Kapadokya

My first day is somewhat lost as I sleep until mid-afternoon.  I amble down to the village to scope it out, get my bearings.  It is a much less eerie and foreboding place in daylight.  I follow a fellow traveler’s recommendation for a börek place, and there find more travelers.  One group is Australian and headed by bus into Syria on their rather lengthy trip.  Another, from Maryland via Buffalo is a tech guy who is heading further inland to Ankara and then onto other places on his journey.   

Amongst others I meet in various places, there are: the NYC area couple dressed almost entirely in monochromatic black (they're lovely, but she's a bit over the top), the Torontoan who quit his job and is traveling through Turkey and the Middle East, the Indian couple from Mumbai on their honeymoon, Korean tourists EVERYWHERE, the barman at a fancy Manhattan hotel who has weeks left on his trek through Turkey and points beyond – honestly, I’ve forgotten everyone’s itinerary and am lucky if I remember my own. 

My most memorable socializing comes at Fat Boys, perhaps the only bar in town.  I am content to enjoy my Efes Dark beer when I am beckoned to play doubles pool by a young British lass who won’t take no for an answer.   Turns out she and I are at the same hotel.  Her pool partner is a local/bar worker, while mine is a young Colombian student whose friend did not want to embarrass himself by playing.  That, however, did not stop me.  One of the students is studying industrial engineering, the other philosophy.  They are quite different, but have been lifelong friends. 

The students had just eaten at the same restaurant as I, and when I left, the two employees were showing the last patrons, two young Asian women, local hospitality.  They wind up at Fat Boys as well, and serve as a good floorshow for the rest of us while Turkish pop emanates from the speakers, peppered with Usher, James Brown and The Weather Girls.  Over the course of the evening, our British lass serves as temptress and ringleader as we play pool, drink local wine with Sprite, and break out the water pipe, known in Turkey as nargille.  It is convivial, educational, relaxed, and freezing cold when we have to nargille outdoors.  The lass and I discuss life and travel on our way back to and at the hotel, where we’ve been joined by three local dogs that trailed us, one of which whimpers and scratches at my door until 6 a.m.

In Kapadokya (The Land of Beautiful Horses), the otherworldly rock formations dominate the physical landscape, but also beget the camaraderie and communality of the human landscape that begins to take shape in its nooks and crannies, especially in the cold of winter.  This region has a mystique that draws certain travelers, even dogs and cats, who seek one another out and trade stories and experiences; and that’s probably been as memorable as anything I’ve seen in this ancient land.