Monday, November 23, 2009

Phallus-stan

There sure are a lot of "stans" in this country. No, not the South Park character (whose Christmas album I am currently listening to). I mean, stan, as in the Persian suffix for "Place of."

Everybody knows the place of Afghans, Afghanistan. The place of Uzbeks, Uzbekistan. And, the place of Absurdity, Absurdistan. But, did you know that (at least on Turkish maps) Turkey is surrounded by Bulgaristan, Yunanaistan, Gurcistan, and Ermenistan? (Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia, and Armenia!?!) I had no idea they were stans!

And, of course, this blog is nargileistan...that is, the place of Turkish water pipes, called Nargile. (Nar-guh-le)

Recently I had the opportunity to visit one of the natural treasures of Turkey, Cappadocia (Capp-uh-dough-kia). It's a pretty, Christian name, but for me, the place immediately became Phallusstan.


We took our 7th grade students here for a three day field trip to the amazing land of giant penises. Awkward can't begin to describe it. That said, this region of Turkey is really a surreal volcanic landscape with an equally interesting history. Like any place here, Cappadocia had the usual rainbow of tenants: Persians, Hittites, Lydians, Christians, Greeks, and Romans. The Christians made their mark by carving out hiding places to protect themselves from invaders. When they had nice access to a penis, they went about chiseling a house out of it: (in this case, it looks like some lucky real estate mogul went to town on a multi family penis-house-development)


And, for those unlucky Christians who lived out in the plains, away from the eh-more prominent protrusions of Cappadocia...well, they just dug into the ground!


To say that these guys liked carving rock is to understate things just a bit. Some of these vast underground cities go as deep as 300 feet, and run for miles underground, accommodating estimates of 50,000 Christians and all the wine they would need to outlast the longest of Arab raids. (and still have some leftover for Communion, unless their last name was Kennedy)

And they didn't just make housing developments. These guys were addicts. They carved custom toilets, bar stools, churches decorated with frescos, and even linseed oil factories. I wonder if they lost many fingers doing all of this hammering and chiseling?





I know, Mesa Verde all of the sudden seems kind of lame.

But, it's not all penises, Christians, and frescoes in Cappadocia. There's also amazing mountain biking, great food, Greek villages, pottery workshops, deep river gorge nature hikes, and cave-hotels to stay in.

Phallustan! Fun for the whole family!

3 comments:

  1. Penises, Christians, pottery workshops, and cave-hotels... sounds like Kentucky to me! Good stuff Bones! -Rover

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  2. teehee penistan. luv it.

    when we were there the terrain was somewhat splooged upon with white moist stuff.

    snow of course. duh.

    oh and that one pic, of the head/shaft cut in half, my caption for that is 'circumcision gone awry'.

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  3. Just noticed I got two "offensive" clicks on this....yes!

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