This morning a concerned Brazilian gentleman approached the drinks counter upstairs to let us know that there was a dead bird on the little terrace off of the main lobby. Bulent was quick to react, though I was surprised that he didn’t grab a plastic bag or even any paper towels on his way out the door. Nope, he just picked that bird right up and brought it inside. With his BARE HANDS. Am I silly to be squeamish about that? How about when that same Brazilian gentleman asked for a brunch-time beer and Bulent casually set the bird down on the tip box so he could fill the order? From now on, I am slipping coins into that box with great caution.
(Bulent and his questionable bird behavior.)



So, there are big things happening at the restaurant. It already seems like a pretty classy operation to me, but apparently Mehmet thinks there’s room for improvement, so he’s hired an outside consultant to come in and whip everything into shape. On the day I met her, she immediately beckoned me into her office with a heavily bejeweled index finger. (Office? Where did that come from? A formerly unnoticed empty room was suddenly outfitted with a large, intimidating desk.) In addition to all the rings she was sporting silver finger and toenails, silver sandals, glittering purple earrings, and a rhinestone encrusted clip clutching her violently highlighted hair. I was immediately cowed. Her first order of business was to set up an appointment for me to be measured for my new uniform. Up until now I’ve been wearing to the restaurant pretty much whatever I want—usually at least moderately nice dresses and skirts. No more. After arranging for my measurements to be taken she pulled a piece of paper from her notebook (the same one she proceded to use to take notes on our performance all evening) and made a quick sketch for the tailor of my new outfit: a long-sleeved shirt buttoned to the neck and a shapeless smock to be worn over it that will “go to here, below the knees.” When I asked her what color it would be she replied, “The shirt is brown, and the smock…maybe brown. Or dark brown.” Lovely. Throughout the evening she sat in the waiting area, which has an excellent view of the dining terrace, occasionally swooping in to issue her correctives. Metin and Erkan are exchanging small talk? No! They must stay segregated. Janaki delivered a basket of bread by carrying it in her hands? No, she must use an ashtray, always. “A tray?” I suggested. “Yes, always, an ashtray! Even for one drink!” She's like the Turkish incarnation of Professor Umbridge, that pink-clad Hogwarts professor with her constant “Hem hem”ing interruptions. You know, the evil one.

Hm, speaking of the restaurant, there was a bit of action last night when the tax man (tax men, rather) came to visit. There I was, trying to communicate to the non-Engish speaking Ramazan that I needed an order of grilled chicken HOLD THE EGGPLANT (Americans, of course, so picky) when Mustafa, another “unofficial” employee at the hotel, came by. “Janaki,” he said, “walk with me.” (I swear, those were his actual words.) The two of us fled to a patio just adjacent to the restaurant, from which we had an excellent view of the terrace as well as the reception area above. Watching the small figures moving in and out of rooms, pulling papers out of briefcases and exchanging vague but grave-looking gestures, I felt just like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, aware that something serious was going on but not quite sure what. Later, when Mehmet was wining and dining his unexpected guests at the restaurant, I had to dispatch Ramazan to collect my sweater and phone from inside, afraid to go in lest my identity be suspected. I felt so Bond.

...and busier evenings

The restaurant is maybe the only place where I would say I really “work.” I’m there from about 6-11 every evening (it turns out that when you’re a restaurant you’re open every day, and that means no days off), and I have to admit, it’s pretty exhausting. The physical set-up at this particular restaurant doesn’t help. The main seating area is on a little terrace that looks out over Rose Valley. For any given table my first little workout is the drinks order—drinks are stored in a the “wine cellar,” a little room through a hall and down some stairs. The kitchen, on the other hand, is UP some stairs, so every time a table’s food is ready (or God forbid someone asks for extra bread or maybe a little bowl of yogurt dipping sauce or extra ice for their Coke) it means dashing up the steps and then navigating back down with a full tray. Then, all the cash transactions take place up TWO flights of stairs, in the hotel reception area, so if someone wants change I’m more than likely to be glowing slightly by the time I get it to them.

(View from the restaurant terrace of the ridiculous stairs.)












(And a view in the other direction, of the dining area from above. Isn't it pretty?)












All that aside, the waitressing is actually pretty fun. I lied yesterday when I said that all I can say in Turkish is “yes,” “no,” and “one, two, three.” I can also say “roasted eggplant salad” and “grilled chicken with rice pilaf,” because while most of the ordering is done in English, I have to write out all the tickets in Turkish for the cooks. I spent the first two days at work memorizing the menu. (Here was a puzzler: roasted eggplant salad in Turkish is patlican salatasi. Sure. But then stuffed eggplant is imam bayıldı. What? How can they both be eggplant-y and share NONE of the same words? It turns out that imam bayıldı literally translates to “passed out imam”—that is, this eggplant is so delicious that when the imam ate it he just dropped cold to the ground. Apparently you can get imam bayıldı all over Turkey; it’s very popular among those with stronger constitutions than that poor imam.) There are some things, though, that I think I will just never get. I’m still terrified any time anyone asks for a recommendation from or a point of clarification about the wine list. The one that I’m supposed to recommend is IMPOSSIBLE to remember and to pronounce: Öküzgözü. It’s made from a locally grown grape that is particularly large and round; the name translates to “cow’s eye wine.”

(Bulent, one of the chefs)














The two waiters, Erkan and Metin, are pretty much my inverse when it comes to speaking English. They’re very adept at describing each dish and saying things like, “I recommend our house red” and “Would you care for any dessert?” but beyond that opinions are usually expressed using either the phrase “very nice” or “kaput.” (No, that’s not fair...they speak a lot more English than that. But a disproportionate number of things are deemed “kaput” or “very nice.”) Ramazan, one of the “stewards,” is a little bulldog of a guy who acts very tough but has taken to making me dishes of ice cream or aside (a fruity pudding with chickpeas, coconut and peanuts) after the restaurant closes, so I know he’s very sweet. Thank goodness for Ali, the other steward, who is studying tourism in Ankara and is able to act as an all-around translator.

(Ramazan, the bulldog, Erkan, Metin and Ali hanging out at the restaurant before any guests have arrived, playing telephone.)











Ooh, the other exciting thing about the restaurant is the house specialty—a sort of giant kebab of either lamb or chicken with eggplant, spicy green peppers, a tomato and an entire head of garlic, all served between two mammoth slices of pita-like bread. I’ve yet to see even the heartiest customer finish one off by himself. It’s all cooked together in a special wood-fired oven, overseen by the owner’s father-in-law, a chain-smoking, wine-nipping, fez-wearing gentleman named Ibrahim.
Every evening Ibrahim brings wood over from the giant pile behind the restaurant and spends his first half hour at work getting the fire going inside the oven. I like how he keeps smoking even as he is sticking his head into the billowing, smoke-filled, woodfire stove.

















The vegetables and meat are cooked hanging from thick iron skewers.




















Ibrahim has the kebab assembly line down to a science...

Busy mornings...

The flurry of adventure tours has come to an end (though I still have yet to go on that balloon ride), and my formerly empty, formless days are starting to take shape a bit. I basically have the mornings free, so I use them to do productive things like wander around the postage-size downtown area, surf the internet or lounge on the pillowed terrace with my book. (I’m halfway through Irfan Orga’s “Portrait of a Turkish Family,” a memoir that no one in either Turkey or the US has ever heard of and which is lauded on the back cover as being “good.”) Sometimes I hang out inside with the other hotel staff, who are a lot of fun; this morning Ünal and Pınar taught me how to make Turkish tea (sweet and delicious), Turkish coffee (shockingly strong), and the most abominable lattes known to man—the process involves microwaving the milk and then stirring it vigorously to get rid of the skin that forms over the top. The other day there was word (false, as it turned out) that the police were in the neighborhood looking for foreign workers, so I had to spend the morning “pretending” to be a guest, lying in the sun by the pool. It’s a tough life.

With Ünal and Pınar
















I’ve also been telling everyone that I’m interested in learning about Turkish cuisine, and for the past few mornings I’ve been admitted into the kitchen at the hotel (a smaller operation than the restaurant next door) and allowed to don a cap and apron to help out with the cooking. I’m not sure how much about Turkish food I’ve actually been learning, though. Yesterday I peeled and chopped potatoes for French fries, and helped make the daily special, which was sautéed onions, mushrooms and chicken thickened with flour and milk, spooned over puff pastry and baked with a slice of cheese. Apparently Mustafa, the chef, learned the recipe from a friend who lives in San Antonio.

I’ve had better luck learning about authentic Turkish food at the restaurant, which specializes in home-style, local food. Most of it is prepared in the morning by two women from the village, Razia and Zembra, who despite the new, gleaming kitchen at their disposal prefer to do their food preparation cross-legged on the ground in the dining room. Specialties include stuffed squash blossoms, stuffed grape leaves and several dishes cooked underground in a clay pot—okra stew, bulgur soup and “sulu köfte,” chickpea-sized lamb and beef meatballs in a spicy tomato broth. On Wednesday morning I was loitering around the restaurant with Ali (one of the “stewards,” who arrives at 7am to do the breakfast buffet at the hotel and doesn’t leave until the restaurant closes at 11pm…oy) when Razia and Zembra were rolling out the köfte.

Razia rolls two meatballs at a time...impressive.





















I helped out for a while--my hands smelled like meat and turmeric for hours, no matter how many times I washed them.












In the afternoons I’ve been manning the drinks bar by the pool, which basically just means more reading, and occasionally popping open a beer for a parched hotel guest. I really, really like being at the pool. All the kids flailing around in the water look like they’re drowning and all the adults splayed out in their deck chairs look like they’re already dead. After hours of relaxing in the sun, too, people are just so happy and relaxed, and a lot of them stop by my little bar just to chat. Yesterday I talked to a woman from Tehran about fraudulent elections and Iranian independent cinema, to an older couple from North Carolina who have been living in Cairo for the past year and to a couple of Belgian archaeologists who spent the last five weeks excavating an ancient city about 50km from Goreme and are very interested in the difference between “interior and exterior contexts.” I’m not really sure what that means. Plus, being next to the pool means it’s suuuper easy to just get IN the pool whenever I feel like it, which it turns out is often. On Thursday I was tempted in by Ozlem, the daughter of one of the housekeepers, who for the past couple of days had been trying to teach herself to swim. (The day before a kindly Dutch man tried to help her out; he extended his hand out to her and said, I thought, “Here, give me your hand.” It turned out, though, that he said, “Here, give me your HEAD,” cause he proceeded to drag her the length of the pool gripping only her chin.) Anyway, I’m pretty pleased, because yesterday morning Ozlem was only able navigate distances of about two feet without grabbing the side of the pool, and by the end of the day she was paddling across no problem. Our lesson was carried out using exclusively the words “yes,” “no,” and the numbers one to five, which basically exhausted her English and my Turkish vocabulary.

Yasin came down to visit me on his cigarette break, arranging himself on the pile of towels meant for guests at the pool. Very smooth.










After the pool bar closes (that is, once I decide the pool bar closes), I head over to the restaurant. Hmm…it’s actually getting to be about that time now. OK, I’ll write about the restaurant tomorrow—if I’m able to find the time.

Early Morning Jaunt

I have a running partner! I think I mentioned that Goreme is situated in one of many valleys that make up the landscape in Cappadocia. From where I’m sitting on the roof terrace at the hotel I can see the fairy chimneys of Love Valley, Rose Valley, Honey Valley and Pigeon Valley (so called because of the many birdhouses carved into the rocks by farmers hoping to harvest pigeon droppings—apparently one of the best fertilizers in the world).

(Pigeon Valley, with Rose Valley in the background)

(Love Valley)

So today Ünal, one of the guys who works at the hotel, came by at SIX AM (his choice, not mine), and we scooted over to Pigeon Valley. I have to say, I don’t think I’ve ever been on a more scenic run in my life. Probably about 90% of the people in Goreme are engaged in the tourism industry, and 5% are retired old men who spend all day sitting in cafes drinking Turkish tea, but the remaining 5% are still farmers. Most of their “gardens” are along the streams that run along the base of the valleys, so we spent a lot of time ducking under the drooping branches of walnut trees and skirting fields of pistachios, squash (they eat the seeds and feed the rest to the cows), chickpeas, and sunflowers. (Incidentally, the primary cooking oil in Turkish cuisine—which is pretty heavy on the oil—is not olive oil but sunflower seed oil…do they even sell that at home? Anyway, the upshot is that everywhere you go there are fields and fields of sunflowers.)

(Walnut Trees)

We made it all the way through the valley and (harrowingly) up the side to the city of Uçhisar, home to a “castle” that is the highest point in Cappadocia.
(Uçhisar)


In addition to sunflower seed oil, Turkish people eat a TON of bread…along the lines of a loaf or two a day. In the morning, the streets are overwhelmed by the smell of freshly baked bread; it seems like from the hours of 7 to 10 every corner market is temporarily transformed into a bakery. When we got back into town we feasted on hot, yeasty sesame seed rolls and fizzy pomegranate juice. Ünal didn’t have his wallet on him, but it turns out that Goreme is the kind of small town where you can eat now and pay whenever.

UPDATE: One of the stops on the "History and Adventure" tour I went on a few days ago was the Kaymakli underground city. Cappadocia has more than 200 of these warren-like towns, some of them as deep as eight levels and 50 meters. Most of them were first built by the Phrygians around the 8th century BC and have been enlarged over the years--Kaymakli is most famous as a hiding place for early Christians escaping persecution and Arab raids in the 7th century. People lived in the caves for months at a time, and archaeologists have identified rooms used as kitchens, churches, stables, and...wine presses (wine being very important for Christians). Anyway, the other day I was looking around my room and in a flash of inspiration realized that it DEFINITELY used to be a wine press. There's a sort of sub-cave attached to the main room that looks exactly like the areas used for stomping grapes, and a little hole at the base where the grape juice might have drained out. Look!

And my new job

(Hmm…so I’m not very good at Blogger. I thought I posted this on Friday but I guess I didn’t hit the right button. Anyway, pretend the timestamp says Friday.)

So on my first real day (Thursday), Mehmet sat me down to tell me about my job. Last night I was told that Turkish people do not plan—everything happens in the moment—but that was already pretty apparent to me. I arrived in Turkey having almost no idea what I was going to be doing, and while before leaving I thought this was just a result of my own irresponsibility, it became obvious pretty soon that actually no one, including Mehmet, knew what I was going to be doing. At first he just sort of said, “You will work here in the hotel, and at the restaurant at night!” and that was it. Some prodding elicited that while at the hotel I could check people in, tell them about the area, answer their many questions, and generally attend to their every need by being helpful and knowledgeable about everything. All of which sounded fine, barring the fact that I had been in town for fewer than 12 hours and knew NOTHING about the area. Haha. Oh, well. As long as you know a little bit more than someone it’s easy to pretend that you know a lot more, right?

Actually, in order to get me in working shape, Hasan has been sending me off to “research” all of the things that I’ll be recommending to guests when they first come in…going on the “History and Adventure” tour (the name of which I misheard at first—I was pretty excited to go on an “Eastern Adventure” tour), getting a massage at the hamam (might have to investigate that one a little further), doing a little wine tasting so I can make good recommendations (also might require some more in-depth work)…all in all, not a bad way to start a new job. Still to come is the hiking tour through the Ilhara Valley and the sunrise hot-air balloon ride.

At night I’ll be working in the restaurant. It’s really quite lovely, situated on a little terrace with a view of the village below and the red walls of Rose Valley above. Stella kept telling me before I left that I was terribly unsuited to waitressing, and since it seems to mostly be about being discreet, not dropping or forgetting things and being endlessly pleasant and ingratiating (none of which I would consider my strengths) I fear she might be right.

My New Place

One of the big tourism draws in this area is the "cave hotel"--in fact, I have yet to see a hotel advertising rooms that AREN'T in caves. It's not just the hotels, though; a lot of homes and businesses and at least one (very aromatic) barn in town are also cave-based. My room is no exception. I'm not actually staying IN the hotel, but in a vacant house a few doors down. To get there I have first find my little alley, which is actually not so easy. The streets are small and winding, and their layout is pretty mazelike, and really one cave looks like another to me at this point, so I'm constantly getting turned around. In fact, my run yesterday morning was extended by a good 15 minutes when I made a wrong turn and found myself almost immediately profoundly lost.

Do you want a photo tour of my new place? OK!

This is my alley. The door at the end actually isn't mine (I'm around the corner), though I've been inside that house as well. (It's not really a house...home? dwelling?), having been accosted on the street yesterday by the old woman who lives there. I was heading to the restaurant when she grabbed me very firmly by the hand and whirled me around to the opposite direction. First she led me through a mound of rubble and through the improbably small mouth of a cave that turned out to house a little church carved into the rock, with an apse covered in decorative frescoes. I think it’s fallen out of use, though, both because of the pile of broken stones partly blocking and the entrance and the fact that the center of the church is now filled to chest height with bags of hay. Our next stop was her house, where she showed me her pepper and tomato plants before collapsing on the ground, complaining of the heat. Then she told me that it was really bad that I had been keeping my windows open during the day because the flies could get in, and that I really should close them up when I left to go to the hotel in the morning. Also that I should jam a stick under my front door when I leave in the morning so that no one can force the lock and break in. (At least I think that's what she said--she was pretty good at charades.) All of which made me a little suspicious--how did she know I was keeping my windows open? I feel very watched...


OK, here's the next stop on the tour. After I unjam the stick and go through my front door there's a little courtyard. I go up the stairs and there's my bedroom door...



















It looks kind of medieval to me; I feel like I'm living in a convent.





















Inside, the floor is all covered in carpets, with cushions propped against the walls for lounging around, and shelves conveniently carved directly into the walls. I turn on the lights by plugging in the cord hanging down from the naked light bulb on the ceiling. There's no closet or bureau, so I'm storing my clothes Turkish-style, just piled up on the floor. The caves stay much cooler than other rooms (I have yet to see air conditioning anywhere), and it is hot hot hot here, so coming home is actually pretty wonderful.










Outside my room is a terrace that overlooks Goreme...So far I've taken about three million pictures if my view, but I'll be generous and just post one of them, taken in a jet-lagged burst of energy at about 5 in the morning on Friday. I was already half-awake at 4, and the call to prayer that came blasting through the PA system at 4:05 brought me around to being completely, fully awake. (The call to prayer is sung five times a day, at slightly different times each day but generally starting a bit after 4am. The PA system gets a lot of other use as well, though. Yesterday Pinar, one of the girls I work with at the hotel, told me that aside from the call to prayer most of the announcements are about pressing town issues like a sale on watermelons at the kiosk next to the bus station.) Anyway, shortly after the morning call to prayer, I heard all these weird breathing noises, like a giant, winded brontosaurus was lurking outside my room. It turns out that Goreme is not actually home to any brontosauri, but IS home to a thriving early-morning hot-air balloon ride industry (and, I’ve since found out, home to the world’s largest hot-air balloon, with a basket that can hold up to 35 people). Every morning at least 30 balloons go drifting over the town—some of them close enough that the whoosh of the giant flames igniting inside can be heard through my window…

Arrived in Goreme

I’m going to continually resist the urge to sound ridiculously gushing and mawkish as I describe my arrival and first few hours in Goreme…but lapses might be inevitable.

After some ado at the tiny airport in Kayseri involving me stepping over a (very faint) red line and a succession of four security guards of increasing size and rank, I was met by a driver and bundled into the little van heading to the hotel. Our approach was made in the dark, which meant there was no view but also meant that the tiny sliver of moon and Venus hanging above it were even more apparent as we drove east toward Goreme; I guess now I know where the design for the Turkish flag comes from.

Goreme is situated in one of a series of valleys carved out thousands of years ago by wind and water, which left not only rippling bluffs but also tall, capped spires that descend down the hillside and into the village itself. Most of the original structures were carved out of the rock, and at night the spires appear lit from within by the lights glowing in the caves. Add to this the Turkish love songs being broadcast over the town speakers, the fruit of an exuberant father-of-the-bride’s desire for his daughter’s wedding party to be enjoyed by all 2,000 of Goreme’s residents, and the warm breeze smelling sweetly of cherry tobacco and you have…well, you have the recipe for me being gushing and mawkish. Sorry. Basically, though, this place is incredible.

Isn’t it usually the case that when someone arrives at their destination after 20 hours of travel, especially if it’s around 11pm, they are immediately given chamomile tea and then shuffled off to bed? Not so in Goreme! On the night of my arrival I was first shown my room, then taken to the restaurant where I’ll be working, introduced by Mehmet (hotel and restaurant owner, whom I met in Seattle) to several of his friends and acquaintances, fed spicy bulgar and chickpea soup and Turkish beer (both delicious) and regaled by live music (a man playing an hourglass shaped drum and a Turkish lute player with a very deep voice), then driven by Hasan on his scooter to a mountaintop with a panoramic view of Goreme to look at the milky way and “get oriented.” Which I still am not quite.

Before Leaving

OK, here is most of what I know: Tomorrow I'll be flying to Turkey, eventually landing in the town of Goreme, in Cappadocia. I'm going to be working as a waitress, and staying at one of the "cave hotels" in town. There's a pool there, and hopefully I'll get the chance to take a lot of day trips. I'm not much of a photographer, but I'll do my best to document EVERYTHING I see and hear while I'm there. For now, here are some pictures (thank you, internet!) that make me go a little weak in the knees.

Goreme city center:


Inside the hotel:


View from the the hotel balcony:


Oh, and don't forget! Send me your address! I promise I'll write...