A few pints later, the brass band picked up its pace, playing New Orleans style jazz that makes you want to jump up and fling yourself around, as certain patrons had begun to do.
Cappadocia
The bedroom was icy. Fresh breaths of arctic air sifted through unseen cracks, under the door, through the glass. My foot lay exposed. I snuck it back under the weight of blankets piled on top of me: three of them, thick and soft.
A steel cylinder stood in the corner of the room, stuffed with newspaper. A fire, waiting to be lit. It would have to wait. Behind the curtains lay another land: a land of eerie undulations in the earth, pointed stone chambers, forgotten homes. Giant cones of volcanic tuff congregated in clusters, watching over this frozen village, Göreme.
Waking up amidst this landscape had the surreal quality of a dream, or a nightmare. The view from our window was alien. I felt elated, but disengaged from recognised reality. Our rented room was barren and old fashioned. It could have existed in any era, anywhere.
Bluish mountains lined the landscape out of our window. These alone were familiar. No modernisation or signs of life were evident. Sand dune shapes flowed into the distance, shrubbery growing atop them. Soft and sandy looking, these dunes were solid, composed of solidified volcanic ash, or tuff. Giant cones of the same brittle substance, some topped with basalt caps, protruded from the terrain, silent. After the eruptions of nearby Mt Erciyes and Mt Hasan about three million years ago, centuries of rain and erosion have weathered this soft volcanic landscape into the mysterious stone folds and outcrops that are Cappadocia. Continue reading Cappadocia>>
