Apple tea and tales of Turkish ruins: Curiosities from Cappadocia

We woke up early to watch the balloons fly from the top of Rose Valley panorama point. Too early as it turned out. Wind had blown up the previous morning and stopped any flights, so we waited and waited, and were about to head home thinking that would happen again this morning, when finally one balloon floated up, then the rest slowly followed.

Floating balloons like Chinese lanterns

There must have been a hundred when they were all aloft. The morning was icy cold so those brave enough to fly must have had on their heavy duty mitts and ear muffs as it would have been brutally cold higher up. The balloons floated slowly over the valley, hanging before our eyes like a hundred coloured Chinese lanterns. One or two dropped down for a thrill into one of the wider gorges near us, but we don’t think conditions must have been perfect today, either, as most floated down after just 45 minutes.

A lovely spectacle though over this magnificent valley.

Superstition is still alive and well in Cappadocia. One of our early morning coffee cafes had this spiky thorny concoction hanging in each corner of the its coffee shop. We saw them elsewhere, too. This is a hazar, there for protection from the evil eye.

Hazar, warding off evil

We often see threaded chickpeas decorating walls. This one is more complex than most, threaded like a macramé piece.

Yüzerlik, chickpea talisman

Here this chickpea talisman is called a Yüzerlik and is hung to seek protection for the home or shop, with the added wish for prosperity.

Gourds are everywhere in Cappadocia and these, traditionally, were emptied and used to store salt, paprika and mint, some of the essentials ingredients in Turkish cuisine.

Spice gourds

This gentlemen had no use for gourds. He used recycled plastic jars. His name was Yoğurtçu Baba and he was selling home made yogurt from the boot of his car, parked by the pedestrian crossing. A consummate seller.

Selling fresh yoghurt in recycled plastic

Turkish folk sit low for most things. Women often sit to work, we notice. The town of Ortahisar was filled with these low tables and chairs, and the men use them in the çay shops for much of the day.

Cafe table and chairs for drinking çay

At home, traditional Cappadocians sit on the floor to eat around a large copper tray, with a cloth hanging from it, all around the table. This doubles as a napkin. And eating is quite communal, using spoons from a common dish. Our salads, with every meal we order, are always served communally. For çay, later, the family moves to one of the divans, which doubles as a bed.

Copper serving tray for communal dinner dishes

Prior to her wedding as in many societies a traditional Turkish girl collects her trousseau: the linen, napery and special embroidered pieces she has carefully selected and collected she places in her wedding chest, or glory box as we call it. This is her sandik. This shop had many of them for sale.

Sandik - Turkish glory boxes and a tuluk pot

It also had in stock one of the large stone pots that is used to strain the water when making yoghurt. This is called a tuluk.

For food storage thorny sticks are often used to string grapes. When these grape-laden sticks are hung in a cave, or a cold room, the fruit can last for months.

Grapes preserved on thorny sticks

We found more than this in one cold room when we were driving one afternoon. We saw a sign for ‘Lemons Underground Storage’ and stopped to investigate. Here, we discovered, that deep in underground caves all over Cappadocia there are massive stores of citrus fruit that was grown this season along the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. It is trucked to these mountains to be storedin virtually free cold storage. Hundreds of tons of fruit throughout many of these working caves in Cappadocia. Who would have imagined that?

Coastal lemons stored in inland mountain caves

We were invited in. Women packers were quality checking lemons that had been in cold storage and were being reboxed and banded, taken from here in trucks to be shipped out to different areas of Turkey, or exported to the rest of the world.

Women at work

It was dark. It was cold. The smell of moist underground mould hit the back of your throat like an acid sting. The ladies were all rugged up. And all I could think of was mesothelioma.

We had just come from seeing a street funeral, too.

Mainly men in the street funeral

Which was quite similar to one at home, though this colourful casket was walked right through town by the menfolk. Women did not appear to follow the cortege, and seemed to take no part at this stage of the procession.

Tractors, mules, horses and carts are very common in the rural parts of the country. They are used as means of transport to go anywhere, in lieu of cars or trucks. This one is in town for a chat: parked in the driving lane and going nowhere slowly.