{"id":4491,"date":"2012-03-06T16:04:02","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T14:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/?p=4491"},"modified":"2024-03-08T15:32:31","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T15:32:31","slug":"real-life-versus-holidaying-2549","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/real-life-versus-holidaying-2549\/","title":{"rendered":"Real life versus holidaying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u201cEverywhere\u2019s white. Lovely.\u201d So came a text message from an \u0130stanbullu friend who\u2019d just arrived in Cappadocia for a long weekend at a time when the snow had been falling steadily for several days.<\/h2>\n

Hmm. That\u2019s not quite what I\u2019d thought when I\u2019d opened my doors a few days before and found my courtyard knee-deep in snow. This was a first for me. In the 13 winters I\u2019ve passed here, the snow has sometimes reached as high as the top of my boots, but knee-deep? This was new, and for a brief moment I wondered how I was going to get to the gate before I realized that I could push a stiff brush ahead of me to carve out a path to the shed with the shovel in it.<\/p>\n

Just goes to show, though, that one woman\u2019s nightmare climatic conditions are another woman\u2019s holiday dream come true. And I can certainly relate to that after a week spent in Turkey\u2019s frozen northeast in search of snow wrestlers and sleighs on ice, while all around me roads were closing faster than the snow could fall, and hoteliers were slumping into cold-induced gloom. As the sleigh clattered out on the ice, I had a silly grin all over my face, and as we stood in the snow to sing the national anthem at the snow wrestling, I felt myself as happy as a sandboy (or should that be snowboy?). Against all the odds, mission accomplished. It was a great feeling.<\/p>\n

But I doubt many of the residents of Kars, \u015eav\u015fat or Ardahan felt as I did then, any more than I was able to share in my friend\u2019s glee over the snow in G\u00f6reme. There they were, teetering in slow motion over the ice-encrusted pavements, just as I now had to do in Nev\u015fehir to get the shopping done. No, I can\u2019t come to Avanos, I texted back. Don\u2019t want to risk any broken bones.<\/p>\n

Later, I rang my friend Ali. \u201cWas this how it was in your childhood?\u201d I asked him since neighbors had often indicated with a chopping motion across their knees that the snow had been much deeper in the past. Then, I\u2019d assumed they were indulging in a bit of artistic license, but his answer was emphatic: \u201cOf course. Now you\u2019re experiencing the real Cappadocian winter.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy grandfather\u2019s sister used to walk about in eight layers of clothes in winter. She was quite thin really, but she looked enormous,\u201d another friend told me. On the dolmu\u015f to Nev\u015fehir, what struck me most forcefully was how few of the older village women own a proper winter coat. Instead, they merely pile on another cardigan and, perhaps, a brown plaid shawl and a white overscarf before stepping out to brave the elements.<\/p>\n

How they can bear it, I don\u2019t know. Me, I\u2019ve been favoring the Michelin-woman layered look for weeks now. Never has the thermal vest\/thermal long johns combo looked as appealing as it has this year. And thank heavens for my Cotton Traders, a pair of half-rubber\/half-suede boots lined with sheepskin that a friend sent me from England a few years ago. They\u2019re hideously ugly, but I\u2019ve been wedded to them all winter, and it\u2019ll be a few weeks yet before they\u2019re stowed away again for next year.<\/p>\n

Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in G\u00f6reme in Cappadocia.<\/p>\n

PAT YALE<\/p>\n\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Real life versus holidaying. Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in G\u00f6reme in Cappadocia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"jnews_post_split":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[7867,122,121,137,3,7],"tags":[8178,7875,7883],"class_list":["post-4491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-turkey","category-fun","category-little-escapes","category-sectoral","category-shopping","category-tourism","tag-cappadocia","tag-istanbul","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4491"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8544,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491\/revisions\/8544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turizmtatilseyahat.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}