us, exploring through abandoned caves and hilly paths to get an up close and personal at the strange, strange landscape that was Cappadocia.
We crashed down for lunch at Goreme sometime around 3:00 and after grabbing some ice-cream, it was off to the Goreme Open-Air Museum for a tour of a collection of churches and dwellings inside the soft Cappadocian rock. Armed with my trusty Cappadocian guidebook, I took to exploring the area by myself. The frescos inside the churches are a colorful collection and it’s interesting to compare the ones from iconoclasm to iconophile. The number of small churches is an interesting phenomenon too. However, I have to say that the biggest impression these strange dwellings gave me was that these people were small. Or there was some messed up restoration; but most of the caves built into the soft rock, free standing or in a cliff, was found as it was.
Oh, and I can’t forget the game of how many Asian tourists can you fit into a small cramped space at one time? Trust me; it’s more than you think.
After the Open-Air Museum, draining a can of Lipton Ice Tea in the space of sentence as I chatted with William, and catching a ride back up to our inn in Uchisar, it was time for supper. I stayed up with David to watch the Spain-Russia semifinal match before crashing.
We met at 10:00 a.m. the next morning to go to one of the underground cities that Cappadocia boasts. It was a bit underwhelming unfortunately because it does sound awesome. Not much of it has been excavated and apparently it is supposed to be huge. It got a little claustrophobic as the passageways were all one-way and tour group after tour group filed in. The worst was when we made it to the bottom-floor after a long trek down a tiny staircase and couldn’t make it back up because more and more tour groups kept coming down. As typical of Turkish monuments, there were no real safety measures. I stayed mostly calm, but all I could think about was what would happen if the already sketchy lights went out. Of course, I only made things worse for some of the others when I announced that we should immediately jump to the walls to avoid getting trampled by the crowds if the lights did go out.
Luckily no trampling was involved and we tail-gated behind a large tour group to make it back up to a wider section of the excavated underground city. With a bit of exploring near the exit we found a sort of an out of the way monastery that we got mostly to ourselves.
Details on the underground cities (there are at least four, I think) are sketchy whatever you may here. No historian is really sure if people permanently lived in them, just used them to escape invasion, or if they were vacation homes.
Okay, maybe we can cross out that last one. In any case, I can’t imagine living underground for an extended period of time. It’s damp, dark, and small. Again, my biggest impression coming out of the sight was that the people who used the caves were small.
After our adventure underground, we got something to eat, and then got dropped off at one end of a canyon after driving out a ways.
This was a legit canyon. The land around it was flat and bare, and then all the sudden, the earth opens revealing that the ground your standing on is more of the soft volcanic rock. In the canyon, which was probably about half a kilometer to a kilometer wide in most parts, it’s all forest with a river running through the middle of it.
It was quite a hike and I, for one, really enjoyed it. At times we would leave the path by the river, and with a bit of climbing, check out the cave dwellings built into the side of the cliff. We eventually got separated as some of us continued on while others explored the caves more extensively, but we all knew that we were to stay to the left of the river. At one point, I was with Amanda, Clayton, and Kristina in front of the rest of the group and as we climbed down over a few rocks, my arm brushed against this one plant growing alongside the path. It only took a moment for my arm to start burning. I jumped to the river as quickly as possible to splash water on it, but the skin where I had brushed against the plant was already bright red and a thick rash appeared. It hurt pretty badly, especially on the sensitive skin of my underarm, but it was hard to be in too much pain when Prince Clayton was fighting for his meter-wide peninsula kingdom against an army of two frogs armed only with pebbles.
As I had a word or two with the plant that gave me the intense burning rash just for brushing against it, we decided too wait for the others. For the rest of the trek we stayed mostly together, encountering cave churches and dwellings, farming in a national park, a random lonely outside café setup in the middle of our trek, and a donkey that Kristina and Kelly rode across the river to name a few things. There was definitely some singing involved as well and maybe, just maybe, a mystic experience.
Though I kind of got to the point, a long with some of the others, that I would only make the hike away from the river to see a church if, in Amanda’s words, Billy Graham came out of it.
We victoriously made it to end with only a few scrapes and bruises, ready for some refreshments and some swimming. The refreshment need was easily fixed and our driver took us to a nearby lake for swimming. The lake was in a crater of sorts not all that far from the canyon. As a few of us pulled a car change into our swimsuits, the rest headed down to the lake. After wading through a somewhat gross bottom and making fun of everyone as they freaked out, we were all relieved to put our feet up and float. Of course, this wasn’t good enough for our group after a while and before long, a number of us were swimming the rough kilometer in width to the other bank. It was quite exhilarating as I’ve never straight swam such a long distance before, but knowing that I could just float if I needed to rest helped ease any lingering doubts. It still probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do considering that we lacked a boat or any sort of floating device, but hey we did have a trained lifeguard.
After two long days of exploration, followed by a night in which Kristina and mine’s bed broke, we were ready for a restful day on Saturday. I gradually got myself together, had lunch, and discussion with Prof Sarah about our stay in the village and our insights into the type of life there.
Then a number of us headed out with the inn’s proprietor again for one final bout of exploration. This involved a jungle, a burning-hot metal ladder, dank caves, and a random Turk in the middle-of-nowhere with fresh-squeezed orange juice. The highlight of this trek was the large cave church. It was amazingly spacious compared to what we had seen in other places and relatively untouched with the stink of thousands of tourists like the ones we saw at Goreme.
We made it back to Uchisar to gather the others and our luggage and all pile into a van only slightly larger than a normal seven-passenger van. We were pretty impressed by the load as we all squeezed in and began our journey to Ankara.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)