Turkish Night

Monday evening, 22 October 2012
4th day of our tour trip
As always, click on any image for larger view.

First belly dancers.  Or were they hip dancers?

Twelve of the 14 members of our tour group opted to attend Turkish Night.  The other couple wanted to go shopping because they had not seen a shopping mall in about 2 years and there was one right across the highway from our hotel.  None of us knew what to expect at Turkish Night except that there would be a very brief demonstration of the Whirling Dervishes.  We had to see that.






 I have already explained the Whirling Dervishes in a prior posting, so I won't go into all those details again.  The exhibition that we saw this night lasted only about 15 minutes.  A real Whirling Dervish ceremony usually lasted far longer, sometimes hours; and the Dervishes appear to go into a trance, although the devotees claim the trance is simply rumor.  The demonstration we saw was exactly as described in my prior post.

2 tables of our group

The lights were dimmed to darkness and the Dervishes entered;did their performance; and exited.  Out of respect to them, no alcohol or food was served during the performance.  Then the lights were brought back up and the Dervishes re-entered.  They twirled a few times for photo opportunities; then exited again.  Turns out that these same young men were the dancers in the rest of the dances we would see that evening.

One of the men's dances

The first dances were performed by men.  Lots of footwork.  Much later in the evening these same men performed a most impressive dance with extremely high jumps.  Heck, bet even our best professional basketball players wish they could jump even half that high!  

Knife thrower -- from his teeth.

This guy on the left did a slightly different type of performance.  He did not actually dance this time; instead, he placed a 14-inch large knife balanced with the tip on his lower front teeth and the side of the blade against his nose.  Then he flipped his head in such a manner that the knife would flip over and over, landing upright with the tip stuck into a large piece of wood placed on the floor several feet in front of him.  How he accomplished this without cutting his nose escapes me.  I've never seen anyone do that.  

Only once did the knife not land tip down into the wooden block.  That once it went flying across the center of the room, stopping well short of hitting anyone in the audience seated at the tables.  Good darn thing that there wasn't a waiter walking by at just that moment.  But I guess they have done this enough times that all the waiters know to stay well clear.  Guess it was really a darn good thing that a customer didn't decide to go to the restroom right that moment.

Headless guy dancing for tips

Going to the restroom apparently was challenging.  I didn't go so don't know if I would have had the same experience, but several people (including Bill) reported how they exited our dining room and found the restrooms easily.  But when returning, they somehow ended up in a different dining room that was identical to ours.  Everything was exactly the same.....except the customers seated at the tables.  The dance teams went from one room to the other so sometimes even the dancers performing were the same as when a customer left his dining table.  Walk into the room and find the same dancers doing the same dance as when you left the table....except you were in a completely different room.  We saw confused faces entering our room all evening; so I guess this was a common occurrence.

Getting his money from Bill

During one break in the dancing, two guys in headless costumes came into the dining room and cavorted around.  They would go up to people seated at the tables and do a sort of belly dance right into their faces.  One did it to me and I could see a $1 USD bill folded into his belt, so I assumed he was asking for a tip.  I didn't have any money and said so and he moved on to another person.  She and her husband had heard me saying "he wants money" and had quickly pulled out a 5 lira bill.  The headless guy proceeded around our tables, ending up seated next to Bill so that Bill could put money into his belt.  

Selma teaching Tony to dance

Selma with her wings

The last 2 dances of the evening were performed by Selma the belly dancer.  She was one of the better belly dancers I have seen.  She arrived with a costume having big silver panels of fabric that attached to wrists and fanned out like wings as she danced.  Those were soon removed and she then danced a short while before bringing up 3 members of the audience to dance with her.  One of the people she selected was a member of our group, Tony.  He was a very good sport about it.  Good selection on her part.

There was one German gentlemen who really got into it.  She had to tame him down a bit.  He was having a great time.  I have included a video of him below, along with videos of several of the dances.

Mark and Dorothy Hazlett from Hawaii

Tony and Elaine from UK

Here are a few photos of some of the couples in our group that evening.

Dennis and Janet Knight from UK

Archie and Liz from Scotland

The way videos are uploaded to this site it is impossible now for me to give each video a label or title.  But be sure and click through until you find the ones of Selma.  The last one should be the best.

Soganli and carpet weavers

Monday, 22 October 2012

Afternoon of the 4th day of our tour trip

As always, click on any image for larger view.

Must move out of the old and into the new.  Free.

After touring the underground city we drove maybe 20 miles to another community in the Cappadocia region.  This one looked different.  It was a long narrow valley between high mountains.

Along the main road to Soganli we passed many fairy chimneys and evidence of hundreds of rock homes.  These homes were carved into the mountain and cliff faces.  Interspersed among the rock homes were small communities of relatively newly built brick homes.  The homes were not grand but they were also not small.  They looked quite nice.  

More moving out of the old and into new FREE homes

 Tas explained that the Turkish government is building these homes FREE for the people who live in the rock homes.  The government wants people to stop living in the rock homes, claiming safety concerns.  These new homes are constructed completely free of charge to the new occupants.  Of course, now the occupants will have to pay for electricity and water.  But their housing is FREE from the government.  The people have no choice in this matter.  The government has declared that they must accept the free homes and must vacate the rock homes.  (Maybe the safety concerns are because this part of the world continues to experience relatively frequent earthquakes.)

Karabas Kilise, The Big Church

Soon we turned off the main road and into the valley where the village of Soganli is located.  The tiny village is still inhabited, the new structures blending into the old.  There were a few houses where one could tell it was originally a house carved out of the rock, then added on with stones placed atop one another and mortared into place, then added onto yet again with more modern concrete block or brick construction.  All combined into one building.  Not how I would chose to live but I think it is good that the local people continue to live as they have for centuries, with only the barest of intervention by the modern world.  The villagers seemed quite happy with their lives.

Inside the Big Church

The small bus wound up the hillside on the right side of the valley, about one-third up the mountain.  We exited and climbed up stone steps to a small church -- the Karabas Kilise or The Big Church.  It really wasn't all that big,  But then I didn't have to carve it out of the stone.  I imagine it felt pretty darn big to those people who did this work around 500 A.D.

Tas describing the Big Church

The church was re-built (expanded?) in the 11th century and again in the 13th century.  One thing that obviously was done during these renovations was covering the original frescoes.  This was evident on several places on the walls.

The stone steps leading up to the church entry were very worn.  It would be easy to take a tumble there.

Infant Jesus

The 'doorway' (no door, of course; this is a rock church and they did not have doors) leads into the first and main part of the church.  There are rooms on either side of the main chapel area.

The walls and ceilings were originally painted in simple patterns and stripes, using earth colors.  After the discovery of oil paints, the earth colors were painted over in the new oils.  And they must have really liked very dark oil paints as it seems very black inside this church.

Baptism of Jesus

The images are of Jesus as an infant, his baptism as an adult, his religious struggle, and the persecution of the Byzantines by the Seljuks.  There were many more images than these 4 described, but these 4 dominate.

Old earth colored paintings beneath the dark oil paintings.
Notice the Greek graffiti everywhere.

What was upsetting (especially to our Turkish guide) is that every surface of the church has been defaced.  In Greek!  These paintings were done by Greeks and have been defaced by Greeks.  Why would they do that to historic paintings of their own heritage!

Yet more religious paintings inside the Big Church

We boarded the bus again and motored down the road to another church.  I think this one was called the Snake Church.  Bill and I opted not to climb up to this one.  Tas told us the best one was the church we had just seen; and, quite frankly, we were getting tired of seeing the interiors of rock churches.  We stayed on the lower level and enjoyed the scenery of the valley and mountains on either side.

Little did we know what was next in store for our little group.  Another hike!  

Fertilizer collection rooms cut into rock

Only this one was a bit more uphill than the others had been.  We trudged off up the hillside on to the left side of the valley.  Tas said it would be about half-hour to 45 minutes for us to walk back to the village.  I think we took a little longer than that because we stopped so often to enjoy the scenery and to check out more rock houses and churches and formations.

White around 'windows' to attract birds

One of the many things that Tas pointed out to us were the white spaces painted around the tiny window openings cut into many of the rock faces.  The white is put there to attract the birds (doves this time; the places yesterday were attracting pigeons).  Then their guano is collected to be used as fertilizer.  Use whatever is naturally available in the area since shipping fertilizer in (even today) would be cost prohibitive.  They have been doing this guano collection for fertilizer here for over 1500 years.  Guess it works just fine.

Slowly up we go

Looking back down valley

As we continued up the hillside the scenes became more striking. 

First turret church

Another turret church

On this side of the valley were several more rock churches as well as many rock dwellings.  The structures on this side were more deteriorated than the other side of the valley.  Maybe they were older.  Or maybe the wind is stronger on this side.  Whatever the reason, the difference was obvious even to our unschooled eyes.

A turret standing alone

A couple of the most deteriorated churches had what looked like turret tops carved from the stone.  Wonder how people got up on top of those tall pinnacles and managed to do these carvings.

Inside solitary turret

And the turret tops were also carved out inside to create interior rooms.  A lot of work went into making these churches from solid rock.  This is not sandstone or limestone.  It is solid rock.

One I did not climb into

Looking out for the holes
in the ground!

At a couple of places there were holes broken through the earth that revealed more rock rooms below the surface.  Care was needed to walk on this path near the top because these holes were right in the center of the path.  Falling down inside one of those rooms would be a real eye opener!  And painful to get back down to the road level.

A different looking one

As we began the descent the sky darkened so we quickened the pace and the group began to split up.   By happenstance we were among the first 4 people to reach the village level.  A dog with the most unusual coloring around his head and ears came to say hello.  I tried to get a photo of his white face with the dark gray markings with his dark gray ears framing his face.  But every time I clicked the camera he would turn to greet new arriving members of our group.  A sweet friendly thing he was.

Village ladies selling their wares

Friendly dog

The village ladies had set up tables of crafts and things for sale.  One lady held up a handmade doll that looked cute and called out "1 lira" so I walked up to her table.  Once there, she changed the price for that particular doll to 5 lira.  That is still a cheap price but it annoyed me that she named one price to get me there and then a higher price to actually buy, so I walked away without the doll.  If she had held up that doll and said "5 lira" in the first place, I would have bought it.  But 'bait and switch' is a sales technique that annoys me greatly and I refuse to participate in it.

Still living in this one.  Note the blue doors.

Looking back from the village toward side we hiked.

The village restaurant had set up a long table outside beneath a tree for us, but several members of our group felt cold and wanted to eat inside.  All the other tour groups were eating outside so we had the entire restaurant to ourselves.  This turned out to be a wise move because about half-way through our meal the skies opened and rain poured.  And we all stayed snug and dry inside.

Weaving a camel designed rug

Next on the agenda was a visit to a Carpet Weavers Cooperative.  The Turkish government is doing its best to encourage some of the traditional Turkish skills and crafts, and carpet weaving is high on that list.  There are a few of these carpet weaver cooperatives spread throughout Turkey.   The carpets are always woven by local women.  

I love her headscarf.  She has such a pretty smile.

On each loom there was a small mirror hanging about eye level with the woman doing the weaving.  I asked the factory tour guide what the mirrors were used for.  His answer, "They are ladies.  All ladies like to look at themselves in the mirror.  To be sure they look nice."  Funny thing; I don't think I ever had a mirror hanging beside the computer monitor when I worked.

The ladies weave whatever pattern they like.  Sometimes
they will weave a specific pattern for a special order.

Our guide had told early in the trip that the average age of death in urban areas of Turkey is 70 for men and 72 for women.  But that in the rural areas, the life expectancy is 85 for women and 70 for men.......because the women do ALL of the work (farm and house)  and the men just sit around drinking tea or coffee and playing dominoes or cards all day.  This observation got a laugh because all of us had noticed this same behavior throughout Turkey.  The women are always out working the fields and the men are always sitting in the shade and drinking tea or coffee.  The men don't appear to do much.  All that physical activity throughout their entire lives affords the women with increased longevity.

Boiling silkworm cocoons to get the threads

Back to the carpets.  First we were shown numerous women weaving carpets of different patterns.  On the top section of each loom hung an illustration of the pattern to be woven.  The women free-hand the colors of the threads to make the pattern desired.  This skill takes many years of training.  Young girls used to do this in their spare time to improve their skills.  Today with cell phones and televisions and computers, girls are no longer interested in learning the weaving skills.  Carpet weaving appears to be a dying art.  

Separating threads from each cocoon takes practice

It takes months and sometimes years, depending on the size and pattern of the rug, for a carpet to be completed.  That is why the carpets are so expensive.  And make note that the correct name for these carpets is Turkish carpets, not Persian carpets.  Carpet weaving originated in Turkey; it did not come from Persia.  So all those folks who have Persian carpets have knock-offs.

Each silk thread is 3/4 mile long. 

Next in the factory tour was the room where silk was explained and demonstrated.  We have seen silkworm cocoons boiled and threads pulled loose in now 3 countries, so none of this was new to us.  In Cambodia they boiled the cocoons in dye, so the threads were colored before being separated from the cocoons.  Here the threads are pulled while still white and then later dyed.  Each silkworm produces 1.5 kilometer of silk thread to make its cocoon.  After being boiled and pulled loose, the result is 1.2 kilometer of silk thread per cocoon.  (For Americans, multiply that by .6 to get mileage of thread per cocoon.)  That is a surprising quantity of thread from each silkworm!

Today the best dyes for the silk threads are performed by nano technology.  And this particular carpet weaving cooperative has the machines for this task.  The colors last much, much longer than any of the other forms of dyes.

Shopping members of our group

Next we were shown into a demonstration room with benches lining 3 sides.  We sat and were served tea or wine or Turkish coffee.  And then the carpets started rolling!  The factory tour guide explained the quality and pattern and labor hours required for each carpet as he rolled them out onto the floor in front of us.  Dozens of carpets, ranging in size from very small to maybe 8-ft by 12-ft. 

This one felt the best.  Only $16,707
I am sitting, not standing, so please realize how
small that carpet really is!

People who know us will know that we have positively zero interest in owning a Turkish carpet, either for a floor or as a wall hanging.  Nothing, no matter how attractive, would be tempting us to purchase.  But a couple of other members of our tour group did make purchases.  The Turkish government pays all taxes, custom fees and shipping to anywhere in the world.  That is a big deal when purchasing these carpets.  But, again, nothing was going to tempt us to buy anything.

If the little blue one is too expensive, how about this
one; only $8,000.  It was my favorite pattern.

Just to give you an idea of the cost of these carpets, Bill snapped a photo of me holding a very small carpet made from the finest silk threads.  The price was 29,900 lira, which would be $16,707 USD.  Oh yeah, I'm going to spend 16 grand on a little bathmat sized rug.  Count on it!  But it did feel smooth as a silk negligee.  There were much less expensive cotton carpets but if you are going to have a Turkish carpet, shouldn't it really be the best or not at all!  


After all carpet purchases were finalized we drove through the Pasabagi fairy chimneys.  

The scenery was again dramatic but we were tired and ready to get back to the hotel to freshen up before going to the Turkish Night festivities.

Derinkuyu Underground City

 Monday, 22 October 2012
Morning of the 4th day of our group tour
As always, click on any image for larger view.

A photo of the dawn balloon ride taken by someone in our tour group

This was an exhausting day!  I am breaking this day into 3 postings because we did so much.  Underground city; Soganli for more rock churches and hiking again through fairy chimneys and up mountainside; Turkish carpet weaving and sales pitch; topped off by Turkish Night celebration with Whirling Dervishes and belly dancing. And the rest of our group started out 3 hours earlier than us because they did the hot air balloon ride at dawn.

We knew little about the underground cities except that early Christians built and lived in these cities to avoid persecution.  We had no idea how extensive these underground cities were.

Per our Lonely Planet guide for Turkey:
  
"During the 6th and 7th centuries, when Persian and Arabic armies set off to vanquish the Christians, beacons were lit and the warning could travel from Jerusalem to Constantinople in hours.  When the message reached Cappadocia, the Byzantine Christians would escape into secret tunnels leading to vast underground cities.

Some 37 cities have already been opened, and there are at least 100 more.  Excavations have not proceeded further because they have uncovered little more than graves and pottery pieces, as the cities' inhabitants took their possessions with them when they returned to the surface.

Some 20,000 people lived at Derinkuyu and 5,000 at Kaymakli, spending months at a time down there.  They cunningly disguised the air shafts as wells.  The Persian horsemen might throw some poison into the 'wells', thinking they were contaminating the water supply.  They would not notice any smoke from the fires burning beneath their feet, as the soft tough rock absorbed most of it and the remaining fumes dispersed in the shafts.

The shafts, which descend almost 325 feet in some of the cities, also served a construction purpose.  As rooms were made, debris would be excavated into the shaft, which would then be cleared and deepened so work could begin on the next floor.

Touring the underground cities is like tackling an assault course for history buffs.  Narrow walkways lead you into depths of the earth, through stables with handles used to tether animals, churches with altars and baptism pools, walls with air circulation holes, granaries with grindstones, wineries, and blackened kitchens with ovens.

Visiting the cities is fascinating, but be prepared for sometimes claustrophobic passages and sometimes an overabundance of tourists."

One of the 15,000 ventilation shafts.  This one made to
look like a water well at the surface ground level.

That sums it up pretty well -- EXCEPT for a few minor (?) details.  

These underground cities were first constructed back during the Hittite era -- about 1800 BC.  The  underground cities were then expanded by the Phrygians in the 8th to 7th centuries B.C.  Much later, the Christians expanded the cities to far deeper levels.  And the capacity was 50,000 rather than 20,000 persons.  This city was not built for permanent habitation but to serve as temporary living quarters for months in case of attacks. 

Guide book map of the underground city levels

Our guide and the museum ticket attendant stressed to everyone before we entered that people with heart conditions or high blood pressure or who suffer from claustrophobia should be very careful and not proceed below the 3rd level, and should return to the surface if feeling the slightest bit of distress or anxiety.  It was well-lit and well-ventilated and it is possible to go down to just the 3rd level and then return to the surface if one feels any stress.  We were surprised to note an ambulance parked right beside the entrance.  They were prepared.  Good thing considering the average age of the participants in our particular group.  I do have a minor heart valve condition and high blood pressure, and have had one panic attack of claustrophobia when placed into an MRI machine; but I was willing to give it a go anyway.  Turned out it wasn't really a problem at all.  Nothing more stressing than any of the caves I have visited elsewhere.  

The 2 of us....way down there!

Once below the surface it doesn't make any difference whether one is 20-ft down or 320-ft down; you lose all sense of depth when the surface is no longer visible.  Upon descending the first set of steps I thought for a few moments that this might not be such a great idea because there was a musty smell.  But within minutes that smell was no longer noticeable at all.

Water well at 11 levels down

This tour visited Derinkuyu because it is the deepest underground city discovered to date.  Unbelievable that up to 20,000 (or 50,000 if one believes the more recently published revised number) people at a time sought refuge down there, sometimes for months without surfacing.  They were fully equipped to be self-sufficient for months.  There are 13 levels or stories beneath the surface but tourists can only go down to the 11th level today for safety reasons.  Derinkuyu is connected below the surface on a few levels to another nearby underground city.  Archaeologists believe that most, if not all, of the underground cities that were located near one another had connecting tunnels.  One reason was for possible escape.  Some of these tunnels go for miles.

Bill inspecting one of the movable stones

There are some 600 external doors leading into the city, mostly hidden out of sight in courtyards of the above ground dwellings.  Every entrance to the city had a corresponding moving stone devised to quickly seal off entrances should the city find itself under siege.

Note the movable stone tucked into wall on left

As we descended the narrow passageways (all bent over because folks back then were short), our guide pointed out several large grinding stones placed on their sides and built into the walls of the passageways.  On the lower side of each of these stones was built an alcove where someone (or several people, more likely) could roll the large stone out to block the passageway to block pursuers.  Clever idea and obviously would be very effective.  

Tas showing how the stone was rolled out of  this alcove
 to block the passageway where Bill was standing

I wondered how they could have managed to roll that stone back into the wall slot when they wanted to re-surface.  It appeared to me that would be a major task.  But our guide was at the head of the group and I was at the rear of the group at that point, so did not have the opportunity to ask this question.  One of the websites I researched stated that these stones could only be moved from the inside.  Wish I knew how that was accomplished.



This is a fabulous site:  Derinkuyu Underground City  On this site is a link for a virtual tour of the underground city.  When you click on the Virtual Tour link, notice the smaller images on the lower left side.  These provide virtual tours of the different levels of this large city.  Neat!  You can see what it is like down there without having to do all the walking and bending.

Vent shaft down.  This is looking downward from 3rd level.

While down there I was especially impressed with how deep the shafts were.  Even when down on the 11th level, the shafts went so far further down that it was impossible to see the bottom even with our brightest flashlights.  Also interesting were the water wells.  The water wells were all well below ground.  So when attackers thought they were poisoning water wells, they were simply pouring poison down empty air shafts.  The real water wells were protected well below the surface.  Not every level had a water well.

Another vent shaft down.  This is looking downward
from 11th level beneath the surface.  How deep does
this shaft go!  What a lot of work through solid rock.

Derinkuyu contains at least 15,000 ventilation ducts that provide fresh air deep within the underground city.  The city was opened to visitors in 1965 but so far less than half of it can be visited by tourists.

Resting 11 levels down.  With Dorothy and Mark Hazlett
from Hawaii, members of our tour group.

This is one of those places that require a tourist to be physically able.  There are no considerations for disabled or physically challenged visitors.  Another one of those special experiences for which we feel fortunate for having the opportunity.

Our camera batteries died less than half-way through this underground tour and the spare batteries we brought were in my backpack up in the bus, so these are the only photos I managed to get of this unique place. 

The Cross Church, 6 levels down.
The rooms were carved out into a cross shape.

We made our way back to the surface (with me huffing and puffing up the steep inclines and steps); stopped for a rest and beverage (tea for all the Brits and fresh pomegranate juice for me); then drove on to Soganli to see more rock churches.