On the Asian side of Istanbul, no one seemed to need me. There were no tourists, no pushy vendors, and not that many monuments begging for contemplation. Just traffic, shopping malls, and people busy living their lives.
I know Naples. In theory, no European city respects the highway code less. But Istanbul has decided to compete. Which one breaks the rules better? Here, motorbikes use helmets and they also don’t drive on the sidewalks—except to overtake. Even so, Naples wins. For someone like me, who prefers common sense over blindly followed rules, it is perfect. I feel perfectly Turkish when I cross at the crosswalk. But what crosswalk? I might as well just walk in the road, as they do here. When a car comes, I step back onto the sidewalk; or else the car swerves. If it can’t swerve, it honks. No drama. It is simply normality. I love it.
I know very well that big cities rarely reflect the country’s interior. People here are very cosmopolitan. Even on the Asian side—which I imagined to be more conservative—the majority of women dress in a Western style. Few wear a veil; many wear lipstick or smoke calmly on café terraces. Speaking of smoking…
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“Sir, I hope you won’t mind my question, but you’re in a shop—are you allowed to smoke?”
“The door is open, the air circulates,” he replied.
Curiously, I see more women wearing a veil in Paris or London than in Istanbul. Here, each Muslim is free to observe Ramadan or not; each woman is free to wear a skirt or cover her hair.
I try in vain to fix my phone problem—since I left Europe, I’ve had no mobile data. I give up; I’ll sort it out later. I need a shopping mall to work in: I choose Tepe Nautilus because of the name—I’m a fan of Jules Verne—and it’s far enough inland. To enter the mall, I walked through one of those airport-style gates and the machine beeped. The security guard then called over a random citizen who spoke English. He asked me if I had a knife in my big bag. I said yes, a tiny one. As I was opening my backpack to show it to him, the guard told me it wasn’t necessary and that I could go in.
For the first time since I arrived in Istanbul, I don’t see any tourists. And yet, so many people! I had thought that, despite it being Saturday, the mall would be quite empty—Ramadan started this week. I was wrong; the only difference from the European side is the absence of tourists. Which immediately improves the food. I eat my first kebab. It has a light spicy sauce, nothing excessive. The reason for the quality is simple: the meat tastes like meat. Onion sliced very thin with artisanal bread. All for a reasonable price.
I can’t decide where to go. I wander aimlessly through the streets before sitting in a small neighborhood park to make up my mind. I will head straight for Cappadocia. Tonight, on an overnight bus. However, the station is far away. I then take public transport to go to Dudullu station. I assumed the bus stop would coincide with the coach terminal. Is this really the place? If it is, I have no way of spending more than two hours doing nothing by the side of a motorway in bone-chilling cold. And it starts raining, lightly, but enough for me to look for shelter. This cannot be where my bus stops. Or can it? Still, it makes no sense—why would the station be called Dudullu Terminal if it’s just an ordinary stop, a halt in the middle of nowhere? The station I’m looking for must be hidden somewhere. Ask, sure—but whom? It’s almost midnight, and I’m in Istanbul’s suburbs, surrounded by tall buildings, shuttered shops, and a motorway you can’t possibly cross. Calm down, I have time. I walk, looking for some service station, a café, some young people on the street, anything. Nothing. I look again at the station’s name and it turns out I’m 5 km from the right place. Imagine my despair if I didn’t still have two hours to kill. I’m still not sure the station is actually there; it seems absurd. Two Dudullu Terminals an hour’s walk apart? I finally come across some young people. They have not the slightest idea. A taxi driver! He doesn’t speak English. What a horrible route: to my left a military compound protected by barbed wire, to my right piles of abandoned rubbish. The path itself is muddy and strewn with uneven stones. Here I am again in a more urban area, with wide roads and no sidewalks. I regret saying I like a city that does not need crosswalks. It is still true by day, but at night, with cars speeding like crazy along the city’s arteries, what can you do? I am not in much of a hurry. However, if I stand still, I’ll freeze. I solve this by doing short sprints to dart across busy roads. In truth I feel excited by the situation and would almost like to keep feeding the tension, but the truth is this: if the cold became unbearable, I would grab an Uber. If I missed the bus, I would spend the night in a hotel and go wherever I wanted the next day.
Luckily for me, and unfortunately for what I would like to write, the situation was not dramatic at all. This is the station, I’m almost sure. And if it isn’t, I’ll still have time to call an Uber, even if it’s to the other end of Istanbul.
I arrive. It is the right station. The smell of fresh bread; there is life here. If I were hungry, there is a fast-food place right next door; I am thirsty, so I buy some water.
I have time to write all this. And to sleep a bit before the bus arrives.
I sleep surprisingly well—if it is possible to sleep well on a bus. It seems to me, however, that I should report that night buses in Turkey have only three seats in each row: 1+2. In other words, I knew for sure that no one would be sitting next to me. I wake up for good around 10 a.m., after we have already passed Ankara, and I finally pay attention to the landscape. It grows less green with every hour. Little by little, we enter the mountains of inland Turkey. The landscape starts to lose its colour. The green slowly dissolves, as if someone were erasing the known world with a dry eraser. The earth turns to dust, then stone, then a relief that no longer seems earthly. Deep trenches, jagged hills, layers of colours stacked like poorly glued pages of an old book. In the distance, snow-capped domes break the horizon.
I don’t know exactly when we entered Cappadocia; at some point I stopped looking for towns. I just started to look. There was something lunar about that mineral silence, as if the bus were crossing a memory from before history. The bus drops me off in Göreme around 1 p.m. I let myself get lost in the village’s historic streets. Those soldier statues are from the Han dynasty, if I’m not mistaken. Is there some historical connection here? No, it is just a contemporary Chinese restaurant.
To the south of where I am, there are several churches, including the famous Dark Church. The reviews and photos tell me it is worth it. In Turkish it is called Karanlık Kilise. Dark Church… what might your story be? Let’s go. The exterior does not look like a church. Ah, you have to pay to go in. And there is a queue to enter. It must really be worth it. If I get the chance, I will come back at night to secretly look at the church with no one in the way. Let’s go back to Göreme. After a well-deserved meal at Burger King, I go to my hotel. I would like to go for a hike straight away but unfortunately I need to work. That will have to wait until tomorrow.
Contrary to what I thought before coming to Turkey, there is no big city in Cappadocia. The historic region is much larger than that little square that captivates tourists from all over the world. It is not a Turkish administrative region at all.
After leaving Göreme to see some authentic houses, I go to Uchisar, another village in Cappadocia, where I hope to meet Vahdi Ölmez, a carpet merchant born there, a friend of a Turkish couple I met at the mall in Istanbul. I follow the road; I will do the hiking trails tomorrow. My God, what rocks are these—I understand better why so many people end up here.
I arrive in Üçhisar. It is more fun to look for Vahdi Ölmez than to call him. I find a carpet shop. I ask for him. It is not the right shop, but clearly he is someone well known and much liked in Üçhisar. I find him in his own shop. Although we did not know each other, we feel an immediate warmth. He offers me a beer and we speak in French. Vahdi Ölmez was born and raised in Üçhisar, at a time when tourism in the region was minimal. He lived for a few years in Paris, where his brother owns another carpet shop. In the eighties, tourism changed people’s lives. Nowadays, almost no one actually lives in Cappadocia. Vahdi Ölmez’s carpets are sold to tourists and some to embassies. Most are made of wool, others of leather… Tourists came to look at rocks. We saw shelter. He tells me about several charming places, always regretting that I am staying only a few days, since there is so much to see in those roughly 400 square kilometres. I could not have met a better tour guide for Cappadocia. I now have all the information I need about the region. Now I head back to Göreme. Tomorrow will be a day of walking in nature.
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