Morjes!

Welcome to my blog. I write about fitting in, sticking out, and missing the motherland as a serial foreigner.

Hotel downs and ups

We had a little hiccup in our hotel plans here in Göreme. We spent one night at the place we had reserved ahead of time during this busy tourist season, and it was awful. The room was clean enough, but it was extremely cramped. The hotel was really just a huge house converted into separate rooms and it was brimming with guests, most of whom were childless, carefree backpackers content to sit up late and chat in the lobby while getting slightly drunk. The problem was, our room was located almost directly off said lobby - there was the lobby, and there was a door, and there was us. It got really old right about, oh, the time we wanted to go to bed. The other side of our room opened up through screenless windows (that we wanted to remain open due to the heat) to a communal courtyard where still more people were chatting. When Jeremy went out to complain to the hotel owner, he asked the drunk people to be quiet. Guess where they relocated to? The courtyard RIGHT OUTSIDE OUR WINDOW. It was almost comical when Jeremy stuck his head out the window at 11 o'clock at night to tell them to be quiet, six inches from their faces.



Then there was the matter of someone banging a drum outside our window at 2am (? - I seriously have no idea what was up with that), but what really got me was that they didn't give us enough pillows. The room had two in it when we arrived (in case you're not keeping track, there are four of us). I went out to ask for two more. The owner looked at me and shrugged, "Oh yeah, pillows. We ran out of those." I gave him an incredulous look and explained again that there were four of us in the room, but only two pillows. Then I added that there were three beds in the room, in case he thought I was shamelessly trying to freeload one extra, undeserved pillow off of him. Could we at least have one more pillow, to match the number of beds we had paid for?

He told me again that they didn't have any more pillows, because the hotel was full. Well, ok then! The general vibe he was giving off was, "I do not care." Later on, when Jeremy went out to complain about the noise again, ask for a fan so we could close the windows and block out some of the lobby noise, and ask for pillows again, the owner apologized half-heartedly but we never did end up getting more pillows.

We held a Jeremy/Bridget conference in the morning after that terrible night of sleep and decided that we didn't come all the way to Cappadocia to shift along in a tiny room each sharing a pillow with a kid, so we regrouped and changed hotels. It wasn't easy, because this is the high season and the first six places I called were full. But we finally found a place and while it is more expensive, their attitude could not be further from the "I do not care" of the first place. The new hotel let us check in at 10.30 in the morning, and even picked us up and brought us there. They fed us fresh fruit and drinks on their rooftop terrace right after we arrived. The room they gave us is gorgeous and far away from any courtyards or lobbies where drunk people might choose to congregate. Even more meaningfully, this new hotel seems to be staffed with an army of well mannered young Turkish men whose sole job is to make sure we have a great stay in Göreme. They are constantly offering to drive us places (for free!) and giving us any information we need.

Anyway, I'm so glad we switched hotels. Having a comfortable place to rest at night really makes the days that much more enjoyable.

August 12th, outsourced

A Turkish Bath...with children