When I left Göreme six weeks ago, we were only just emerging from winter. It was still cold, and it was also soggy and wet. We were still struggling about swathed in thick sweaters and sturdy shoes, so it's delightful to come back here and be able to walk around in lighter clothing and sandals (in between the May showers, of course). Then there's the color of the landscape. When I left, it was still basically beige with just the faintest tinge of green hinting at what was to come. Now, however, everywhere is the brightest of emeralds, the upside to all that heavy winter rainfall.But that's not all that's happened in the last six weeks. When I left, the dust was still settling on the election results and the change of party in charge of our local belediye (municipality). Not knowing our new mayor, I had no idea what to expect, but it was mildly disappointing to walk into the center and see that in my absence several trees had been cut down and hedges dug up to provide greater visibility for local businesses. The grass had also been dredged out of our rainwater channel, an idea that must have sounded great on paper, although the end result has been to leave it full of mud liberally sprinkled with litter.
I had also received a letter explaining new changes to the refuse-collecting arrangements. No more should we dump our rubbish in the bins as and when the mood took us. Instead we should get ourselves organized and put it out between nine and 10 o'clock in the evening so that the garbage truck could come round to collect it before midnight. In high summer, the letter pointed out, the rubbish bins all too quickly turned into foul-smelling, tourist-repulsing messes. A good point, although personally I doubt these arrangements will last any longer than the ones that briefly insisted that every shop along İstiklal Caddesi in İstanbul should display its name in gold lettering on a brown background (remember that, anyone?).
Near my house, work has continued on one minuscule and one mammoth building project. One is being built with old stones that ensure it blends in with its neighbors; the other, unfortunately, is not, a piece of penny-pinching on the part of its owners that is, frankly, infuriating.
The landscape has changed, then, and so has some of the scenery. The gorgeous frescoed Mehmet Paşa Konağı has probably changed hands, although there seems to be some uncertainty about this, and the best known of our many balloon companies is also about to undergo a change of ownership, passing into the care of the Dorak Tour company, which has also bought one of the largest of the local hotels. Are these changes for the better or worse? Let's wait and see, shall we?
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
