Cappadocia II

So, the first day was rainy, and I’d resigned myself to the fact that I was destined never to see the sun in Turkey. 

But the next day was stunning. Clear, crisp. Beautiful.

Cappadocia was flawless, and not at all as I’d imagined it. I suppose I hadn’t really known what to expect, other than the famous fairy chimneys, so I was really happy at how much more to it there was. 

I went on a tour organised by the hotel, which I was a bit wary of, but it turned out to be the best way to see a lot of the area, which is pretty spread out and hard to get around without your own transport.

I ended up talking to an Australian couple, and I evidently came across as pathetic and lonely enough that they felt moved to invite me out to dinner with them. I had yet another astoundingly good meal, yet more excellent Turkish wine (I can’t get over how good the wine in Cappadocia was – I had tried some wine in Istanbul that made me weep for the grapes that had had to lay down their lives for it, but Cappadocian wine is very, very good), and finally started to think that maybe the world wouldn’t be a better place if Turkey just slipped into the sea one day. Well done Cappadocia, you have redeemed the entire country.  

Cappadocia I

I’ve wanted to go to Cappadocia since I was about fifteen, so this was the fulfilment of a dream. 

It didn’t start out promisingly. 

The flight was racked with turbulence, and I had opted for some reason not to take my make-flying-less-of-a-nightmarish-ordeal pills. It was raining. Again. On the shuttle bus to the hotel there was an  obviously very posh English couple who spent the entire trip complaining loudly about their ‘useless’ travel agent, and her ‘lavish commission’ because their names had been misspelled on the driver’s sign, causing about thirty seconds of confusion before they were allowed on the bus. Then, as we started to glimpse the first rock formations through the gloom, the woman broke off from her complaining for long enough to make some vague comment about them, to which her husband said, dismissively, ‘oh yes, I’m sure we’ll be seeing quite a lot of them’, then went back to complaining about the travel agent. I wanted to knock their stupid, over-privileged heads together. 

Sadly, the closer we got to Goreme the harder it rained, and the less we could see. I started to feel a bit depressed. This wasn’t what I had dreamed about. Trapped in a van in the middle of a storm with a pair of cantankerous rich bastards. 

But then we got to Goreme, and it was everything I’d ever wanted. It was still raining, but the rain had lifted enough that I could actually see more than ten metres in front of me, and I did a bit of soggy sightseeing with a huge grin on my face. 

Hooray. It more than made up for how miserable I’d been in Istanbul. I squelched around for a while, then retreated to a cafe to sit damply over a glass of excellent Turkish wine (who would have thunk it?) and a gozleme. Purveyors of Turkish food in Australia really ought to be taken out and shot for besmirching the reputation of possibly one of the most delicious cuisines on the face of the planet. 

I sat happily in said cafe with my gozleme and wine, and the lady who ran the place sat at the table next to me and seemed keen to chat. She didn’t let the fact that she only knew two English phrases (‘is warm, no?’ and ‘good food?’) and that my Turkish was non-existent (shameful, I know) stop her, and we had a lovely time, smiling at each other. I pulled out my camera to look at my pictures and the lady’s two little girls stood over my shoulder and looked at my photos with me. I took a picture of my food, which they laughed  at – fair enough, too. But it was delectable, and deserved to be documented for posterity. 

Ah, so this is the famous warmth of the Turkish people I’d heard so much about. I almost wanted to cry, and thank them just for being so completely the opposite of horrible. 

That night I wandered down the hill from my hotel into town to have a drink and some dinner somewhere. I had a beer at a cafe called Fat Boys (run by an Australian, they have Vegemite toast and meat pies. I snobbishly refused to eat them, something I now regret as it has been months since my last taste of Vegemite), then decided to stay for dinner. I ordered kofte, and was sitting reading my book when the power went out, leaving the room lit only by street lights. My food arrived shortly after, and I tucked in. It was delicious, and yet oddly soft and smooth in texture. I sat there in the semi-dark eating my kofte, and was half-way through it when it suddenly occurred to me that the reason it was so soft might have had something to do with the power going off halfway though it being cooked... I chose not to use the light from my iPod check how cooked it was, and decided to try and finish eating before the lights came back on. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. 

More beer, some possibly raw mince and a couple of hours later I wobbled back to the hotel, had an ill-advised glass of wine in the hotel bar then went happily off to bed. After a crappy start to my holiday, I was happy to be somewhere so wholly agreeable.

Spice markets

This was my favourite place in Istanbul.  

They didn’t just have food. There were stalls selling all sorts of things, from bed sheets, to soaps, as much tourist tat as you could want. Oh, and scarves. Very special scarves, apparently;

Or perhaps you fancy a bumper pack of leeches?

Then this is your lucky day. Mmmm, leeches.

à la recherche de musiciens perdu

Another weekend, another fiesta. Ho hum. But this weekend was different, because this weekend we were serenaded by some misplaced musicians. We can only assume that they somehow got lost, though considering that the parade route is generally not especially challenging (Start on one side of the Plaza. Walk to the opposite corner. Turn Around. Repeat.), it is hard to think where they thought they were going. 

Anyway, we heard them coming up the street;

They stopped under our window for a bit;

Then they sort of trailed off. They'd obviously realised that, somewhere along the way, they'd taken a wrong turning.

There was a pause while they conferred, checked their maps, made a few phone calls, then they eventually decided that a dignified exit was the best strategy, and they solemnly turned around and left as if it had been their plan all along;

It's Istanbul, not Constantinople...

To be fair to Istanbul, I didn’t really want to go there in the first place. I was going to Turkey to go to Cappadocia and so fulfil a life’s ambition, and wasn’t that interested in Istanbul.  I don’t really like big cities, and generally find them a bit samey and often a bit soul-destroying. 

But I figured that, as long as I was going to Turkey, I should go to Istanbul. I did try to like it. 

But my state of mind was not conducive to me enjoying myself: I was a bit sick, and it was the longest that Jo and I had been apart pretty much since we got together so I was a bit lonely. 

And it rained constantly the entire time I was there, which does not for enjoyable sightseeing make. 

What I’m leading up to is the fact that I really, really hated Istanbul. Hated it with the kind of passion that I usually reserve for poorly written vampire novels or those reality TV shows where people sing because their parents didn’t love them enough. 

Yes, I hated it. 

Mainly because I couldn’t walk down the street without being hassled by guys. I’ve never felt that I am especially conspicuously pretty (my mum always tells me that I ‘have a lovely air about me’, which I have always taken to mean that I maybe not be beautiful, but at least I don’t actually smell) and I don’t dress particularly provocatively, but in Istanbul I felt as obvious as a Miss World contestant walking down the street in a bikini. Having said that, I don’t think I was approached because of my looks, but because I was obviously a tourist, and obviously on my own. But even when I tried to make myself as blandly unappealing as possible (no makeup, big baggy jumper zipped up to the top, hair in unflatteringly messy ponytail), I was still approached constantly. 

It doesn’t sound like much; a guy walks up and asks where you’re from, or if you need directions. Then if you’d like to go and get coffee with him. Then, when you say no and try to walk away, he steps in front of you, leans right into your face and says insistently ‘where are you going? I’m talking to you’, occasionally physically stopping you from leaving. It isn’t that big a deal when it happens once, and I’m not one to be intimidated by the odd guy who can’t take a hint. But when, several times an hour, a man would appear from somewhere when I stopped to check my map or to take a photo and tried to chat me up, it started to grate. There’s just something really invasive about being constantly approached. I suppose that lots of people find it all very jolly and good fun, but I just got sick and tired of it. 

The worst was when a guy ended up following me around one afternoon, then finding me again the next morning. I ended up going up to a couple from New Zealand in the Blue Mosque and explaining my situation (ever so slightly tearfully) and asking them for help. They were amazing, and hustled me out and away from the guy before he realised what was going on, for which I am eternally grateful. 

I suppose I should try and focus on the good things. I did meet a lot of really lovely Turkish people. I ate amazing food, including kebabs and gozleme of a quality that would make the average purveyor of food court Turkish food hang their heads in shame. My hotel was nice. I discovered ayran, which is delicious. I saw a man kiss a duck and tell it he loved it;

And I was suitably awestruck by the Aya Sofia, though it was really hard to take a picture of the interior that does justice to the sheer scale of the place;

the Blue Mosque, 

 and the Basilica Cistern. This is a huge underground reservoir, which at one time served as a source of water to the citizens of Istanbul, but which ended up being used as a garbage dump and fishpond until it was rediscovered and cleaned up. It was my favourite place in Istanbul, with the possible exception of the Spice Market (more later), and it is astonishingly peaceful.

For reasons that no one really seems to know, some of the pillars right in the back of the reservoir have these beautifully carved Medusa heads at their bases. It seems so poignant that someone would have put in the effort required to make them, only for them to sit in the dark, underwater, unseen for hundreds of years;

And there were cats;

So it wasn’t all bad. But I feel that I can cross Istanbul off my list now. I don’t need to go there again, though I would like to see more of Turkey.