Marching About

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 ...

We learned a new word today: deprem. It means earthquake. Apparently there was a 6.5 earthquake centered around an island close to where we are in the peninsula. We had stopped to get some phone credit and I thought some kind of tank was rumbling down the street. Suddenly everybody rushed out of every building and we ran into the street. Fortunately nothing crazy happened were we were standing. There was a dilapidated building next to us that started crumbling and developed a huge crack above the door, a motorcycle and a car were crushed under some falling roof materials but the building didn't tumble, it's just more dilapidated. As if we needed a reminder that we are literally straddling the European and Asian continents. Our goal for today was Çanakkale, which is accessible by ferry from Eceabat across the peninsula. The peninsula was apparently a hotly contested area during World War I and there are many sites of intense fighting between French, British and Turkish tro...

Sometimes you have to tailor your expectations and modify your goals. Today was a great day for biking but we suffered a couple minor setbacks. We left Tekirdağ after a köfte breakfast recommended to us by our host - she had done the meat inspection for them and said they had excellent standards. The first setback was that the maps we had created did not load properly onto the GPS. I had part of it memorized but was unsure about the end and we may have taken a longer route with more hills. That brings me to the second setback, mountains. We climbed about 1700 meters (1.1 miles).We had spectacular views from the top. It was just the time to get there was longer than on flat roads. Mylene climbing a brutal hill. Lastly, we experienced quite a downpour, which turned into a nice experience, but a delay as well. We have rain gear but this was a deluge with enormous thunder and lightning right overhead. I stopped under a tree to put on a rain jacket and a man signaled me to put my bi...

2 jours de vélo derrière nous, et premiers magnifiques paysages. Ce fut difficile de sortir d'Istanbul, mais une fois la ville et sa banlieue derrière nous, nous découvrons de nombreux villages de pêcheurs ! Beaucoup de montagnes aussi, hier, nous avons grimpé plus de 1200 m de dénivelé en une journée et avons essuyé un orage, nous nous sommes abrités chez un retraité qui travaillait dans son jardin et nous a offert le thé. Résultat : tous les deux claqués, nous nous sommes arrêtés avant notre destination prévue, avant la tombée de la nuit, dans un hôtel-camping improbable où nous étions les seuls clients, exceptés deux tentes. Nos rudiments de turc ont déjà bien servis... En photo: - Andrew montant visiter une cabane de pêcheurs - Notre hôtel de cette nuit

Our first day of biking. We set up our bikes in front of Yavuz's apartment. Unpacking them was reuniting with something familiar in an unfamiliar place. Yavuz lives near Kadıköy, a suburb on the eastern side of Istanbul. Riding from there through the city would have been as dangerous as it would have been time consuming. We biked to the ferry - which was only 13km but took an hour. We then took a boat to Bakırköy and rode west. Although the first 30 km were still some pretty intense city riding along the side of the road, once we left the metropolitan area we had it all to ourselves, with the sea peering at us every time we climbed a hill. We finished the day with 140km. I also got to use some Turkish - our rather all of it each time, just to exhaust my vocabulary. People were interested in the bikes and often asked whenever we stopped where we are from and where we are going. It doesn't matter to them that we don't really speak Turkish, they'll still talk at us - m...

Merhaba! It's been a while since the last bike tour, but my legs have still been going the entire year. In fact, in preparation for this trip Mylène and I participated in a bike race around Berlin (granted it was not with loaded packs). As Mylene wrote in a previous post, we have both been casually learning Turkish for the past couple of months and trying it out in our neighborhood I'm Berlin, which had a very large Turkish population. We packed our bikes up and checked them along with our paniers in the plane. We arrived early and our couchsurfer was at work, so we found a place in the city center to leave our bike boxes while we went around for the day. We decided against mounting them at the airport and riding into town, which would turn out to be the correct decision. Traffic in Istanbul is horrendous, and probably fairly unsafe for anyone, including bikes. The first day we spent gawking at the activity around the center of the city. Crossing the Gattala bridg...

Bien arrivés à Istanbul, et nous sommes prêts à démarrer les aventures! En quelques heures d'avion, nous sommes passés dans un autre monde: le beau temps, les rues étroites pentues, et  les appels du muezzin en fond sonore! En image ci-dessous: -Pêcheurs sur le pont Galata -Mosquée Suleymaniye, extérieur et Mylène à l'intérieur -Intérieur deHagia Sophia, église chrétienne transformée en mosquée - Un stand de thé -Andrew dans le ferry Demain nous sommes prêts pour démarrer les aventures et commencer le voyage en vélo !

ha ha, Sommer und Urlaub nähern sich langsam, wir bereiten unsere nächste Reise vor !!! Und zwar: es geht nach Istanbul ! Genauer gesagt, von Istanbul nach Antalya, an der Küste entlang. Erste Etappe: die Sprache ! Wie wollen mit den Leuten dort in Kontakt kommen, also, los ! Vor einigen Monaten haben wir einen Kurs an der Volkshochschule besucht. Seitdem, sind wir in unserem Viertel sozusagen berühmt geworden, da wir beim Bäcker gegenüber und im türkischen Supermarkt auf Türkisch bestellen: "Bu ne kadar? " = was kostet das ? Für die Integration in Kreuzberg also, ist ein Türkisch Sprachkurs ein guter Schritt. Wir hoffen, dass wir auch so weit in der Türkei kommen ! Vorgeschmack: "ich habe Hunger": açım "ich habe Durst": suşuyorum "Wo sind die Toilette?" : Tuvalet nerede ?"Moschee" = cami (ich habe gelesen, dass es in den Moscheen immer frisches Wasser gibt ).

L´anniversaire d´Andrew approchant, nous avons voulu faire provision de quelques bonnes bouteilles de vodka polonaise, il faut bien profiter de notre situation géographique ! Ravis en Pinorad ! Et quoi de plus simple, que d´y aller en vélo ! Et pas n´importe quel vélo: nous avons loué un tandem Pinorad, qui nous a permis de parcourir les 200 km de la route (aller-retour) entre Berlin et la Pologne sans encombre !