Death by Hiking

Like I said a few days back, half of the blogs out here in the interwebs about Cappadocia are about hiking.  Now, I like to think I enjoy hiking, but when it actually comes down to it, what I really enjoy is walking along nice, flat trails, through beautiful scenery, while snapping lots of pictures.  I actually know my limits, and have a tendency to lose interest when there's not a shady bench to rest on relatively quickly, at regular intervals.

Engrish, on the other hand, lives for this shit.  Hell, she probably would have run through all the valleys if I hadn't been slowing her down.  I was happy for her to get some hikes in while we were on vacation, really I was!  And when she read about Baglidere - the so-called Love Valley - she knew she'd be able to drag me out on at least one hike.

Our final day in Cappadocia dawned crisp and clear.  That morning I took a break from my webnovel long enough to go to the bathroom, and when I realized it was light out, wondered if the balloons would have already passed.  I opened the door to our cave, and there they were, floating in the bright morning sunlight (which I was not actually happy to see...I had forgotten to bring sunscreen AND a hat, and none of the umbrellas I saw during the snowstorm were opaque - more on that later).  We went up to the rooftop to watch them for a bit - wondering if there wasn't much wind, since it looked like they were coming down in town, whereas we made it much further south - and then got ready for breakfast, while I tried to figure out if there was a shortcut to get from Goreme into Love Valley.  If there was, I couldn't find it.  However, I did stumble across an app that had incredibly detailed hiking trails - AllTrails - and this got us out of town and down to the trail head, with some pretty spectacular views along the way.

Sadly, the GPS tracking on it wasn't the best.  It got fixated on one street corner in Goreme, so I was guessing how far we'd gotten by how many "trails" we'd passed for most of the walk to the trail head.  It caught up to us for a short time before finally deciding we were irredeemably lost.  Fortunately, once you're in the valley, it's pretty obvious which way you're supposed to go.

As we moved into the valley, we both noticed a distinct lack of benches.  There also wasn't much shade.  It wasn't too hot, though, and while the trail wasn't flat, it wasn't too strenuous either.  At least at first.  And it didn't take long before we got to the main attraction...the...err......heavenly pillars.

If, a few moments ago, you thought to yourself, "Huh, she didn't explain why Engrish was so sure she'd be willing to go on this hike," well, I believe it should be obvious now.  Why is Baglidere known as Love Valley?  Because the fairy chimneys in this valley have been weathered into rather phallic shapes - like, shall we say, love plungers???  

Wondering what time it is?  Time for me to make as many penis jokes as I can come up with - in other words, it's dicks o'cock!

Have you heard about the phallic formations in Love Valley before now?  They're as expected...rock hard.  That said, it just seems like a waste to me that they didn't carve these in the valley with the red stone.*  

I do have a bone(r) to pick with Engrish though.  This hike was like a giant stone dick - hard and way too long!  (If your hike lasts more than four hours, please call a doctor.)  However, I would have felt bad if I'd cock blocked Engrish.  She made it up to me by loaning me protection.**

(About seven jokes...not bad.)

Seriously, though, I struggled with this hike.  A huge part of it is because I've been a sloth for two years, but on a good day it really shouldn't have posed a problem.  Considering three days before I exhausted myself on the LAST hike and then completed underground maneuvers in Kaymakli, I really should have known better.  My legs were really stiff and sore the day before, but I was convinced that hiking would loosen them up...more the idiot, I.

Thankfully, Engrish has the patience of a saint, reinforced by the fact that I didn't mind if she went off on her own into the hills.  No matter how much I whined, she never lost her cool, no matter how slow I went or how many times I stopped, she was chill, which is amazing because I'm pretty sure I was a huge pain in the ass (much like a huge stone...nevermind, I think I'm done).  Meanwhile, when I found this cool and shady spot, I very nearly gave up and carved out my own cave home - that little trickle of water had already done most of the work for me.  The fact that there was actually nothing to eat anywhere nearby, though, provided enough motivation for me to keep moving my feet.

That said, I just want to state that this hike is a lot longer than people make it out to be.  If you hike from Goreme to Uchisar it's 3.8 kilometers, and supposedly the hike from Love Valley to Uchisar is 4.4 kilometers.  The catch, though, is that you have to hike a ways north of Goreme to get to the trail head - a whole 4.7 kilometers.  And in case you're wondering why we were trying to get to Uchisar, it's a natural fortification that was used to watch over the surrounding valleys.  Unfortunately I can't tell you anything else about it because by the time we finally got there I had given up, choosing to sit on the big leather couch in the cafe we went to get Engrish coffee from.  Maybe if some enterprising soul had set up a restaurant right where we came out of the valley - or hell, was just selling water - I could have rallied, but no.  We had to keep going from there, and even after another 20 minutes of walking we hadn't hit a restaurant.  Eventually a man at the roadside souvenir stall offered to drive us into Uchisar, but by then my spirit was crushed.  After Engrish had a look around the town we cabbed it back to Goreme, killing time drinking coke and beer before dinner at a place called Soffy's Kitchen.  What was for dinner?  Eggplant, of course***

*In case you are gullible - the shape of the fairy chimneys is due to erosion NOT carving.  There IS a valley made out of red stone, though the red stone is apparently harder and doesn't erode OR carve as easily.

**I stole her hat about halfway through.  I'm a redhead, 'nuff said.  

***PSYCH - I definitely wasn't done, I mean, it would have been a crime if I hadn't fit an eggplant joke in somewhere.

Cooking With Gas

I beg you not to judge Engrish and me.  Yes, during our time in Turkey we ate with the enthusiasm of a Mormon singles' ward at a break-the-fast potluck.  Or a Muslim at Iftar.  Or, if those metaphors hold no meaning for you, we were a two-girl horde of locusts, devouring everything in sight.  Because here's the thing about Mongolia in 2022: we're between a rock and a hard place.  China's closed their borders.  Russia's off playing king of the mountain.  Meanwhile, we can't just go to the store and buy things.  Admittedly, when I first came to Mongolia ten years ago, the rule of thumb was to buy rare items when you found them, because there was no guarantee they'd be there when you came back.  However, it was never to this extent.  Back then, we were talking about cherry coke...now I'm lucky if I can buy a can of coke.  I haven't seen flour tortillas in probably six months.  Hell, Korean food was one of the things I could always count on, but these days I can't even seem to find sesame oil.

So that's the situation.  For an entire, glorious week, nobody told us "bahkwei."  (I knew I was well and truly back last weekend when I tried to go to LaRosa for dinner and left without eating because they didn't have anything I wanted...and I tried to order three different things!)  Instead, each dish was more delectable than the last.  However, no meal we ate the entire trip was as tasty as the one we cooked ourselves.

Okay, let me back up.  After returning to Hidden Cave from our balloon ride, we chilled a bit before being picked up again, this time by Tolga, who whisked us off to his family home in Ayvali.  Their family business is a restaurant called Cappadocia Home Cooking.  And they very kindly let you be the chef!  Sure, they did most of the hardest parts of cooking, like grocery shopping and washing the dishes, but still.  You know me - I'm kind of addicted to this sort of thing.  But I feel like I should get some points for getting Engrish hooked on it, too - not only did she buy the family cookbook, but when we got back to Istanbul, she stopped us at a shop along the street to pick up a Turkish rolling pin.  Now that's dedication!

When we got to their home, they treated us to tea and these amazing little...heaven help me, I'm going to sound like a pretentious British git...biscuits (sorry, there's really no better name for them - cookies just isn't accurate), dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon.  After chatting with us they brought us to the kitchen, which was huge and made of stone - like a barrel vault?  I actually know pretty much nothing about Turkish architecture.  There were plenty of jars of canned, home-grown produce - they actually own these huge apricot orchards.  It felt really inviting - they told us, "Our home is your home!" (I'm not that easy to fool, guys - if this was my home it would be a huge mess - but thanks for playing!)

Over the course of two hours they showed us how to make SO many dishes.  As we cooked they let us in on a lot of little secrets, like not adding the garlic til last (otherwise it overtakes the other flavors while cooking) or peeling the eggplant in stripes (although I can't remember the reason for that one).  By the way, I just want you to recognize the restraint I'm showing in holding off on eggplant jokes, in spite of how often Engrish ordered it on this trip.  Probably because I need those jokes for tomorrow's post, but I digress.

The dish I was most interested to learn was the so-called Turkish ravioli.  It was amazingly simple to make, WAY easier than Italian ravioli.  I'd actually eaten it the night before at Seten, but it was just okay.  It was served warm, rather than hot, and the sauce just didn't wow me.  Well, Tolga explained that dishes that are served with yogurt - Turkish ravioli, for example - have to be cooled off before you put it on, or else you end up with a big, runny mess.  As far as I could tell, though there was no excuse for the sauce - Cappadocia Home Cooking tossed theirs in butter with some paprika and...maybe some parsley?  Something delicious.

When we finished our chores, they brought us back into the dining room where a host of dishes was already laid on the table, including the tastiest vine leaves of the whole trip.  We were both a little worried that they'd want us to eat everything...we'd had to finish the biscuits earlier, although they were so tasty that I, at least, wasn't complaining...but they didn't, and somehow we managed to make it all the way through dessert.  It was scrumptious, but I could hardly move when it was all over!  I doubted we were going to need our dinner reservation that night, after all.

That trip 14 years back was the first time I went to a cooking class, at Petra Kitchen in Jordan.  Since then, I've learned to cook Nepalese, Chinese, Thai, Italian, Indian...not to mention all the dishes taught to me by my OG masterchef, Bronte.  Over the years learning to cook has become one of my most favorite traveling activities.  There's something about food that is so fundamental to who a people are.  There's something about cooking together that draws people together.  Oh, and there's the fact that my family is a little more understanding of my rock-and-roll lifestyle when I come back ready to cook tasty meals for them.  

Any Way the Wind Blows

One of the greatest atrocities the human race has ever perpetuated against itself is its insistence on sunrise.  Don't get me wrong - there is something unmistakably stunning about watching the gathering brightness burst over the horizon.  But as far as I'm concerned, you get the same light show at sunset, without the hard morning rollout.

Our third day in Turkey started at 4 in the bloody morning.  It's a good thing Engrish and I were both jetlagged, because getting up that early when you're on vacation should basically be a travel crime.  And I say that in spite of the fact that I hate tourists so much that I regularly wake up early to avoid them.  It's just that early is bordering on obscene.  4 am is just past the "easier to stay up all night than to get up early" mark.  But I digress.

The reason we were up at oh-dark-hundred was to go hot air ballooning, which apparently is rare at sunset (probably having something to do with the wind), or apparently any other time of the day (probably because no one wants to pay out the ass unless the sun is doing something romantic).  We sat, bleary eyed in the office of Hidden Cave waiting for the white van of destiny to stop at our door - one of a seemingly endless convoy shuttling tourists out of Goreme to the north, where the balloons were raising their heads about as sleepily as we were.  

Once we got there, snacks were passed out, and it wasn't long before we were shephered into the basket - there ended up being 28 of us, but Engrish and I weren't complaining because we at least got IN the basket; undoubtedly there were some people who missed their shot thanks to the previous day's snow.  The skies were finally lightening when the balloon was fully inflated, as the guys from Discovery Balloons finally gave up their wrestling match against the power of fire and released us up into the air.

Engrish didn't take much convincing to decide that even if it was expensive we really had to have this "once in a lifetime experience."  Or...you know...twice, for some of us.  Even though I'd been before, Luxor really couldn't compare to this trip - for starters, nobody seemed to have livestock on their roof.  There were also so many more balloons in the air that no matter which direction we faced there were beautiful shots to be taken (did I take over 200 photos in less than an hour?  You bet your ass I did).

One of the things about traveling to Cappadocia is that, like, 50% of the blog posts never shut up about how fucking romantic it is (the remaining 50% only talk about hiking...it's a very select market going there, apparently).  Not only was our basket - including the other two people in each of our compartments - full of lovey-dovey couples, it was also hard as hell for Engrish to find us a hotel with two separate beds.  Far, faaar too many of the cozy little cave hotels also had rooms with the bathtub in the room with the beds.  Which I guess is nice if that's what you came there for, but the two of us had a couple of good laughs about how very UNromantic our vacation was.

Anyways, if you're not aware (and why would you be, since I didn't mention it when I did this fourteen years ago?), balloon pilots can only control the altitude of the balloon.  That is, they can make it go up or down, but that's it.  Okay, actually, I think they can get it to turn, too, but otherwise they can't impact the direction it's going - that is, where they actually end up depends on where the wind blows.  This was pretty funny when the hour was almost up and we could see the convoy of white vans chasing us across the countryside.  I'm guessing that they at least have some idea of where they might end up, and probably choose their starting point so that you fly over something interesting, but ultimately it's undoubtedly more art than science.

Our flight went over "Love Valley," which you will be hearing more about another day.  You will also be hearing about that turd-shaped rock formation, sitting on the horizon like a pile of shit, and the endless trek we went on to get there...to tide you over til then, just know it would have taken Engrish a LOT less time on her own...

By the way, remember how we had snow the day before?  Well, on one hand, getting to see the frosty landscape all decked out in white was pretty sweet, not gonna lie.  But...

Do you have any idea how cold it gets up in the sky?  On a normal day?  Well, I don't, but I'm pretty fucking sure it's not THIS cold.  Every time the pilot pulled the cord to make the fire blast, I held my hands up to thaw them out.  Somehow* the rest of me was fine, but since I pretty much didn't stop taking pictures the whole time, my fingers were constantly being exposed.  I can still feel the freeze.

I mean, I don't regret it for a heartbeat.  But if any of the many, MANY shops we'd stopped in the day before had any sense, they would have been pushing the hand-crocheted mittens HARD.  I probably still wouldn't have bought any - if you haven't caught on yet, I DO have the "I'm from Mongolia, this isn't cold!!!" attitude - but I would have been kicking myself for it, and that might have brought them some satisfaction for all the things I DIDN'T buy from them.

Another thing someone should be selling around there?  Some sort of harness for your phone so that you don't drop it.  I had my Big Gun's strap wrapped around my arm several times, and I was still sweating.  We went low over the open air museum, and I told Engrish that if you were going to drop your phone, that was probably the time to do it - it might have actually survived the fall.

Well, all good things come to an end - the sun rose, we passed valleys and rock formations and ended up somewhere south of Nevsehir before our pilot took us down in a perfect landing.  And can I say, humd'Allah for Muslims?  I forgot, after many, many years out of the Middle East, how nice it is when someone expects - and plans for - people who won't drink.  Our "champagne toast" after the flight was prepared with juice, which I appreciated.  Especially since, from Engrish's sassy reaction to the Americans chatting up the pilot in front of us on the way back, the champagne didn't do anything to blunt their idiocy.

*Never let anyone tell you that blubber doesn't have its advantages!

Going Under

My legs were pretty wobbly on the way down, and when we got back to the Hidden Cave my reading break quickly turned into a nap.  One that didn't end til midnight, sleeptalking and leg cramps notwithstanding (and leg cramps in your thigh are a whole new level of hell that I never realized I didn't want to experience).  When I finally came to at midnight-thirty I realized I'd missed dinner, which was okay since I'd probably eaten two meals' worth of food at lunch, and since Engrish was dead to the world, read for probably another five minutes before sleep claimed me again.

We were supposed to go hot air ballooning the next morning, but before I zonked out for the night, the company informed Engrish that it had been cancelled because of the weather, and that we'd been bumped onto Wednesday morning's flight.  Normal people would see this as a good excuse to sleep in, but I'd already been sleeping for twelve hours, and Engrish was jetlagged, so around six we decided it was a nice time to go for a walk around the hotel.

Just a short one.  Not too strenuous...just something to kill the time before King's Coffee opened up, in case the hotel breakfast only had Nescafe.  And if you believe that's how things actually turned out, you've clearly never been on vacation with Engrish.

As we were hoofing it up the closest 60° slope (because what's life without a little challenge?) the sky was spitting on us.  We had agreed that a little rain wasn't a problem, but before long I realized something was wrong with this rain, and told Engrish to look at my shirt.  At first she couldn't understand why I was sharing my dandruff problem, so I had to explain that it was snowing.  Now, apparently seven years ago people kept apologizing to us for the unseasonably cold weather.  Well, nobody did that this time, although based on the looks of horror on every fellow hotel guest's face as they came out for breakfast, an apology wouldn't have gone amiss.  Needless to say, coming from Mongolia, we weren't put out by a little snow in the slightest - just surprised.

That said, as breakfast progressed and the snow only got thicker, it DID beg the question of how to spend a snowy day in central Turkey.  Actually, one of the things we were hoping to do was to visit at least one of the underground cities.  There are a shit ton of them scattered across Anatolia, so we decided this was a perfect time to visit the two closest - Kaymakli and Derinkuyu.  The clerk at Hidden Cave suggested we just negotiate a price with a taxi driver, suggesting that it should cost us about 600 lira roundtrip.  We wandered down to a taxi stand, negotiated the price, and were on our way in a taxi with wifi, which seemed pretty awesome.

The cliffnotes version of these cities' history is that back in ye olde days, Christians weren't popular and they had to hide out or risk being martyred.  Central Turkey is an absolute warren - it is riddled with caves, and the pale stone is soft and easy to carve.  Although early Turkish Christians were probably not the first people to inhabit these caves, they definitely served their purpose (and not just as protection from their neighbors - apparently they sheltered here from Mongolian invaders in the 14th century), up until the early 1900s.  

I feel like it is important to note at this point that I have never had a reason to think that small, underground spaces would pose a problem for me.  This is evidenced by the fact that every time I have ever heard about an underground city, I have thought, "That is SO cool - someday I have to check that out."  I can solemnly attest that I have never suffered from claustrophobia (my only phobia, for those of you wondering, is apeirophobia - the fear of infinities).  But after leaving Kaymakli I had a whole helluva lot more understanding for people who DO.  At first, it was mere annoyance.  I'm not excessively tall, but I'm tall enough that many of the rooms and most of the passageways required me to stoop over.  At one point I underestimated the ceiling clearance and brained myself on the none-too-smooth ceiling, feeling like I'd left a part of my scalp behind.  

However, that was nothing compared to the last tunnel we passed through before leaving Kaymakli.  The top of it was so low that with my backpack, I couldn't walk through bent over - I had to duck walk.  It just kept going on and on.  The group ahead of us kept stopping to take photos.  And - worst of all - it was narrow!  Two years of pandemic have not been kind to my ass, and while I may not be bothered by enclosed spaces, the idea of getting my ass stuck in a tunnel approximately 65 feet underground is absolutely horrifying.

Luckily that didn't happen until very nearly the end.  Most of our time underground was very cool.  Engrish found me a very nice reading nook, and at first this seemed like a pretty cool way to live.  Unfortunately the guided tours that we happened to overhear provided some details that significantly altered the "coolness" of these habitats.  Basically, the inhabitants couldn't go outside.  Ever.  That means all the livestock lived in the caves with them, and you couldn't just empty the chamberpot out the window.  At the time I thought how isolating that must be, but I've just now read on Wikipedia that apparently some tunnels connected Kaymakli with its closest neighbor, Derinkuyu.  So.  You know.  I guess for a change of scenery you just had to walk 10 kilometers underground, which makes it MUCH more manageable.

That said, they did have places to worship, and a winery if you were into that sort of thing, and you never know when you might delve too deeply and discover a Balrog, so hey...I guess life could be worse.  Nevertheless, by the time we reemerged into the snowy afternoon, I had a new appreciation for fresh air and the light of day.  We were planning to go to Derinkuyu from there, but visited the stalls selling tourist kitsch first, picking up a local folk doll, a smaller backpack, and bottles of water.  By the time we got back in the taxi, I was over my panic attack (mostly).  However, as fate would have it, we didn't visit Derinkuyu.  As we left the parking lot, I thought the driver had turned the wrong direction, but figured he knew something I didn't.  We were most of the way back to Goreme when we started thinking things looked familiar, and upon checking Google Maps discovered there was a very good reason for that.  And, on the whole, we were okay with that.

The rest of the day went by in a blur of shopping and eating.  The skies ended up clearing around sunset, as we climbed up the same hill we started the the day with, to eat at Seten, a restaurant our Turkish colleague had recommended.  After enjoying the tones of the city at night, we turned in early - the next morning would involve the (butt)crack of dawn.

Ups and Downs

It was a dark, and stormy, Monday afternoon...

After two LONG years, this spring break saw me finally, FINALLY on the road again.  It would have been nice if I could have gone to Japan - had that trip I planned two and a half years ago, sitting on a beach in Toyama watching the firefly squid roll in - but that hope was in vain.  Instead, I finally caved and went with the suggestion Engrish tentatively made, back in January or so: we could always do Turkey.

Now, if you have been patiently waiting the last 11 months (haha) for me to write words*, you will no doubt be aware that I've done Turkey before.  Seven years ago, I led an intrepid band of my rag-tag students there.  Seven years before that, I led an intrepid band of my ragtag self there.  Maybe in another seven years I'll go back, and finally see Pamukkale (I've been kicking myself for not going there since 2008.  True story).  I had a blast both times, but I did basically the same thing both times...just with kids the second go-round.  This time, though, Engrish was my wing-girl, so futzing around in the city for a week would NOT do.

I believe it was she who first suggested Cappadocia...I'm pretty sure she described it as, "That place with the interesting rock formations."  Fortunately, I speak engrish, and I know enough about Turkey to guess, with pinpoint accuracy, what the hell she was talking about.  We booked our flights - I got us overnight bus tickets to Goreme, she found hotels - and two weeks back, we found ourselves under warm skies, looking at green grass, and breathing mask free.**

After an early check-in the clerk called "lucky" (because our room was, in fact, actually ready at 7:30 am), we walked down the street to what is apparently Goreme's only coffee shop that opens before 9 - King's Coffee.  The owner didn't seem too appalled that I ordered a coke to go with my "toast" (grilled cheese)...maybe that was because Engrish ordered a Turkish coffee like a decent human being.  On the other hand, considering the number of times Engrish was offered Nescafe, as though that was remotely related to actual coffee, maybe he's just been around enough tourists over the years to become jaded.  Who knows?

At any rate, my first order of business was to get to Urgup and enjoy an art lesson - ebru, Turkish marbling.  (Good to know that the pandemic didn't change everything, eh?)  I left Engrish to her own devices (which I had no doubt would involve hiking up the biggest cliff she could access) and caught a taxi to Kappadokya Ebru Sanat Evi (or Ebru Art House).  

I had a brief run-in with marbling when I brought the kids seven years ago, but I didn't get the chance to really indulge in it.  This time I wanted to be able to understand it, so that I'd be able to do it again once I was home.  The owner, Guler Somturk, and her daughter were really patient about answering all of my questions as well as guiding me to learn the basic forms.  We were having so much fun that I didn't even realize when my two hours were up.  The only shame is that I had to go so early that Engrish missed out on sampling at the winery across the street.

I returned to the hotel to find her sitting in the sun reading (for approximately the last time...unlike some people she didn't work her way through 200 chapters of a webnovel during the week).  After taking a shower we went out looking for something tasty.  After I'd abandoned her that morning, some weird old broad in the cafe had suggested a restaurant for us to try...however, after we took a look at their menu we decided trusting weird old broads that randomly start conversations with you in cafes was a bad idea.  We wandered around Goreme's main drag, finally getting reeled in by a big place called Kebapzade.  Where we might have gone a little overboard.  I mean, this was our first REAL meal in Turkey.  After getting to the bus stop the night before we had iskander kebap at a nearby mall, but that was all they had on the menu.  Here, we took one look at the menu and ended up ordering what felt like one of everything.  And maybe I was just starving by that point, but I still think their pottery kebab was my favorite of the whole trip, because it was so juicy and flavorful.  More on those later, though.

At that point, I could no longer put off the inevitable.  Although at that point I was ready to be rolled back up the hill to the hotel, I had promised Engrish hiking.  It could have been worse - as mentioned in the first line of this post, it was stormy, which seemed to concern some of the passersby, but Engrish was not to be deterred and I actually like the rain.  Worse come to worst, I would get soaked and have an excuse to spend the evening reading snuggled up in our cave.  My plan was to delay us tackling anything too strenuous by going to the Goreme Open Air Museum.  Along the way, though, we got distracted by something shiny - the famous "fairy chimneys" (aka, interesting rock formations).  

We actually intended to end up at the museum, really.  It's just...the trail that should have taken us there didn't.  Possibly because we willfully wandered off it in a different direction.  And by we, I totally take the blame for that, because my internal GPS kept telling me we were moving back in the direction of the town, rather than away from it.  But the scenery was pretty nice and the trail wasn't terribly steep, so all was good.

Or, rather, it was...and then it wasn't.  In a very short amount of time we found ourselves getting higher and higher on the ridge that my internal GPS kept telling me separated us from the town, and I let us keep going, because I knew that this would actually turn into a shortcut.  And it did.  However, I made Engrish go up the last, steepest bit to make sure before I climbed it.  The moral of the story is, if you don't want to pay to access Goreme's sunset point, there's a back way in, but be prepared to work for it!  

*Joke's on you - I've written lots of words.  I just haven't published any of them because they were fucking depressing.  Nobody really wants to read about my nerd cave, or my (futile) attempts to kick my ass into a slightly less round shape.

**Mostly...I was a lot more hesitant to burn mine than Engrish was, but even I didn't wear mine that much.

Who Needs Holland?

It’s not entirely unfair to wonder how I spent my time in Toyama, since I didn’t stay up all night to watch for squid on the beach.  It isn’t all that big a town, and I’ve been here before, after all.  But what you may not know if you’ve never been to Japan is that there is ALWAYS something to discover.  You just have to find it.

My discoveries started Sunday night.  I was reading about something - I’m not even sure what it was at this point - and it mentioned Tonami, a town about an hour away on the train.  I knew because I looked at Google maps, and while I was there, I noticed they had a tulip park.  There was also a little pink date marker on the map, so I googled the next day’s date and Tonami.  The marker was undoubtedly for the ongoing tulip festival, but I also happened to discover that there might be children’s kabuki performances that day as well.  It was a little hard to tell, because I found two different dates on separate websites.  Regardless, I decided that I needed to make an excursion to Tonami.

On my way I decided I’d find out about the kabuki first.  Tulips are nice, but they weren’t something I could “miss” - they’d still be there later in the day.  Since I wasn’t entirely sure when the kabuki was taking place (or even IF it was that day) I didn’t want to miss it.  Also, it seemed like every last person who was on the train with me was going to see the tulips, so good riddance to people!  As I was about to go down the stairs on the north side of the station, I saw a poster announcing the Demachi Kodomo Kabuki Hikiyama Matsuri was the 29th and 30th of April.  I went into the information center to check the location - another thing that was sort of unclear from what I’d read online - and the oba-san pointed me in the right direction.

Now, allow me a brief interlude to admit that kabuki is not my favorite Japanese performance art.  The last time I experienced it the story was Naruto, and that still wasn’t enough to keep me awake through to the end.  That said, kabuki is unlike any other drama I’ve ever experienced.  Of course the costumes and make-up are distinctly Japanese, but even the way the actors move, using stilted movements and the kind of poses that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, is so unique.

Likewise the voices used.  I found the young actress’ speaking particularly striking.  A little backstory for you: originally kabuki was performed entirely by women.  Then men took it over, as they do, declaring it indecent for women to be on stage (also as they do).  So for a very long time, all the female parts have been performed by men, at least in professional performances.  Children’s kabuki seems to play by a different set of rules, though, because there were girls in the play I saw, as well as depicted on the posters.  The way that she pitched her voice, though, sounded more like a man speaking in falsetto than a natural female voice, so it seems that an artistic necessity has, in this case, become the convention.

Another thing I preferred about this performance over the Naruto kabuki was the fact that I could take pictures.  The audience sat on stools in the middle of the road.  The performance took place in front of us on a small portable stage which reminded me of nothing so much as a mikoshi.  The crew mostly stayed inside the structure, hidden behind the scenery, although they were visible during costume changes and when the fox appeared early in the act.  Although everything was in Japanese - I’m pretty sure I was the only gaijin in attendance - I did catch the title: Yoshitsune Senbon-Zakura (otaku vocabulary for the win!). It seems like they were specifically doing the fourth act, based on Wikipedia’s synopsis.  It moved relatively quickly, but I decided after it finished that I was satisfied with my kabuki experience and moved on to the tulip park.

Now THAT was a completely different beast.  One regret I had after visiting the Netherlands back in 2016 was the fact that tulip season was over before I got there.  Last month Sensei visited her daughter there and her tulip pictures made me sick with envy.  So I thought I might be able to get a small taste of that experience in Tonami, and I did.  The park sprawled out, surrounding you with tulips of every color imaginable, and there were water wheels and fake windmills to give you that good Dutch feeling.  So Claude Monet never painted the garden in Tonami - I can hardly hold that against them.  However, when I saw that it was a joint project with some kind of Turkish organization...maybe I held that against them a little.  It’s not their fault that I’m a little bitter against my current employers, but after the Director teasing me that the school was following me on vacation (which I’ll explain when I’ve seen the end of the school year), I didn’t really appreciate the reminder of my indentured servitude.  

The Final Shenanigan: That Awkward Moment...

Well, the fashion show is over but after the last week I'm kind of out of Istanbul, so rather than trying to scrape something together about our last day (in which I left Time Lady and the kids at Aya Sofya to go back and learn to marble paper before taking Team Bazaar for one last bit of shopping, after which we returned to the airport), you're getting this.  See, traveling has a habit of bringing out the awkwardness even in the best of us (in the population that is already pretty awkward - watch out!)  When traveling with teenagers, it's even worse.  There were a lot of great moments on this trip...there were also quite a few awkward ones.  Like that awkward moment...

...when the bus has to stop because you've left your luggage by the curb.

...when you trip over something that isn't there.  In front of everyone.

...when you ask your student for their phone number, only to have another one accuse you of hitting on them.

...when one of them says something comPLETELY inappropriate and you really want to laugh but know you shouldn't. (More awkward?  When your art teacher proceeds to explain how erections were carved on a lot of statues because they were a symbol of power in Ancient Egypt, and how sometimes invading armies would break them off the collosi to psych out the Egyptians).

...when you show up wearing the same thing as someone else...and it happens to be a laurel crown, because PRETTY and WHY NOT??  (The one Ukulele Man is wearing?  Yeah, that's mine.)

...when your belly dance teacher makes fun of you for being too sexy.

...when you trip over something that's not there for the second time (if you're really lucky, only one student will witness it this time).

...when you forget your luggage for the second time.  At the freaking airport.  And they ALL witness it.

...when you realize that you'd rather travel with teenagers than most people your own age.  I looked forward to and dreaded our vacation together in equal part.  There was the responsibility (including for the weather, which rationally I know I can't control but when your flight's delayed or you spend your visit to Topkapi Palace cold and wet, somehow you feel like there's something you should have done), the fear that they'd be let down with something, and the diminished lone wolf-iness, but there was also the joy of watching them experience new things, of sharing my love of travel with them.  So there's all that.  But then there's moments like when you watch them pick up garbage at the Gallipoli Battlefields, and you just feel so damn proud of them.  There are also the moments when you want to scream at them, and you don't, because even when they deserve it they still don't deserve it (I swear this is much easier to do with young people, at least for me, because you still have hope that they'll grow out of whatever idiotic thing they're doing).  So yeah.  90% of people in their 30's would not be welcome on vacation with me.  90% of my students would.  I've said it before and I'll say it again - they're just that awesome.

Also entertaining.  They crack me the hell up, even when I shouldn't laugh at them.

Shenanigan-ing the Fifth: Shelter from the Storm

We'd been playing pussyfoot with the rain since our second day in Istanbul.  People kept apologizing for the weather, explaining that it was usually warmer this time of year.  Little did they realize that we hailed from Mongolia - their idea of "cold" is a warm spring day to us.  Also, it was nice to not have to fight our kids over wearing the hoodies on account of it being too hot.  That said, I have to tell you that when the weather really did catch up to us, we felt it.  The fifth day of the trip we were scheduled to visit Topkapi Palace, and while the weather held long enough for me to go ahead of everyone and buy tickets...

...just FYI, apparently those 85 lira 3-day museum passes can sell out.  As in, like, everywhere.  And that sucks...

...but by the time we'd entered the second court and started to look around rain was coming down.  This was such a bummer I hardly had words for it, because the last time I visited Topkapi Palace, it was a gorgeous autumn day, and the lovely grounds really deserve to be strolled through at a leisurely pace, rather than quickly as you shiver from building to building.  Still, a palace is a palace, and I think everyone enjoyed seeing the fantastic architecture...just not as much as they would have on a sunny day.

While Time Lady stayed back with the majority of our students who were getting their fill of shopping at their second gift shop of the day, I went ahead to buy tickets for the Istanbul Archaeology Museum (since we now needed tickets for every attraction we went to) with one of my tenth grade boys (who brought a ukulele on the trip and thus earned the moniker "Ukulele Man") who had a great sense of direction and liked to be ahead of everyone else.  The main group spent so long shopping that we bought the tickets and were half the way back to the gate before they caught up to us.  Since we were all cold from the rain we decided to go to lunch down the hill from the museum first, and we all ended up eating at The Han, where most of the kids got to enjoy another meal seated on cushions (not to mention some good food).  Afterwards we went to the museum where we were THRILLED to be able to skip the ticket line and go straight in.

Now, this is where I kinda lost it a little.  We'd already "lost" kids a couple of times - once because they forgot to check in before wandering off, once because "Can I goof around?" means something different to me than it does to one of my students.  And I had not yelled at anyone, even though at one point I promised to murder one of them, because we were on vacation and I didn't want anyone - myself included - to have a shitty time.  As we were getting ready to leave the first building of the museum, a few of the girls were straggling, and when they and Time Lady caught up to the main body of the group, we came up one girl short.  And I cracked.  It's a big enough museum that you aren't going to be able to find someone just by looking, so I waited out in the cold rain while Time Lady went on in with the rest, and I started feeling sorry for myself and got pissed off for a couple of reasons, so that 10 minutes later, when I made a lucky guess and went in looking for our girl, I couldn't actually talk to her, and had to go off by myself for a few minutes once she was with the rest to cry a little.  It didn't ruin the rest of the trip for me, but it made me ready to go home, and even though when we did get home it was disappointing to be back and I was all about planning a trip for next year, I also needed to be left the hell alone for a while.

It helped to lift my spirits that after a short walk up the hill we were visiting one of my all-time favorite places, the Basilica Cistern.  You walk down steps into a cavern of water held up by columns, lit from below by a soft golden glow.  Every time I'm there it feels like magic, like a different time or even a different world.  It's my kinda place.

We went from there back to the hotel for about an hour, where people put on dry clothes and I let myself nap for about a half hour, before we headed out to our belly dance workshop.  This was another of my ideas for something we could do in the evenings, and on bellydanceclasses.net I found Hale Sultan, a fantastic Turkish dancer who agreed to do a workshop for us for a great price, and was super flexible with our schedule and the weather.  We ended up going to her studio in Taksim, and I had to listen to both grumbles and giggles along the way, because a lot of my students didn't exactly know what to make of the fact that they were going to learn belly dance.  Once we got started, though, almost everyone enjoyed themselves.  In our two hours Hale talked about some of the history and culture of belly dance as well as teaching us most of the basic isolations.  She was a great teacher - she kept it fun and fast paced, and at least a couple of the girls told me they'd like to learn more. Afterwards we went out to Istiklal Caddesi (known as "the street" by all my students, most of whom were keen to go back) to grab a bite to eat before heading to Sultanahmet. 

Shenanigans, Part IV: Ruined!

Being Aussie, Time Lady was really looking forward to Gallipoli.  Being a student of the classics, I was excited to go back to Troy.  It was the whole reason I went to Canakkale the first time.  I love the story, even if - as Time Lady pointed out - it probably isn't true. Part of me wanted to bring movies and books and shove them down our kids' throats, like, "THIS IS THE TROJAN WOMEN!!!  DON'T YOU GET IT???"  The other part of me started thinking that next time I should tag team Lil' Miss Catwalk for our trip and let her shove the literature down their throats. 

At any rate, we set out from the Egem Pension at around 9 a.m. for Troy.  The breakfast there was not as nice as the one at the Antique Hostel, but we paid half as much for the room, so what do you expect?  Although we needed a guide and he was helpful when it came to communicating with the driver, Time Lady didn't think he was that good a guide, and I've already mentioned how much guides annoy me, so the plan was that the kids would kind of be in charge while we were at Troy, and refer to us or the guide if they had any burning questions.

How that worked out in practicality is that I was in the front with the kids who - like me - wanted to soak things in.  Time Lady was in the back listening to the audio guide and passing the knowledge on to her History Geeks.  In the middle we had Ekrem (which was actually an easy name for me to remember because it's fairly close to a Mongolian name, Erkhem), and a group of students who was asking him questions.  So actually, it worked out pretty well. 

At least one of our kids is an outspoken believer in aliens.  I'm kind of "live and let live" when it comes to alien conspiracy theories - the universe is a pretty big place and I see no reason why we should be alone in it, although I don't particularly think that means they built the pyramids - but it drives Time Lady nuts.  Luckily she was still further back when our girl said she felt like she was on an episode of Ancient Aliens and I had her pretend she was explaining something about the site for the show.

We finished up at the gift shop where some of us went a little crazy (and would have gone crazier if our money hadn't been on the bus...I personally would have done some serious shopping, but after my major purchase I handed the rest of my money over to kids who couldn't access their cash).  I asked the guide if they wouldn't let us go out and come back and he said no, which seems like a pretty ridiculous policy, considering several of us were all, "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!"  But oh, well.  We finally loaded up the bus and headed back to Istanbul, with a couple of stops along the way for the bathroom and food.  The rest area food was surprisingly good, but that's the regional cuisine for you and supports my theory that the prison food in Greece is probably pretty tasty.

So far everyone had loved the food but we hadn't eaten a real meal together and I hadn't really hit them with a truly fantastic restaurant.  I was hoping to really wow them with a restaurant before we left, either with music or something, and when I had my layover in February I wandered past Palatium, which is right down the street from the Antique Hostel.  The poster on their window showed that they'd been featured on the History Channel for their ruins of part of Constantine's Magnaura Palace, so I figured that would definitely wow them, but I wondered about the food.  One of our students recently became vegan and one of her friends was supporting her by joining her for the week, so we were looking to find something good for them as well...we hadn't had dolmades yet, and they wanted hummus.  Well, the night before in Canakkale Time Lady and I looked at the menu, and not only did they have good vegetarian options, they got good reviews on TripAdvisor. so we made a reservation (with some help from our guide, who overall did earn his keep) for an hour after we were set to get back to Istanbul.  It was everything we could have hoped for and more.  We sat at low tables on cushions.  The food was delicious, and it was really great to eat together as one big family.

After a good long chat we went down to the ruins.  A lot of Sultanahmet has just been built on what came before, and when the owners were doing renovations in 2000-something they discovered part of a palace, and chose to excavate, spending millions of dollars to open it up.  It was really cool to wander around in.  One of my 10th graders might be moving his way up in my list of favorites, thanks to the fact that during the trip he kept touching things because they were "old," and this is something that I also love to do - put my hand on a wall that has stood for thousands of years.  And then he just got ridiculous by touching his friends and saying, "I'm touching an ancient Munkhy!"