Turkey Part 2: Afternoon

I headed out the door with three liters of water in my backpack, my camera around my neck and some cash in my bra. I went to the Goreme Open Air Museum, which looked a lot like everything I had seen the day before.












By the time I was caved out, I was also ready for a break. I sat right on a patch of grass by the entrance and guzzled water while I eavesdropped in on a young lady’s phone conversation.

From what I could tell, the young lady was bidding adieu to someone she had been traveling with and was now on her own. When she hung up, I asked her how she was doing. She told me about a man she had traveled around with for the past week or so, and he left for the airport that morning.

We talked for a little bit, and I learned that her name was Keun Ah, she was 19 and came on a solo adventure from South Korea. Any 19-year-old brave enough to go to Turkey by herself wins some serious coolness points, so I invited her to hang out with me that day, or at least we could grab some lunch together. She thought about it for a second, then some security guard came over and motioned for her to cover her legs a little more because he could see her underwear if he bent his head down far enough.

I spent a lot of money getting away from Saudi, so I wasn’t going to tolerate this on my vacation.

“Quit looking up her skirt! You pervert! It’s Ramadan, you’re supposed to be better than that!”

Her hesitation to spend the day with me stopped immediately and she agreed to join me, but wanted to see the museum first. We decided on a restaurant and went our separate ways for the next two hours.

I wanted some pics from the top of the hill overlooking the valley, and after about twenty long, hot minutes a man pulled over and offered me a ride. His English was limited to “OK?” and “OK!” but that’s enough sometimes. My Turkish consists of two words, too (saw=right, soh=left), so we were even.

Before I admit to climbing in the car with a strange man, let me quickly remind my American loved ones that this isn’t America. You would have to be crazy to do that! Allow me to restate my opening sentence in my introduction: "The Middle East turns sane people crazy and crazy people crazier."

I appreciated an escape from the heat, so I hopped in the passenger seat. This man kindly drove me around to all his favorite sites with good lookout spots of the valley. His car definitely wasn’t built for off-roading, but he didn’t seem to mind.




After an hour or so, he pointed at his mouth and stomach. Cute, but I declined the charade version of an offer to take me to get something to eat because I knew he was fasting. He took me to the town, then I handed him ten lira (about $6) to pay for gas. At first he declined, then he handed me two magnets shaped like slippers and took my money.

I met Keun Ah at a small restaurant and enjoyed an entertaining conversation about her adventures. My favorite part of our chat wasn’t about her wild times in Turkey with a man she met in Istanbul, or the year as an exchange student in Texas, it was her reaction when she asked me what I did for a living. I told her that I work as a nurse.

She looked at me for a minute, then repeated, “You are a nurse.”

“Yes, I’m a nurse.”

“And you work in a hospital.”

“Yes.”

She looked at me a little longer. “I never would have guessed that you would be a nurse.”

“What would you have guessed?”

“A bank teller.”

Is that supposed to be a compliment? I pretended it was, and asked why.

“Because you talk like a bank teller.”

“How do bank tellers talk?”

“Like you.”

Okay. Anyone out there know how bank tellers talk, because I really don’t know what sets them apart from anyone else.

We kept up our friendly conversation while we did some people watching. Lots of scooters and motorcycles filled the streets, and I had a great idea.

“Wanna rent a scooter with me?”

“I don’t know how to drive.”

“You just hold on and I’ll do all the driving.”

“Okay.”

We found a scooter rental store that didn’t require a driver’s license. The man behind the desk asked us if we had tried any local wines yet. I replied in the affirmative, but Keun Ah hadn’t. He said that he would give us some when we returned the scooter, and told us to keep it a few hours later than the amount we had paid for. I questioned his motives, but appreciated the extra scooter rental time.

I fired up the scooter, Keun Ah hopped on the back, and we headed off to see all the sites I was supposed to see on our tour from earlier that day. Driving the scooter over the cobblestones and winding hills of Capadoccia was a little trickier than riding my scooter, Sophie, around Tucson, but we managed. Keun Ah and I constantly adjusted our ill-fitting helmets as we savored the wind in our faces and the feeling of freedom from hagglers as we rode through the peaks that looked like KKK hats, the boulders resembling Smurf houses and small cities built to charm even the most calloused of tourists.














We dropped the scooter off a little early so Keun Ah could go pack for her bus ride back to Istanbul. I walked her to her motel and we hugged goodbye. We thanked each other for the fun time, and I gave her my email address so she could email me some pics. Then she said the best line I’ve probably ever heard in all my life.

“I can’t wait to tell my mom that I spent the day riding in the back of a scooter with an American woman!”