Pamukkale - the Cotton Castle

The Cotton Castle has nothing to do with any kingdom. It is a breathtaking natural wonder, which looks like frozen waterfalls but in reality is a white cliff covered with white minerals, left by the flowing down, hot water from an underground spring. This process has been running unstoppably for over 14000 years. Around the 2nd century BC, the ancient city of Hierapolis developed right above the cliff, making Pamukkale an ancient spa.

Ever since people discovered Pamukkale, they bathe in the natural pools, especially in the summertime. Nature didn't seem to be bothered by this fact and the terraces remained in almost untouched condition until the last century, when some modern hotels were built nearby and negatively affected the spring's natural processes.

As soon as Pamukkale was enrolled on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1988, the hotels were closed but it was already too late. A couple of years was enough to destroy a huge part of the natural masterpiece.

I've seen the cotton castle two times. For the first time, I went to Pamukkale about 10 years ago with my parents. We were asked to take off our shoes, when entering the terraces. It was very painful for me to walk barefoot there. The day was very hot, the sky was extremely blue and the terraced pools were filled with water and people. There were soooo many of those pools within eyes reach. Also, I still have on my mind, what some local Turkish people told me, that it's not as beautiful as they remember it used to be.

The second time I went there was last month. As it was late April, the temperature was bearable. I must say, that I was impressed by the new arrangements made around the entire area such as wooden paths. It surely protects those of the terraces that are left. However, the visitors are still allowed to step on them and bathe and do whatever they want in the selected areas. This time, I decided to keep my shoes on and not to participate in this act of destroyment, as I had my chance to take a few steps there before.

When I sat on one of the benches, I suddenly heard two older gentleman from Poland admiring the view few meters away from me. It sounded as if one of them was in Pamukkale in the 1960's and his impressions were just like mine from late 1990's, that there were hundreds of people bathing in the healing water.
I didn't notice when it got very late, I had to skip the ancient ruins and hurry not to miss my bus.

Paper Cherry Blossom

I've been waiting for spring so impatiently this year, that I decided to make a cherry blossom branch of crêpe paper. It was awfully time consuming but I made it!

My graduation day

Photos from my graduation day taken by Renata

Game over.

Not-so-secret garden

I finally made myself develop a film from Fujifilm waterproof single use camera which had been waiting in my fridge for almost 4 years with an expiry date Nov 2007. These were the first underwater pics I ever took so I didn't expect great results. Just to experiment. I'm happy that even though the quality turned out to be very poor, the colors are brilliant anyway. Here they are, treasures of the Red Sea's Far Garden coral reef!






In April 2007, I tried snorkelling for the first time and it was literally speaking:
B-R-E-A-T-H-T-A-K-I-N-G! Without any hesitation I can also say that it was the most beautiful experience and thing that I've ever seen.

Alternative Christmas presents

At the beginning of November, Ze Mario - a friend from Portugal, gave me an idea of participating in boardgamegeek.com Christmas presents exchange. I had some doubts at first, coz I never liked this kind of events in my early school years. However, I realized that this time the participants won't be kids but grownups.
The rules of the exchange were simple: sign up by filling the application form, choose those countries from the list that you're willing ship your gifts to and wait patiently until the 14th of November to have your target assigned.

And so I became Secret Santa of one extremely friendly guy from Illinois, USA.
Right from the beginning, I kept on sending him funny-christmassy messages without revealing who I really was. I decided to order a game from his wish list at Amazon, which was a perfect solution to make the shipping procedure easier for me. In one of the messages, he told me that he is a huge zombie fan, so I also decided to send him a very cool Polish card game about zombies together with a Christmas card. Even though he got the main package before the 6th of December, another surprise arrived from Poland just before the Christmas Eve.
Meanwhile, I didn't hear from my Santa for over one week since the exchange begun. I thought I had reasons to worry. I couldn't be more wrong! My personal Secret Santa turned out to be very generous by picking awesome presents from my wish list.

This might sound corny: I didn't expect the giving part to be as fun as it turned out to be. Giving, can not only be as fun as receiving but even better!