Ortahisar

 These are Greek design. The family is Turkish Muslim. How did this happen? I'll write more about the Greek-Turkish population exchange later.

 What's going on? Where are we going? What are we seeing? The excitement never ceases, one strange moment after another. We were supposed to go to a house church in Ortahisar. A Turkish family has a church in their home, their house was locked tight and padlocked, the family was out. No one's supposed to know that you have a church in your house. The Turkish government will confiscate all property with churches. So not even your neighbor knows because they might rat you out. Our guide has been snooping all over Cappadocia for almost 9 years so all the locals knows he is a church man. We were a little disappointed but wait..... the neighbors are waving us down. Our guide goes over to them, they tell him they have a church in the back of their house and you can Bernd's back as he leads us inside the dark passage.

Bernd wasn't convinced that it is a church but there is this huge room there, there's a balcony area, there are niches in the walls and traces of paint. I think it's probably a family room, used maybe for services, feasts days probably Christian feasts days and celebration. It's probably not a church in the true sense of the word. The Turkish owner asked us for money so Bernd told me to give her 20 TL. Whatever it was, it was very interesting. Bernd said the other church is better, the one we didn't get to see. Guess what, I want a do over... I'm going back next year to see it. I'm not supposed to reveal where any of the churches are. I don't even know if I should have revealed the location, it's Ortahisar but where in Ortahisar, I don't know. Our guide's specialty is the unknown churches, the ones that are not on the usual tour circuit.