Tag Archives: walk🚶🏻

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 […]

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 […]

I wake up in a hotel room that’s located above a gas station and a wedding salon. The window overlooks the sea. The sea is grey. The sky is also grey. It rains softly. When I go down to get the Caboose from the wedding salon, the kitten is gone. It was roaming the halls […]

Obviously, the church at Cape Jason has nothing to do with Jason himself. He lived (if he even existed) way before Jesus (if he even existed), and it’s unclear if he ever came here to this cape, this piece of earth that sticks out into the Black Sea as if the land had grown a […]

It smells like fish in the harbor. Well, it’s actually more of a little bay with a pier and a few boats than an actual harbor. But it smells like fish anyway. The seagulls love it. When a fishing boat comes in or someone tosses some leftovers into the water, then they come from all […]

When I wake up and look outside, I feel disheartened. Rain. I deliberate for some time if I should go or not. I even make an instagram poll to help with the decision, but 55% vote REMAIN and 45% vote LEAVE, and it’s fucking Brexit all over again. Indefinite Chrixit extension? After a while I […]

More greyness. More rain. I talk to a restaurant owner on a beach who explains to me that some guys are operating heavy construction equipment behind his place because the sea has been nibbling at its foundations. It certainly does look grumpy today, the sea. I slowly make my way along the coast. In the […]

I leave Giresun via its shopping street, passing the stores where I bought my shoes and the winter gear a few days earlier. Hundreds of little Turkish flags line the way out of town, and sometimes I wonder if the people of Turkey are worried that they might forget their own nationality if they didn’t […]

The cliff and the beach, the road and the sea, they are all very quiet. A few dogs are walking around. A few ducks are following them. They seem very interested in the tent. Still, everything is wet. Once I get to the ögretmenevi in Giresun, I am going to have to take the tent, […]

There is a word I keep hearing a lot: yok. It means “no” in Turkish. Excuse me, is there a way around that tunnel? Yok. Do you have soup on the menu? Yok. Is there a place to sleep around here? Yok. Yok. Yok. Yok. I am still thinking of this word while I am […]

The year is getting old, but the sun still manages to burn. I remember the middle of October in 2016. I was walking through Kazakhstan when it suddenly started to snow. Back then I ended up buying gloves and a wool hat – along with my beloved pink Blankie – in a bazaar. I wonder […]

Every tunnel is always the worst. The very moment I see it from afar, my heart sinks. I fumble for my phone and stare at the map, trying to find a way around. There seems to be a small road over the mountain. I try to take it, but it’s a dead end. There are […]

Last night, when I was almost at the ögretmenevi where I was planning to stay for the night, two guys appeared and wanted to take a picture together. Then the cops showed up. Not just one or two, but four of them. As I was standing there, posing for the picture in my Chinese reflective […]

It’s two in the afternoon when I see my first pine tree in as long as I can remember. Actually, it’s a bunch of them on both sides of the road. Their fragrance fills the air, and just looking at them makes me feel as if I was on the shores of the Mediterranean. That’s […]

Here, on a pedestrian overpass, on a metal bridge that spans four lanes of traffic, here am I, and I’m having tea. Below me, there is a constant roar from the vehicles of those people who want to get somewhere – anywhere – really fast. I can see the Black Sea hitting the shore, it […]

Having rested very close to the city, I get to sleep in and have a long breakfast, then I just leisurely waltz into town. At least that’s the idea. In reality I squeeze my way through insanely tight traffic and try not to get hurt. The Caboose hates it, while I’m trying to think of […]

The hotel in which I wake up is called “Hotel Lost”. When I arrived last night, the nightclub in the basement was just warming up, there were three bouncers in the lobby, and the whole place had an atmosphere of fake leather and black lights that reminded me of certain establishments in China that charged […]