Marching About

We made it! I'll be able to post the cycling statistics later, for now we have just a couple days in Antalya before heading back to Berlin. We met up with our couchsurfer, Hasan, who lives not too far away from the center. He was quite tired the first night after having worked on Sunday tutoring high school students in Turkish grammar. We went off to find some dinner but got sidetracked by a barber, who was open at 9pm on a Sunday. As it turns out, we were quite early, as the place was full with people waiting in line when we left at 10:00. I like getting haircuts in other countries where I only barely have a grasp of what's going on (I've done this in Israel and Estonia as well). The haircut was good, and he offered to style it for me. It was a bit short in the sides and longer on top and I thought he was asking if I wanted it shorter on top. He was actually asking if I wanted it styled and wrote "dikmek şekil" into the translator on my phone. This transla...

I'll sort some pictures and put them on a consolidated map in a few days. But here are some quick stats from the tour: Total Distance : 1,460km (907 miles) Longest Ride : 139 km (Istanbul to Tekirdag) Average Speed : 20.4km/h Max Speed : 62km/h (what goes up definitely comes down) Total hills climbed : 19,253m (63,166 ft) - in comparison, the ride from Berlin to Helsinki was 400km longer with a total of 13,482m climbed, but only 0.4km/h higher avg speed. Making progress! Most hills in one day : 2,407m (Kaş to Çıralı) Total pedal strokes : 248,794 Total time in the saddle : 73.9 hours (13.3% of the entire time spent in Turkey) Estimated water consumption : 85 L (22 gal) Estimated şeftali suyu (peach juice) consumption : >20 L (5 gal) Number of çays drunk : 98 (for me, this translates to about 196 sugar cubes)

There were two mountains in between Kaş and Çıralı - this was the hilliest day of the tour. But at least I was treated to some nice panoramic views. Kaş from above The ancient Greeks got here before us, and even left some ruins near the beach. I was able to cross riding through an ancient Greek city by bike off my bucket list. Also at Cıralı is the site of the Greek myth of the Chimera, a fire-breathing beast who terrorized the lands in Lycia and was defeated by Belerophon with the help of Pegasus, then imprisoned below the mountain, known as Yanartaş. The myth came about because the mountain is literally and permanently on fire due to natural gas leaking from below the surface. There aren't any huge flames; some are about the size of a campfire, in fact some people brought some skewers and grilled some food. I think it's just more surprising to see flames coming out of the ground. It started to rain while we were there, but the fire kept burning. Fire from the mounta...

En Turquie, traditionnellement, les coiffeurs pour hommes et pour femmes sont séparés, et sont spécialisés. Le mot français "kuaför" est utilisé pour les femmes, et "berber" (barbier) pour les hommes. Après 3 semaines de vélo, de chaleur et de camping, il fallait bien se rendre présentable. Surtout, il faut tester les coutumes locales ! Ma coupe fut très réussie, aussi parce que je pouvais montrer ce que je voulais et ensuite faire confiance. Andrew, quant à lui, a vécu un moment assez drôle, étant crispé lorsqu'il confie sa tête à quelqu'un d'autre ! Les difficultés de communication ont renforcé le comique de la situation. Nous nous sommes tous les deux fait épiler les joues à la cire, et brûler les poils des oreilles. Comme on le devine sur la photo, Andrew n'est pas très rassuré !

It was tough going from Butterfly Valley to get to Kaş, there were a couple more mountains to climb and, according to locals, very unusually strong winds, unfortunately they were not blowing in my direction. Every time I tried to stand up and push, I was knocked back into my seat. We were delayed leaving Butterfly Valley for the same reason; we couldn't risk climbing the cliffs with such high winds, even the shuttle boats to Ölüdeniz weren't running. A perfect place for an Agatha Christie mystery. Consequently, I wasn't able to do the 120 km ride to Kaş in one go, we stopped in Eşen for the night, a very rural village on the way to Kaş, we figured we could stay in a hotel there. Nope, no hotels. We asked the restaurant owner and we couldn't understand a word he said - he had a mousey voice and spoke exceedingly fast. He brought us to the roof of his house motioned for us to set up the tent. It wasn't too bad until about 4 in the morning when I heard a loud clap of...

Nous avons quelques nuits de camping sur la plage derrière nous: soit nous nous arrêtons dans un camping officiel, ou bien nous demandons au restaurant-hôtel au bord de la plage, qui n'a pas beaucoup de clients car la saison touristique pour les Turcs commence véritablement en juillet, si nous pouvons monter notre tente pour la nuit. Quoiqu'il en soit, les réveils au bord de plage sont à chaque fois très différents: Il y a quelques jours, nous pensions être tranquilles sur un bout de plage, tout isolés. Dès quatre heures du matin, cependant, des bruits de moteur nous réveillent. Nous n'étions pas très loin du port de pêche, et tous les petits bateaux commencent leur journée très tôt ! Lorsque nous nous sommes levés, vers huit heures du matin, ils étaient déjà de retour. Pendant qu'Andrew commençait sa journée à pédales, je prenais un thé au bistro avec les pêcheurs finissant leur journée de travail. Deuxième réveil mémorable sur cette plage de rêve, en bas de la...

C'est la saison des récoltes ici, et nous remarquons beaucoup d'arbres fruitiers différents. Cerises, pêches, abricots, olives... Nous traversons de nombreux vergers et renforçons nos connaissances en arboriculture. Les paysans vendent leurs fruits directement devant les vergers, au bord de la route. Au cours d'une courte pause en vélo, le paysan nous montre ses vergers et je suis toute fière de sortir mon turc: "zeytin mi?" (ce sont des oliviers?). Et lui de me regarder comme si je venais de Mars : "Hayır, şeftali" (non, ce sont des pêchers). Je ne sais pas comment j'ai fait pour confondre les pêches et les olives, pourtant, les pêchers poussent aussi en Alsace... En tout cas, nous reconnaissons ces fruits au goût, car nous absorbons littéralement des litres de jus de fruits par jour. Les premiers jours, j'ai fait l'erreur de demander un classique "jus de pomme", c'est trop exotique ici. Nous nous rabattons donc sur le ju...

Je tiens à préciser ici que j'ai fait beaucoup de progrès dans mes rencontres avec les nombreux chiens errants ici en Turquie. Ils sont nombreux et nous les croisons dans les villes ou sur les chemins. Pour la plupart, ils ne sont pas du tout agressifs mais se baladent nonchalamment. Certains nous courent après en aboyant en vélo, mais je comprends petit à petit que c'est comme un jeu pour eux. Enfin, il y a l'adrénaline: plusieurs chiens qui arrivent vers moi en dévalant une pente et qui aboient vers mon vélo. J'étais en train de peiner pour monter une colline, et je crois bien que je n'ai jamais été aussi vite en montée ! Je ne m'en suis pas encore remise, et un certain compagnon de vélo se tord encore le ventre de rire chaque fois qu'il y pense. Eux aussi, ils voulaient juste "jouer"? Non merci !

It was a short riding day, but very eventful. We had read online about an abandoned "Ghost Town" near Fethiye. It was on the other side of a mountain and, despite being only 10km away, we felt suddenly thrust into a very rural Turkey. The Ghost Town of Kaya Köy The town was built in a medieval style and used to be home to many Greeks and Turks. But during the first world war and the overthrow of the Ottoman empire, many men left to fight in the war. Then after the war, there was an accord that forced out all of the Greeks, the town was already in decline and rumors began circulating that the departing Greeks had poisoned the cisterns. Furthermore, the city was further damaged in an earthquake (a recurring theme), leading to its total abandonment. It was overcast, adding to the ambiance. The houses were stone outlines of what used to be there. After further decay, farmers were allowed to take the remaining wood from the structures. What remains of Kaya Köy now is a v...

I made a brief road friend today at about the half way point, an Austrian biking solo to New Zealand. He was fully loaded down with four large packs and a handlebar bag, and was planning on biking across the Iranian desert in August. I'm happy with my reduced setup of two large paniers in the back, I've refined my packing list since my first couple of trips and feel like I have everything I would need for both short and long trips. With all of his weight, we didn't ride together for very long. Fethiye is kind of like the Ft. Lauderdale of Turkey. English people and Turkish people alike come to retire near the beach. Our couchsurfing host was one such retiree who was nice enough to open his home to us. He didn't speak English very well but we hung out in town before heading back to the beach side where his apartment was. With our host, Hasan, in Fethiye. Ok but full disclosure, it could have fine smoother. It was hard to convince him or get him to understand that...

Started off the day with some massive hills, 2500 feet in the first 10 miles. But the mountain air was cool and refreshing. But in the end I think I ended with 1500m total making it only the second most hilly day. The descent into Akyaka was spectacular though, descending from about 600m (about 2000ft) to sea level in less than 10km (6 miles). View during the descent. Akyaka is a village best known for its wind surfing conditions. Unfortunately, the couchsurfer we had originally planned to stay with was out of town so we scoped out a spot on the beach to put our tent. We took a nap before going to get some dinner. We also got to see some live traditional Turkish music with a kind of sitar (not sure of the name) at one of the restaurants in town. Other than that it was low key compared to the night before. We slept well next to the sea. The pier that led to the beach where we camped.

I was lucky today, the sun stayed behind some clouds most of the day, and I had a wicked tail wind. At one point, after crossing some mountains into a valley I cruised through the center, a 20 mile road as straight as one of the US interstates that passes through Arizona. Except I was surrounded by mountains on all sides. While looking for the meeting point where I was supposed to meet Mylène I made a wrong turn and heard some traditional Turkish music coming from behind a house. There were two zunas and a drummer. The zuna is a type of high pitched Turkish double reed instrument (I think also commonly associated with snake charming). There were a ton of people eating in a corridor behind the house and I just stood there gawking at the music and at the very lively scene. A man beckoned me to sit down and have something to eat. I went off quickly to get Mylène and bring her back. It turned out to be a prelude to a wedding. Apparently there are several preludes starting with each fam...

Mylène isn't feeling up to biking anymore, but decided to compromise by renting a car. I'm continuing on as usual but we'll meet up at the destination each day. After leaving İzmir I rode to Efes (Ephesus), another ancient city with extensive ruins. It is much more expansive than Troy and also better preserved / restored. We managed to get the amphitheater all to ourselves. Greek column weight lifting We couldn't find any couchsurfers in Kuşadası so we found a campground where we set up our tent. We found it on arrival to be a very resort type town with a lot of shopping and only tourist traps in the center. The boardwalk is long and very well designed, even with a couple of beaches along its length. We were treated to a nice sunset on the boardwalk. All of the merchants and restaurateurs made a big deal out of us speaking Turkish. I couldn't tell if they just wanted to sell us stuff or, as they put it, we were the first tourists they had met who knew...

J'ai une petite collection de photos de supermarchés, parce que je trouve que ce sont des endroits où les gens d'un pays passent beaucoup de temps et qui est donc un bon miroir d'une société. Evidemment, les supermarchés se ressemblent, mais dans chaque pays, il y a toujours un rayon particulier, avec un produit très typique qui se trouve décliné en plusieurs marques ou goûts: citons en exemple le rayon humus en Israël, sauces piquantes au Nouveau Mexique, USA, ou bien les produits destinés au sauna en Finlande. J'ai trouvé ma photo en Turquie: le rayon huile d'olive, "zeytin yağı" où des bidons de 10 litres de marques différentes sont exposés. Ajoutons que quelques exemplaires de ces mêmes bidons ont dejà été repérés dans notre supermarché turc de Kreuzberg...

You see it correctly, the dot above the İ in İzmir. Turkish had a few additional letters (more like dialectics) and the dotted "i" makes a big difference compared with the undotted "ı." I sped over here today without Mylène, who is recovering from some overheating in Dikili. She came a bit later, being very kindly dropped off by our couchsurfer from there (Emre). İzmir is the third largest city and sprawls quite a bit like Istanbul. The first night we met up with our host, Ufuk at a bar for a couchsurfing meeting where we met some other İzmirliler (people from İzmir). Most of the couchsurfers at the meeting were Turkish. On the second day we had an adventure simply navigating the public transport system and finding our way center from Ufuk's house. We went to Kadifekale, the ruins of the ancient İzmir Akropolis on top of a hill overlooking the city. It wasn't as much of a tourist attraction as I had expected. In fact we were the only tourists there. ...

Mylène its getting a little exhausted from the heat so we took a rest day in Dikili at the behest of our very kind host, Emre. He's a London-educated economist who worked as an investment banker in Istanbul before moving to Dikili in order to take over the family business: plastic confectionary box manufacturing. His father was a bee keeper by trade but was frustrated about not having suitable boxes to store his honeycomb, so he started the company. I had a chance to visit the factory in Bergama where they are able to custom manufacture the molds and mount them onto the injection machines where the forms are pressed and produced. Bergama is also the city where the Berlin-based museum, the Pergamom, gets its name. There is an ancient acropolis on top of the highest hill, similar to the one in Athens. However, the Germans were "gifted" most of the buildings and artifacts for safe keeping during World War I (this is actually part of an ongoing quest of the Turkish govern...

That's biking in Turkey.

We are increasing our carbon footprint by buying cold drinks. But it is really hot! Last night we camped in a great spot with our couchsurfer and a friend of his. We were the only ones there and the night was warm with no insects - we just slept in our sleeping bags near the water. We ordered a barbecue and grilled side fish and drank Rakı. In the morning we rode back to Eceabat and took the ferry to Çanakkale. It was already starting to heat up. Our plan was to break during the hottest part of the day and visit the ancient city of Troy (described by Homer in the Odyssey). It is a pretty touristy spot, which is to be expected, but also very interesting. We were a little overheated from riding in the heat so we touristed out and got and audio guide and white umbrellas to protect us from the sun (yes technically parasols). The most tourist possible photo we could muster, at least we weren't the only ones. The visit was great and the audio guide reminded us of the passages ...