Alexandroupolis, Greece > Kocaçeşme, Turkey 105km

[Originally posted Oct 7, 2014]

What a day.  What a day.

5:14am.  Pitter patter, pitter patter.  Raindrops on the rain fly of our tent.  Not my favorite sound.  It was a clear sky last night, could see the moon and the stars and so I'm not too pleased by this sudden showing of rain.

8:30am Decide I better roll out of my sleeping bag and start the drying process.  Before departing on this trip I never realized how much time Katy and I would spend focusing on water, in its many forms: the drinking kind, the warm kind you like to shower in, the bad kind that falls from the sky and makes your feet squish in between your toes, and the dew that shows up in the morning between your sleeping bag and pad, assuring that all your camping equipment needs some time for drying out.  Everything got hung up underneath the bamboo-esque umbrellas while we had our typical breakfast: muesli and yogurt (the muesli remains the same, but the yogurt is rather variable - Greece makes a yogurt that is 10% fat, and it is goooo-oood.)

2:07pm The Turkish border comes into sight.  It's a view of mixed thoughts and emotions.  The first: WOW, we made it, country #19 - our last country before we box this bicycle up and start the next lef of our journey.  Second - everything seems all peace and quiet on this border, I wonder how Turkey's other borders are doing?

Been looking forward to this moment for some time now.

2:44pm We finish tea with some German folks we met at the border and are back on our bike, heading east to Istanbul.  The wind continues to rage.  It has been an in-your-face headwind kind of day, all day, and we're pedaling hard and going slow.  But I keep telling myself, don't worry Clayton, it just means you can have an extra meal tonight, don't worry.

Windy Turkey.

Turkey.

The week's roadkill.

6:43pm We turn off the main highway, after a beautiful climb through a densely pine tree forested mountain range, and into a rather small town - Kocaçeşme.  We've heard that, although Turks have a reputation for speaking little to no English, they also have a reputation of being warm and hospitable, and we're going to put them to the test.

6:45pm At the only restaurant in town, we hit the brakes on the bumpy dusty road and come to a stop.  A friendly looking gentleman, about the same age as me, says Hello.  Hello, how are you? I respond. A simple question tests the water - does this guy actually know English? - if he responds in English, it's fair game to ask another question in English, if he just stares at you then its likely you'll have to resort to hand gestures and charades (which Katy and I are both very good at - lots of practice).  We get a blank stare.  Using the universal sign language for we are looking for somewhere to sleep (make a pillow of both hands, put next to one ear, and cock head 40 degrees to the side) we are motioned to keep going down the road.

6:59pm It's a dead end.  No where to sleep.  We ask the 3 women on the side of the road where we can sleep, they point to the nearest green patch of grass and in Turkish say "you can sleep over there if you want."  Next we move on to finding out where some food is, and we are instructed to follow an 8 year old on his bike back up the main road to the restaurant.  The kid zooms off, making sure everyone in town is aware that the two foreigners are following him.

7:02pm The restaurant is nice, and someone else is eating there (always a good sign).  As we enter, instead of being brought to a table, we're brought to the glass display case with a myriad of different fish.  Katy asks for a menu (again with the sign language - this one is done by making a book out of your hands and opening and closing the book repeatedly).  They just point to the fish.  (It was rather reminiscent of the scene in My Cousin Vinny when Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei show up at the diner for breakfast and are given a menu - it lists Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner.  They think about it for a while, and then say to each other, Breakfast?)  Dinner is delicous, although it's always a little scary ordering a meal having no idea what anything cost.

Dinner.

Turkish cafe.

7:09pm Katy comes in from getting something off the bike and says, well, we're sleeping in the garden.  Oh really? I ask, how'd you pull that off?  I was talking to a guy out there who speaks German and he said we could sleep in the garden (the garden is the European term for grassy space - which means we are camping in the front yard of the only restaurant in town, about 4 meters from the main square and 25 meters from the town mosque).  I didn't bother asking how she conversed in the German language.

8:14pm After a memorable shower (filling up a bucket from a spicket and repeatedly pouring it over you) I'm looking over our map of Europe that shows our entire route.  A moment later 3 waiters, a friend and the owner are all looking at the map - lots of cheers, looks of disbelief - they are genuinely amazed at where we've come from and continue to get more friends to come and see our map.  Then they proceed to ask to take pictures of us.  (We feel like a big deal).  Then they want to know where we are going after Istanbul, so we tell them Izmir and Antalya.  And since humor is the best way to connect with others, I then point to Syria on the map.  I get the look of disbelief, followed by the game winner in the nights' back and forth of charades: he slowly pulls a long knife from his pocket and pretends to cut the throat of the guy standing next to him.  It was an interesting moment - the first time I've seen a Muslim express their opinions on ISIS. It's apparent they view ISIS the same way we do, a cruel barbaric regime - although it seems that often times Westerners have an ability to kind of lump all of "Islam" or "Muslims" into the same category - that's definitely not the case here.

Where have we been?

11:42pm  Just about to finish writing this post and the waiter and his friend come back out to tell us good night.  This time they have a smartphone with Google Translate and so we spend half an hour writing out sentences so that we can communicate.  It's great to meet people you know nothing about, have almost nothing in common with, can barely communicate with each other, but spend so much time conversing and expressing interest in each other and their unique approach to life.

Turkey is a great place.  Can't wait to spend the next three weeks here.  Feeling very fortunate to be out on such an amazing trip.