Tag Archives: walk🚶🏻
knife town
Just as I wake up under the cement roof that has been my home for the night, it starts to rain again. I decide to wait it out. After all, I have apples, nuts, and bread to eat, water to drink, and a tv series to watch. No need to lose hope as long as […]
the right way
Rain unrained is a taste of metal in the air and a shade of darkness on the ground. It is there, I can feel it all around me, only it chooses to remain in the clouds and to not fall down to earth just yet. And so I walk under a grey sky that reminds […]
the fires and the pots
A few kilometers into the day, Nihal and Kader call me into their yard to have breakfast with them and their colleagues. They’re into the dairy business. There is much laughter at the thought of how long my hair and my beard will be once I have made it to Germany. Back on the road […]
the stepchild
Today the road shows me another face. Up until now, it has mostly been made up of two lanes in each direction, divided in the middle, with an emergency lane on either side. Now those emergency lanes are gone. Sometimes each direction consists of three lanes, though. Yay for drivers, I guess? There is a […]
leaving China
I’m in bed. The tunnels and the guardrails and the glorious pink sunset, they are behind me. I have not written a word until now. There was never enough time. When I close my eyes I see myself walking into a small town called Pazar. That was at noon, and Pazar turned out to be […]
feeling close
There was one little bug that insisted on spending the night under my air mattress. I tried to talk it out of it, but to no avail. It was as black and shiny as it was determined, that bug. I woke up a few times during the night, not because of my bug buddy but […]
happy bullets
Turkish roads are wider than those in Georgia. And they seem to be better maintained. That doesn’t help me, though. Every time I take a long break from walking I am bound to have a hard time getting back into it. This time is no exception. Sometimes I see billboards of the president. There must […]
leaving the corner
Gonio means “corner” in Georgian. And what a strange little corner it is. The sun shines bright in Gonio. The clouds rain heavily in Gonio. The dogs are friendly in Gonio. Everyone is very relaxed in Gonio. Having spent a month in the corner, tanning, swimming, reading, socializing, I felt that Gonio had taken some […]
ruin value
I spent the night in front of an abandoned house in the hills. An old man had suggested I go there to sleep, so I had no way of backing out. But I felt spooked. Some of the windows were busted in, and the doors had been locked and then blocked from the outside. As […]
listening to my breath
Words of friendship and a bottle of wine. “When you are feeling weak – drink a bit of this” says my inked friend, then he lifts one hand to the sky. May God protect me. I stay on the back road, and it is quiet and nice. Wearing light trail runners, I feel myself floating […]
no amusement
My first night at a camp ground is behind me. It felt like a caravanserai: campers herding their cars, motorcycles, and tents into little spaces, then hurrying off to use the restrooms or grab some food at a table in the center of the camp site. The road is as narrow as it is busy. […]
Hello, Black Sea!
I wake up with one of the shittiest songs ever stuck in my head. “Under My Thumb” by the Rolling Stones. It’s apparently about a dude who manages to romantically suppress a woman, so yay for a wholesome ear worm! Sometimes I wonder how boomers can pretend to be outraged at punk or hip hop […]
biting bread
I woke up a bunch of times. Sometimes it was people honking. Sometimes it was people yelling. One time it was a thunderstorm. Once, in a dream, I found myself at a shooting range for high-tech rubber bullet guns. I wanted to point the gun at my own leg to see how it felt, but […]
Madame Le Pig
Right off the bat, I run into two Germans. We are everywhere. I’m just surprised the Mars Rover hasn’t found any yet. “Ja, guten Tag, nice to meet you here! It is quite cold on this planet, isn’t it? Thank god we have the best outdoor coats and thermal underwear, haha, jaaa!” I give another […]
same yet different
Heavy rain woke me up in the middle of the night. When I went outside to check on the Caboose, I ran into the owner of the guesthouse. He mumbled that he was checking on something as well. It continued to rain until late in the morning, then it died down. Loading up the Caboose […]
cows and pictures of the dead
I couldn’t hang out in circuses and swimming pools forever. So today I packed up my stuff and walked out of Zestafoni: Someone had apparently been trying to make the road a bit prettier by painting murals on some of the walls: This echoed some of the older murals that the Soviet Union had left […]
rain in the dark
I woke up, packed my stuff, sat down for some tea with Inga and Gela, and then I said goodbye: I knew the day wasn’t going to be short and easy. But I had no idea just how long and difficult it was going to be. The road kept following a river through the valley, […]
Matthew 10:14
When I left Surami, the air felt a bit warmer than the day before. And yet I could see that the fireplaces and the ovens and the radiators were hard at work: I thought how nice it must be to be there, inside one of those buildings, doing nothing, just enjoying the warmth. But I […]
(ancient) ruins
I woke up at five thirty in a hotel room, looked out of the window, saw that it was raining in the dark, and went back to sleep. When I started walking it was already nine thirty, the rain had stopped, and the road was very quiet: There was a dead dog in a puddle […]
a tyrant who hides and a beggar who doesn’t
When I started walking in Gori I turned to the north, towards the white mountains in the distance: And when I had left the city behind me, I continued walking in that direction for another half hour or so: It was then that I realized that I wasn’t going to find him. Stalin. He had […]