Day 17: We will ROCK you!

Today’s big adventure started very early for some of the younger members of our crew as they set off at 4am for an optional hot air ballooning expedition. We were relieved to see their exuberant faces at breakfast where they entered triumphant having had a fabulous time. The photos of the hundreds of hot air balloons in the air together were a truly amazing sight. 

Our first stop today was the underground city of Kaymakli. This city is built in caves which occur in volcanic ash rock that can be relatively easily hewn. This area is purported to be the underground escape for early Christians to hide the persecutions. It involves tunnels and chiseled stairs with “cave rooms” to the left and right of the path. There was a food storage area, a chapel with a little stone that looked like an ambo, a kitchen, with a large stone with little circular recesses, used for grinding herbs and spices, a ventilation shaft and many other unmarked rooms. Moving through the cave complex was claustrophobic, the corridors only just being wide enough to walk through and so short in places that I had to be bent at 90 degrees to get through them before emerging into somewhat more cavernous areas. This was no place for the fainthearted or the claustrophobic and it certainly gave my legs a workout.

We moved on from the underground city, heading supposedly to a cave church where we were to have Mass. Unfortunately on the way another group beat us to it so we rescheduled the day and headed off to see a pottery workshop and store. For those of you who know how I feel about these scheduled tourist stops, it felt a bit like a pearl factory in Hawaii… but it was really very entertaining. A potter showed us how he hand throws and manually pedals to make a circular jug centre and then Steve had a go at playing master potter. I think I have well increased my personal stash of 'God as potter' pictures. After the demonstration and tour we saw some absolutely exquisite pieces and many in the group bought beautiful pottery and had it shipped home. It was then time for Mass and so just out of the small town of Avanos. We stopped, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. 

A short walk down a path revealed a small cave that had walls decorated with some crosses and other religious symbolism, A little work had been done on the space because there was a sanctuary and there were wooden benches for the congregation, but it was all  quite original and so very simple and beautiful. After the hustle and bustle of the other tourist spots we have been in to in Turkey in recent days, it was lovely to be somewhere spiritual that we had to ourselves. Mass was lovely and the elegant and ancient simplicity of the space made for a very prayerful experience , in spite of the somewhat challenging choice of reading… let’s face it, it wasn’t going to make much difference what spin Sam put on Paul to the Ephesians “wives be obedient to your husbands” it wasn’t going to be good. 

Mass over, it was lunchtime and we went to the tiny tourist area at the foot of the Goreme World Heritage Park to have gozleme. A funny experience really. The menus were placed on the table and then we were told that the only thing we could have was gozleme, and there was no spinach into the bargain. Still it was a yummy lunch and time then for a quick shop before heading up to the Open air museum containing the early monastery churches dating back to the 4^th century and possibly before.

This was fairy chimney country, and again the softish volcanic ash rock made for an ideal material for hewn chapels in the rock. Unfortunately there is no pics of the inside of the building so you will have to imagine the interior, although the internet has helped me a little here! The earliest chapel of St Basil was quite amazing with its fairly monochrome red and unique line sketches and naïve frescos that are badly faded and aged. Still it gives a great idea of the evolution of early Christian art. We went into another couple of chapels, with varying degrees of paintwork. It appears as though the original straight onto the wall paintings had been plastered over and frescoed in places. The most impressive of the chapels is the DARK Chapel. So called because for some time it had been used as a storage area and was locked away, preserving the colorful frescoes of Jesus, Mary the saints and the evangelists. It is a truly amazing piece of art and most of the murals date to about 11^th century. Wow, underground byzantine architecture.

Back to the bus and a final photo opportunity for very weary travelers was at the fairy chimneys that are topped with an igneous outcrops. This has given them their quite distinctive shape, but by this time the group had almost lost the plot and wanted to head back to the hotel to organise the ever growing luggage for our departure from turkey tomorrow. As I pottered around the hotel packing (after getting the wrong laundry back it’s not good!), I realized that there was such an incredible cost in being an early Christian. Today we are so lucky to be living in a free and relative tolerant religious society so different to that of the persecuted ones in the early years. What has it cost me to be a Christian? It cost my forebears so much. I am blessed.