Fairy Chimneys and Dead Cities

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Trip Start Jun 17, 2008 Previous
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  Hamah, Syria
Sunday, October 26, 2008

It is with a trembling, but recovering, hand that I put pen to paper this week.  We are in Syria now.  So my Turkish tea addiction is a thing of the past - relegated to a mere memory (like scraping our car windows after the first good frost on a cold Canadian autumn morning...).

When we last blogged Kevin was in such a hurry to catch the tea guy at the train station that he couldn't finish writing his last thought...and, he said I have a problem??   We both enjoyed our Turkish tea right up to the Syria/Turkey border.  And, on our last full day in Turkey we set a new personal best - five and a half cups each.  This PB is even more impressive since we accomplished it without stooping so low as to sit through yet another carpet salesman's pitch solely to get the accompanying free cup of tea (as Kevin suggested).   I admit that I did ask Efan, the hotel operator, how Turkish tea is brewed so I could continue enjoying this delicacy in Canada

Overnight Train, Turkey

.  Perhaps he saw the longing in my eyes (or my dog-like salivation), but he soon came through for me.  "You like one?  I show you!"  Oh, you are so kind, Efan...yes please!!!   A few minutes later I heard Kevin mutter, "Anything for another score", I can assure you that he was right there with his hand out doing his best Oliver imitation.

Our train ride from Istanbul to Cappadocia in central Turkey was great; that says a lot considering it lasted 19 hours.  We had a 6-person couchette, which is a separate cabin with two sets of triple bunks.  The top two levels of the bunks could fold up during the day so we had lots of room.  Unfortunately, within a half hour of arriving and settling in, the conductor realized that the "little" power problem he was having in our car (i.e. there was none) wasn't going to get fixed quickly.  We gathered up all of our bags and traipsed them over to the next car.  All in all, it was a welcome change as just moments before our move, I had tried to take Laura to the bathroom....even at the best of times it's not that easy (for us western society girls) to pee squatting over a hole, but try doing it on a train that's rocking back and forth while in the dark!... that's a real challenge.  With our move, not only were we now able to see ourselves pee on our shoes, but we could now also see the complex workings of the elaborate Turkish railway plumbing system (as the excrement fell naturally onto the tracks below).

The new couchette was incredibly hot (maybe 30 Celsius?) but the conductor kindly showed us the thermostat and turned it off when we arrived.  The heating radiated from water pipes that ran underneath the seats, so the resulting drop in temperature took several hours.  We opened the window and door to let a breeze in and by the time we went to bed it was finally comfortable

Cappadocia Landscape, Turkey

.  It's too bad that we didn't think about the chilly Turkish nights (and our lack of blankets) and turn the thermostat up to a reasonable level as we went to "sleep".  Poor little Sarah wrote about it in her journal the next day, "Me and Michael wer like an ice cube last night.  That was a most horable sleep I ever had."  And to think this could have been avoided if only her parents were a little smarter.

The biggest news of the train ride was not the couchette, or the temperature, or playing "Bombs Away!" in the bathroom.  No, the biggest news was that we met another family!  Yes, for all you naysayers out there who thought we were the only ones crazy enough to pull our kids out of school and go globetrotting, you are wrong!  There is at least one other crazy family out there.  Aussies Dennis and Bettina O'Neill have two kids, Annie (11) and Kai (8).  Our kids were thrilled to finally find some other children to play with.  Bettina also seemed happy to visit with us.  We found out later that her "visit" with us was really an escape, as sharing the O'Neill couchette was a nice Turkish gentleman who was trying to talk Turkish politics (in Turkish) with Dennis...and although Dennis appears to be a man of many talents, speaking Turkish is not one of them.  Those translation books are only so useful...

The O'Neill's were also heading to Göreme in Cappadocia so we spent the next three days with them - we stayed at the same hotel, ate together, hiked together, and saw the sights together

Cappadocio, Turkey

.  It was great; the kids and adults all got along famously. 

Cappadocia is an amazing place.  The landscape is lunar-like.  The huge stone mushrooms, deep valleys and soft ridges were all created from volcanic deposits that were sculpted over the millennia by water and wind erosion.  Centuries ago, people carved out the innards of the hills and formed caves in them that were more than big enough to live in.  Some even had doors and numbers.   Local people have dubbed these as "fairy chimneys" - apparently the original inhabitants left the area, and when others returned 1,000 years later, they didn't know who built the houses in the rocks...the general consensus of the new inhabitants was that the fairies did it (our girls loved this story!).  The area is resplendent with Cave Hotels and we could not disappoint the children, who had their hearts set on staying in one, so the Dervish Cave House became our home.  (Point of Note - we had no trouble disappointing them when it came to the 45 minute, $1,000 hot air balloon ride they wanted to take!)

Something that deserves special mention about our time in Cappadocia was our visit to Kaymakli, the underground city.  We had prepped the kids about it in advance using some of the facts in our guide book - that Kaymakli was used in 500 AD (or so) by Christians to hide from Roman persecution.  That as many as 10,000 people could hide in the city at any one time and could survive there for up to 6 months, depending on the provisions they had stored away.  When we arrived in modern day Kaymakli, Sarah was obviously annoyed when she saw all the buildings around her.  She said in her (not so sweet) 6 year old voice that "this city doesn't look underground!"

We took some deep breaths, walked her over to the hill on the outskirts of town and showed her the entrance to the underground tunnel

Cappadocia Landscape

.  The underground city was fantastic.  It is a honeycomb of underground rooms connected by tunnels that span down eight levels into the earth.  The rooms have openings for windows (to allow for a primitive telephone system) and there are huge round boulders that could be rolled in front of doors to block passages off from enemies.  The kids had great fun jumping down holes and exploring the different levels.  In one case they even had to be rescued by Kevin when they jumped in and couldn't get back out.  Only Laura was smart enough to not jump down in the first place - good thing too as we didn't know exactly where they had gone until we saw her sitting beside the open hole.  Does that make us bad parents???...I guess no more so than turning Sarah into an ice cube on the overnight train.

Some of the other highlights of our time here were:

ˇ    Going to the Open Air Museum, but not quite getting there.  At the last moment we got distracted by the hundreds of nearby deserted cave houses, so we spent several hours exploring them instead.  There could not have been a better place for five kids (who had spent the previous night and day on a train) to go tearing around together.  Our only disappointment was that we didn't have flashlights - a guarantee that we would come back another day;

ˇ    Eating dinner at a table for adults only

Our Lovely Cave Hotel Room, Goreme, Turkey

.  A win/win since the kids were just as happy to have a table to themselves as we were.  And, we got to hear stories of Dennis' experience for 7 weeks at a Buddhist retreat, and his past adventures in Istanbul as a youthful accomplice to a car smuggler.  Thankfully we didn't get into too many any of Kevin's past stories...

ˇ    Göreme Open Air Museum - the second time we didn't get sidetracked, and we actually went inside.  This museum got high marks from the kids.   Unlike the Louvre, the children could run around through centuries' old cave churches (fully ignoring the impressive religious frescoes on the cave walls) and explore all the secret passages they could find with their flashlights;

ˇ    The Dervish Cave House, with its tumbled marble bathroom walls, marble floors, Jacuzzi tub (yes, all within a cave).  I thought I had died and gone to heaven!  And, to top it off our two families were the only people there so we had free reign over the playground, the lounge and the high speed internet access...who says cave dwellers are primitive!!

ˇ    Lest the allure of the cave houses themselves is not a good enough draw, the good folks here upped the ante with a Flintstones obsession (The Flintstones Hotel, Flintstones Bar, Bedrock Café, The Flintstones Internet and Music Shop, and Pebbles' Place ("Get Bam Bammed at Pebbles' Place!")

Kaymakli Underground City, Turkey

.  Okay, I made that last one up, but why not be creative if you live in a town of cave houses?...

ˇ    Our last dinner in Göreme with the O'Neill's- complete with live Turkish music, sitting comfortably cross-legged on cushions on the floor (well, except for "flexibility challenged" Kevin) and getting our stew that had been baked in sealed clay bowls and broken open in front of us.

There is so much more I could write about Turkey:  like the omnipresent "Blue Eye" good luck charms  embedded in roads and macramé hangings; the absolute adoration here for Mustafa Kemal, the man who brought about Turkey's independence (and who is affectionately referred to as  Father Turk); the lemon scented liquid the Turks spray on your hands after a meal (in one case even chasing us as we left the restaurant to make sure we got some); Michael's mysterious rash (okay, we weren't really going to blog about that); and the giant bread, and I mean giant, we were served at dinner...we'll just have to say that Turkey goes on our "favourites" list as a place we would definitely like to return to sometime.

So, after having a Yabba Dabba Doo time in Göreme we were off to Syria...on an overnight/day bus ride that included no less than five different buses, a two hour sleep in the bus station (for the kids) and about twenty hours of driving

Exploring Cave Houses in Goreme, Turkey

. 

The bus we were in for most of our overnight journey seemed to have a bit of an engine problem in the middle of the night.  Thankfully, Kevin doesn't sleep well on buses so he was able to see all the black smoke pouring out of the back of the bus.  Oblivious to what had happened, I woke up and asked Kevin why the bus was stopped.  He said (and I quote), "Like the fire-breathing dragons of folklore old, the bus spewed angry smoke into the night.  But unlike its brethren of long ago, this dragon was slayed without a fight!"  So even when it's not Kevin's turn to blog he feels he must get his "blather" included, and he had spent 30 minutes composing his little prose while I slept...nicely done, metaphor man!  What he's trying to say is that the bus had to stop for some sort of repair.  I was happy to hear that he was ready to wake us all up if he thought the bus was on fire and going to explode (assuming he wasn't too busy "composing" that is).  Four and a half months, 24/7 together and he still loves us...

Twice during our trip, the nice comfortable big bus we were riding in stopped on the highway in the middle of nowhere, and some of us were herded out to "take little bus".  We tried to adopt a laissez faire attitude about it but it was a little unnerving when the "luxury" bus company driver wished us "Good Luck" as we piled into our new "non-luxury minibus".  It got even more unnerving when the new driver made a big show of doing his seatbelt up, lit a cigarette, smiled in his rearview mirror at us, and said "Sorry, no seatbelt for you" as he sped away. 

 We finally arrived in Syria, in the city of Aleppo, exhausted but happy

Bettina, Kevin, Tracy and the Smuggler

.  Syrians are known for their hospitality (contrary to what you may hear on CNN) and within a few hours of our arrival we had experienced it firsthand.  After standing around looking bewildered, we were escorted by two older ladies on the street to the Aleppo National Museum (a landmark we used to help us figure out exactly where in the world Mario Andretti had dropped us off - there was something about the road signs being in Arabic and the travel guide map being in English that made navigation difficult); the hotel manager telling us we could have as much tea or coffee as we would like for free (no such luck on the toilet paper, however); and the invitation by the hotel manager's father to come have a meal with his family.  He said our kids could play with his kids.  Knowing his son was old enough to run the hotel, we asked how many other children he had.  "Eight," he said.  Then with a wink to Kevin he added, "My machine work well, no?  Like a six-shooter."  What a shame we didn't have time had to take him up on his offer....

Syria also took us into our first major endeavour in hand washing our clothes.  Standing over a dirty tub full of clothes that the children had worn during hours of crawling through caves is, quite frankly, no fun.  I think you'll agree that Kevin was not being entirely supportive when he looked at me and said, "I hope you don't expect me to do any."  During my second tub full of grime, he offered to go find out whether there were any high speed internet connections available in the neighbourhood

Frescoes, Open Air Museum, Goreme

.  "If you want," I replied in my outside voice.  Oddly enough, my inside voice was saying something quite different.  Surely finding out if the Maple Leafs won isn't as important as clean underwear for the children?!?

So far, we have really enjoyed Syria.  We saw the mandatory sites in Aleppo, but, the bulk of our sightseeing so far occurred yesterday when we hired a driver to take us to some of the more hard to reach spots around the area.  Zachariah, our driver/guide, was working hard to earn a tip.  He gave us candies ("for the babies"), took us to a number of additional sites (for no extra cost - "no problem, no problem") and we accepted his invitation to his home for tea and to meet his wife (who he mentioned also happens to be his cousin - no kidding).  He was a lovely man who continually referred to Kevin and me as Madame, and liked talking in the third person ("Zachariah, driver, no like George Bush!"), and when he wasn't saying "no problem, no problem" he was saying "welcome, welcome".

The highlights of Syria so far are:

ˇ    The Basilica of St. Simeon.  This was a magnificent old church (or the ruins of it) which was constructed to enclose the pillars of St

Goreme Business, Turkey

. Simeon.  If I do say so myself, Simeon was a bit of a strange bloke.  From what we have read, Simeon climbed on top of some pillars in this town (Qala'at Samaan) and just stayed there.  After 36 years of "putting himself on a pedestal", he died on top of one that was 18 metres high.  The pillars are essentially gone, but the church was quite spectacular.  Somehow, I think there must be more to this Simeon story than we've read (anyone who wants to fill us in, please feel free...the internet connections aren't that plentiful in Syria, and besides, I don't know how to type "Google" in Arabic);

ˇ    The dead cities - Syria is known for its dead cities, Serjilla being the largest and the most visited.  As much as we can gather, a dead city is the same as the ruins of an ancient city.  It is "dead" because the inhabitants just walked away one day, and there has been no effort to restore the ruins or make sense of them.  I don't know if it was the sheer magnitude of the ruins, the mist that was enveloping the area on the day we were there or the fact that we were the only ones walking about, but it had an eerie feel to it;

ˇ    Wandering about the desert in Ebla, an ancient buried city, and the kids stirring up dust storms;

ˇ    Seeing the olive factory, one of Zachariah's "extra" stops

The "Good Luck" Blue Eyes of Turkey

.  Looks to us like they just press the heck out of those olives until the oil comes pouring out.  It certainly smelled good.  They handed us a little cup full, and after checking it for errant cigarette ash, we readily dipped our fingers in for a taste.  Very flavourful, but not the type of thing that one downs like a shot of Baileys.  Unfortunately, that's what they had in mind for us...

ˇ    Initially coming over the border and seeing four wrecked cars piled in a ditch, immediately before the "Welcome to Syria" sign...some sort of warning perhaps?

ˇ    The landscape in Syria so far - rock, rock and more rock - seemingly scattered about, but they are embedded deep into the ground.  There is little soil here (that we've seen so far) and it's a wonder that the multitude of olive trees can possibly grow;

ˇ    Listening to Sarah's fake Australian accent - good to see that while the O'Neill's have left us in body, they still live on through Sarah's voice.  If three days with a few Australians has this effect on her, what will she be sounding like after 6 weeks down under?  Heaven help us!

That's it for now...we have some more desert hopping to do and then it's on to Damascus, the capital of Syria.

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Giant Bread with Dinner, Istanbul, Turkey	Citadel at Aleppo, Syria	Clocktower in Aleppo, Syria	View from Basilica of Saint Simeon, Syria
Dead City, Syria	View of Ebla Ruins, Syria	Rocky Landscape of Northern Syria	Basilica of Saint Simeon, Syria
The Kids Discover the Desert, Syria	Giant Olive Oil Press

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