Inbetweenland

The other day my mom asked how I was.  I said I was bored.  She responded, "well of course you're bored now."

It's been roughly one week since I returned to the U.S.  I suppose I could have taken the global nomad path that some of my fellow teachers are currently on and not have returned at all.  But alas, paperwork brings me back to DC.  I have to hang out here and wait for my student visa to be issued so I can attend school in the fall.  I have to specify DC and not say "home" because at the moment I am and without a home.  Sure I have inhabited DC for the past 10 years, but everything and everyone here is so transient that it never really became home.  Right when things get comfortable, everything changes.  Salt Lake is where I grew up, but having been away for so long, there are only a few people there I still know.  So suffice it to say, I have no place to call my home at the moment.  Maybe that will change at some point in the future, but who knows.  So for now I'm in DC hanging out for a bit until my visa comes.  I hope it comes soon -- I'm bored.

This is the tough part of what is called reverse culture shock.  Coming home is always much harder than people expect it to be primarily because traveling changes you.  Or at least it should.  If it doesn't then you're doing it wrong.  Coming home is assumed to be exciting -- you get to see everyone and everything you missed!  But the downside is that not only have you changed, but home has changed.  Everything continued to evolve -- without you.  In my case this is not only true, but it is exacerbated by the fact that, like I already said, "home" is a nonexistent concept for me right now.  So I'm back and it is still great to see to everyone and everything that I missed so much.  But knowing that another round of goodbyes is just around the corner compounded with general uncertainty about what happens next makes it all the much more gut wrenching.

Now to be more positive...

One of the many good things about being stateside, other than getting to spend time with my favorite boys (though one of them is shedding all his fur off in giant tumbleweed sized balls), is getting to enjoy everything my neighborhood has to offer.  I love Cleveland Park -- hate DC, but love Cleveland Park.  This little gemstone of a neighborhood has plenty of bars and restaurants to keep one entertained and yet manages to be personal and friendly, even in the midst of hoards of tourists waddling their way to the zoo.  I love my local dive bar, I love playing pool and board games at the other bar, I love getting food from the Vietnamese, Indian, Mediterranean and Thai restaurants, and I love my grocery store (all the stock boys love my tattoo) and my liquor store (the manager always picks out my wine for me).  I also love petting other people's dogs and saying hello to my favorite panhandlers.  Sure a few things have changed while I was gone.  There is no longer an empty McDonald's sitting around looking blighted, it has finally been replaced with a new seafood restaurant.  It joins the other addition, a new steak and frites joint.  Who can complain about such changes?

I have had the luck of living in the same apartment since I graduated from college several years ago.  While everyone and everything around me drifted in and out of my life, this place remained constant.  It is quite possibly what I will miss most about DC.  I'm currently passing my days by looking for a place to live in London.  There are many challenges, but the biggest (other than finding a place that doesn't have shower in the middle on the living room) is finding a neighborhood that I will fall in love with the way I fell in love with Cleveland Park.

Cappadocia

There are many tourist towns in Cappadocia, I blindly selected Goreme.  Don't ask me how it is pronounced, because everyone I met pronounced it different. I must admit that much of this portion of the trip was "blindly selected" as I didn't have my usual bookstore resources and abundant travel guides to assistant me in my decisions.  All I knew was that people go to Cappadocia and I had 4 or 5 days on my own to do whatever I wanted with, so why not?   

So now that that is out of the way...

After Istanbul I headed to Cappadocia, which is in eastern Anatlolia and about a 12 hour bus ride from Istanbul.  Luckily the Turks know a thing or two about traveling by bus.  Unlike the nightmarish Chinatown buses that us lucky folk living along the eastern seaboard get to utilize, Turkish buses are comfortable, clean, and have actual attendants that bring you tea and snacks.  So while I originally blanched at the thought of spending all night on a bus, alone and in a strange country, in the end I was thrilled with the experience.  Over the months I have cherished my somewhat frequent road trips and the time spent with my ipod.  This playlist took me back to the mid-2000s and included such hits as "international dateline," "finding out true love is blind," and "cloud."

Upon arrival in Cappadocia I found myself standing among about a half dozen other blurry-eyed travelers.  The dude at the info desk, conveniently located at the bus stop, kindly called each of our hotels to come fetch us.  I was eventually whisked away to my cave hotel where I was greeted by an extremely doting and friendly staff.  The nice American girl who was staffing the place directed me to the all the local sights and cafes.  After a shower and a nap I set off to a cafe followed by a journey to the "penis rocks."  Upon seeing a solo traveler the cafe staff joined me for lunch - it was me, Ali the owner, and a girl from Japan who came to Turkey and hadn't yet returned because she fell in love with Goreme.  We traded bits of our lunch along with our various travel stories. 

I took a detour from my appointment with the penis rocks and wandered around in the desert for a bit instead.  It looked a lot like southern Utah and blessedly felt just as dry.  I passed by a souvenir stand which had a few camels standing nearby.  I chuckled at first but when I circled back around on my way back to the hotel I spotted a baby camel.  This is where I got weak.  It was a baby camel!  Of course I needed a picture with it - I hadn't spotted the sign noting the cost for rides as well as pcitures.  No such thing as a free ride or a picture.  The situation snowballed after my cameo with the baby camel, suddenly a ladder was pulled out and I was ascending it with the intent to mount the big camel.  This is what happens to solo travelers, nobody is around to talk sense into them.  So there I was being paraded around the souvenir stand as the dimwitted tourist who just had to have the camel ride, which was just a big circle to the ice cream stand and back.  The  entrepreneur busily took several photos with my camera saying "Angelina Jolie" at every snap.  (No sir, I will not adopt your children and I will certainly not co-star in a movie with Nicolas Cage.)  After dismount they brought over the donkey.  Yeah, I really just wrote that.  So there I was riding the donkey.  Clearly they wanted to rack up quite the bill.  I just laughed and handed them what I thought was fair for making me laugh and went on my merry way.

I occupied my time in Goreme with hikes through the valleys, a Turkish bath, a day tour though southern Cappadocia with a bunch of happy couples, and of course drinking plenty of tea.

Pigeon Valley

Cave city/ monastery in southern Cappadocia

But the main thing I was pumped for was my sunrise balloon ride.  I was picked up from my hotel at 4:25am and taken to the balloon center which was brimming with people, seemingly from all over the world.  I was handed my safety instructions and told to wait until my pilot's name was called.  When they shouted out "Francesco" I and about a dozen Brazilians were loaded into a van.  We arrived at the sight as our balloon was being inflated.  A woman spotted me on my own and decided it was her duty to make sure that I got plenty of pictures of me floating up in the sky.  It was a fun group to be in the air with, especially as I can only understand one word of Portuguese, so I was basically alone with my own thoughts.  After little over an hour of dipping into valley's brushing the tops of trees, and floating high above the rocks we landed and toasted our journey with champagne.  Then it was time for me to go back to the hotel, eat breakfast with the two older couples staying at the hotel (who were thankfully NPR addicts like me) and take a nap.

Eventually the fun ended and it was time for me to head to Anakra where I would catch a flight back to Tbilisi.  Hands down, Goreme is the best place for a solo traveler.  I made plenty of friends and had many interesting conversations with strangers.  And now that I know a bit more, I will definitely return to Turkey and this time Izmir and Borum will be on the itinerary.