Tag Archives: resting

I wake up late, and when I do, I remember my dreams. There were two. The first was about me arriving at my home on my final day of walking. There was a sense of relief that I had made it, but there was also a sense of panic that I had forgotten something. The […]

I spend my day doing something I dread: I plan things. I plan Georgia, Germany, Christmas, New Year’s, storage facilities, train tickets, plane rides, doctor’s appointments, etc. etc. In the evening, when my head is about to explode, I have dinner topped off with sütlac, then I get on a minibus to Atakum. A friend […]

My visa-free stay in Turkey is coming to an end, and so I need to get out of here for a few months. The Caboose is staying in a friend’s garage, I’m boarding a bus back south to Samsun. Looking out of the bus window feels like rewinding a video-tape and watching the story unfold […]

Sinop, they say, is famous for being Turkey’s happiest city. Why are people so happy here? Maybe because Sinop is located quite beautifully on a peninsula in the Black Sea. Maybe because the climate is less rainy than in the eastern parts of the coast. Maybe because there are literally no traffic lights in all […]

Gerze, someone has told me, used to be a very beautiful town. That was until it burned down a few decades ago. It was subsequently rebuilt, and now almost all of it looks newish and rather uninspired. After taking a little walk down to the harbor, I concur. Gerze has an awesome geographic location, and […]

Yakakent feels like Gonio. Okay, there is a mosque here and there are a few tea houses, and it’s generally a lot more tame than in Georgia, but the kind of touristy beach-town atmosphere Yakakent has is a bit similar to that of Gonio. This is Yakakent, the relaxed beach-town. I’m here during the off-season, […]

I go outside looking for some mobile data for my phone and a bottle of lens cleaner for my cameras. I get 14 GB of data, and when I ask an optician for cleaning fluid he gives it to me for free. Then I stand around for a while. I like doing that, just standing […]

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. […]

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 […]

In Persembe, there is a square with an Atatürk statue next to an old cannon. It looks as if the founder of the Republic is preparing to launch a cannonball at someone. Probably someone who is trying to mix politics with religion, I assume. When I walk over to the waterfront, I arrive at a […]

Ordu is nice. Its shopping streets are clean and busy (though I don’t see that many people carrying actual shopping bags), and there is the Atik Ibrahim Pasa mosque from the late 18th century, where old men sit around talking to each other (though the mosque itself looks rather new). Meanwhile, I’m thinking about a […]

There is a church here in Giresun. It’s located right next to the ögretmenevi, and I look at it sometimes when I walk by. Only after a few days I realize that I never hear its bells ring, and it takes even longer to find out that it was converted into a children’s library in […]

Before I even get to Giresun Castle, I see a sign that tells me it dates back to ancient times. Roman times. Greek times. Those times are gone. Giresun, just like Trabzon, might have had proud fortifications once. But today they lay in ruins. A few walls and an old well are all that’s left. […]

It’s been exactly one month since I entered Turkey. I have two more left until I’ll have to leave the country for a while, and I wonder how far I will have come by then. But first I need to get a pair of new trail runners. Back when I started my walk in 2007, […]

The only island in the Turkish part of the Black Sea is small and shitty. I am not aware of this as I buy my ticket. The ride there takes about a half hour. Legions of jellyfish wobble against the ship. They don’t care. I think of Jason and his Argonauts and how they met […]

A day in a roadside hotel. The room is okay, the yard is nice, breakfast is the bomb. I walk over to a shop down the road and end up buying not only water and a candy bar, but also a pendant from the Trabzonspor football team because I like its colors. Guess I’m a […]

Somewhere in the south of Trabzon, hidden deep inside of a mountain valley, there is an old Greek Orthodox monastery called Sumela. It is not functional anymore. There are no monks, no holy books, no ritual chants, just a few stone buildings hanging on to the rocks. I can’t help but ask myself what happened […]

I took a walk around Trabzon with an old friend today. We talked about his life and mine, and about some of the things that had happened in the last few years. The big things and the small things. Meanwhile, we looked around. When we passed the old Gülbahar Hatun mosque, I said let’s go […]