Cappadocia

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On my first day of freedom in Turkey I traveled to a place called Cappadocia. We took an hour long flight out of Istanbul to Kayseri. On Turkish Airlines they give you free food! It was a nice treat from our usual stingy American airlines.

Right when we arrived, we drove straight to an underground city called Kaymakli. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a place where Christians hid during persecution. This place was crazy! We went down nine stories through all of these tiny, tiny tunnels. The city was carved out by the people who lived in them. The whole time I was there I was just imagining this being my home and I couldn’t believe that people were able to do it.

Next we drove around for a little bit and visited a couple spots with panoramic views of Cappadocia. A lot of Cappadocia is rural with agriculture, but there is also these amazing natural rock formations called fairy chimneys. The chimneys were created when two volcanoes erupted, dispersing hot ash over the terrain. The wealthy believed it to be barren land, but the poor saw it as a means of survival. The indigenous people carved homes, churches, schools, and entire villages out of these rocks.

On the second day we were there we went to another World Heritage Site called the Zelve Ruins, which was one of these rock-carved villages. It was so cool to walk around and explore. People actually lived in Zelve up until the 1950s, but they had to move out because it was starting to erode and become unsafe. We also went to a place called the Goreme Open Air Museum which was a little village with a bunch of different churches. Inside the churches were some amazing frescoes that were still intact. The largest church had frescoes depicting all different stories from the Bible like Mary and Joseph’s trek to Jerusalem, Jesus turning water into wine, and Jesus multiplying the loaves and fish. It’s cool to think about how the same stories that I know were also known by people hundreds of years ago and how they have carried the same special meanings to people over time.

Other cool things we did included visiting a pottery factory and a carpet factory. The carpet factory was insane! They had something like 30,000 carpets and we got to see samples of at least 100 different handmade styles. Everywhere we went served us tea or some kind of beverage, making me feel like the Turkish people have a very hospitable nature. The hotel we stayed at was nice and had the best breakfast and dinner EVER. The breakfast literally had a buffet of jams and the dinner had dessert buffet with probably 15 different dishes. It was really hard not to be pig. Cappadocia was so awesome and definitely something different. It was so cool to be in Istanbul and then be out in this almost extra-terrestrial place that was unlike anywhere in the world.

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