Tour - Day 4-5 Bolu-Ankara-Cappadocia

Yesterday we departed about 7:30 and drove through the mountains on the way the Ankara. The highest pass I saw was about 1500 meters. There was quite a bit of snow. In Ankara we visited the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations which was really interesting. There were lots of cool sculptures of deer that were used in funeral ceremonies, and also lots of fertility goddesses.  And lots of examples of early writing from the Hittites.

From there we went to the mausoleum of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. He was in the Ottoman army and was a brilliant commander during WWI and the Balkan wars. When the Ottoman Empire fell, Ataturk assumed the presidency. He decided that for Turkey to be a modern country they would have to align with Europe rather than the middle eastern countries, so he adopted an alphabet similar to ours, everyone had to take a surname, they adopted the Gregorian calendar, outlawed the fez, and instituted universal suffrage. Even though 90% of the population is Muslim, Turkey is a secular country, and you will find churches and syagogues living in harmony next to mosques. Our guide, who often injects his own views into his commentary, said Turks are heathen muslims - they call themselves muslims but are fairly liberal with the rules.

When walking in the streets, you may see women in mini-skirts, women in burkas (totally covered except their eyes), women wearing headscarves, and even women in mini-skirts wearing headscarves. As our guide said, maybe they are just having a bad hair day, hence the scarf. Armando said when he was in Saudi Arabia, when the call to prayer sounded, everything came to a halt as everyone would put their prayer rug down where they were for their prayers. Of course Saudi is not secular and if you don't stop to pray there you will probably be in big trouble. In Turkey you hear the call to prayer and you see people going into the mosques to pray, but not crowds and crowds. The only time a lot go is the service at noon on Friday.  Mosques are just buildings where you go to pray, not like our churches where we belong to a particular congregation.

After a terrific lunch we drove through a wide flat valley with mountains on either side (I suppose that is the definition of a valley) and with a salt lake in the middle - Turkey’s largest lake and where they get 60% of their salt. We stopped at Saratli to visit an underground city. There are several. They were carved out of volcanic ash that had turned to stone. They are a maze of rooms and passageways and they had round stones they could roll in front of a passage to close it. It is thought the caves were made by the Hittites. Later they were used by Christians to hide from the Persian and Arabic armies.

Our guide Jon is great - 31, single, no girlfriend (he said with his job he’s never there enough). He started in restaurant and hotel management and switched to travel. He went to university in Ankara. Turkey has a mandatory service, military or in some cases civil. When he was in the military they asked who could speak English, he raised his hand and found himself in Afghanistan with the NATO forces. He’s got a great sense of humor and I love his little asides every now and then - he tells us the speech he’s supposed to give and then rolls his eyes and says but “who knows really”.

Today was Cappadocia - first we went to the open air museum which is a bunch of caves cut into the volcanic rock.  This was a Christian settlement during Byzantine times, there is a monastery, a convent and Jon said over 600 churches in the valley - we only saw a few. They are carved into the rock. Some have domes and columns like the big churches but the domes and columns are only decoration. Some have very elaborate frescos painted in them.  Many of the frescos were defaced when the Muslims conquered the area - they removed the eyes from the pictures in order to free the souls of those trapped in the paintings. One of the churches is dedicated to St. Onuphrius who, according to Jon, was a beautiful woman who went away and sinned, when she returned she begged God to forgive her and when she woke up she still had the body of a beautiful woman but the head of an old man. (Then Jon rolled his eyes.)

We had lunch in an old inn, an oasis on the trade route. People came with their goods and their camels and only traveled during the day because of bandits. Camels could travel about 30 miles per day so these oases are spaced about that far apart. The building was beautiful and the lunch was wonderful as usual.

Then to the rug weaving place. It was very interesting to see the rugs being made - Turkish rugs are either silk, wool, or cotton and are double knotted rather than single like Persian, Moroccan, and others.

We saw what silk cocoons look like and watched how they unwind the cocoons and spin the threads. And then how they dye them. They told us what to look for when buying a rug, how small the knots are, etc. They have some silk wall hangings that were amazing - 3700 knots per square inch!!!

That was the interesting part, then came the sales pitch.  They sat us in a room and gave us some wine and showed us some absolutely beautiful rugs, (and very expensive too). And of course they will package and ship right to your door.  We looked around a little bit and left with no one buying.

We stopped at the pottery place, and Fred got to try making a pot using a manual potter wheel. He didn’t do so good, but had fun trying.

Then we learned how they fire the pots and then decorate and glaze them. Of course then we were offered more tea or wine and given the pitch (again, they will package and ship right to your door).  Later we stopped at a little stop to buy sodas. Donna saw some green stuff and asked Jon what it was. He said it was an herbal thing that was good for digestion and asked if she wanted to buy some. She said no and Jon said he could have it packaged and shipped for her. That will probably become the running joke for the rest of the trip.

But the highlight of the day was the scenery. We made several stops just for looking and photo ops. This area was buried in volcanic ash 25 million years ago which turned eventually into rock, then volcanoes spit out basalt which covered the soft rock like an umbrella. Then the area had tropical rain for eons which eroded the volcanic rock into the weird shapes we see today. Most of the caves are not in use, but in the town of Goreme and a few others the houses and buildings are built in between and right up to the fairy chimneys (the local name for the odd formations). There are even some cave hotels. We were hoping to be able to stay in one.  Maybe next time.  I thought Meteora in Greece was the strangest place I’ve ever been, but this tops the list.

We’re having a great time on our tour, our travel companions are great and so is Jon. But this is the downside of being on a tour - I wish we had a couple more days to just drive around, walk around the town and just enjoy the views. Maybe next time…..

Trivia - Turkish language is related to Japanese and Finnish, not Arabic or Persian like you might expect.

Oh, and I almost forgot...we saw several film crews - they are making a movie with Nicholas Cage, but no we didn't see him.