Shaking my Tailfeathers in Turkey

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Sorry this has been such a long time coming—Turkey was a blast and I meant to post when I got to Italy, but Venice was kind of the black hole of wifi, and once I met up with my family life was too busy to get to a computer. So I wrote this about two weeks ago and haven't had a chance to post it until now.

I had such a great time in Turkey. I flew into Istanbul at 2AM carrying no cash for the visa that I wasn’t aware I needed to buy. Of course ATMs are on the other side of customs, and the office doesn’t take credit cards. This was not a problem, however, as an incredibly nice airline worker walked me to the ATM, apologized for the trouble, and made sure the guy selling me the visa was nice to me.

So of course I’ve flown here from mainland Europe, where almost everything useful closes at 8:00 or 9:00, so I’m thinking the airport will be dead—I’ll have to sleep there and bumble around until I can figure out how to get to the bus station (I planned to get down to central Turkey by that evening). However, I clearly underestimated the helpfulness of the Turkish people—a bus was waiting right outside the door, which deposited me at the bus station (otogar). By now it’s 3:00 AM and now I’m thinking no one will be there—I’ll sleep on the sidewalk until 8:00 AM and then buy my ticket. Wrong again. A guy met me at the bus, grabbed my backpack, and led me to the ticket office, where he banged on the window until someone came to open the door. This guy let me in, turned on the lights, sold me a ticket, and offered me some tea. I had no idea Turkey would be so hospitable!

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So after a 6 hour wait in the bus station and a 12 hour bus ride, I finally made it down to Goreme, in Cappadoccia, central Turkey. This place is like nowhere I’ve ever seen—the landscapes are incredible. Everything is a dusty brown, the sunsets are dusty pink, and every few hours you hear the call to prayer from the mosque—haunting and exciting every time. I stayed in an amazing pension, run by a woman from Scotland who’s lived in Turkey for 25 years. I promptly met up with some nice American kids who were staying there as well, and we ended up running around together for most of the rest of my time in Turkey. The best part of the pension (besides the delish food) was my balcony—one morning I got up to see the sunrise and all the hot air balloons that take off for sunrise flights (for the low low price of 160 euros… I passed on that one).


One day in Goreme my new friends and I went on a daylong bus tour, which was really cool—we ended up seeing some crazy caves that have been used for about a zillion years, first as a monastery and school, and then eventually as a motel 6 for travelers on the Silk Road. You can still see frescoes from when it was a religious center, but a lot of them are covered in campfire smoke from later times. We also toured an underground city—there are 35 of them in the area, but the one we went in was 8 levels deep and super interesting. People used them as defense shelters when Arabs came invading, and some of the corridors were so small we had to basically crawl on hands and knees. I guess the people only stayed in there up to 2 weeks, but after about 1 hour I was ready to see sunlight again! Our last stop on the tour was at Pigeon Valley, and instead of taking the bus back with the group my friends and I decided to hike the 4 km back. Our guide said the trail was kind of hard to follow, since it’s unmarked and there are lots of other little paths leading to people’s vineyards, but she didn’t seem too concerned, so we took off. It was a nice walk and the landscape was really cool, but eventually we got to a point where we had no clue what to do. The trail kept on straight, but it was too dangerous to take—sheer cliffs going up and down, and the trail only about 4 inches wide. We couldn’t figure out how to get down to the valley floor, and above us was straight up. Plus, it was starting to get dark, so we were getting a little worried. All of a sudden this guy probably in his 70’s shows up (wearing dress shoes, naturally) and starts showing us the way. We gathered that he lived on the side of the mountain in a little camp we’d passed through earlier, and he told us he had 20 dogs (about 7 of them followed us around). So he starts climbing straight up the side of the mountain and we follow—it literally felt like we were climbing up the side of an egg. Once at the top, he helped us climb straight down the other side—holding our feet so we wouldn’t slip. Eventually we’d climbed around the scary part of the trail and met up with it on the safe side. It took all of about 10 minutes, but this guy seriously saved our lives. So we go to tip him—Todd hands 5YTL (which is nearly $5), and this guy acts like he doesn’t even see. He looks off in the distance and waits. So we give him 10YTL, he takes it, and walked off without a word. It was hilarious! And really, I probably would have fallen off the cliff if he hadn’t shown up.

So the next day we rented scooters to explore the area on our own, and we had a bit of a time convincing the rental place to hand them over. The day before, 3 Americans also staying at our pension had taken some out and gotten into a little accident right at the end—they scraped up the scooters pretty bad and actually had to go to the hospital for some scrapes and cuts. So we show up the next day, scooter virgins, and the owner was really wary about giving them to us—he kept trying to get us to rent a car instead. True, none of us had ever driven them, but we knew we’d be careful, and eventually we talked the guy into it. Then we go in the back room to pick out our helmets, and found that nearly all of them were seriously cracked! We ended up having to wear batting cage-type helmets (my brother saw a picture of them and called them 'swimming caps,') and that definitely solidified our resolve to take it slow. Scooting around was a lot of fun and we saw lots of little towns in the area. The funniest part was that in all the small places we would see tons of men in the town squares, just sitting around. We didn’t see any women—just men—and they just sit around, apparently waiting for people like us to show up so they can stare at us and laugh at the way we park our scooters. It was funny, but I was definitely glad I wasn’t there by myself!

That night Kiley and I took a night bus up to Istanbul, and got into town the next morning. We right away got some sightseeing done, seeing the Aya Sofia (gigantic and impressive), the Covered Bazaar (4000 stalls and probably 7000 carpet salesmen), and the Blue Mosque. We stayed in a really cool hostel right next to all the big sights that had a great rooftop terrace with a view of the Bosphorous.
It was cold and cloudy most of the time in Istanbul, so that’s why I’m all bundled up! It was probably a good thing, though, since we had to wear jeans and sweaters—girls attract enough attention on the streets there; I would hate to be there when the weather called for shorts and tank tops!

Since it’s Ramadan, the town really comes to life at night—there are tons of food stalls and lots and lots of people out—it felt like a carnival.
One night we sat down at a restaurant that had a live band and a singer playing Turkish songs, and it seemed like everyone else in the place knew all the words, they were all singing along, and random people from the audience would get up on the stage and dance. Everyone had their cups of chai and were smoking hookahs filled with apple tobacco, and it was just such a cool atmosphere—it felt like we weren’t tourists.

So the funny thing about Istanbul is that you get propositioned to buy a carpet about 45 times a day. It’s usually kind of irritating, because you’ll tell them you’re a backpacker, have no money, and no home in which to lay a carpet, and they tell you ‘oh no problem, just come in my shop, have a look at the nice designs, have some tea’ and if you’re dumb enough to step inside, they pressure you to buy until you have to leave them mid-sentence. There was one funny guy, though, who called out to us on the street, “Hey lady! You have $20,000? Want to buy a carpet?”

I also went to a hamam, which is a Turkish bath, which I was pretty excited about, but it turned out to be a little underwhelming. I think I was expecting more of a spa-type experience, and it was more of a ‘sit stark naked in a room full of strangers and have a fat hairy Turkish woman soap you up’ type of thing. The room was really beautiful, though, and this particular hamam has been in use since 1741, so that was cool. (Note to fellow travelers: if a site has been featured in the book ‘1000 Places to Go Before You Die’, it’s probably a good idea not to go. This hamam was apparently in the book, which we were reminded of every time we turned around, and it felt pretty tourist-trap-ish because of it.)

Probably my favorite sight in Istanbul was the Cistern, which apparently was the water source in ancient Istanbul. It was a really beautiful place, wish gorgeous columns and big fat fish swimming around in it.

I was sad to leave Turkey! It’s definitely a place I’d like to go back—I heard great things about the southern coast.

So after a long journey, I finally made it to Italy. I’m in Venice now, which has been… cold. The canals are really beautiful, but it’s been pouring sheets of rain, and the hostel I’m staying in has been laughably bad (they kick you out of your room at 9:00! In the rain!) I think especially after the warmth of Turkish people, I am amazed at how rude I have found Italians (well...Venetians) so far. Up until now, it’s seemed like they’ll go out of their way to be unpleasant, which is probably just a cultural difference, but it kind of sucks. I had my first real Italian gelato yesterday, which was delish, and the woman who sold it to me didn’t spit in it or my face, so I guess they’re not all bad! =) Tomorrow I meet up with my family, so I’m probably just antsy for that. I’m ready to stop living in hostels and see some loved ones!