Tag Archives: walking

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]