I’m in Goreme, the city of the caves. Since we left Palmyra we’ve been following the old silk route up around the eastern end of the Med. We arrived here the day before yesterday and were immediately ushered into a carpet store for dinner and a show. The show was Turkish lads rolling out different varieties of carpets while reciting plausible but dubious stories about their provenance. Dinner was good. The show was unnecessary. I bought a carpet. More on that later.
It’s cold today. It rained solidly for about four hours earlier this afternoon. I sat in a café watching DVDs and playing pool while waiting for the weather to break. In the morning I had a futile thirty-minute conversation with a HSBC call-centre employee who was clearly empowered to do no more than read from whatever script was blinking up on the screen in front of her. Reason is futile in these circumstances. The logic of the ancient Greeks would come to nothing. All you can do is keep your temper and pray for grace. Grace came in the form of a £100 per day withdrawal limit. HSBC has turned me into a child.
Goreme is an interesting place with underground cities and homes carved into the sandstone and basalt outcrops of the wind and water shaped landscape. I’d be more favourably disposed toward the region if I hadn’t spent yesterday on the world’s most pointless and over priced tour. As one of the lads grunted to me on the bus as we wound our way back from the pottery store, which formed an integral part of the “tour experience”, you know you’re going to get violated now and then when you’re travelling but those doing the violating should at least have the decency not to smile at you while doing you over.
On the plus side there are a number of what the locals call fairy chimneys. The volcanic ash base of the Cappadocian mountains erodes quicker than the layer of basalt that formed at the top when the larva and ash cooled. Since then centuries of wind and water erosion has created hundreds of tapered sand coloured rock tubes, most of them crowned with dark brown boulders much larger than the tip of the ash columns on which they rest. Joe stepped off the truck, took one look at them and said: “I don’t know about anyone else, but all I can think of when I look at these things is penis, penis, penis.”
He’s right actually. More than that it’s a geological phenomenon that inspires creativity. Perhaps not divine inspiration but many of the images we were able to get on pixels wouldn’t look out of place in the early folios of a young Helmut Newton. At least one silver-haired Italian gentleman thought so. He ran half way up a hill to offer us a hearty “Bravo” following the capture of this award winner:
Obviously taking suggestive photos of phallic rock formations is a little gay. Fortunately I was able to recover a little bit of bloke credibility as soon as we got back into town by going carpet shopping with Joe. Fabulous!
It’s cold today. It rained solidly for about four hours earlier this afternoon. I sat in a café watching DVDs and playing pool while waiting for the weather to break. In the morning I had a futile thirty-minute conversation with a HSBC call-centre employee who was clearly empowered to do no more than read from whatever script was blinking up on the screen in front of her. Reason is futile in these circumstances. The logic of the ancient Greeks would come to nothing. All you can do is keep your temper and pray for grace. Grace came in the form of a £100 per day withdrawal limit. HSBC has turned me into a child.
Goreme is an interesting place with underground cities and homes carved into the sandstone and basalt outcrops of the wind and water shaped landscape. I’d be more favourably disposed toward the region if I hadn’t spent yesterday on the world’s most pointless and over priced tour. As one of the lads grunted to me on the bus as we wound our way back from the pottery store, which formed an integral part of the “tour experience”, you know you’re going to get violated now and then when you’re travelling but those doing the violating should at least have the decency not to smile at you while doing you over.
On the plus side there are a number of what the locals call fairy chimneys. The volcanic ash base of the Cappadocian mountains erodes quicker than the layer of basalt that formed at the top when the larva and ash cooled. Since then centuries of wind and water erosion has created hundreds of tapered sand coloured rock tubes, most of them crowned with dark brown boulders much larger than the tip of the ash columns on which they rest. Joe stepped off the truck, took one look at them and said: “I don’t know about anyone else, but all I can think of when I look at these things is penis, penis, penis.”
He’s right actually. More than that it’s a geological phenomenon that inspires creativity. Perhaps not divine inspiration but many of the images we were able to get on pixels wouldn’t look out of place in the early folios of a young Helmut Newton. At least one silver-haired Italian gentleman thought so. He ran half way up a hill to offer us a hearty “Bravo” following the capture of this award winner:
Obviously taking suggestive photos of phallic rock formations is a little gay. Fortunately I was able to recover a little bit of bloke credibility as soon as we got back into town by going carpet shopping with Joe. Fabulous!Shopping for a Turkish carpet is the world’s most difficult activity, particularly when you’re trying to buy a wedding present for a Kiwi bloke (who quite frankly would be happy with a new socket set and some salted peanuts) and a French chick with much better taste than you. The bloody things come in a range of different sizes, they’re made from a bunch of different materials and there are about twelve different weaving techniques. And then they start talking about patterns and giving you a story about a family of carpet weaving Kurdish tribes-people from the Mount Ararat region who can only be reached by camel and only if you have the permission of the Iranian and Turkish military authorities and only if you know someone in their family and can bring them good quality dope. It’s very confusing. Fortunately they have booze on hand to help you make a sound INVESTMENT decision, because that’s what it is, an INVESTMENT. Anyway, Joe and I spent about an hour and twenty minutes looking at rugs and carpets and something else called killum, as well as something else starting with an s, and then, possibly on account of the local fire-water we’d just finished drinking, we purchased a carpet we’d been shown the night before during the dinner demonstration. Next time I go to a wedding I’m getting something off the gift registry.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the Turkish Night and reveal the identify of the tourist whose dance move is to shuffle up behind an unsuspecting dance enthusiast and knee them really quite hard in the buttocks. It hurts.
That is all,
Dale Atkinson
2 comments:
Did you purchase a lamp to go with the magic carpet! If so - I am curious to know what your three wishes would be - obviously HSBC would feature in one of them. ....and as for the rock formations....no I don't think so..... cucumbers ??.... naahh they just look like rocks mate. You've all been in the desert too long. Darn good yarn though - at least I know what Joe is up to !!
Bravo!
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