Central Anatolia’s a pretty special place, and the area we’ve driven around is called Cappadocia, which is pronounced like this: Kapadokya. Among many marvels, Cappadocia is a wine region, with some delightful whites.
I will report back later on the whether there’s any truth in that. For now I can tell you that Raki is not a bad beverage, so long as you find liquid licorice appealing. And that there are various qualities of Raki, which I have only 3 days left to investigate. Travel’s a chore, but it’s one I happily shoulder.
If I were an early Christian living on lovely, grassy, rolling hills in Cappadocia, and needed a place to hide 5,000 of my family and best friends from the Mongol hordes invading from the East, where would I go? Downward, of course, into the soft limestone beneath my callused feet.
I’d dig myself rooms, kitchens, food storage, wine pits (can’t give up our wine in hiding, can we?), a church complete with graveyard, stalls for livestock, ventilation shafts to bring in fresh air and other shafts to evacuate smoke from the communal kitchens.
I’d go down as many levels as I needed to, eight perhaps, and would make the connecting tunnels so convoluted that I could pick off any invader unlucky enough to find himself in one of them. And then I’d live underground for many months.
The above ingeniously engineered underground city, Kaymakli, was an utter marvel. I fancy myself a bit of a connoisseur of rooms carved out of stone or into cliffs and such, what with all that we saw in Ethiopia. But an entire village housing three times as many people as live in all of Jackson County? Astonishing. As we followed our elderly, near-toothless guide down, down and down, it was impossible to keep track of where we were. This dapper gentleman with an impish grin, a neatly trimmed white beard and smartly buttoned grey suit, was small enough to manage handily the many tunnels chiseled of palest limestone.
Some of them were so narrow and low though, that I had to duck walk to get through them. They spread in all directions, over, around and through each other in patterns more complex than even a massive interchange on I-10 in Los Angeles. Room after room with 7-foot ceilings, bays for beds and small holes through which to holler at your neighbors, spread from the tunnels like leaves on a branch. Need I say that, since we were subterranean, it was lovely and cool despite the hot morning, a temperature that would hold steady in the winter even when it was snowing and minus 5 up above.
Done with our subterranean survey, we sipped a Turkish coffee (Bernard) and a Turkish tea (me) at a little cafe. This is all one can get before 8:15pm or so. It’s Ramadan and it’s impossible to get anything cooked during the day.
-Dina
