Göreme

“I need a holiday”.

That’s one of the first things I thought when I awoke this morning. It’s something I’ve been thinking a lot lately. It seems a bit absurd, given the fact that I haven’t worked full-time for almost two months now, but I feel… well, overworked.

I’ve considered several possible destinations. Hawaii (inspired by the strength of the Australian dollar against the American and by Allyeska’s travel blog), the Cook Islands, Christmas Island, maybe. Somewhere interesting. The last time I felt like this, I genuinely was overworked. It was February of last year, and I was exhausted after a busy Christmas season. I had money, and I could get a month off quite easily, so decided to fulfil a long-held desire of mine. I went to Turkey.

I’ve been fascinated with Turkey for many years. It’s a fascination which grew from my obsession with history. With Roman history, primarily, and the history of the Byzantine empire which emerged from it, but also with the history of the modern era. Of Gallipoli, where Turkish and Australian history would interact and set both nations on the courses they would follow into the 20th century.

I went, and I spent a month there. A fantastic month. Probably the best month of my life so far. I so and experienced so much. I wandered in the great covered bazaar of Istanbul, and stared up in amazement at the dome of the Hagia Sophia. I visited the silent battlefields of the Gallipoli peninsular and the citadel of Troy. But if any place that I visited in Turkey stuck with me it was the village of Göreme in the region of Cappadocia. This ancient place, where the early persecuted Christians built their churches and their homes into the soft sedimentary rock of the “fairy chimneys” and where people have lived ever since, is like nowhere else I’ve been. Maybe nowhere else on Earth.

Words will probably fail me if I try to describe the beauty of Göreme and why it sticks in my mind, so I won’t even try. Look at these pictures I took instead.

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