Göreme Part 3: Spirit

In high school and college, I generally selected what I considered to be the more off-beat history classes:  Communist Societies, Latin American History, Environmental History of the US, African History, Art History, etc. etc.  Now, here in Turkey, I am a bit of a blank slate when it comes to the history of Western Civilization.  I envy those Georgetown students (and Bryan) up on the rocky promontory in the Ottoman-era digs of the McGhee Center with their intense reading schedules and cozy academic seminars delving into Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman and Turkish studies.  My education down here with the commoners in Oba has progressed at a slower pace, with bits of reading tucked between multiplying monomials with Booker and submitting grant applications for HIP. 

But the moment I leave the confines of Oba, with its bad t-shirt shops, aggressive restaurant customer-rustlers and hideous tattoo parlors, I literally step into history.  And Bryan patiently indulges my curiosity by recounting stories behind the ancient ruins upon which we tread (sometimes not so lightly).

Göreme’s landscape was filled with spirits of the past.  Every morning and afternoon during our three-day stay there, we walked 10 minutes down the street from our hotel and turned into various paths winding through the dusty dry mountains and valleys, into which were carved colonies upon colonies of cave dwellings.  Some cave dwellings were stacked on top of others inside one tall precarious mountain, like an ancient rock-hewn favela.  

On our first afternoon hiking about the crumbling cliffs, Bryan found a cave entrance with a locked gate protecting the frescoes of what was once a church.  The iPhone picture made by sticking my hand through the gate captured more details of the church interior than I was able to see in the dim light.  Are those dandilions springing out of the cross??

The soft rock of the Cappadocia region, formed from layers of volcanic ash and lava, made it easy for settlers to tunnel out cave homes in the early part of the first millennium.  The rock is so soft to the touch, in fact, that it’s surprising that the honeycomb of caves and towering fairy chimneys are still standing.  Göreme has been declared UNESCO site, thank goodness, but as I was wandering through the circuit of cave dwellings, I thought that UNESCO won’t be able protect this magical landscape from the ravages of wind and water.  Currently not much is done to protect it from the human element either.  Aside from the walled off Open Air Museum, the landscape around Göreme is wide open for anyone to wander through, including plenty of tourists on ATVs.  An ATV, I can say with absolute confidence, is a vastly inferior means of exploring the awesome ridges and valleys of Cappadocia.  Really people, just walk, for god’s sake.  In any case, Cappadocia’s carved out wonders have lasted for 2,000 years, so let’s hope they have another good 2,000 years of life before getting worn down to a nub by some weather event or ATV hot-rodder.

Back to the walled off Open Air Museum.  We bought our tickets to this elaborate monastic village at around 9am, before the tourist buses arrived to unload their hordes.  I learned that St. Basil was the inspiration for this cluster of cave monasteries.  He was born into a large well-respected Cappadocia family in the 4^th century, and as part of his religious studies he travelled to Egypt, Syria and Palestine where he studied with Christian ascetics.  He returned to Cappadocia, gave away his possessions and set about establishing a monastery with his old friend Gregory the Theologian.  St. Basil’s religious community was defined by a cenobitic or communal lifestyle, but also welcomed hermetic monks.  Some of these hermits would carve themselves a cave hut and remain inside meditating for the rest of their lives, only receiving food and providing religious counsel through the door.  St. Basil’s idea of a monastic village lived on in Göreme, and in the 10^th, 11^th and 12^th centuries Christians continued to carve into existence an even larger network of cave churches, refectories and very ascetic monastic sleeping quarters, all of which we wandered through in the open air museum.

 This was one church tour that elicited not one complaint from Booker and Seamus, as they raced up cave stairs and ran through cave tunnels.  Yep, no question, these boys were diggin’ it.

Göreme Part 2: Sky

How could I deny Bryan his 50^th birthday wish, even though he just turned 46 and his birthday isn’t until June?  How could I miss the opportunity to take aerial photographs of one of the most stunning landscapes in the world?  How could I bear standing on the solid earth while the ones I love most rose into the atmosphere in nothing but a big basket topped by a flame-filled balloon? 

Suppressing my irrational fear of heights, and my rational fear of human error, I awoke at dawn and marched lock-step with the family - we bundled up, loaded into a van, picked up a crowd of jolly middle-aged Australians at their cave hotel on the Göreme hillside, and drove to our balloon site where we spent 30 minutes drinking tea, eating cookies, and watching our balloon technicians blow up the balloon with a couple of fans connected to a generator.

I really love the simplicity of the hot air balloon.  I loved how the old-school wicker basket looks like a gigantic version of the European picnic basket my mom used for outings when I was little.  I love the bright colors and clean lines of the balloon.  They look like a friendly figs or a party of festive light bulbs bobbing along in the air. 

I did not love the whoosh of the fire shooting from the propane gas canister into the air just above our heads.  I did not love looking straight down to the hard unforgiving ground as we rose higher and higher.  Better, I quickly realized, to look off into the middle distance and not think too much. 

Our balloon pilot did inspire confidence, which helped.  At one point, though, he spoke animatedly in Turkish into his radio, and the Aussies and I were alarmed until Bryan, with his mastery of Turkish, assured us that the pilot was just talking about his flight plan with the ground crew.  I was happy to believe him at the time. 

As our balloon finally floated gently downward near the end of our flight, my hands steadied enough to squeeze out a selfie with my loves before our crew masterfully guided our basket safely into the flatbed of their truck.  A once in a lifetime experience, for sure.

Göreme Part 1: Earth

My last overnight bus-trip, before our recent trip to Göreme, happened in 1994: a 30-hour bus marathon down the western coast of South America from Guayaquil, Ecuador to Iquique, Chile.  I travelled the entire length of the Peruvian coast, and my only memories are eating piping hot meals with rice and sea-food at the many rest-area stops.  The remainder of the trip I either blocked or slept through.

Twenty years later, neither hot food nor restful slumber helped pass time on the 9-hour overnight trip from Alanya through the Taurus Mountains to Göreme, a famed “fairy chimney” town in the Cappadocia region.  I was too busy keeping one eye on the kids to nod off for too long.  At 6am, Bryan, Booker, Seamus and I stumbled bleary-eyed from the bus into the quiet chill of the pre-dawn mountain town.  To our relief, a lone cabbie swam into view and pointed us down the street, indicating that the Peri Cave hotel was only a block away. 

In one of the typical confusions that result from language and cultural barriers, we had to rouse the hotel’s surly, or maybe just sleepy, night watchman, who promptly told us check-in starts at 2pm, and then led us and our luggage to a dark and slightly dank holding room.  Of course, Bryan had previously confirmed that the room would be available upon our early arrival (always on top of the logistics, that Bryan).  Surly sleepy night-watchman did not get the memo.  We shrugged and ventured out in hope of finding something warm to eat in town. 

The sight upon leaving the hotel stopped us in our tracks.  The view was like nothing I’ve ever seen, but it had the effect of transporting me back to those days of travelling in Latin America, when I would find myself in radically unfamiliar territory (squeezed next to a sack of squawking chickens on the floor of a bus barreling through the Andes with my friend Melissa, for example), and be completely cracked open by the wonder of the moment.  Right in front of us, just across the street, four then five then six hot air balloons, like gentle giants, were rising up between the fairy chimneys, dark one minute, glowing with fire from within the next, rising into the black sky with its first pink streaks of morning sun.  

Still life with lokum

Inspired by Hannah Whitaker (previous post), I got an aerial shot of our purchases from the farmer's market that comes to our neighborhood every Monday:

Breakfast Turkish-style

Before I fill these blog pages with photos from our visit to Göreme, a fantastical city in Turkey's Cappadocia region, I'll take a moment to share my love for the Turkish breakfast.  My first exposure to Turkish style breakfast was our Istanbul hotel's morning buffet.  I'll say that it was an underwhelming experience.  Nothing in the the table-long spread of salad fixings, soft white salty cheeses, bright pink bologna slices, hard boiled eggs, bread rolls, packets of jam, corn flakes and cocoa puffs was particularly appealing first thing in the morning.  Each morning I was disappointed that nothing more exciting appeared, and settled on an uninspired bowl of corn flakes with a cup of coffee, longing for the bounty of tropical fruits that lined the breakfast buffets during our stay in Brazil.  Now, as a more seasoned Turkish tourist, I realize two things: first, that hotel presented a bit of a sub-standard Turkish breakfast, and second, cucumbers are a divine way to start the day.

This past week, I loved that the New York Times photo essay by Hannah Whittaker called Rise and Shine: What Kids Around the World Eat for Breakfast featured not one, but two kids from Turkey.  Interestingly, two were from Brazil as well, but the Brazilian kids' breakfasts were very hum-drum and didn't include even one delicious tropical fruit selection.  Meanwhile, these Turkish parents are taking it to another level:

Above photos by Hannah Whitaker via nyt online

I want to eat at Doga's house!  The article points out that repeated exposure to foods at a young age will bring a kid on board with pretty much anything, even a "putrid soybean goop" called natto that the Japanese eat.  I apparently didn't need exposure in the womb in order to appreciate the virtues adding cucumbers to my breakfast plate.  For those looking to put a little Turkish flavor into your morning, try this at home:  slice open a warm boiled egg, layer on soft white salty cheese and top with peeled sliced cucumbers.  Mmm mmm good.

Here are a few breakfast shots from around Turkey:

Breakfast at the Peri Cave hotel in Göreme, Cappadocia

Honeycomb at the Ankara hotel

Not breakfast, but an apple tea with kitty to warm Booker up after our pre-dawn arrival to Göreme

Kurban Bayrami at Dim Cayi

This morning we caught the local bus #10 and rode about 30 minutes up into the mountains that rise just outside the Alanya city-limits.  We weren’t sure whether the buses would be running on schedule, or at all, since today is Kurban Bayrami or Eid al-Adha in Arabic (“Feast of the Sacrifice”), one of the two major Islamic holidays. 

The holiday honors Abraham’s willingness to carry out God’s command to sacrifice his son Ishmael. According to the Koran, after receiving the order, Abraham reveals God’s instruction to his son, who stoically urges his father to comply with the divine order. Just before the act is done, God replaces Ishmael with a ram, rewarding both father and son for their complete surrender to God’s will. I had a conversation yesterday about this holiday with the very open and warm woman who works in the little stand that sells “American-style donuts” just outside the Costco-like supermarket in our neighborhood.  She learned English from a Jamaican ex-pat and conversations with her will be my incentive to buy more donuts for the boys over the next few months.  They’re definitely not complaining.  So, as the boys munched on their cinnamon-apple and strawberry glazed donuts, she told us that most families kill and eat a goat during the holiday, but that there would also a public sacrifice of a ram near the hospital here in Alanya.

And sure enough, on the short walk to the bus-stop this morning, we heard goats bleating from behind fences and saw a few men in a driveway dividing up parts and loading them into the hatchback of their car.  It’s hard for someone like me who buys her meat in plastic wrap from the supermarket to think about the fate of those cute little goats, but at the same time, I wouldn’t mind being invited to one of those goat dinners.

We weren’t invited, so instead spent the day eating fish at a restaurant on the Dim Cay river up in the mountains with our Georgetown faculty neighbors and their two kids.  There’s nothing like this in the states.  Here in Turkey, private restaurants are able to secure rights to build a dining establishment on top of a rushing river.  We hopped off the bus, walked across a bridge over the river, and had a choice of tables on stilts, floating tables tethered to a tree or tables high up in a tree over the river.  The kids chose the tree-house, and we settled into the cushions for an afternoon of dining and swimming. The water was icy, but the McCanns are a hardy bunch and took full advantage.  I was momentarily tempted by the thrill of jumping in that frigid water, but decided instead to enjoy the show with a bit of tea nestled comfortably in our tree-top perch.