My Introduction post / Göreme (Turkey)

Hello there...

My name is Bernie, I'm a 22 y/o college student in cultural sciences from germany. I'm new on Hive and I have a passion for photography and travelling, so I figuered I fit perfectly in this community.
Due to recent events I'm obligated to stay at home for a while. Finally I had some time to go through my photo files from my pre-covid travels.

Today I present to you: Göreme in Turkey. It's a small city in Cappadocia - a region in the centre of Turkey most known for it's volcanic shaped hills and mountains.
I visited the city in 2016 for a week during my stay in Mersin for a voluntary project (which I will be talking more about in another post). There won't be any recents photos, but I hope it's still worth your while.

Basically this is how every city in a radius of 50km looks like in Cappadocia. but each one has it's own charme. What's fascinating about these places is, that the indigenous people used to live in caves and hollow spaces which were carved out of the stone. The rocks are mostly made out of Pumice and limestone and therefore extremely brittle.
Nowadays most of the remaining caves were turned into luxurious Hotel rooms, luckily we stayed in the most beautiful little Hostel for a very affordable price.

The view from the top of the nearby mountain was breathtaking. One day I managed to motivate myself to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning in order to catch the hot air balloons starting their usual tourist route - and it was more than worth it. Best. Morning. Of. My. LIFE.
Eventhough I don't look that happy, I was just too tired... ^^

Noone will ever be as majestic as this dude on his horse.

A little patriotism for the turkish readers :

Do you see why they call it 'the valley of love' ?

Just the other day I was walking and exploring with a fellow friend as we came across a sweet little farm and resort for families. It had some donkeys and other animals for a petting zoo, but they were already inside due to the low temperatures at night. They had this old truck for the kids to play with:

Further down the road we met an old man who still lived inside one of the caves. At first we were cautious, because his antatolian mountain dog (google it) was pretty scary. But then he invited us for a tea and he showed us how he lived. Out of respect i just took a photo of the entrance, but he had a fully equiped kitchen and bathroom to my surprise.

It was very interesting to see how he transformed this age old cave into a modern living space while keeping the traditions alive.

Now something off topic. The last picture shows a collection of 'Nazar boncugu' the so called 'eye of allah' and it represents the all-seeing eye of god.

Can you spot the irony ?

Hopefully travelling will be easier again in the future...

Thank you for reading and until next time <3