soup at the end of the day

This post is about a 20km walk from Zonguldak to the Martyrs’ Forest. I make it through one tunnel and around a few more.

I had a hard time falling asleep the night before. And I woke up before dawn, feeling scared.

People had been telling me about a few tunnels that were lurking on the road out of Zonguldak. Was there a way around them, I asked. Around some of the tunnels – yes, they said. Around one of them – no.

lucky

I looked at the map, and they were right. There was a complicated tunnel situation right at the end of the city. I hated it, and I could think of nothing else. Fucking tunnels, fucking tunnels, fucking tunnels.

But when I got there, the first tunnel had a closed lane that I could use all by myself. It was awesome, but I decided not to push my luck with the other tunnels. So I tried to walk around them.

There was a bypass over the hills. It led past the medicine faculty of the local university. There were young people everywhere. Dudes with long hair. Some girls in hijabs, others in Doc Martens.

I ran into Ahmed, a Palestinian student who knew me from Instagram. He and his friends were studying medicine here, and they lived in a dorm nearby. I asked them if, as Arabic speakers, they found the pronunciation of the prayer call to be good, or if there was an accent. They said that it was usually good. Many of the muezzins were from the region in Turkey’s south that bordered Syria and Iraq, and they were bilingual.

back on the highway

Then I was on the highway again. I didn’t care for it very much, but there didn’t seem to be a way around it. So I walked and I walked, and the road went up and up until it made me feel very tired. Also, there seemed to be no place for me to pitch my tent.

As it got dark I reached a park called “Zonguldak Martyrs’ Forest”. At first I thought it was a military graveyard. There were headstones, but they were only symbolic. The soldiers were buried near their homes, this was just a place to remember them.

The good thing was that the Martyrs’ Forest had a restaurant, and the restaurant had food. Also, there was soup, and there were beans, so that was even better. Tuncar, the caretaker, showed me a place in the back where I could pitch my tent, and he insisted that I ate for free.

And so I crawled into my winter sleeping bag with a full stomach and clean feet. Then I listened to an owl in the darkness.

pictures

Statue of a coal miner in Zonguldak:

Tunnel on the way out of Zonguldak:

Near the medical faculty:

The helmet:

With Ahmed and Islam:

The road to walk from Zonguldak to the Martyrs’ Forest:

The highway:

Village house in the mountains:

Zonguldak Martyrs’ Forest:

Tuncar with a friend:

The tent goes here: