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…