It's been twelve days and I think this may be the first buzz of the trip. Thank God (or Allah) for tourists. Since we've been in un-touristy towns for the last week all the restaurants haven't served bira (beer). Tonight we hit Bedrock and it's Efes Pilsens all around.
I'm writing from the Hotel Alfina, my room is carved into the side of a mountain, very cool (both meanings of the word). This is the story nearly everywhere in the Cappadoccia region of Turkey. Cappadoccia, specifically the Goreme Valley is an amazing place where the people have lived in the mountains for thousands of years. When I say "in the mountains", I mean "in the mountains". The area is characterized by spiky little conical mountains of very soft rock created eons ago by a few nearby volcanoes. This soft rock has allowed generations of people to dig houses and huge underground cities right into the sides of the mountains. It's absolutely magical. And, I swear to God, it's like walking around in Bedrock. The houses built into these conical rock formations is right out of the Flintstones.
I'd venture to say that there is no place like this elsewhere on the planet. We visited an underground city with thousands of rooms and dozens of levels. It was a matrix of dwellings and tunnels which almost defies description. We walked among houses and churches built into the sides of these towering rock cones... Thanks to generations of Greek Orthodox residents, several interesting churches, monasteries, and convents take there place along side the apparent (but not really) stone aged dwellings. We ended the day with a short hike up the most spectacular of these structures to watch the sunset across this alien landscape. Cappadoccia may be one of the most unusual places I've been.
Tomorrow I get the chance for more exploration of the land of the Cappadoccians. Prior to visiting Cappadoccia and staying in this underground hotel in the town of Urgua we visited several Central Anatolian towns including Sivas, Afyon, and Turkey's capitol of Ankara. While the scenery and landscape has been drab at best, we've been able to explore some real Turkish towns without the heavy tourism... Easily summed up, the people are wonderful. At least half a dozen times I've been invited in for tea by the locals after a five minute conversation where little English was spoken and where little was understood beyond "hallo", "merhaba", "cay?", or maybe an exchange of names. Whether it was the iron mongers, the lady in the window, or the old woman doing the wash, everyone goes out of there way to make you feel welcome. A few people from our group even ended up at dinner with a well off family from Sivas... They invited them in for tea, then fed them dinner, then ended the evening by giving them all gifts... Where else can you get that type of hospitality? Certainly not in the U.S. People would be too afraid to talk to you let-lone invite you into their house. Somewhere things went wrong in the states and we've cascaded into an isolationist hell with no escape. No escape. It's only getting worse. Worse.
After a week of kicking around in Turkey, after a week of uneventful travel, I'm thinking about reinitiating my plans for Syria and Jordan. Assuming I can get them going again without too much extra expense, I think my original plans sound better than off-season Greece... Stay tuned. I still have several days left here in good ol' Byzantine.
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