My last day in Goreme was clear and cold.  I slept in, again, and stopped for a cappuccino at Cafe Safak, again.  My plan was to have a kick back Sunday.  But I did want to walk a little, so after my cappuccino I walked up the road towards the Open Air museum, and then off the road to the “church of the evil eye,” off the main road about a 10 minute walk.

As I headed out of town I picked up a little friend.  A very cute, very sweet dog started following me and I could not shake her.  I kept telling her I had no food, nothing to give, but she just looked at me and kept on.  She was my dog, for a little while.  On the main road we encountered a few other dogs and all of them were very mean to my friend.  I don’t know what happened to this poor doggie in the past, but she is very fearful of other dogs, and they can smell it.  We walked together off the main road on a dirt road where my new friend checked out some local birds and cats and I thought about living in Goreme.  It was quiet and peaceful, and warm enough that I could take off my coat.  As we approached the church though, it appeared closed.  There was a sign on the door but also a big giant dog watching us intently.  The church was about a football field away, but I did not want to go up there and risk my new friend getting bothered again.  So I turned around to walk back.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something big and fast barreling down behind us.  It was the big German Shepard from the church, and she was on top of my friend before we knew what hit us.  The German Shepard was practically ripping my friend’s neck out with her teeth and my poor doggie friend was whimpering and crying something fierce.  After a minute the German Shepard got off of her and my friend ran behind ME, cowering and shaking.  So I am in between the fierce dog and the scared shitless dog.  Somehow I was not scared, which is weird for me because usually I would be the scared shitless one.  I just wanted to get my friend away from there in one piece.  So we slowly walked back down the road.  A caretaker came out of a little house by the church and hollered for his dog.  A little late I might add.  Dude, curb your animal.

After all that excitement I decided to walk up to this tourist bazaar place by the Open Air museum to have a glass of wine in a little cheesy wine and food kiosk there.  As me and my friend walked through the first part of the bazaar an Asian tourist took a plastic wrapped snack left over from his breakfast out of his pocket for her.  Bye bye Doggie Friend.  It was nice knowing you.

While I was in the cheesy food bar/shop the woman who squeezes pomegranates and oranges for the tourists outside came in. She speaks no English (except orange, pomegranate, and juice) but we somehow manage to carry on a conversation.  She lets me feel her big muscle from pulling down the juicer handle.  I show her pictures of my nephews and she shows me pictures of her daughter.  She is lovely.  Not all the people in the bazaar are so happy.  I watch a guy who sells tablecloths get totally pissed off at some Asian tourists.  He screams at them.  “I already told you the price five times. Get out! Go!”  The the tourists flee, back to their bus.

The rest of my day was restful.  Hung out at Cafe Safak for hours, blogging and drinking wine and talking to Ali and the other people in there.  I meet a guy who works for a military subcontractor in Kuwait, and his Turkish girlfriend.  He tells me about this place he works that truly sickens me.  Things about slave labor and other horrors.  He is, himself, disgusted.  I tell him he needs to get away from that situation and his girlfriend agrees.  Why is our government allowing this?  I feel sick now, just thinking about it.

But other than that it was very nice to hang out in this cafe with the comings and goings of many nationalities, the lovely winter evening sneaking up on us.  I went and had one final dinner at my little table at Seten, and in the morning, back to Istanbul.  Goreme touched my heart and I want to go back someday.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 at 3:07 am and is filed under Turkey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.