There is no better atmosphere for writing about a trip than with tea to sip and a thunderstorm for music. The weather seems to be on my side today, for I had amazing patches of clouds and sun for my morning run, and now it is just daring me to be productive within the confines of my apartment. To you, weather, I say no problem. I have a story to tell.
Last weekend I was graced with a visit from my crazy Bryn Mawr friend, Sara. Sara was in the midst of traveling around Turkey with her mother, Anne, and family friend Chris (whose years of life experience were much closer in number to Anne’s than to Sara and myself). The three of them arrived in Ankara Friday afternoon and met me on campus with a rental car. Sara had come with enough gifts to make Santa blush: cooking magazines, books, running shoes, my favorite Dutch waffle cookies, and lots and lots of Gouda cheese. (Sara had stopped on her way over to visit her Dutch boyfriend in Amsterdam, thus all things Dutch.) After quite a bit of squealing and gift giving and organizing, we were off for Cappadocia, four hours east of Ankara, for a weekend of natural beauty and great company.
We arrived in Goreme, a backpacker paradise in the middle of Cappadocia, after dark. We were all rather tired and went on a brief stroll through the tiny town before going to bed in our cave hotel. Not all rooms were caves, but the one Sara and I shared was carved straight into the rock, leaving the atmosphere a little chilly and damp but, above all, quite intriguing.
Saturday morning we woke up for breakfast at the hotel, then set off for Avanos, another town a few kilometers down the road. On the way we stopped at a ceramics shop that was brimming with teenagers on a school trip. While the shop had some gorgeous pieces for sale, it only took about five minutes before girls were asking to take their picture with me. I obliged briefly before running for the door, Sara’s laughter at my heels.
Avanos was an interesting little place, full of ceramic shops and carpet dealers and little else to speak of. One carpet dealer in particular caught the attention of Anne and Chris. We went through the usual steps of tea and the pulling out and putting back of countless gorgeous carpets. The shop was owned by two brothers, only one of whom spoke English well. We oohed and aahed over the fine silk and embroidered wool in our typical babel of languages, and after some time Anne came very close to buying one. Instead, we decided it was time for lunch and, after some wandering, followed one of the brother’s advice to eat at a part-time lunch restaurant run by otherwise unemployed women. We ordered one of everything to share and were not disappointed. That was the best manti (think meat-filled ravioli covered in yogurt) that I have ever had.
After lunch, we walked over to Ikislar, a ceramics studio owned and run by twin brothers. The building was their home, their studio, and their store all wrapped into one. Only one twin was present, but he let us watch as he threw a pot and was astoundingly patient as we tried not to buy the entire store.
Eventually we moved on from Avanos to Urgup. On the way, we stopped at an open-air museum full of Cappadocia’s famous rock formations. These “fairy chimneys” resemble very tall, thin white mushrooms sticking up in the middle of nothing in particular. We climbed around and took lots of pictures before driving on.
By the time we got to Urgup we were a little tuckered out. We stumbled through a tiny museum before relaxing over some much needed Turkish coffee, but didn’t stay long at all before deciding to make our way back to Goreme, where we ate dinner and did a little shopping. I need to take a moment here to describe one shop in greater detail. Orantik Bazaar was a teeny tiny jewelry store filled to the brim with necklaces, bracelets, earrings, and rings, all hand-made using a crochet or lace-like technique. Manning the register was a young guy named Emre. Emre and I got to talking. Over coffee, he told us all about how his mother and aunt make everything in the shop and have just begun selling it overseas to shops in Paris. He was 21, and helping out because his mother had just had a baby girl. It was unclear if Emre ever planned to go back to school, but he had a knack for languages and an honest disposition that, if nothing else, made him a successful people person. After over an hour of pining over the jewelry and chatting with Emre, Sara and I finally picked out what I feel was a respectable number of pieces and tentatively made plans to come back the next day for nargile.
For Sunday, we decided to be true tourists. We paid for a small tour, along with six other (mostly older) people, to see some sights that are a bit more difficult to get a feel for without a guide. First up was an underground city. If memory serves, we went to Kaymakli, a maze of tunnels and rooms and foreboding staircases that lead eight stories under the earth. Early Christians used these cities to escape persecution, and lived in them up to two months at a time. Air vents provided fresh air, and underground wells ensured that invaders could not poison their water supply. I’m not sure how they dealt with what must have amounted to severe cases of Seasonal Affective Disorder, but I suppose it would have been marginally better than enslavement or death. Tough call though. The tunnels were generally quite low, requiring quite a bit of hunched walking and head bumping before suddenly happening upon a larger, sometimes even spacious room. While it was not sight for the claustrophobic (Chris sat this one out) or weak of quads (most members of our group were huffing and puffing on the way back up), it was an extraordinarily impressive taste of what people have engineered for the sake of survival.
After an hour or so underground, we were ready for some fresh air. Ihlara Valley was just the place for a hike surrounded by sheer rock walls, a bubbling stream, literally weeping willow trees, and wild asparagus for a snack (to the consternation of our tour guide). Lunch lay at the end of our hike, and we were ravenous by the time we got there.
One of my favorite parts of the trip was yet to come. Selime Monastery is a rock outcropping riddled with caves that were sculpted into impressive rooms and living quarters. On the outside they look like nothing more than the bizarre rocks that pop up all over Cappadocia, but on the inside they more closely resemble the stony castle I visited at Palmyra than any cave. It was like an inside-out Petra; nothing much on the outside, but oddly stunning on the inside. One room had columns and false windows. Another, clearly the chapel, had an altar and frescos. I climbed and snapped photos left and right while Sara hid from the heinous wind. Much to my surprise, I was the last one back to the bus. Since when am I the straggler?
We did not oblige, however, and instead paid one last visit to Emre at the jewelry store to let him know we were just plain too tuckered out to smoke any nargile. As we bought some postcards down the street, Sara got yet another taste of what it means to be in Turkey. The man at the shop, upon hearing that I was from Northern California, revealed that he went to U.C. Berkeley for both his B.A. and Ph.D. in business. This, of course, meant we had to have tea with him, which, of course, turned into an hour-long conversation about California and Turkey and the Middle East and the state of the world at large. I can’t say that I agreed with much of what he said (i.e., that everyone in Iran is happy with the religious rule of their government), but it was certainly an uncommon perspective. Eventually we made it to dinner with Anne and Chris, and Sara and I enjoyed a bottle of Cappadocia wine back in our cave room before crashing after a very long and exciting day.
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