I put this post office visit off until almost the very last minute. Nothing against post offices, it was simply that I dreaded leaving the air conditioning and pool to go out in the 100 degree heat to do anything at all. We had comfortable weather the week we were in Istanbul, but as soon as we got to Fethiye, summer hit us in full force. We hardly left the apartment and its pool at all except for groceries or to play in the Mediterranean. Then, just as it was about to cool off in Fethiye we flew to Cappadocia, and the same day we arrived there, so did a heat wave.
We did leave the hotel pool occasionally for some pre-booked tours of the area (which Trevis will talk about), and on one of those tours I purchased a few postcards from a museum gift shop (which was air conditioned!) They sat in a stack in our hotel room until our last day in Cappadocia. I already had located a post office on the map and knew that they opened at 8:30 am, so right after breakfast Trevis and I walked a little over five minutes to the local PTT, or Posta ve Telgraf Teşkilatı (Post and Telegraph Agency). It was already scorching out, but we found it easily enough. There were only a couple of customers in line ahead of us and both of them were doing currency exchanges.
When it was my turn, I stepped up to the counter and showed the gentleman my postcards. He typed a price on his calculator and showed it to me, but when I pulled out my credit card, he shook his head and said “cash.” I asked, “ATM?” and he said “Down street, past station.” Okay. This was one of the very few times we were required to use cash in Turkiye and unfortunately most of it was sitting in our hotel room, so we went to an ATM and withdrew enough to pay for the postage.
When we returned to the post office, there was an older gentleman in line ahead of us, trying to convince the employee to do something for him. He kept shoving papers across the counter at him and showing him his phone, but wasn’t getting anywhere. After several minutes, the line was starting to grow behind me and he eventually seemed to give up. The employee waved me forward, I purchased my stamps, applied them to the cards and took them outside to drop them in the mailbox. Then we walked back to the hotel and jumped in the pool. We were melting!
Update: These postcards arrived at their recipients’ mailboxes the week of August 12 – only two weeks after I mailed them.
