Wandering Turkey

I've been physically home in Montana for nearly a week now, but a part of my mind seems to still be wandering around Turkey, because every morning when I wake up, I realize that's where my dreams have taken me: wandering Turkey, in search of...something.  Sometimes food, sometimes confused dream searches, but always wandering Turkey.

It really isn't that surprising when you consider that the last 22 days  (or so) of my life previous to arriving home were spent doing just that: wandering around Turkey in search of...something.  (And an additional week was spent wandering Greece in search of similar things).  

More often than not we were in search of food.  Cheap food.  Sometimes we would wander for hours, up one street and down the next, pausing occasionally to check prices on a menu.

"Not bad,"  one might say.  "Wanna stop here?"

"Mmm, whatever," the other might reply.  "I'm not starving yet.  Why don't we walk down this street a little further and if we don't find something better we can come back."

"Okay."

Eventually we would get so hungry we would have to pick a place. 

Sometimes we would wander in search of a specific type of food.  One time we wandered down toward the Galata Bridge area, in search of fish sandwiches (balik ekmek).  We must have walked past every booth that sold those sandwiches before we finally went back and got one at one of the first places we passed.

Other times we would search for a specific grocery store or restaurant.  Our first day in Istanbul, wandering mostly aimlessly, we happened upon a grocery store which had peanut butter, a substance which apparently doesn't exist in Greece and barely exists in Turkey.  Our rejoicing was great.  However, it took us several tries and more than one hour of wandering to find that market again on a different day.

When I finally found it again, I took pictures to make sure I would recognize it.

It was not uncommon for us to go in search of a specific place: a bus station, a hostel, or a museum or other tourist site.  Many of these places were actually labeled on maps, which didn't always decrease our wandering time.  I was usually the navigator on these expeditions (by virtue of being the only one who paid attention to where we were going) and using a combination of maps and GPS, I usually managed to make our wandering last at least an hour longer than necessary.  Not that it was entirely my fault.  Some places were mislabeled on the maps and other places had enough windy streets that you could be close to your destination and totally miss it as your little street wound in the opposite direction.  Eventually, though, we always managed to get to the right place.  

We passed some interesting areas as we wandered in search of the Spice Market (having missed the right street),

but eventually we found it:

Sometimes we wandered just for fun, seeing what there was to see,

in the city, 

A house in Istanbul - with the laundry out to dry

in the country, 

A more rural place in Cappadocia

and even in historical cities.  

Ruins in Hieropolis

Other ruins in Olympos

Sometimes we would pause to watch the sunsets,

In Istanbul

and Goreme

or the bird circling the mosque after dark,

Sometime we'd stop to laugh about the things we found, like the "Underpants Street of Istanbul,"

or a water park with two small slides and a hose,

We'd often pause to admire the view

...or to admire the view while trying to find the trail we were looking for,

or to eat ice cream

or watch the moon rise.

In Antalya

and in Olympos

Sometimes we would wander around in the wilderness, hiking, exploring,

Pigeon Valley near Goreme

Part of the Lycian Way near Olympos

even stopping to play with the occasional tortoise.  

Sometimes we even wandered around shopping areas (though we did very little actual purchasing), always searching for a slightly better deal on the few items we wanted.

All in all, I guess it's a good thing I like wandering.  

Return

The way home was wrought with perils and adventures including a hand dripping copious amounts of blood, baggage drama, a seat mate who could have been almost my twin, crowded terminals, and delayed flights.  Fortunately, in the end, I (and all my bags) arrived in Montana, only about an hour late.

However, now that I am home and have a little more time to think and write and sort through pictures, I will hopefully be posting a few more blogs about my adventures in Greece and Turkey.  If any of you out there reading this have any specific questions or want to know more about any aspect of those countries, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer as well as I can.  

Moon Magic

Story #1:

Flashlights bobbed along the trail before and behind us.  It was a warm evening, and as we moved quickly up the hill, sweat beaded on our foreheads and our lungs were put to good use.  For about 20 minutes we hiked and then, as the light of several campfires came into view we stopped.  For they were not actual campfires.  Instead, holes in the earth allow a strange mixture of gases to leak out, and they combust when they reach the surface. The dancing flames are the remains of a phenomena that has awed travelers for millennia: the Chimera.

As we stopped to take in the flames, the star encrusted sky, and the black outlines of the mountains against the horizon, we looked also at the moon, struck by it's odd shape.  It had been almost full the previous night, but now it appeared to have decreased in size again - but in the wrong direction.  The conclusion was inescapable: and eclipse!  So we sat there, by ancient dancing flames and watched the moon be fully eclipsed by the earth's shadow.  Years ago there were pagans who worshiped on this mountain, at these flames, awed by the magic of fire from the earth.  What would they have thought on such a night, with the fires burning and the moon growing dark?  We, however, are blessed to know and are known by the God who ordained these wonders.

Story #2

Under a darkening sky we made our way down the road towards the beach.  Most of the tourists had left with the sun and anyone who might return after dark was still at dinner.  So it was that we were alone when we rounded a curve and came into sight of the bay.  A point of land stuck out, black against the twilight, and on the tip a campfire seemed to burn.  As we walked closer to the water, however, we realized that the yellow light was not that of a fire, but of a huge orange moon that hung just above the horizon.  The reflection in the water shimmered with the same orange glow as we sat down on the pebbled beach to watch it rise higher.

The frog's song, accompanied by the plunk of pebbles in the quiet waves made a perfect accompaniment to the silently, majestically rising moon.

Together with Innocent Smith, we celebrated being alive.   

The Ruins of Paradise

It is, perhaps, slightly off the beaten track, this ancient ruin at Olympos.  With no four or five star hotels in sight, the atmosphere could perhaps be best described as summer-camp-for-grownups.  Hammocks and cushion-lined booths dominate the scene,

and a dirt road (periodically crossed by a dry riverbed) leads sun-burnt travelers through Cair Paravel-like ruins to the pebbled beach.  

At some point during Greco-Roman times, this was a fairly important city, with a bath, a theatre, a port, and a couple necropolises.  Perhaps because of pirates, or perhaps because of earthquakes, or perhaps because of some other combination of reasons, the city went into decline.  Now the mostly unexcavated remains are overgrown and mainly visited by Europeans and Turks seeking a holiday but not wanting to pay resort prices.  

It's a great place to explore and to imagined among the ruins, without the aid of archaeological constructions (or misconstructions), what life might have been like.  

And one can understand why pirates seemed to prefer the place.  

Now the most ruthless inhabitants are the chickens which parade around regularly, crowing and cackling and searching for bugs and stray crumbs.   

This one seems like he could be a reincarnated pirate :)

A few highlights

So many things are constantly happening that I'm afraid I've fallen a bit behind in updates.  Here are a few highlights from the last week.

1. Hiking around the beautiful area of Goreme:
a. The Open Air Museum

b. Pigeon valley and the nearby Castle, guarding the Silk Road

c. Rose Valley

2. Successfully using public transportation to go to the underground city at Derinkuyu.

3. Seeing old friends (and meeting some new ones) in Ankara and getting a taste of their lives there.  Plus, getting to stay in a house with laundry facilities instead of a crowded hostel.  :)

4. Trying new foods (sometimes with the advice of people who know Turkish) including manti and ayran and always doners.

5. Visiting various museums

Ethnographic Museum

History of Anatolia Museum

Museum in Antalya

 6. Eating cherries...and having a seed spitting contest.

 7. Seeing the mountains and waterfalls around Antalya

 8. Seeing and experiencing parts of Turkey - it's very beautiful.

Goreme

It was close to 7am and we had been traveling all night.  The sun had risen and was lighting up the pleasant land scape of field and a few gently rolling hills.  A few hot air balloons hung in the distance, the only indication that we were nearing our destination, famous for its unique geology.

Suddenly the bus took a turn and began descending.  At last we could see the funny pointed rock formations that make this region so unique.  Within a few minutes we had arrived in Goreme, famous for its rock formations and for the large Christian community that inhabited them in years past.

There seem to be no end of places to explore.  Apart from the scenery, which is spectacular,

many of these little rock teepees were carved out and used as ancient houses or churches.  (Our hostel room is in one of these many caves.)

I'm sure that months could be spent exploring everything.  We've been here but a day and have yet to see much of anything but the most famous site: The Open Air Museum

They say there are thousands of churches in this region, which may or may not be true (perhaps depending on one's definition of church?  We don't necessarily know how all these churches and chapels were used).
Nevertheless, there are certainly a number of churches, and some of them have dramatically preserved frescoes (or something like frescoes) decorating their walls.  Probably the best preserved of these are in the Open Air Museum.

Fresco from (I think) The Dark Church

Lots of groves and niches...and not sure what everything was used for.  Maybe this was a table?

Really fun blue color in this one.

 So far Goreme is pretty well worth it.