Around Black Sea to Düzce

During our passport control, Tony talked to one driver and arranged us ride to another few clicks.
Later we stopped for a break and hitchhiked by 7 more cars till Giresun.
The driver in the last car with his friend took us to bus stop and almost force us to go by bus to another town and not to hichhike anymore. When we told them we don't have money for bus, they were eager to pay for our bus. We were stubborn and wanted to hitchhike anyway. It took us some minutes to get away. The bus stop was located in worst part of the city. Far away from some good spot, so we had to walk quite dangerously around the road.
 
Two men were trying to almost force us to go by bus and wanted to pay for it but we were stubborn and hitchhiked. When we got to Giresum, it was getting dark but boys decided to take one last ride. Jackpot. Tony found people from Bolu at the traffic lights and they took us! They just rearranged some stuff in the car to make space for us. They couldn't believe we're not hungry and bought us dinner.

Tony's father took us from Bolu to Düzce. We spent there one day resting and the next day in the afternoon we went to Istanbul.

As fast as possible - Turkey again

We'd done 36 hour bus marathon from Bandar Abbas through Shiraz and Tehran to Tabriz. There we met with our friend Payam and his wonderful family. They were so nice to us that we felt they're our family as well. We spent the night in their flat and in the morning continued to Turkey. Payam took us with his car to the end of Tabriz and we hitchhiked from there.

Our drivers were very kind, they even took us further then they'd supposed to go and turned back after that. I'm not even talking about sharing food or drinks, we so got used to it ;) Then we walked a bit to the border crossing (almost everyone was surprised that we didn't take a taxi and some workers were joking about taking us with cement mixer car :) We left Iran on September 18th 2010.


When we arrived in Turkey I happily took off my scarf. Well, I have to admit it was tiring after some time. From the border we hitchhiked to Igdir (we did whatever we could to avoid Agri). We stopped a member of local city council and he arranged us accommodation in a teachers' house. We met three girls who were teachers there and we had some tea with them. 

In the morning, after watching celebration of a national holiday, we continued North. I was amazed and surprised how different it was from every image of Turkey i had in my head. It looked rather like central Slovakia or Romania, mountains were covered with trees, it was so green everywhere. Totally impressive.

Iran. first impressions. ...This is Tabriz Barbara!

Before our trip we've read a lot about Iran but reading is one thing and experiencing - another.

Our first stop after crossing border was Tabriz. We got there by three rides directly from the border.

If you're passing through border Dogubayazit/Maku you have the opportunity to see Ararat (5,137 m). no wonder people thought of it as the Holy Mountain, it makes quite an impression. except for Small Ararat, it's the only high mountain around with snow on top all the year round. i think one day we'll come back to climb it.

Ararat - view from Iran

One man in Tabriz told us that Iran is black and white. I managed to see more colors though.

People in Iran are mostly good. We experienced their hospitality but learned to be diplomatic in every situation as well. Bigger problem was with sellers and taxi drivers, they thought that we were awfully rich just because we came from Europe. and they tried to take as much money as they could from us. the rules of trade are the same everywhere.

It's almost impossible to see a couple (even married) holding hands. It only happens in big cities and is very rare. And forget about kissing in public!

I was very concerned about my clothes at the beginning and very careful to be dressed properly. I brought some scarfs, tunics and long thin trousers from Poland and bought a mantoo (as they call it in Iran) when we were in Turkey. And it was ok, sometimes i even rolled my sleeves up to elbow and nobody seemed to care. Even the Police is not very harsh on tourists.

We were so delighted after hitchhiking in Turkey that we tried it in Iran as well. First was a couple that showed us a house one boy started to build for a girl he loved, as they told us. It was digged in the rock, there was a beautiful view of Ararat from the entrance, three rooms inside. The house was unfinished though because the boy died before he managed to finish it. Guy was policeman, they were building their new house in mountains.

After stone house they took back on road to the highway. House was just few km from the border. There we met first foreigner in Iran. He was Canadian guy cycling to Switzerland from Turkmenistan. We had small talk and exchanged maps for our fore-coming trips. We left him great camping map of whole Turkey and he gave us special waterproof touristic map of Iran. After saying goodbye we continued.

Our next ride was a man who wanted us to pay. It was the first time that anyone asked money from us. We had no rials though and luckily Tony managed to convince him that it's possible to travel all the way from Istanbul to Iran for free. That's how we learned that hitchhiking is not quite popular in Iran.

After that another man, who couldn't take us further, came and gave us money to pay to greedy drivers. Luckily one taxi driver took us for free to a spot after police control. It is common in Iran that every now and then there's a control spot where police checks the drivers and their vehicles.

Just after that control spot we stopped a driver in an old tiuck who'd seen us earlier on the road and Martin waved to him like 3 times. He spoke a bit English and told us that his age was the same as his car's - 57 years.

He took us to Tabriz and was so proud of the city. He kept on repeating 'Barbara! This is Tabriz. Tabriz, Tabriz, Taaabriz!' to show me how big it was. He left us in the city but also stopped, took a taxi for us and left us money to pay for it.

That's how we arrived in Tabriz.

Kurdistan - new tabu word in my dictionary

From Erzurum we hitchhiked to Agri. Two young man took us there and in a while we realized they were members of The Kurdistan Worker's Party also know as PKK. According to Wikipedia PKK is separatist organization which fights an army struggle against the Turkish state for the creation of an Independent Kurdistan. European Union put them on list of terroristic organizations. They told us a lot about PKK, their ideas and goals.

Accidentally in the middle of talks with them in their car, going to Agri, I got a call. Some unknown angry Turkish guy called me just to say words like bitch, fuck and some others. All the time repeating this is Turkey not Kurdistan. It was hard to understand him, because we were in car, but later he sent us around 10 texts only with swears. All of them addressed to me. Imagine messages like "I will kill you, when i"ll meet you" ending with "Good luck on trip!". We got some idea who is it and later when we saw another message in mailbox which proved it. It was one couchsurfer who got request from me.
The request was something like "we are traveling around Turkey, passing through Kurdistan, going to Agri, can you host us?".. I didn't want to offend anyone and I didn't know that Kurdistan is tabu word in this part of Turkey. People were and they are still dying for this word. Apparently it's not just word.
I have to focus more on cultural than geographical facts for next time. There is not enough preparation for journey and this political correctness is killing free discussion.

In a while we were dropped in Agri and we started to explore the city. When we asked a policeman if he knows about any accommodation for us. He was surprised, asked what we were doing there but he told us about teacher's house (Teachers in Turkey have to spend some time teaching kids in east parts of Turkey and after that they can get well paid job in good schools in the west as ppl told us.
After arriving into teacher's house we managed (read Tony in Turkish with our moral support) to persuade guy working on reception to give us some place for night for free. Looking for hotel or other kind of accommodation would be loss of time. We could use one office next to reception. It was still to early for sleeping so we just left our stuff there and went explore the city. I don't know why but i didn't feel safe there for first time in my life. No tourists, no other foreigners, just locals who were staring at us. We went around, bought some food and after sun went down, we ate in the park and listened to some music from phone and from buildings around. I was suspicious and always looking around but nothing happened. So we went back to Teacher's house and made our office comfortable.

We woke up early bin the morning when someone was knocking at our door. We were locked because we didn't feel safe in this town. It was guy from yesterday, he told us that we have to leave bcs. his boss is coming and he can't found us there. It was ok, we didn't want to stay there longer anyway.
Walking through city till main road took us some time, we saw nice couch which would be great to have at home but too heavy to carry it with ourselves :) so at least we took a picture on it. That's the CS spirit!
There was another surprise when we almost reached main road. Look for yourself...

Cheating wives

We left Kayseri a bit late, in the afternoon. Tony's friends left us on a good spot and we hitchhiked to Gümüşhane with two guys.

Gümüşhane

The journey was quite long, we went through mountains at night and suddenly someone stopped us with lighter. It turned out that there's some kind of military base there and they control everyone going that way. They checked us and we peacefully continued.

When we were speaking with our drivers we get to know each other better. We acknowledged they they both were lovers of some women who cheated their husbands. They spend lovely time with them, but their husbands come back from business trip earlier that they were supposed so our cheaters were forced to leave really fast. We have really good time with them, making jokes and so. We even stopped for half an hour and had a party in the middle of road.

Dancing on the roof of the car, anywhere on the road, listening good songs very loudly :D But then came a call from one wife. One husband got suspicious about his wife. That's why he come home earlier. Fortunately for them, there wasn't any proof of cheating on place, but they wasn't in good mood because they spend with them just one night and travel back to their home - Trabzon.

After the call fun was abut to limited just for good songs. They started to argue in Turkish about situation. Of course we weren't involved in discussion, the plan was bring us to as close as possible to Erzurum. We chose the best road and Gümüşhane was chosen as final destination.

We arrived in Gümüşhane at night and decide to stay with guys and slept in the car.

They didn't went to Trabzon but rather offered us place in car. Iin the morning we bought ourselves something for breakfast and continued to Erzurum.

We tried to find a CS host in Agri from an Internet cafe, which later involved into interesting accident.

Don't follow us.

From Nevşehir we caught another ride straight to Ürgüp. We went through picturesque Cappadocia and saw valleys and rocks on the way. It's amazing how nature works and how people there managed not to destroy the landscape.

In Ürgüp we sat for a while and had some ice cream. It felt like holidays ;) Then we walked around the city, visited tourist information office and took some nice maps and booklets from there. On our way we saw Turkish bath (it was veery damp inside).

We also passed stalls with souvenirs, beautiful carpets and famous Cappadocian wine.

We climbed a hill-house (how to say it other way? in was a hill with flats digged in it :) ) to watch the city from above.

Amazing view. there was also a hotel in the very same hill (an expensive one) and near a cafe there was a room with sarcophagus of a warrior (as far as i remember).

We left the city and hitchhiked to Göreme. on the way we stopped on another hill-house. this one was completely abandoned and you could see that maybe locals come there in the evenings, because there are many beer cans and butts around there. but the view was great.

you can take a balloon flight over Cappadocia and i bet it's a breathtaking experience...

From Göreme we hitchhiked to Avanos.

Hitchhiking Training - On The Way to Iran - 31th Ride


In Avanos we visited a man who made things of clay. his workroom and shop was actually in an underground cave which was excellent hideout on hot days on summer. one room was a "hair museum" created by his friend who wants to get to Guinness Book of World Records and collects women's hair. I was not so eager to leave him sample of my hair, so i ran away and bought two cups of clay although i was worried if they survive till Krakow. they did :)

Then we went to eat dinner (or late lunch, our dining regime during the journey made it hard to classify :) ). or maybe i should say we were walking around to find a good place to eat. when we finally stuffed our stomachs with delicious pide, we continued on our journey.

When we were crossing bridge in Avanos, a dog followed us walking on the street and it got hit by a car which most probably broke its leg. it hurt even to look at the dog. so, one warning for the future: Don't follow us. it happened a few times that people (or animals) that tried to follow us, had some problems...

We headed to Kayseri. we saw the city only at night, but it seemed really beautiful and it had an interesting castle. we arrived near the university hospital there and we were very tired and dirty with dust. the idea of spending another night on the grass was not tempting anymore and i was getting angry. but Tony once again amazed me. He called his friend, who called his friend, who called his friend... and we ended up in one friend's girlfriend's empty flat. (did i mention that people in Turkey are amazing?)

we could finally take a shower and sleep in an actual bed.

Do you have ID?

We arrived in Konya on Sunday morning. Everything was quiet, almost no one on the streets. We were walking to a spot suitable for further hitchhiking and in the same time Tony was running from one shop to another but he wasn't able find new sleeping bag.

Truck driver who brought us to the city was born in Konya. When we told him we'd just pass the city he become angry. He told us that Konya is like a gem in Turkey. Actually he told us true, modern city with nice architecture and clean! One of the cleanest cities in Turkey that I saw. But our mission was to get to Cappadocia on the same day. So we just skipped Konya.

On our journey in Turkey we didn't use buses or trains at all. It wasn't question of money for us but something more important. We were able to socialized with locals much more deeper and get to know country in such a level which traveling with buses nor trains wouldn't guarantee.
People who took us on the road were always speaking with us, asking questions or showing interesting places. They wanted to show us the best from Turkey.

When we found good spot and started our classic pose immediately the first car stopped. It was an old couple. "Tony's language support" helped them understand us. They were surprised what we are doing here, even a bit angry. Term hitchhiking was unknown for them. Anyway after talks they still weren't sure about us and wanted to see our IDs. It was first time after thousands of hitchhiked kilometres when someone asked me for ID. They took us to Nevşehir, which was more than we expected.

Nevşehir, modern city full of muslim traditions.

Close to Nevşehir was our awaited Cappadocia. As you know Cappadocia isn't just one city but it's whole area which contains several underground cities.

How rats ate our delicious clothes

We went on to find some place to sleep in Aksehir. Whole city was so dirty and dusty. Nothing really turistic. We asked some people for hostels but they weren't in mood to respond. So we just walked around and after some time we only found a closed gas station with nice open garden behind. No one was around so we picked it out as our hostel for some hours. It had a nice resting place with armchairs and small table. next to it there was really tempting grass. we decided that it was the best place we'd ever find in the neighbourhood. Just to be sure, Tony asked a guard there if we could stay. Guy hesitated a bit but agreed in the end of conversation. He even let us use some cushions.

It wasn't so cold at the night with sleeping bags.But Tony doesn't have any. So he slept between us. I slept good. We woke up around 6 am and continued to Konya by truck. During the day though, we found out that we got really original souvenirs from Aksehir. Barbara's trousers appeared to have some strange holes that looked eaten rather than torn. After some time Tony also realized that the same thing happened to his jeans. That would explain some paw-like marks on our sleeping bags. It must have been some kind of rat or other rodent. It was strange. nothing happened to our sleeping bags or other stuff, only jeans and trousers were eaten.

We reached Konya by truck in the morning.

Flat tyre and hitchhiking at night

Tony didn't sleep whole night, he was exploring night life in the city. In the morning we took a shower on the stony beach fortunately without hot sand and decided to continue our journey. Spending time on beach was so refreshing.
We bought some bananas and after fresh breakfast we peeled and ate them. Do you remember old gags from silent movies with banana peel? We did the same :)

We left banana peel on pathway and sit close to it. When
first person came, he stopped, look at the banana peel, then look at us, twisted his head and overpassed banana peel :D After this guy who was in his forties we improved our trap. We put another banana peel next to first one. Then old lady with shopping bags came. And she did the same thing but without twisting her head. We laughed a lot.
Third level was with three banana peels on the pathway so anyone passing through has to step at least on one. They were smart, almost everyone stepped over it. We didn't calculate this possibility. After some gag attempts we put all banana peels to trash and continued to walk next to road.



Thanks to Tony's Turkish language asking for directions was qualitatively higher than with our English.

In some moment we got ride by taxi without paying for it. I love Turkey and people there!  When we were passing through countryside we spotted a lot of animals next to roads. Staring goats are almost everywhere, not speaking about fowls. So waiting for car, I was talking with them but they refused to communicate with me.
Probably they were afraid that I will eat them. Lucky bastards, I wasn't hungry :D.



Heading to Konya, we got few rides, even freshly on small truck which took us to no-name village. As we got thirsty we asked one woman working in the garden for water. She offered us water and when we were filing our bottles she brought us lunch. It was something like soup with fresh yoghurt. In return we left sweets for little girl living there.

After lunch we got great ride on the open back of car. Looking at the changing views around we were smiling at each other and having fun by taking photos. Still smiling and in good mood we said goodbye and later reached Isparta.

We came to another not important village before Konya in the evening. I think that everyone in that village knows that we were trying to hitchhike next to roundabout. Even some teenagers were coming one by one or in small groups to see us, some of them on motorbikes, poorer by bicykles or on foot.

After one hour and tens of watchers random guy tried to help us and took us to the close truck station, actually he send his friend in his car there. Unfortunately they didn't want to take us, because we were too heavy. So his friend took us back to the same place. Guy was surprised, he was waiting with his girlfriend (or whatever was their relationship) for bus. Before her bus came, he left us some fruit and his phone number just in case.

One hour later we got ride with small truck and old guy. He was around 60, smelled like toilet, but it was a ride. Our camera was out of battery and we got suspicions about him.

What would anyone like him do on the road and why should he take us? After some time though, our suspicions have gone. We got a flat tyre on narrow mountain road. It took about 30 mins to change the wheel and we could continue our journey through the dust around. The man left us near the bus station in Aksehir. After checking buses we learned that there's nothing for us there. We had to find a place to sleep till morning, so we walked and checked every place that seemed suitable for us.

Don't look for sea, go for ocean

We spent whole night in bus from Ankara to Fethiye.
At the beginning it looked like big resort abandoned by tourists and travelers. We slept around two hours at the morning. SunFace Hotel trash bins were first things which were possible to see from bus. Hotel was hidden in small town. It has to be really hard to found this place without guide. It was quite small place with small swimming pool and bar. We were thinking to stay for breakfast but desire to spend time in the sea was much more stronger. After saying goodbye to everyone we were walking to the beach. Later when we asked for direction, we acknowledged that the beach is quite far away.

We had a small break, bought some breakfast and found abandoned hotel. It looked like no one was there for half a year. So when we found good spot on logs of wood we started our breakfast. We were lucky, toiled was closed but water pump was working. Leaving something hidden for dunk beetles we left our hotel and continued by hitchhiking to the Ölüdeniz Beach. Hotels and restaurants next to main road in this touristic place had a lot of English ads like Swimming Poll or Take a way food. Nice to see, they are polyglots.

Not having warm sea in our countries  was main reason why we stayed on the beach whole day. Lazy to do anything, only having fun there. The sea fulfilled our expectations for temperature. Three hours after our arrival some of our friends from Ankara also came. Nothing really adventurous. I was thinking about some climbing, but others weren't in the mood.

In the evening they left us and we came with an idea of staying there for another day. It was too hot to sleep inside and anyway we didn't got couchsurfing host so whole beach was our bed. Before we started to count jumping sheep we got dinner from local market and found a backpack with treasure. Lots of memory cards, weird expensive camera and some clothes. Hmm what to with that. No one around we took a camera and watched pictures. It was from paragliding and we realized that weird camera was for parachute.When were looking at the pictures, owner of the backpack arrived. He wasn't worried about his stuff, he didn't even say thank you or maybe I just don't remember that. In any case he left as fast as he arrived. Basically we slept really good with that feeling we saved lot of money and memories that night.

From family circle to best party

on the way to Duzce

We left Istanbul on Wednesday by hitchhiking directly from center of Besikas. Our first destination was Düzce, Tony's hometown. We got there by five cars. Every driver was somehow interesting but one was unique. Truck driver who also invited us for tea.

He was so happy that he could communicate with us through Tony's mouth. It wasn't first time when he took hitchhikers but he doesn't know English and he was so sad that he couldn't share his stories with them. But this time he enjoyed it so much that he even left us some of his necklace which is used for praying. He was wearing it for 15 years! And I managed to lose it in two weeks when I was getting out from some car :(

It was fun when he showed us picture of circumcision of his son and other pictures of his family. He was so proud of them. That's the moment when you really see cultural differences. What is disgusting for one culture could be one of the most important milestones of a lifetime for another. After teatime we continued with him and close to turnoff to Duzce we got off from truck and there was another car waiting for us already. Driver saw that someone is leaving truck so he stopped, waited for us and took us to the city. Isn't it amazing? He drove us directly to the front of Tony's house. Later we met all Tony's family (regretting that our Deutsch ist kaputt) and tasted more Turkish hospitality. We were impressed by the whole family.

Duzce looks like all cities in Turkey. It was rebuilt after big earthquake in 90's, so most of buildings were new. We stayed there just one night for recovering and small shopping. My backpack was ready for trash-bin after two years and Tony didn't have any. So we were walking from one shop to another until we found something usable. Tony was bargaining with merchants for every price and we got it really cheap. I was so glad for his presence. He choose really small backpack for trip and I was wondering how will he be able to put everything in it. He was, but I wasn't. Later history proved that my choice was good..

One day in Duzce and we were so eager to start again. Standing next to road with camera and making some documentary we got company of public police. They started to ask what we were doing there and why we had a camera. It was close to bus station in non touristic city so maybe it wasn't a good idea. Anyway, after a few-minute talk they disappeared and we got ride. Our destination was Ankara, our presumable sleeping place technical university. It was so easy and faster than public bus. So after some hours we were walking through one entrance and even in campus got ride for some hundred meters. We arrived around evening, luckily just in time for big party. Local BEST group just organized leisure course and participants had a party there.
Party itself was like BBQ with lot of get-to-know games, dance music, liters of sangria and fun.
Main organizer was Cansu Birgen. She even let us go together with them to Fethiye, small city close to the coast in south-west part of Turkey. Of course with party bus and for free. We were so thankful to all organizers for it.

Inside of the party place there was science playground, the big size model of Turkish coast. It was used for wave experiments. Party was over after five hours and we were sitting inside and waiting for buses. We talked about our plans and why we wanted to visit Iran. In a meanwhile buses came. One was a party bus and the other for tired. With sound of live sax, singing for hours we got to Fethiye.