Göreme (aka Cappadocia, or "the land of beautiful horses")

So ever since we left on this trip, and have been chatting with fellow backpackers, when we mentioned Turkey, everyone  said, ohh, are you going to Cappadocia?  To which we replied, never heard of it. Maybe you have, or maybe you haven't,  but since people kept insisting  we go, and since we're in Turkey for 3 weeks or so, we decided to take the 10 hour overnight bus into central Turkey, to the land of beautiful horses.

Look how happy Jim is to be watching the sun rise in Göreme after our 10 hour overnight bus. Really, it's just that our bus got in at 5am, and though the hostel said it's doors would be open, they weren't,  so we had to kill a few wee morning hours before we could check in and take a pretty solid nap. Luckily we met a kind travel agent who treated us to tea, a map, and the note on where to catch the pretty, but cloudy sunrise.

Red rose valley after sunrise

The Göreme Open air museum. This region, Cappadocia,  is known for its unique landscape,  in that about 2 billion years ago, it was under the ocean, then 3 volcanoes  errupted, and the land got pushed above sea level. The millenia of sand, wind, and rain, have eroded the soft volcanic ash, leaving odd pillars and mounds of basalt and stone. In addition, early peoples, the Hittites,  carved caves into these formations, for storage of fruit  and vegetables during the winter.

Later, as early Christians were escaping  persecution  by the Romans, they moved into these cave dwellings as permanent shelter. As such, whole civilizations emerged, including  of course, chapels for worship. Here you can see a cave chapel fresco.

Odd pillar formations in Pigeon Valley 

We all know what this looks like....

Looking down on Göreme  from  the panorama view point

Derinkyu  underground city: More cave dwelling remnants  from escaping Christians.  Instead of being built  into the side of a strange rock formations, this civilization is completely underground, up to 8 stories deep. 35 civilizations like this have been found in the area. 1000 people could live down here for up to 7 months.

The Selime monastery.  The prevailing rumor around these parts is that this is the landscape that inspired George Lucas to create Tatooine. There's not really anything to back up that theory, but they do look similar, and I'm  sure it helps them sell alot of tours.

Selime  selfie 

Ohh, we also got really good at playing cave cribbage:

 Here we are becoming a living part of the Göreme  Open air museum,  much to the delight of several British tourists who actually knew what we were playing

Here in the cave common room of our hostel. Much more comfortable with  carpets and pillows. 

Can I Interest You In Some Roman Ruins?

I was bummed about not being able to go to Chimaera, but it did mean we got to visit some sights without flooding instead that we otherwise would not have.  We had a tour guide who was fairly useless other than saying "very interesting" every five seconds, but it was OK as the sights basically speak for themselves.  First up was the ruins of Perge.  This is where the statue from the previous post comes from.

Perge

Columns in the Agora (the main gathering and market place).

Hanging out in the ruins.

More granite columns!

The nymphaeum or fountain.

Chrissy was enjoying herself, but it was time to move on.

Side

The main sight in Side is the Temple of Apollo seen here.  It's almost right on the water which was crashing pretty heartily on the rocks in the background.

Here's the alternate view.  We then moved on to my favorite of the places we visited.

Aspendos

Here is the view of Aspendos from afar.  I really like the clouds in this shot.

The main feature in Aspendos is the theater.  Originally built in 155, it's said to be the best preserved Roman theater in the world and it's breathtaking when you walk in.  They still have performances here and can seat about 10,000.  Seeing a performance here would be great.

Here we are halfway up.

The view from the top.

Relaxing and taking it in.

Relaxing and taking it in (Chrissy version).

We passed the aqueducts of Aspendos on the way to our last stop.  This is a great shot but the area around the aqueducts was tourist trap central with locals trying to take pictures with you and charge money and harassing you to look at their souvenirs.  Too bad really, the aqueducts would be a sight without it all.

Kursunlu Waterfall Nature Park

We finished up the day at a waterfall.

I didn't go the swiming because it was forbidden.

But I did run behind the waterfall and get wet.  All in all, a good day.

Antalya, First Stop in Turkey

We flew from Sarajevo's tiny airport to Antalya via Istanbul (which we'll work back to). It's in the southwestern part of the country right on the Mediterranean.  It has an old town that has touristy shops, hotels, and restaurants with old Roman ruins sprinkled throughout.  It also has a sprawling modern city beyond the old town but those pictures aren't that intersting.  Anyway, in old town (Kaleici) your souvenir shop is right next to say a gate from the 2nd century built in honor of Emperor Hadrian.  You can see that gate below.  It is unsurprisingly called Hadrian's Gate.  We're staying just down the street from it.

Except for the pillars it is all white marble.

This the ruins of the Kesik (Broken) Minaret and Mosque.  It was originally built as a Roman temple in the 2nd century, converted into a basilica and expanded, then eventually turned into a mosque once the Ottomans came.

This is the Fluted Minaret which is the biggest in the city and one of the more recognizable landmarks along with the gate above.  Now that we are in a Muslim country, minarets abound.

Antalya has a pretty cool museum with a ton of marble statues from ruins around the area.  One whole section is statues of Roman Gods with some of their myths printed next to them which I really enjoyed.  Most of them are from a town called Perge (which we visited but that's another blog post).  They are almost all 2nd century AD copies of 3rd to 4th Century BC originals.  Either way they are really old and awesome to see.  This one was Chrissy's favorite.

Antalya has a long pebbly beach a little bit of a walk from the center of town.  You can see part of the town off in the distance.  It's been around 60 degrees or so which is not bad compared to Boston at this time of year and the water felt warm enough to swim in, especially if you are used to New England beaches.  Still, at that temperature you need a bright sunny day to consider going in and we have not had that.  Behind us here would be a striking view of mountains if it weren't so cloudy and rainy.

We've been wandering around despite the rain (waterproof shoes and jackets are amazing).  You can't control the weather.  Unfortunately, this is the first place where the weather has really screwed up some of our plans.  There was an epic thunderstorm on Monday night that dumped enough water to flood some portions of the area and loud enough to wake us up a few times.  Our hotel briefly lost power twice.  We had planned to go see the ruins at Olympos and see the Chimaera which is a park that has rocks with flames shooting up around them because of gas that is released from underground.  It sounds crazy and awesome but the bridge you take to get there has been flooded and is currently impassable.  Still, we've been lucky so far so we try not to get too disappointed and there is plenty else to see.

100 days

So December 5th marked our 100th day out on the road. I thought  it might serve as a milestone and opportunity  to reflect.

We have covered 12 countries thus far, touching 3 time zones, and depending on how you  want to count Turkey, 1 or 2 continents.

We have stayed in 8 hotels, 7 apartments, 8 hostels, and 1 home stay, meaning we have moved on average about every 5 days.

We have played on average, one game of  cribbage every other day.

I have written 176 journal pages.

I have read 6 books:
In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson- A captivating account of Berlin in a curious time
Towards Zero,  by Agatha Christie -A fun detective fiction where the murder is not revealed until the end, ie it moves towards the zero hour of the crime, instead of kicking off with it. Straight forward Agatha.
Bossypants, by Tina Fey-Funny and a fast read. Finished it in two days.
The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt- Over 800 pages long,  more than half of them are unnecessary. Do some Coke and e, and watch the Thomas Crown affair and you'll  probably have a more fun  time with similar subject matter. In short, don't bother with this one.
Sharp Objects, by Gillian  Flynn- Dark, like the rest of her novels. Slow to get started, but the last 30 pages move quickly and pay off.
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee- Still poignant to race relations  in America  even 50 years later.

Favorite places, so far the B's have it: Bergen, Berlin and Bled. Least favorite: Mostar.

Best single restaurant meal: Mundoaka in Zagreb, Best street food: Döner in Berlin, Best hospitality : Sandy's  house, nothing beats home cooking

A question  I'm still pondering, posed by a fellow hosteler in Sarajevo,  "Are you guys backpacking,  or on a trip?" I answered backpacking, since we are using backpacks, but really, the question is worth considering, are we backpacking? What would that mean say as opposed to traveling? If I had said, we were on a trip, would we have been perceived differently?  The vocabulary  begs definition and would need to include details like, I think, purpose, duration of travel, budget, intention, method, etc. We may be backpackingoing posers given that we only stay in hostels a third of the time. If we're  only on a trip, it's quite a long one, and if we're traveling, are we missing some mystic philosophical guidance? Honestly, I'm not quite sure of the word to describe what we're  doing. Like our first post and title of this blog  indicate, we've been calling it sabbatical  knowing full well we don't  meet that definition. 100 days and we still haven't  found the right word. Guess we'll  have to keep looking.

Sarajevo and observations on former Yugoslavia

With an inescapable past, Sarajevo  offered up more learnings on the recent war, as well as WWI. Many of the tourist activities in the city focus on historical  sites,  and the damage to them during the wars. The people are friendly, and surprisingly open to discussing their life during the war, a decidedly  different approach as compared to how western Europeans discuss WWII, even today. Despite the emotional  burden of trying to engage with a troubled past as a tourist, smog that was heavy enough to burn your eyes on a few days, and very lax smoking enforcements, Jim and I did try to have a little fun exploring the city.

Here you can see into the entrance of the Tunnel of Hope. This 800 meter long tunnel was dug under the UN protected airport during the Serbian siege of the city. This tunnel was a critical  passageway to  provide escape for people into free territory and a crucial supply line when UN provisions were insufficient 

The red area on  the map shows you how the Serbian  army occupied the mountains around the valley of Sarajevo  during the seige. That little white strip was the small area protected by UN neutrality and was never closed during the fighting.  Sarajevo citizens lived under constant sniper and mortar fire for more than 3 years until, as our tour guide put it when I asked him what brought an end to what seemed like a stalemate,  the US bombed the shit out of the Serbian positions and ended the thing over night.

Sarajevo  was host to the 1984 winter olympic games. These are the games where both Katarina Witt  and Scott Hamilton  won their first Olympic gold medals. On our tour, we got to visit  the now abandoned bobsleigh and luge tracks (skeleton didn't  enter the games until Salt Lake City,  but they do use the same track). Here you can seem me walking on the cement slab of what used to be the track.

It is now covered in gaffitti

And being actively reclaimed by nature.

Additionally,  and this is the view from the mountain with the track, the track and it's associated facilities , along with many other of the Olympic facilities, also functioned as sniper positions for the Serbs during the seige. I asked our guide if there was any talk about reclaiming such facilities for use in tourism, but he said that politics are really still too corrupt to create any progress, particularly  in an industry like tourism or competitive sport. Our tour guide happened to be the coach for the Bosnian and Croatian bobsleigh and skeleton teams, so he would be the one with a inside scoop.

There are two Olympic facilities in town that  have been restored. This one houses a musuem in service of promotIng the Olympic spirt of world community  through  sport. It's small, and was  in the process of being set up to host a function, but we did get to peek at some memorbelia.

This is the skate rink where the hockey games were hosted.  It is plated in copper and was the first  building to be shelled by Serbs  during the seige. It took 3 days to melt. In the early 2000's, it was rebuilt.

The Latin bridge, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand  was assasinated, sparking WWI

The beautifully decorated city hall, with renovations just completed this year. A stunning example of some of the beauty in the city and a style that honors the large Ottoman history and Muslim population

Since the city is surrounded by mountains,  there is considerable access to nature not too far away. Unfortunately, in our endeavour to find the Skakavac  waterfall, we were misleadingly  told we'd  only need to hike 6 or 7 km uphill. It was really more like 13 km and we lost daylight  before we could actually make it to the waterfall. Alas, nothing ventured,  nothing gained.

On our last day in Sarajevo,  we took  a different  hike up to the white fortress overlooking old town. Unfortunately  between the smog and the fog, most of the view is the cemetery and the mosque minarets  piercing the sky.

Bosnian coffee, like Turkish coffee with mud on the bottom. Tasty and beautifully  served in traditional  hammered  copper

A plate of kajmak  and local beer. Kajmak  is like a cross between butter, ricotta and cream cheese. Someone needs to take this to NY and put it on a bagel stat. It is delcious. 

Lastly, on traditional  food, Cevapi. Grilled meet served in a pita  with chopped onion. After a few days touring the Balkans though, we got wise to the idea that if you add kajmak, and avar (red pepper and eggplant the spread) you really have something tasty. Even still, after eating this for a week, you'll be screaming  for green leafy vegetables .

Other observations on former Yugoslavia:

Scented toilet paper: It's everywhere and I just don't understand the point of perfuming something you'll flush anyway. The perfume is so heavy it even lingers on your hands after washing with soap. It's just weird!

Pajama stores: An odd retail observation. Stores selling just pajamas are about as common as your local CVS. But their whole inventory  is just pajamas. Is there really a strong Balkan market for pajamas only? 

Beautiful  fillagre and metal work.: The Balkans  may not have been my favorite place to be, but they have been a great place for souvenirs . Truly beautiful  crafting in silver and pressed copper.