Cappadoccia etc.

I've just spent the past four days in the Cappadoccia region in central Turkey, based in a small town called Goreme. It has been very interesting to say the least...I am now on a 12 hour (groan!) bus to Istanbul with my left eye practically swollen shut. As my brother Soren said on the phone last night, the medical ailments I've suffered on this trip are biblical. He thinks it's the world and my battered body telling me to go home. I can't really disagree with him at this point as currently I would classify myself as a hot mess. I'm encroaching on Lohan territory!

First, let me finish my thoughts on Tarsus. The week I spent with Oriana and Matt was great. Not only was it awesome to get to spend so much time with them but it was nice feeling like a normal person again with all the creature comforts of home. I reaquainted myself with my internet addiction by watching lonely island videos on YouTube (Oriana helped me rediscover the hilarity that is "mother lover" and it has been running through my head non stop for days, which is needless to say outrageously innapropriate!) Much time was also spent obsessing over their two cats-gracie and ghengis (as in khan)-and the twenty or so other cats that live in their complex. Where they live is really a cat colony because a woman who also lives there and is even more cat obsessed than I am brings strays from all over Tarsus to live on campus. It's ridiculous but amazing. I think all the Turks around there were amused by my constant singing of meows to the cats.  Turkey has also helped re-ignite my love affair with caffeine. And bread. And cheese. At this point I think it's inevitable that I'm coming home a little bit fat!

Another interesting experience I had in Tarsus was my Turkish haircut. I am now fully rocking a Turkish mullet. The haidresser was hillarious and aggressively washed, chopped, blewdry, and hairsprayed me all for about 15bucks (sure beats the 80 bucks I pay in Toronto!) To top it all off, I got to observe the absurd hairstyling requested by a middle aged women. Do you know what I mean when I say hair that is circa 1980's Tiffany's "I think we're alone now?" Let me set the scene: bleach blonde hair with black roots that has been permed and hairsprayed so that it is crusty, accompanied by poofy bangs that have been teased into a waterfall like formation. It was amazing. At first Oriana and I maybe thought it was a joke but it was serious, dead serious. She topped this look off with some thickly applied blueish eyeshadow and painted nails and was off! 

All this Turkish pampering was in preparation for Oriana's Grade 8 grad ceremony that she was emceeing. I think it's safe to say that grade 8s in any country or culture are a little bit horrible. The parents at the grad were a little bit horible too! Dressed to the nines in hooker heels and skin tight short dresses. This is a look Oriana calls "nouveau riche." You know what I always say: money can't buy taste!

Oriana took me to old town in Tarsus which is beautiful. This is apparently where all Turkish movies are filmed because everything looks like it could be pre WWI. On the way we passed "the road to Rome" which is part of an old stone road built over a thousand years ago. It's crazy how much antiquity there is around here, and it's all displayed so casually as if it's no big deal. It's like "oh there's the bridge where Antony and Cleopatra met. Yawn." 

My last day in Tarsus, Oriana and I took the train into Adana for the day to take in some sights and visit the big mosque they have there. It's called Sabanci Merle Cami and was built by the richest man in Turkey. The mosque was incredible. It can fit 20000 worshippers inside. Some say it's even better than the famous blue mosque in Istanbul but I'll have to wait and judge for myself. While there, a Turkish woman striked up a conversation with us, and while Oriana's Turkish is pretty decent, neither if us really had a clue what she was saying. Her solution to us not understanding? Moving closer to my face and talking louder. It seems Turks love to "close talk." 

We finished off our day in Adana by meeting Matt and having dinner at a Chinese restaurant along with ghengis the cat in his little cat carrier who had just been shaved! Poor guy, he was feeling a bit ashamed of his new look so we were careful not to acknowledge it too much-you know how sensitive cats' egos are!

Sataurday I took the bus to Goreme.   The drive from Tarsus to the Capadoccia region was beautiful. 
Sunflowers are in bloom now and there were thousands and thousands of them along the road. I love sunflowers so much, mostly because they remind me of my dad. They were his favourite flower and he always used to grow them in our front garden. They often grew taller than him and we would pose beside them to get our pictures taken. Some of the landscape along the way was more like what I picture   
Switzerland to be like, what with mountains and evergreens etc. 

Pulling into Goreme is an experience hard to describe. The landscape is unlike anything I've ever seen before. And after exploring the area for the past few days I can definitely say I put it up there with Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the Plains of Jars in Laos, and Hampi in southern India. It's like a fairy tale with all of these rock formations called fairy chimneys. The fairy chimneys are huge phallic-like rock columns and pyramids that were formed when a volcano erupted thousands of years ago. What makes them even more awesome is that during the Byzantine era the rocks were cut and carved to make houses and churhes. I can definitely understand why Oriana and Matt chose to get married there because the surroundings are so incredibly romantic, with all the hotels and hostels placed inside the caves. Other than Paris, it's probably the most romantic place I've been. 

My first night there I discovered a cute Turkish cafe called Nazar Borek. I immediately bonded over a beautiful dog named Snoopy with two German women and admired an Asian American couple with a very precocious 2 year old doing math problems with the sugar cubes on the table. I then made fast friends with the owner Refik, who speaks every language you can imagine, and who gave me amazing traveling advice for the area. I ended up going back there everyday for the good company and good coffee. Advice from locals is invaluable! 

My second day I went to the open air museum which houses a whole bunch of cave/rock churches with religious frescos from over a thousand years ago. Afterwards I attempted to walk to one of the valleys for a hike but ended up getting a little sidetracked. More than a little actually. A man with a broken foot, a pitbull, and his cousin rolled by me in a cart and horse and asked where I was headed. They told me to hop in and that they would drop me there. I normally wouldn't agree to something like this, but as I wrote in an earlier blog, I no longer have any concept of what's appropriate or not. So...much I'm sure to my mothers dismay, I got in the cart. They ended up showing me their village Ortahisar and taking me for lunch before then taking me to this amazing church out in the Pancarlik valley. After I explored the church and took photos I watched as they chain smoked, ate watermellon and downed two bottles of local wine with some village friends all while we listened to Turkish music. It was one of those "where the hell am I and what am I doing?" moments of my trip.  It's all part of the experience I suppose and for the record I never felt unsafe as there were a few other tourists around. On our way back to their little town it started pouring rain though and the man wanted to show me more sites on horseback, with both him and I on the same horse. This is where I drew the line. There is no way I wanted to cozy up to a random Turkish man on horesback. I lost my patience a bit and told him I was just going to head back to my hostel. So, I hopped in a taxi and took an expensive ride the couple of km's back to Goreme. Thank god for taxis! I went back to Refik's cafe and we drank coffee while I vented. 

My third day I headed south to explore one of the many underground cities, Kaymakli. Being down in the tunnels was a little claustrophobic, although not quite as bad as the army tunnels in southern Vietnam. The layout and design of the underground cities is really complex, so I was glad for once that there were plenty of tourists around so I couldn't lose my way. I can't really imagine many things scarier then getting lost down there. There were diferent kinds of rooms-kitchen, food storage, living quarters, air shafts, and wineries. Apparently the depth of the tunnels is perfect for making wine. Although some think the cities are 4000 years old, historians definitely know that Christians used and lived in them during the 6th and 7th century when the Persian and Arabic armies were trying to off them. Crazy stuff! 

On my way back to Goreme, I got dropped off in Uchisar, the town before, in order to walk through the pigeon valley. Again, the valley was unbelievably beautiful with so much greenery and flowers in bloom. Luckily, at the beginning of the walk I came across a Turkish guy named Moustafa who walks the valley everyday so I could follow his lead because there are no signs whatsoever and lots of turn offs. The walk was a good two hour hike up and down and I did it in flip flops and short shorts which I wouldn't recomend to anyone, but I managed. 

My last day I ended up doing an even crazier hike (again in flip flops!) from Goreme through the red and rose valleys to the next town over, Cavusin. This walk too was incredible because it's the best place to see all types of fairy chimneys and you climb high up to many different look out points where you can see all of the surrounding valleys. Just incredible. Once I have access to a computer I will post some pictures, although I'm not sure that photos really do the place justice. I think I hiked for about four hours, but half of it I did with a nice Italian woman named Renata which I'm happy about because for the first while I didn't see another soul and I was having day dreams that I was going to end up like the guy James Franco played in 127 hours!

Now I am half way through my 12 hour stint to Istanbul. At the half way point I almost had a meltdown as everyone got off the bus and I didn't know what was going on or what to do as absolutely NO ONE speaks a word of English here. Not one word. In the 21 countries I've been to in my life I have never been anywhere where no one speaks a word of English. Oh well, I figured it out (kinda) eventually. 

Now I'm sitting here half watching a Turkish dating game show, which is only marginally better than Turkish Idol which was on at my hostel last night. My eye is killing me, but aparently Istanbul has really good (and expensive) eye doctors, so I'll try and get sorted there. 5 nights in Istanbul and then it's off to London for my reunion with my Mum! Which also means I'll be two more flights from home! Hurrah!