October is the season of extreme paralysis.. Anywhere you go will be beautiful wherever you go, colored with golden autumn leaves. On this trip, let’s take a flight to Turkey, a country that connects Europe and Asia, embracing the East and the West.
Tight schedule.. Quite a few transfers.. Joining with others.. I got on the plane with a bit of concern and curiosity about the name Turkey.
Turkey, the treasure house of human culture.. The passage connecting the East and the West..
A place where the center of Islam and the holy place of Christianity coexist.. The country of the Ottoman Turks that once made Europe tremble..
Cappadocia-Antalya-Pamukkale-Epheso-Istanbul arrived at Cappadocia, the first course with excitement.
Kappa’s strange appearance, which is a collaboration between God and nature, and the appearance of numerous stone pillars and hills that look like stacked rice cakes that humans cannot imitate, aroused a sense of awe as if they were on Mars.
It is a masterpiece created through years of endurance while repeating the eruption and resting period of Mount Ergies at 3900 meters hundreds of times. It was like looking at the world of medicine. Historically, this place belonged to the land of giants in history, from the Hittite Empire to the Persia Byzantine Empire to the Ottoman Turks, and it is also the land of Christianity in Islam where the traces of the apostle Paul passed through.
After the crucifixion of Christ, it became a refuge for early Christians who escaped the brutal persecution of Rome until the Edict of Milan in 313, when Christianity was officially recognized by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great, and it is also a holy place for many early Christian saints.
It is a place where they continued their beliefs that resisted Rome by digging rocks in a stone mountain… sometimes making a church in a cave, and even making an underground city. Seeing all these stories and the appearance of nature from a hot air balloon in the dawn of the dawn, the thrill of that moment has already settled in one side of my heart as an eternal memory.
Now, I have only traveled to one city, but it is a long journey to Antalya with so many emotions..
It was the time I was most concerned about after seeing the schedule for the first time, but that time was a precious time for us to know Turkey…more broadly, the Ottoman Turks, and the Middle East, which we were vaguely looking at. In addition, the guide carefully explained the jewel-like story that came to us as another attraction of the trip, where we can properly understand the prejudices about Islam viewed through the lens of the West… The time when the thread in my head is untied… Through the window of the bus, I saw the ever-changing scenery, passed the birthplace of human civilization, and passed through the silk road where many stories were hidden. Sometimes I became a merchant in the 13th century, and I became Cleopatra on the road I passed with Antonius. As we arrived at Antalya, a pretty watercolor-like city, we exclaimed.. A beautiful Mediterranean resort city that we had only heard about.
The ancient kingdom of Pergamon and the Ottoman culture formed on top of it are mixed together with Starbucks.. And Mount Olympus and its peaks, which are the background of Greek mythology surrounding this city… It feels like entering into a calendar.
The street at night was a place full of vitality and youth that you would not think of as a street in an Islamic country.
When I rode the cable car to the top of Mount Olympus (2365m), the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Aegean Sea to the east stretched out beneath my feet, with overlapping peaks and clouds. The scenery when gods look at humans, this must be the feeling.
Pamukkale has an ancient name called Hierapolis, which means the city of nobility.. The hot springs that Antonius and Cleopatra used while staying are preserved as they are, and they became famous as Roman nobles flocked to use them.
There are only two hot springs in the world where the cross section of the mountain we saw in the picture is covered with white lime. Because it is a hot spring water with a lot of lime, the lime has been accumulated for a long time in the hot spring water, and it has become a hot spring with a beautiful appearance as if snow was accumulated on the mountain. Unusually, it was impressive to see that not only the temple enshrined in the Egg region, but also several temples were together because they flocked from all over Rome.
It was also a significant place in Christianity, with Laodicea nearby and Philip’s tomb nearby.
The place where there were 7 major churches in Asia Minor, the house of Apostle John and the Virgin Mary nearby, the place where Apostle Paul was imprisoned and became the mother of the New Testament and wrote a letter. It’s the old days…
From the 5th century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D., the ruins are splendid, befitting the largest Roman city that exported olive fur, etc., from what is now called Ionia to the Greek mainland.
Unlike Pamukkale, the ruins are densely packed, so it was nice to see it in detail. It has been preserved and restored so perfectly that you can imagine it being filled with people 2500 years ago while walking there. Odeon, the place of social gatherings for nobles… The baths and toilets of ancient Rome, the famous Library of Celsus, which is said to be the highest peak of Roman restoration architecture, the amphitheater that can accommodate 25,000 people, and all of them, you can realize why Ephesus is famous for its beautiful appearance that cannot be thought of as a building built at that time. As I walked around listening to the guide’s detailed explanation, I was mistaken as if I were a Roman…
Istanbul, the last city on our itinerary, was called Constantinople as the famous millennium capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. . It’s a place that you can’t see all of them even if you visit for a week or even a month, but I was busy to visit as many places as possible for two days…
There are masterpieces of the time that I want to know in detail, such as the Sophia Cathedral (currently a Muslim mosque), a great Christian heritage completed in 537, the beautiful Blue Mosque completed in 1609, and the Ottoman palace Topkapi and Dolma Bahce Palace. We had the amazing experience of going back and forth between the two continents on a cruise ship through the Bosphorus Strait, the size of the Han River, which is halfway between Europe and Europe.
While traveling, I felt the greatness of nature, the greatness of history, the greatness of religion, and the greatness of culture evenly, making me think of many things. Is there another country that gives the feeling of colorful people..?? How will you feel when you come back to Turkey? It was the kind of place where you can feel the different feeling that remains the same as when you first came to Celleim.
I parted ways with the guide teacher as well, promising to meet again, but I think we will meet again soon. No.. It was an enchanting experience for 8 nights and 9 days with the assurance that Cappadocia and Sophia Cathedral would be welcomed…