From Underground Yoga to Smurfland to Rock!
After a cold night (close to 0°) we drove into Derinkuyu to visit the famous underground city. There are many underground cities in cappadocia but this one is supposed to be the biggest (of the known ones). 8 stories of underground tunnels and caves, dwellings, meeting halls and churches which once were home to min. 3000 people. Noone really knows the age or initial purpose. Possible functions are a hideout against enemies or just a nicely tempered place to stay in hot summers and cold winters.
One thing is for sure: the people building and using it were much smaller than me - the walk through the tunnels felt a bit like some kind of Yoga exercise - most of the time my body was in very strange posture. But it was totally worth it. It is really a small city (including still working ventilation system, wells,...) and it is really underground - not in a mountain or something which you would enter from one side but in a relatively flat landscape where you enter from an unsuspecting stairway from above.
After spending about an hour underground we could appreciate sunlight and fresh air much more. We had a short look at a nearby armenien church now used as a gallery and set down for a tea. When we were finally getting started for todays ride some German tourists approached us and couldn't quite believe our travel plans. After the short ride we arrived in the ' real cappadocia ' (i.e. the tourist-agency-leaflet cappadocia). When seeing it from above my first thought was: Welcome to Smurfland! Funny landscape. Very funny landscape. With houses in rock mushrooms and cones. I felt a huge desire to paint myself blue. Instead we settled with a simple shower (also not bad after some days on the road) after checking into a cave hostel. We gonna spend the night in a trve rock cave, because: "Jimi Hendrix slept here", yeah!!!
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