A week end in Cappadocia

Pictures on: http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/8203599/1/Cappadocia?h=b0d041

This week end, instead of spending the day in Ankara between sleeping, watching tv series and going to cheap doctors (I didn't mention eating you see, I am slowly getting over the turkish food obsession), I went to Cappadocia, or the land of beautiful horses. And a beautiful land and great experience it was! It took about 5 hours to get there by bus, surrounded by an american family who had recently moved to a small village of cappadocia where they were planning to spend a sabatical year. Since there are so many hostels in Göreme, I dedided to be picky and did some inspection before picking the place where I would be sleeping the next 3 nights. Out of the options available, maybe because I am a bit of a hermit inside, I chose to sleep in a cave. But what a nice cave it was! A spacious one with electricity and running water (although cold!).


My cave bed, it feels good to have found my true cave women nature!

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Alright, the caves of Göreme are nothing like rough mountain caves. The landscape is made of many fairy chimneys of all sizes, which are rocky mounts resulting from the former volcanic activity and subsequent erosion. Since prehistoric times, in order to provide shelter and protect people from various enemies, those chimneys were carved into houses  and churches. Many of these cave houses are still in use, as private habitations, restaurants and hotels. The landscape is incredible, made of thousands of white, light pink and gray chimneys, most of which have little windows and sculptures revealing their current or past inhabitation.


The best panorama in Cappadocia

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The first night was quite hilarious. Being a foreign girl in Turkey, and getting too much masculin attention for that reason only, is most of the time very annoying. Except that evening, when after having spent a day without eating proper food I decided to eat at a very good restaurant, knowing that I would spend a little bit more money than usually. I ordered mantı kayseri, a kind of ravioli typical of one of the neighbouring towns. In my attempt to limit my expenses, I didn't order anything else. Unexpectedly, a waiter came with some red wine. And after I was done with my mantı, they brought me a very nice desert. In the end, they refused to let me pay for anything and I went home carrying paper tulips and a rose, happy to have had such a good dinner for free. On my first day, I went on an organised tour as that was the easiest way to get to many places at once. We visited an underground city, which has been used by many people since more than two thousand years. At the time of the christian persecutions, christians made it their hiding place. It's amazing how the whole place is organised, there was even a school and a church inside.

The underground city

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On sunday, I decided to go hiking in the red valley. After paying 15 lyra to see some more cave homes and churches, I went further and saw the same thing for free. That was the frustration of the day, it taught me not to listen to guides and tourist books too much! At some point, a surge of Indiana Jonesness came upon me and I decided to climb one of those chimneys, knowing plainly that I was just doing it to prove the world how strong I was. At one meter from the top, I gave up because I thought that there were better ways to die than by falling from a fairy chimney without anyone watching. On my way down I slipped, because after all, I am not the true Indiana Jones, and scratched my arm and wrists. I have to say I felt like a true cave woman after that. Later on, as I was starting to wonder if I was actually following any walking track, I heard some footsteps and saw someone appearing from the canyon in front of me. Happy to find some company, I walked through the rest of the valley with Mike, a canadian-slovakian doctor in Ecology. We ate loads of wild grapes, explored remote (and FREE) cave houses, and met with some donkeys and beautiful horses. Keep scrolling for the pictures!

Some wild grapes in a stony landscape, wasn't enough to satisfy my hunger though!

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Cavuşin, one of the oldest rock village

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The little donkey eating left over pumkins

Random stuff

Hello world (there are som many out there reading my blog that I get shy...), I think I could use this blog as a means to keep people up to date with my daily life as I travel. Alright, I have been doing this from the beginning, but today, since I have nothing to do, I will just talk about random stuff. Recently, I discovered a book called "truth" where the author starts of by saying that after having written an essay on bullshit entitled "On bullshit..." he would move on to discussing the concept of truth. Discovering that some philosophers write whole essays on the topic of bullshit makes me feel like it's not only ok but also deeply philosophical to write the most random things in my blog. So here we go, today I woke up at 9:22 and put my blue tee shirt with stripes. Then I left home forgetting to brush my teeth and saw a mag pie. At 3:24 I ate strawberry cheesecake.

Ok very funny, now some more interesting news. Today, I received a call from the dutch embassy. To my surprise and great relief, the woman speaking at the other end of the line told me that my new pasport had arrived! After having been treated badly at the embassy, having been forced to wait for 2 hours hungry and cold (I think they try to recreate the dutch atmosphere by putting the air conditioning on maximum), and being told that there was no way to make the process hurry and that we would have to wait between 10 days and 3 weeks to get the new passport, it took only 7 days to receive the expected phonecall! This news really made our day. Earlier, we had a trip to the hospital, where thanks to some connections, I had a whole health check up for about 8 euros :) I would have had to wait for 3 months to get this in France so I am pretty happy about that!

Now I have been sitting, turkish style, about 3 hours in a coffee place eating nice pastries and drinking tea while Sıla is at the hairdresser's. Even my most feminist friend becomes a real lady in Turkey... I am thinking of leaving for a trip in a beautiful region in the South of Ankara for a few days while Sıla takes care of some things here. It's called cappadocia and looks very cute. It also has a very rich history and a lot of very ancient christian remains. Then, I still don't know precisely the timing and order of things, but I know that we might go to another city called Adana, and somehow, since I now have a passport, I will then go to Armenia. I am not planning on going back to France or Holland yet, it will propably take me some more months as I am planning to stay in Armenia for a while and try to find an internship. I am so excited about discovering this country, which is, although part of my distant cultural heritage, almost totally unknown to me! I hope you are all good, don't hesitate to write and give me your postal addres so that I can send some postcards!

Love from the road Philippine

Some last sights of istanbul...

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We have left Istanbul more than a week ago now, but since Ankara is not a city of much action (our life here is just the oposite of life in Istanbul, except for our sleeping pattern...) I will put some more pictures of Istanbul.

That city just never sleeps, you can walk around it for days and only your feet will get tired of it. Istanbul passes the test of nightlife, the crucial point for entering the list of a young traveller's favourite cities! Each day, we would wake up late, and either walk until the sea in order to drink turkish tea and eat supper yummy pastries (they beat the french ones in both price and taste, you should see people's faces at seeing me eating chocolate cake for breakfast! haaaa I love travelling!), or stay home and prepare a large simit (bread with sesame seeds), cucumber, tomato, feta cheese and olives breakfast. After having walked Sıla's dad's nutcase of a dog and put our lives at stake to protect him from the local dog bouncing cats, we would finaly get out of the house. The day would go like that: "oh I never tried that! Let's eat it... Ouuuch I am so full!...Hey let's walk... and eat again... and have coffee...oh it's cold! Let's wrap ourselves in our identical scarves and keep going until we can take no more!".

At night, after having escaped from the city's busiest street, we'd either walk in a place and meet friends, and stay there for hours (I love this habit, people here and in the balkans seem to have a different conception of time than the stressed and busy french and dutchies), or not know which place to pick since each place seems funkier than the previous one. One of our favourites: the cuban bar. Climb 5 floors up on a narrow staircase full of artistic graffiti and enjoy the rooftop view and the reaggae music on the building's rooftop!

The only annoying thing, as anyone who's come to Turkey noticed, is that you can't walk by a place or even less take a look inside without being submerged by attempts to get you in. But for the rest, and except the night I got robbed in the safest and poshest bar of the city (which was taken so seriously by the local police that we ended up walking around with a bunch of policemen the next day, I've had worse times...) Istanbul rocks! Besides the crazy nights, there were also lazy cats, crazy cats, fat ginger cats, and beautiful lightened buildings around squares with great jazz gigs.

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The God who dances

Here is a poem I just found in relation to the October 3rd oil fast launched by some christian environmental organisation. The picture was taken in Istanbul... my perfect man haha :) Enjoy the dance!

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The god who dances - Garth Hewitt

Henri Matisse is rumoured to have said

That he’d only believe in a God Who understood how to dance.

I believe you are the God of dance –

You are the God who moves in creation

You are interwoven through out evolution

You are the God who dances at dawn

You are the sparkle of light

You are the rhythm of life

Moving in mysterious ways I feel you dancing in the earth I sense your whisper in the trees I breathe your spirit on the wind

You are the rhythm of life

Moving in mysterious ways

But always dancing

You are the God who dances.

My trip

"Where are you from? - I am from the road - Oh really? But where were you born? - Ah... In Poland, but that doesn't matter, my life is on the roads of the world. I travelled by bike through Africa, many years. Do you have anything interesting in your life? - Oh... no we just work in offices, wear expensive clothes and try to stay away from junkies and filthy people like you! Hey, let's go and eat sushi!"

On the road you meet some people like this polish guy, they have found the meaning of life, and imagine that two girls walking by without a backpack and dirty feet must be of this other world, the one in which people are scared of what they don't know, and waste their lives worrying about their next car and the kid's grades. But let's not judge on appearances. Let's not feel superior, or cooler because we have no job and do nothing for the world but passively roam around and consume the cheap things that are on our way, all of this while taking pictures.

Well, I also travel. Under, just to show that I am almost as cool as that polish guy, is a picture of my route. I haven't reached the final destination yet, which will be more than 5,000 km from the start... So? Do you have anything more interesting to say!? Haha ;)

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Mosks and spices

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Our first day in the very touristy Sultan Ahmed area (I think some of these pictures are somewhere else but I don't know the name of that place). We started the day by visiting Hagia Sofia, a church built at the time of Constantine and later on transformed into a mosk. It's strickingly big, colourful, unique with its mixture of christian frescos and islamic paintings and so expensive that I had to get in on my own! The day went on with nice meatballs, the spice market, and many other adventures which I can't remember. Watch closely at the picture on which I stand in the middle, the effect is really funny and it wasn't done on purpose!

Hello Istanbul!

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Sila and I went to a wonderful restaurant on the Asian side of Istanbul. In the plate, there is a tomato, a piece of eggplant, a wallnut, olives and orange. With buttery ice cream and pistacio bread is made one of the best deserts we had ever eaten! That's traditional eastern turkish cuisine, or just a modest sample of it. So you can understand why I am looking forward to that part of the trip! Alright, in this blog, there should be more than food, but I shall keep you updated with the delicious peculiarities of our menus! Jurre... I got that word "peculiarity" from you, can't stop using it now. It must be contagious between plane boycotters! I wish you the best reading my posts, and hope that you will as if you were walking a few steps next to me here and there...

When communist buildings wear their party clothes

What happens when an artist becomes mayor of a city made of modest communist buildings? That city gets a colourful makeover, with stripes, patches and rainbows over its buildings. From what I heard, this new look was not welcomed by many of the inhabitants of the capital city. My reaction was just the opposite. I love to look at all these painted buildings, and I admire the boldness and creativity of the people behind this. Without it, Tirana would look just like any other post communist city, but this way it really has something beautiful and attractive to show.

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The cappuccino day

If someone would ask me "let's drink coffee" I was always one of these persons who would say "ok, but I don't drink coffee!". I tried it sometimes, these kinds of super concentrated and dark coffees in small cups, and always found it disgusting. I had resigned to a coffee free life, a life of tea and fruit juices. I did feel a little frustrated when I saw that people got so much energy from these little black cups which enabled them to resuscitate after long sleepless nights. The coffee revolution came slowly into my life. In dhermi, I asked for my first coffee, a cold nescaffe which I didn't finish. But two days ago, having taken the habit of taking spoons of the foam on Enida's coffee, I tried cappuccino. Revelation! Wonderful! Why did I never try this before! It's like the smell of coffee without the bitterness, and with cream as an extra! That's when I started liking cappuccino. My first very own cappuccino was prepared by Miri.

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That same day, in another coffee (yes life revolves around coffee places here) I delighted in saying for the first time "cappuccino please!" with my best italian pronunciation. I was so happy that I ended up putting my nose in the wipped cream.

"Wipped cream is better in your nose"

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