Twelve years ago on this day I started my walk. It was the first day, it was also my birthday. I walked for a year, then I stopped. I started writing books. Walked some more. Wrote some more. Time passed. Then I started walking again. Last year, on the eleventh day, I was in Tbilisi. […]
Just after leaving the hotel, I take a photo of a flyover. Upon which I hear a whistle. Upon which a heavily armed guy in uniform tells me to prepare to be interrogated. So I sit down on my plastic chair and drink some water. It’s a hot day. After a while another uniformed man […]
It’s a little less than 30km to Tekkeköy. And then another twenty or so to Samsun. I feel tired, so I tell myself that I don’t want any adventures today. No dogs. No dancing. No getting lost on country roads. The first few hours I stay on the highway. It is loud. During lunch I […]
I wake up from the call of a rooster. After a long breakfast and some tea and a lot of hazelnuts and some more tea, I leave my hosts and get back on the road. It’s a quiet day. One time a dog barks at me furiously, then changes his mind and wants to be […]
I have a call scheduled for 12:00, so when I finally leave the motel it’s 13:30. Late. There are 12,7km left until the next dance. When I look at the map, it says it takes about 20km to walk from Terme to Carsamba on the highway, but if I took the village roads then it […]
People have been warning me. There will be dogs right after Ünye, they say. They live around there because there’s a trash dump, they say. But I’m still not prepared for what I see after a bend of the road. First it’s half a dozen dogs that appear out of nowhere. I say hi and […]
Last night the skies opened, and they have been releasing torrential rains all day. I’m not surprised. The Black Sea coast is known to be rainy, especially during this time of the year. I’m just glad I’m not out there, walking. There are a bunch of hotels here near the beach, and I guess the […]
I wake up in the darkness. It’s night outside, the wind howls, and I can hear the call to prayer. But it’s not just one. There seem to be at least two or three mosques in the vicinity, and their prayer calls are overlapping. All of them are calling for god, and they all end […]
During breakfast my hosts ask me if I would like to have some Turkish Coffee. I say yes as if this was something I am used to having every day. The coffee does not disappoint. Then one of my friends reads my future from the coffee grounds. I will get married and probably have a […]