journal

Day 11 – September 11 2024 – Göreme

From the eczane in Eskişehir we had painkillers for the killer cramps (J told me I just wasn’t used to contractions) and vitamins and bio- something to restore the killing effects on microflora (and, it should be said, microfauna) in our guts but no, which is what we’d gone in asking for, electrolytes. No, these are not available over the counter in Turkey, is what the pharmacist told us in perfect English, cutting in to my patchy description in Turkish of what we wanted. However, these, while making us feel like we were alive, did not reassure us that we would be for long. And so we went in search of stronger stuff.

For electrolytes, we had been directed to the supermarket to buy Powerade, which we stocked up on for the next several days, filling the backseatwell of the car with bottles of it, each time we got gas. (Or stopped in for a toilet, those at petrol-stations being themed, with pumping (in the club sense) soundtracks and of a higher standard than anywhere else. And free. (Not with the smoking resentful radio-listening attendant who would only reluctantly give change as elsewhere, or with the filth that caused most visitors to roll up their trouser legs before entry into the, so to say, swim of things. Where there was seldom loo-paper and if a watering-can no means of de-cacking the cack hand.))

Pharmacy first: J had read that Turkey had been a destination for English seeking cheap over-the-counter antibiotics. We were hopeful. No, not in Turkey, explained the pharmacist, who responded more favourably to my Turkish, principally because she had little English. We would need a prescription. Whence?

From acıl, which translates as emergency.

OK. Tamam. Where? Nerede?

O. Straight down the road. 3km. On right.

Sağ?

Evet.

So, off we went. On our medical date. J resistant, fearing it would take all day, as it would have done in NZ.

We found our way, entirely a different way to that suggested by the pharmacist, which is usual with the way directions are given, even in English, to Ürgüp. And found a park near the acıl attached to the hospital. The short walk gave us a chance to appreciate the very pretty town, less Disney-fied than Göreme, and less touristy, which backfired when we reached the doctor. The premises would only accept locals and we were given a new set of directions. This time the doctor took the initative and entered the address into J’s phone.

We circled back to near where we had been but in an entirely new dimension of the folding, refolding landscape. And reached a hospital.

Here we were to see the Infections Doctor. Whom when we did see her, which took not long, told us we needed to register.

This cost, the officious blockhead behind the desk said, before fobbing us onto one of the trainees to complete the registration, ₺470 each.

We returned to Infections Doctor. Who saw us immediately. We communicated mainly in Turkish.

J and I took turns lying on a bed in the office and she poked and prodded, J, evidently harder than she had me, because J went ow. Whereupon, Infections Doctor retreated behind computer and set the printer humming to return proudly with her prescription: Gaviscon, Vitamin B, and more bioflora restorer: and we looked … and said. No.

But, protested the doctor, we don’t recommend antibiotics until after seven days.

Evet. We have been waiting. Seven days. I said, Turkishly.

In the end, she croaked. And we got 2 lots of antiobios + Gavascon + antinausea + VitB12, which we discovered upon getting the prescriptions filled at the Castle town, Uçhisar, … refusing the unnecessary bits, keeping antiobios and B12.

Let us however, start with the wonder of it all. An ordinary day in Göreme begins:

J had leapt out of bed as if it were Christmas morning. It was at 7am. She came back and said, Quick! Upstairs to the terras.

The ridge where those without a rooftop terrace went to view,

perhaps the photos are repetitious but what was fascinating is the movement of the balloons which was constant and gradual enough that neither a still nor a video gives a sense of it or of the strange silence, only broken by the whoosh of gas when the balloons were right overhead.

It was a long wait for kahvaltı. I took some snaps of the room.

[these were the last snaps my camera took. Next day lens cap off, it whirred, the lens went in and out but that’s all. The microswitch, I guessed. So, to the cellphone and] breakfast,

A nice buffet but could only take a little.

Turkish bath:

Ürgüp,

Uçhisar, the Castle seen as we approached it over the plateau,

even as we did I thought, everything in this landscape looks to be visible but, everything is invisible. Perhaps there is in this character of place some guide to the character of its people.

We would turn a corner and everything would appear differently. Just as in Fatih, in the city, the walls would shift unexpectedly, here in Anatolia, in Capadoccia, we would ascend to the plateau and find everything changed, nothing where it was supposed to be; and the people who first appeared severe would break out into smiles and offer hospitality. So also the seeming aggression and competitiveness of the drivers was tempered by making allowances for others who just needed to get where they were going. Space could always be found. The land was unexpected.