Cappadocia

Ugh. I just cannot believe it. So early in my writing career and the worst has happened.

I’ve been scooped by The New York Times.

I’ve been meaning to post this entry about our weekend trip to Cappadocia on the blog all week. It was just about finished, save for a few last details, but then our furniture and boxes showed up and I’ve been unpacking and cleaning for three days straight. So here I am, Saturday morning, thought I’d check out my email and the NYT online before I sat down to my literary endeavors, et Voila!, as we said in my last country of residence, there it was, smack dab in the New York Times Travel Section – Next Stop Cappadocia, Turkey – A Moonscape Carved by Nature and Man.

If you’ll forgive a bit of petulance on my part, no doubt common in the blogosphere but probably not the least bit tolerated in the grown-up world of journalism:

Waaaaaaahhh! No fair! I-WAS-THERE-FIRST! The news, such as it is, waits for no (wo)man.

Well, I do want to make up for scaring you about the Ankara traffic, and this time offer a blatant pitch for travel to Turkey. OUR weekend away to Cappadocia was fabulous. Cappadocia sits about 3 ½ hours southeast of Ankara, and the drive there could not have been more different than driving around France. The land was barren, parched, gold/brown, windy, covered with grasses and rocks and evoking an Eastern Washington/Central Valley/Nevada appearance. It’s the kind of landscape that makes me nervous, Easterner that I am, with no trees for cover, a relentless sun, and very few dwellings. A different kind of beauty, to be sure, and utterly foreign. Fortunately there are plenty of places to stop for gas and drinks and, um, facilities.

Yeah, I’d been warned about the public facilities, but I have availed myself of facilities, such as they are, all around the globe and in more primitive places than Turkey. So we stopped. I walked in, saw the hole in the ground, no toilet paper, and began to calculate how long I could hold my breath for how much I had to pee. (Oh, this is too graphic for you, you say. I thought this was a NICE travel journal. Relax, I’m getting to the Cappadocia part.)

You see, with the rest of my family consisting of two males and a female still in diapers, I am the only one that has to make the tough decision about how long to wait until the next acceptable rest room. It’s been ten years since I’ve lived in South America, and I’m well out of practice of tucking in a roll of toilet paper wherever I go, and ten years less tolerant for a hole in the ground as the facilities. So the question was, could I hold out?

Good thing I minored in math - the calculations were complex. Let’s see, it’s 95 degrees out, the soda I’m desperate for contains 355ml…times 135 lbs….divided by another hour to a modern bathroom, to the 2nd power for so many Turkish potholes, bumpy ride, sore kidneys…carry the six….nope, I won’t have any liquid, thanks.

Anyway, we made it (as did I, so to speak) to Ürgüp, a small town in Cappadocia where we checked into a great hotel where each room was a cave carved into a mountain. Most of the hotels in the area are cave hotels, and they are truly unusual. Each room is a single cave carved from the mountain, often with its own outdoor area. It keeps the rooms naturally cool (a must with the heat) and absolutely beautiful. They usually afford a stunning view over the whole valley too.

And what a valley! It was voted a UNESCO World Heritage Site and for good reason.
If I was a more poetic writer I could better describe a lunar landscape with incredible cave houses and crazy rock formations (they call them fairy chimneys) and cave churches that date back many, many centuries as well as 400 underground cities and thousands of churches and monasteries. Lazy writer that I am, I’m hoping that some of my pictures will do it justice. In short, a volcanic eruption 30 million years ago covered hundreds of miles in lava, ash and mud and the subsequent erosion formed deep valleys and “fairy chimney” rock formations. People over the ages have carved entire buildings out of the rock – houses, chapels, cells, stables and quarters for the Byzantine Army.

I’m struck again and again how the concept of history in other countries is just in another league altogether. In France they trace their first set of kings back to the year 600. Well in Cappadocia, the earliest settlers, the Hatti, were already overrun by Western European Hittites by 2000 BC. Already by 2000 BC their language and culture were mixed. Just whoa, I need to sit down and think about that. Alexander the Great showed up in Cappadocia in 333 BC, St. Paul introduced Christianity in the first century, he was followed by the Selçuk Turks, the Mongols, and then Cappadocia was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in the fourteenth century.

I could go on and on about the history of the region, but you might as well just (snivel, snivel) read The New York Times piece. It came out before mine. Well, truth be told, dry historical travel pieces bore me silly and I’d much rather read a personal account. (Not me!, you cry, please, more ancient history and much less roadside bathroom humor…) Ah well. Come to Turkey and visit Cappadocia yourself.

So that’s your - albeit extremely abbreviated - ancient history lesson for today. I’m sure some of you could care less about ancient history, so I’ll delve into pop culture for a moment. An extra credit question for you Simpsons weenies (Rich? anyone?): Does anyone remember in which episode, and what character, mentions the Cappadocians? Only from memory, folks. NO GOOGLING THE ANSWER.

Just a little something for everyone…