Cappadocia is great place! Impressive!

We were staying at a host in [?rg?p] and he had two other German girls as surfers, his girlfriend and another friend of hers over. We had a great evening and a lot of beers (an other alcohol).
So after some time that friends of our hosts girlfriend told us he could take two persons for a free balloon-flight. Because we were the one coming first we were the chosen ones. But we would have to come to a hotel (he would pay too), because [?rg?p] was too far from that place and the flight would go at 5 AM so we would have to get up at 4:30.

And the next day we really got a free balloon flight (which is usually about 150 US-$). It's an awesome feeling - like hovering. It is so smooth! And of course seeing the great landscape of Cappadocia in winter in the birds-eye perspective was awesome.

One more day exploring the underground cities with the German girls. These caves are most remarkable. "[...]largely used by early Christians as hiding places before Christianity became an accepted religion. The underground cities have vast defence networks of traps throughout their many levels. These traps are very creative, including such devices as large round stones to block doors and holes in the ceiling through which the defenders may drop spears. These defense systems were mainly used against the Romans. The tunnel system also was made to have thin corridors for the Roman fighting strategy was to move in groups which was not possible to do in the thin corridors making it easy to pick them off." (Wikipedia) They go down up to 11 level or so and up to a 5000 people lived there for sometimes a few months. Only a few small fraction is open to the public.

Returning to Ankara - Hopefully get my visa and the train to Tehran.





Here are some pics. Click on them to enlarge. Use the arrows on the right and left to navigate.