Cappadocia, Baths, and Boys

Cave Dwelling in Cappadocia
Flintstones, meet the Flintstones. Cappadocia is in central Turkey and apart from having the most diverse landscapes of anywhere I have seen in my travels, we lived in a cave for three days. Yes, the ancient civilizations carved their cities out of volcanic stones and had miles of underground cities that could house societies up to 100,000 people during times of invasions.
As many of you know, this region was the main stomping grounds of the Crusades and people often had to live for months, even years at a time underground to avoid attacks. Just out of an Indiana Jones movie, these caves and passageways have rocks which roll into place to block invaders and long, creepy tunnel, which no longer house skeletons, but modern day excretions from the locals. People still live in some of the caves, and others are preserved for tourist attractions.
Early Christian churches have well preserved frescoes inside since the temperature is constant year round. The columns and archways are carved into the rock rather than built up as modern technology mandates today. The rock is so porous, it absorbed smoke and almost every room contains a fire pit in the center.

The Turkish Bath Experience
I remember studying the Romans in Mrs. Widmeyer’s 6th grade social studies class, then again in architectural history courses through college. The baths looked so relaxing. A cold pool, a warm pool, slaves fanning you with palms and feeding you grapes over your head, reclined on a chaise lounge surrounded by Roman columns, mosaics and boys in loincloths. In my imagination, Turkish baths were much the same.

NOT! We checked off one of the 1,000 places to see before we die..the Cagaloglu Hamami, 300 year old Turkish baths in Istanbul. Architecturally, it is an amazing structure with concrete domes protruded by a central occulus and small cylindrical punctures through the shell. The floors are marble and Persian rugs line the hallways to private changing rooms opening up to a central atrium with a tearoom below. International women are lounging in orange Turkish towels.

Once undressed, a large Turkish woman takes you by hand into the anti-chamber to change into your pink water shoes to keep from slipping naked onto the marble floor, like Bambi on ice. A blast of hot, humid air emits from central chamber. There is no bath, Jacuzzi, reflecting pool or any body of water. The perimeter has faucets flowing into marble sinks and metal buckets to rinse your body. If you do not get wet enough, the large Turkish lady takes the bucket into her own hands to douse you with cold water over the head.

She then reprimands in Turkish and maybe if she speaks louder, I will understand. I do not, so she forces me to follow her to the central marble platform where I am placed with eight other naked women, head to toe in an octagonal formation under the dome. I cannot understand what she wants so she manhandled me into position and dumped another bucket of cold water over me…two for me, one for her. She motions for me to put my hands over my head, which end up on some other woman’s feet, then she massaged my front, my entire front from head to toe before exfoliating two layers of my epidermis off my body. She grabs my hand to feel the pile of dead flesh on my stomach. It feels as if someone dumped a box of dried mashed potatoes on my tummy. She started yelling at me in Turkish again and I don’t understand…. whoosh – another bucket of cold water dumped on me and she flipped me over like a pancake.

Same thing on the other side. My feet are in someone else's hair and my face is on someone’s leg. I hope she left some skin on my back. I am flipped again and she motions for me to go rinse myself off. Upon return she has a bucket of soapy water. I get a dry massage, a wet massage and soap massage on each side as she rotates me around as a pig on a skewer and I am kneaded like a pile of dough. Soap gets in my eyes and she can see me fidgeting frantically. WHOOSH, whoosh, two buckets of water over my head and I am gasping for air. She applies the soap with a shredded palm mop and I am covered in bubbles and lubricated from head to toe, sliding around on the marble slab, laughing hysterically and crying, because this is NOT what I expected.

More buckets of water are poured over me to get the soap off. She shows no mercy for washing me down in buckets of cold water. If I was in Turkish prison, this is how they would bathe me. Now she wants to wash my hair and I feel like she just made cotton candy on my head, then about ten buckets of water, one right after the other as I was, laughing, screaming and gasping for air all at the same time. She takes a comb and is ripping the hair out of my head. Without conditioner, my hair is a giant knot and I beg her to stop. I could not even open my eyes because I was not sure when the next rinse was about to happen.

She gave me a big bear hug, says me very pretty, and points me to the hot room…as if this one was not hot enough. Here I sat in the Turkish steam room as Laura and Katy join me one by one. It was the most barbaric bath I have ever had, but at least I got a parting gift of Hello Kitty panties.

The Turkish Guide to Picking up foreign women
Tip #1, hang at nearest famous mosque or architectural relic.
Tip #2, get yourself a carpet shop and dress it like a Jeannie’s Bottle!
Tip #3, compliment EVERY woman who walks by…one of them is bound to entertain you.
Tip #4, it doesn’t matter how young or old the girl is, just go for it! My favorite young man who tried to get me in bed in Lebanon had the line, which was also a favorite of the Turks – “age makes no difference, you can be like Demi Moore…”

We had to make a compilation of our favorite pick up lines, although almost every one starts trying to guess our nationality. This must be the international icebreaker.
“We are 3 men, you are 3 women…yeah?” (enter silly grin here)
“Where did you steal your beautiful eyes from?”
“Are you Jennifer Aniston.” Yes, it does not help to travel with someone that looks like her twin. The best I got was Paris Hilton, but at least I had Madonna’s arms from the guy at the baths.
“I get off of work at 11:15pm – you come back and we go dance.” This came in some way or fashion from just about every waiter we encountered throughout the trip until we realized the sign language I thought was to get the bill, may have been asking him for his phone number.
“Are you real, or are you a dream?”
“Hey Angel Lady...”
“Have you fallen from Heaven?”
“Let me change your Life.” In Cappadocia, Katy and I had dessert and wine with a couple of Hot Air Balloon pilots and a carpet shop salesman. The Hot Air Balloon industry is booming in Cappadocia and a middle class income is easily obtainable to charge tourist 250 Euros for a short morning soar over the rock valleys. This is the most lucrative industry in the region and it opens up the Turkish men to meet mass quantities of foreign women. They were very honest about the marketing prospects in Turkey in regards to tourism. Basically everything costs more than it should.
A Foreign Girl’s Guide to avoiding the Turkish Men
Tip #1, get up at 5am to take pictures at all the touristy areas…all the Turkish men are hung over on Raki at least until 9am. You can wander the streets of Istanbul freely without any fat cruise boat people and busloads of German tourists in your pictures…and the sky looks pretty cool too. Wake up with the first Morning Prayer call.

Tip #2, pretend to be Helen Keller – blind, deaf and mute…ignore them, they are not there you can not see them. Some may actually follow you for sometime, so if this happens and you actually need to open your mouth, pretend to be foreign, really foreign, and speak a language none of them knows. I used to pretend that I was Swedish and talk pig Latin with a ‘fart’ after every word. Try it with a friend, you can actually understand what they are saying and it really does sound like Swedish. Then I realized that most people know that everyone in Sweden speaks English, so I started to pretend I was Polish, which I am and can speak a couple phrases, but nobody in Turkey can actually speak Polish and they will be dead in the water.

Tip #3 put your iPod on and DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH ANYONE. Even if a man follows you like a puppy dog, remember Tip #2, they are not there if you cannot see them. It is hard though, because they are honest people, trying to make a living…Well, honest may be stretching it, but deep down I bet they are really nice.

The Turkish man’s dream is to run off with a foreign woman, or at least have a fling, because as Ramadandan, ‘Rambo,’ on the beach at Ephesus put it, and sorry for the harsh language, “If you f@ck a Turkish girl, you are expected to marry her, but foreign women you can just fu$k.” This was an interesting fellow who though he could impress three American girls with his stories of all the international women he has ‘f*ck@d,’ including the Japanese woman who begged him to stop after five times in a night. Seriously, the word fcuk was every other word out of his mouth.

Tips #4 – never any under circumstance, find you alone with a Turkish man, especially at night. He will ask you out for a drink and every excuse you make will be rebutted to make it more convenient for you.

Yes, you CAN go back to Constantinople! A flight from Istanbul to Amsterdam, to Washington, DC – living a couple blocks from Obama’s house for an ISPE conference and getting over jetlag by walking the mall. Made it back to SF the next evening with Stefano waiting for me at the airport. I am suffering schwarma withdrawals.

During the flights, I started to plan Kelly’s next adventure! Africa, including Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya and Zanzibar! I hope to leave on Christmas Eve for a layover in Chicago to see Anabelle Bananabelle’s first Christmas. Oddly enough, my flight on Christmas night flies through Istanbul again, so I will be able to return for another layover en route to Addis.

In Ethiopia, I hope to visit an orphanage that my friend from MBA classes is supporting through a non-profit organization. She worked for Gilead, a biotech company that provides HIV medication to children in Ethiopia. She adopted a little girl from Addis and will be living there this summer to work in the orphanage. I am helping her gather medical supplies from Genentech and Bay Area hospitals to take over there and researching the possibilities of maybe adopting a little girl from there someday. It will be nice to learn more about the culture before jumping into such a large commitment. Some people say it is like going to the SBCA to 'look'...you almost always end up coming home with a puppy....

From Addis I will travel to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, embark on an African safari and SCUBA dive in Zanzibar! Meanwhile, Amazon picked up my children’s book – World Playground. You can order it online from there and LuLu.com now! Cute little Anabelle keeps growing and I will be working on the sequel soon – Anabelle Bananabelle’s Totally Terrific Travel Tales!

http://www.amazon.com/World-Playground-Kelly-Keen/dp/B0029J3IFE

Turkey and The Republic of Georgia

After 5 months officially back in the US, I am starting to recover from the culture shock of leaving my jet-setting life in Singapore behind. People warned me about the depression expatriates feel coming home, but I didn’t realize how hard it would be to go back. I went from living it up in a $10K/month apartment with maids, waterfalls, pools, relaxing on white sand beaches on weekends and riding my bike to Malaysia to cleaning my own toilets, gardening, reconstructing dry rot during the rainy season, replacing sewers and cleaning up the shit-n-slide in my neighbor’s yard.

So I have taken a break from the blog to write a children’s book instead – it is published on lulu.com, called World Playground, a compellation of pictures I have taken of children around the world. I dedicated the book to my niece, Anabelle Hanna, who was born April 20th. Anabelle in Farsi means, ‘I am beautiful,’ so she will be saying that every time she says her name. I got to see her for the first time this weekend in Madison, Wisconsin, where Brian and Nancy live. Boy is she cute and I am not just saying that because I am now Aunt Kelly. She has this little layer of puppy fur that makes her even more adorable.

That evening began the next international travel in Turkey and The Republic of Georgia, located on the Black Sea that Russia tried to take over last year. Why the heck would I choose to Tbilisi, Georgia? It all started in Singapore last summer while I was working on the mycoplasma lab with a colleague from Georgia, Vadim Estravi. His family is high in the political system, extending from Georgian knighthood. He was consulting with me on master planning ideas for a biotech campus sponsored by the Georgian government. Vadim has an accent similar to Count Dracula and my favorite memory of him was listening to him order chicken blood for the mycoplasma lab. It sounded like a crank call.

Then on New Year’s Day as I set my resolutions for 2009, I decided to not travel as a tourist anymore, but try to travel with a purpose of preserving cultures or educating people along the way. I contacted a professor from architecture school who is a world known Byzantine architectural historian a former boyfriend spend two summers uncovering frescoes in the caves of Cappadocia, Turkey. Professor Ousterhaut replied to my email within hours and although Turkey does not give archeological permits to foreigners anymore, there is some work being done in Georgia. He has a contact at the University of Pennsylvania working in Vani and gave me the contact to the curator at the National Museum at Tbilisi, which needs help with a structural analysis.

Last semester, I combined my term paper for my international logistics class on manufacturing collaborations, using Vadim’s project as my case study, so I have a little background on Georgia.

Istanbul, not Constantinople
My first stop was a layover in Istanbul. I booked the Kybele Hotel (www.kybelehotel.com) as recommended by a Russian friend of mine and it was amazing with a prime location within a minute of Hagia Sophia, Blue Mosque and the Hippodrome. Turkish lamps line the ceiling with a charming tea parlor, courtyard and, of course, a carpet shop. As I step out the door, there are no less then 10 men who want to me my friend…and probably sell me a carpet. (See note on research for Marketing 343 on facebook.)

“But you must have an escort in Istanbul..” one hustler recommended.
“If I accepted every invitation to escort me, I would have a line of Turkish men behind me.”

I refused them all until a very attractive one stuck with me a while and snuck me into the Muslim side of the closed Blue Mosque. Ramadan is his name because he was born during the feast of Ramadan and is sure to let me know that he is Kurdish and not Turkish. Kurds are a derivative of the Iranians who live primarily through Turkey, Syria and Armenia. I am blunt that I am not interested in a tour guide, jewelry or a carpet, but he is still adamant on following me like a puppy dog. He does know Istanbul well and led me in all the right directions to make the most of my 24 hours, including a roof terrace looking over the sea and a mosque for sunset.

He seems less like a salesman and more like a friend now. As I learned in Morocco, Fiji and Egypt, if you have a local with you, all others will leave you alone. Ramadan inquires on my age and wants to know if ‘I have boyfriend.’ I tell him about Stefano, which he is sure that all Italians cheat on their women, which led to an interesting conversation about sex around the world and how foreign men view it.

He claims I am now his ‘sister’ and he is my brother.
“My real brother tried to sell me for camels last year in Lebanon. You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”
He just looked at me perplexed. It is Mother’s Day in Turkey, but I do not accept his invitation to meet his mother for dinner…she probably wants to sell me a carpet too.

Georgia – Home of the Unibrow!
Am I in Russia, the Middle East or Eastern Europe? I am lost among cultures, but I like it. Nothing is in English, the language has no western characters and sounds Russian. Tbilisi is the capital of Georgia and it is the only place where a Mosque and Synagogue exist next to each other. Some churches look Christian Byzantine, some have onion domes as in Russia, and others were constructed around 500AD and taken over by different religions through time. Great Medieval research for Sword Lake.

I wandered into a very organized protest encouraging the resignation of Mikheil Saakashvili, the president. Although I do not know what is being preached to the crowd, I can tell by the tone, the pauses, and the applause that it is politically charged. There are a large amount of supporters and some travel in ‘cells’, which are temporary structures, aligned perfectly in the streets with cots to house the protesters. They have shut down the main thoroughfare to Liberty Square and caused chaos and a huge traffic jam in Tbilisi at rush hour. If you cannot beat ‘em, join them. Cars just park in the jam and join the protest.

The next day, what I thought would be a quick hike up to a tower outside my hotel, turned into more than a three-hour tour. This tower lights up like the Eiffel Tower at night and seems to have viewing platforms. It is WAY farther up the mountain than it looks and what, are these people, goats? What starts as a paved staircase with rails through a field of red poppies turns into me bushwhacking up a mountain with rusted cables that used to support the Gondola? Once I make it to the top, there is a huge security fence surrounding it. Now I know I cannot possibly go down the hillside I had to scale and I can see vehicles up there, so there must be a road down.

I walked the perimeter of the fence until I find a hole, which every Tbilisian teenager has probably snuck through at some point. Once inside, I realize I have just broken into an amusement park. This may be most people’s dream, but my nightmare because all the rides are running, it is filled with carnival workers and I am the only visitor. Guards are approaching me, but I have no idea what they are saying, so I am good now at playing stupid blonde. Every time I think I see a way out, the guards will not let me leave! I am trapped in an amusement park and the Carnies are stalking me!

I find a service road and take it downhill, except it is the wrong way down the side of the mountain. I am hoping for a switch back to reorient me back to Tbilisi, but an hour down the road, I am just in a small village. It is a beautiful walk, surreal green rolling hills with snowcapped mountains in the distance and I still feel like I am in a dream, and I may be walking, like, FOREVER.

I see 5 teenage boys ahead who I think are making fun of me. I ask if they speak English and they just make obnoxious noises. I say Tbilisi? And point downhill. But they have no idea what the crazy girl in spandex is saying (I was not expecting to encounter people when I set out this morning.) A bus pulls up and I just hop on to hope it goes to Tbilisi. Half an hour down windy roads in a rickety bus and these boys may be retarded and who knows, I could be heading for the zoo. Finally we turn a corner and I can see Tbilisi. It would have taken me 3 days to walk. I saw a Monastery on the side of the road, hopped out without paying and took pictures of this 5th century church before finishing my walk home.

According to my Georgian friends the amusement park was the work of a billionaire who made his millions in Russia. The Georgian government was going to strip him of it if he did not reinvest it in a public project for Georgia. He skipped out of town to London and had a massive heart attack...coincidence, I think not.

Yesterday I met up with Vadim’s brother and good friend to visit some hella old churches and eat traditional Georgian food, which would be perfect for a hangover. The biggest cup o’beans, fried pork dumplings, ground beef rolled in dough, and fried cheese. I may be in Wisconsin.


Today I am adventured with two wild and crazy guys on a mountain bike ride into some gorges and through the rolling hills, past 5th century monestaries and cave dwellings. 60km, mostly uphill and my legs are exhausted. Political uprising is brewing and the President will break it up on Saturday if the protesters do not leave. Tomorrow I head back to Istanbul to meet up with Laura and Katy.