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Monday, 26 November 2012

Ankara


We arrived at Ziyas flat just five minutes before he came back home from work himself. He is our host for the time of our stay in Ankara together with Sinan. They are as different as they could be. Ziya has lived togehter with people from all over the world and travelling aswell reflecting a lot about differences and his position in their and Sinan more turkish as I could image. Still both adressed as with a lot of hospitality and respect showing us their thoughts. They are both very educated and willing to share their knowledge about culture and politics and as our visas will take long we have a lot of time to experience and learn about Turkey. Two days after we arrived also Anne suddenly showed up, coming from Istanbul by bus to catch up with us.
Together we visited the big mosque during prayer. The same feelings as in the Blue Mosque rose in me and I felt the need to put them in words. İ really prefer the atmosphere compared to cathedrals. Both beeing monumental buildings the size and atmosphere inside the mosque is not intimidating and depressing but freeing and raising the spirits. Its the mixture of a lot of white space on the walls and ceiling only the colours red and blue for scripts and mandalas - no pictures - on the walls and the whole floor covered with carpet also only in the colours red and blue. The missing of chairs of benches opens the complete room even more and makes it one unseperated unit as there is almost nothing small in it making it look big. But everything is big with simple round shapes, without unnecessary details destroying the flowing lines and enlightened by soft and warm lights which reach their aim by pure size. Therefore the room does not give you any  input of religion and time and could stand in a lot of contexts. As it was not the big prayer the mosque was quite empty and still the men essembled in the front shoulder to shoulder which showed us that they are not forced but want to be gathered as brothers and I could feel part of their spiritual expierience in that moment even as I am not religious at all. The missing of benches makes them arrange without obviously forced structure and they seem even closer. I am grateful to been part of this event and nobody complained about us watching without joining. Instead they welcomed us openly.
Very big appears to me the difference between the Koran, which is even more violence and fear based than the bible and the results the people and their culture take out from it at least in this part of the world.

We also visited the old town center which lies on a rocky hill in the middle of this four million people inhabiting city. It looks like a small mountain town which got placed there by accident through some magical port. Gravelroads only as wide as three persons and houses out of another time. All of it is surrounded by the old citywall and over it throwns the old castle. A different old and quiet world in the middle of a lake of houses, traffic and noise.Still it is not a touristic place at all and therefore still inhabits its original character.

One night Sanin took us along to a club. Apart from Gangnamstyle which seems to be famous here aswell they played electro remixes of turkish folk music. Older people join with the younger ones and everybody danced and sang together. What impressed me more was arriving at a club at one in the morning and seeing not a single person under bad influence of alcohol. All of them still have the ability of letting go and having fun without drinking at all and just enjoy two or three beers.













It is a shame how little we know and how much prejustice we have about these people and their culture which could be so enriching and helping for our western society. As there are problems and bad people everywhere I only met good ones along my way. These days ensure me, that we are as brainwashed by media and politics as we accuse them to be.

Istanbul to Ankara


After more than one week the three of us finally managed to leave Istanbul. After days of relaxing most of the time and visiting we also managed to apply for the iranian visa on the last morning. Anne stayed in Istanbul as she had a lot of stuff to take care of. It was sad to leave the nice flat and our very friendly hosts Fuad, Murrat and Gurkan behind as they made our stay so enjoyable. Because we still remembered entering Istanbul we agreed on leaving the city by bus and succeeded to avoid most of the traffic by doing so. Shortly behind Izmit we set up camp for our first night back in more or less nature. The next day we entered the mountains and during lunch time, buying bread turned first into getting invited for tea in the bakery than eating there and in the end helping the people unloading crates of Aiwa and than staying for the night. The decission to take the road through the mountains turned out to take more energy than what googlemaps told us, but it was totally worth it. The way lead mostly on small roads through a very rural area with nice towns in bizarre landscape. It ranged from forest over grassland to completely desserted areas on all variaties of bedrock. People were always very friendly helping us with finding the way, buying food on the marked and also the military police who woke us up in the morning just wanted to check if everything is ok and warned us of bears, wolfs and wild pigs as big as cars. The closer we came to Ankara more and more fields ranged along the street with a lot of fruits and vegetables left on them, because it was a very good year for aggriculture as one farmer ensured us. After a long climb up the last pass, empowered by a lot of hazelnut cream and the rest of our 1kg package of Halva we could enjoy riding all the way down to Ankara.












Wednesday, 14 November 2012

Turkey until Istanbul




After travelling for 3 weeks and riding almost 3000 km I arrived in Istanbul at the 10th of November. Despite I ate as much as I could along the way I lost five to eight kilos as it was mostly cold and I did a lot of riding. Now that the winter lies mostly behind me it is time to slow down and enjoy even more.
After setting up my camp a last time in the Turkish mountains there were 200 km left to ride to Istanbul and I planned to do this within two days. After 50 km however I met Anne Ben and Marco riding the same direction by bike and we decided to do the trip together. Anne started riding in Berlin seven weeks ago Ben and Marco in the UK three and a half months ago. At that point of time we planned to go seperate ways again after Istanbul so after one day riding together Anne and me speeded up to reach Istanbul in the evening of the 10th while Ben and Marco wanted to go slower and go into town the next day. Riding into Istanbul by bike was on of the most frightening parts of my trip as it got late and we rode along a five lane highway in the dark and Turkish people are not exactly driving slow. When we finally reached the center we payed a visit to the Blue Mosque before we checked into a hotel with few over the city. Thanks to Annes charmes it was quite affordable. My first shower in two weeks than some beer good night sleep and breakfast buffet and i felt like in heaven. Next day we met again with Ben and Marco and succeded to get couchsurfing places for everyone. Till then I am staying with Ben and Marco on the already Asian side of Istanbul with really friendly hosts as Anne ist with an other host on the European side. We spend the days visiting and enjoying all the culture in this impressive town and organise our further trip. Ben and Marco wanted to go to India aswell so we will group up. Anne did not plan that far but really wants to come along. As soon as shes finished organising her life in Germany she will hopefully also come along.

The planned route is to go to Ankara and pick up Visas for Iran. Than cross the mountains to Adana und travelling along the coast east passing Syria. After that we will ride south through the kurdish part of Iraq into Iran. As it ist impossible to get Visas for Pakistan we are forced to take a ship from Bandar e Abbas either over Dubai or directly to India. I am glad not to be alone on the upcoming passage which is a small ridge between winter in the mountains dessert PKK Syria and the southern part of Iraq.

East Europe

As I have to start a new blog, this is a wrapup of the last weeks on my way to Turkey. Hopefully the future will bring more but shorter entries. It seems like long gone now but I fınally started rıdıng from Radolfzell at the 21th of October wıth the plan of reaching Istanbul within three weeks in oder to avoid the upcomming winter. The planned route was to ride along the Donau almost all the way to the Black Sea and than facing south through Bulgaria. Till Budapest it was a really nice ride along the constantly growing Donau with quite moderate wheater. At the time the winter caught me, I was riding with Heinz, an elderly man from the Black Forest, who wanted to cycle to Budapest aswell. We shared rooms to get through the nights and the worst was gone after two days.
After Budapest the Donau fınally takes a big turn right going south. With sunshine and beautiful landscapes I enjoyed the way through Serbia into Romania. At this point I must have crossed a certain distance to make it a long distance travel. All people were amazingly friendly and hospitable, cheering along the street and inviting me for beers or food or even staying for the night.
In Russe I met Rostislav, who works as a mechanic on cargo ships. At that point I was already riding breakless for almost a week, because I could not find the needed spare parts. So he made it his job to find me those here and now as he did not have that much to do anyways till the next ship leaves. After five bikesstores he realized aswell we would not find them new. In the end he found a spezialist for car breaks who clued break covering for cars on the old medium for free.















That really saved me in the upcomming mountains that I had to cross on my way through Bulgaria. To avoid the higher mountains and most traffic I chose the more eastern route passing shumen and Burgas and was rewarded with beautiful mountain landscape and a completly new road without cars almost all the way from Shumen to the Turkish border. Despite from one dog biting me in the last ascent in the mountains it was a wonderfull trip without any bad expirience. Only friendly people mostly good weather and astonishingly beautiful landscape.

Wednesday, 29 August 2012

Heading east

The next step will be reaching the Danube around the area of Sigmaringen and then follow it all the way to Rumania and Bulgaria before turning off south east to head towards Istanbul where we plan to cross the Bosporus leaving a geographically define Europe behind.

Roughly estimated distance down to Istanbul: 2748 km according to google maps, will probably end up being more than 3000 km

Stuttgart to Istanbul estimated route

lets see how it goes

The Route from Münster to Stuttgart


Trip from Münster to Koblenz from Thursday 16th of August to Wednesday 22nd of August
with 1 day break in Cologne where we visited Rapido workshop and did a special guided night ride around the city



Field trip to Hohensonne, Luxembourg, Tier and the Mosel Valey by car:



Trip from Koblenz to Stuttgart along the Rhine and then along the Neckar, started on Saturday 25th of August at around 8pm, arrived in Stuttgart on Tuesday 28th of August at midnight

Koblenz to Stuttgart



Adding up all the legs of our journey we get to 1313km cycled so far which does not include unintended detours and extra kilometers done that googlemaps cannot calculate due to inaccuracies


some random stuff:

Kilometer average 47km a day including break days

Kilometer average of 69km a day cycling days only

However some days we manage to do more than 100 a day

until now, no money spent for accomodation, sleeping in a tent or just in our sleeping bags in parks, vineyards, forests and river banks works perfectly fine

People are mostly  very helpful indicating us the way and possible camping hide outs, providing us with tap water and nibbles as well as at times ice cream, pizza, dinner and breakfast

These encounters enlighten our voyage and make sure that we never get into a monotonous routine.

Friday, 10 August 2012

Our way until now

Our route so far:

On the continent 6th of August to 10th of August

Route from Ijmeden to Muenster

Route in Scotland: 29th of July to 5th of August, on 1st of August day break in Edinburgh and on 5th of August day break in Tynemouth, waiting for the Ferry

Route from Aberdeen to Tynemouth

Now we will have a few days break in Muenster, next stop will be Stuttgart.