A journey through turkey

Eminönü, Istanbul

 

 Batumi - Samson

The first thing we heard when we were entering the room for passport control at the Turkish border was screaming and shouting. Everybody tried to see something, pushed each other and squeezed each other even more into the crowd. It was strange but nothing more happened.

Finally we made it through the passport control and caught pretty fast a ride through Hopa the next Turkish city by two older Turkish guys. After ten minutes waiting at the side of the road for our next ride a taxi pulled over and asked where we want to go. We said the direction of Trabzon. And so he told us he will take us. We were really confused because we thought we would need to pay but we ended up not paying all the way to Trabzon because there was a guy in the taxi who rented the Taxi for a couple of days and decided to take us along. Omer was from Istanbul; had a huge chain of Antique stores, is super rich and somehow lonely. He flew on Friday to Trabzon and took this taxi to go to Batumi, spend a day there, couldn't get a direct flight from there to Istanbul which was the reason why he was in the taxi driving back to Trabzon to catch a flight from there the day after. It was strange to see how easy he handles money, how he just invited the two of us and the driver for lunch, gifted Julie and the driver two packages of cigarettes with the words: my bags is too heavy, Take it! But it was really nice of him to take us along. 

Julie's feet over the Bosphorus

In Trabzon we arrived at the airport and made our first and luckily only experience with the Turkish police. Julie was wearing quite short shorts and as the black sea region of Turkey is quite conservative she decided to put a pairs of long pants over it right at the spot. Unfortunately the policeman probably didn't see her shorts because of the long t-shirt and came up to us and wanted to see our passports; asked us why she out on some pants here, why we are in front of the airport, etc.. After checking our passports preciously, opening up our backpacks, shortly interviewing us we finally were allowed to gather our stuff and leave. And we did that as fast as possible!

It was getting late but the sun was still up and we wanted to continue hitchhiking as it was still over 1200 km to Istanbul where we wanted to reach the following day. And we had luck once again. A middle aged Turkish guy took us all the way to Samson where he was living with his family. He told us that he saw us and as he think hitchhiking in Turkey is not safe for girls, he had the feeling it was his responsibility to make sure that we were getting safe to Samson. Therefore he turned around to get us. So we made it to Samson the same night and spent the night there in a random cheap Hotel to continue the next day.

Samson – Istanbul:

Waking up early in Samson we tried to find a bus to get out of the city which wasn't the easiest to find but we managed and as we were just standing on the side of the road a small truck already stopped and took us. The two guys needed to bring a broken car from Samson to Merzifon. They were super interested in what we do and how and why and therefore we tried to communicate as well as possible in Turkish. Afterwards we caught a half an hour right from Merzifon to Osmancik. And there we met our hitchhiker of the day: Tarek. Super nice guy, around 30 years old, born in Germany but when he was 8 his family moved back to Turkey, used to work for the police and is now in real estate. It was so funny to drive with him all the 700 km to Istanbul through all the traffic jams where he always found some small roads to cut through it, to visit a friend of his for lunch on the way who was running a restaurant and hotel on the highway, to let Hannah drive the car for an hour as he got bored of driving, all the jokes and stories he told and finally when we arrived in Istanbul he even asked a friend of his to drop us out our couchsurfers place as he needed to go somewhere else. 

In the car with Tarek

What an amazing nice guy!! For sure we will come visit him again when we come to Turkey again!

Istanbul

In Istanbul we were staying at Doğukan's place - the friend of a friend who we met in Tbilisi. It was super nice of him to over it to us. His apartment is in a new building complex in Maltepe on the Asian side of Istanbul and through the window you had an amazing view - specially by night. 

 

Our one day in Istanbul we used to stroll around through the old center of the city, walking over the big bridge, through Karaköy, Kabatas all the way to Bisiktas and then back with the ferry to Kadiköy to have Cigköfte for dinner! Hannah's favorite Turkish food which she kept on talking about the entire time before we arrived in Turkey. 

Blue mosque

Beautiful decorations in the Blue mosque

Ferries to cross the Bosphorus

 

Cigköfte with Ayran

While walking around the Hagia Sophia we could make one dream become true. We found a spot to put the sticker of our friend Ain as close as possible to the Hagia Sofia as it was her dream. 

Ain's sticker

 Istanbul – Edirne:

The next day was already a travel day again and we were leaving or trying to leave Istanbul but easier said as accomplished. Istanbul is already huge and the outskirts of the city are fusing together with the small towns around it. So it was super hard to find a good spot to hitchhike and also because it is impossible to get to the highway as it is fenced or walled up and put lower into the ground as the normal streets. We had three different rides which always took us a little bit further out of the city but we got really desperate. But the two guys who were our third ride were really nice and really concerned about us hitchhiking to Edirne. They were so concerned that they didn't end up bringing us to a good spot from where we could hitchhike easier but instead they brought us to a bus stop. We were quite confused but everything went quite quickly and in the next moment we were sitting in a bus to Silivri which they stopped for us and with a bunch of Turkish Lira in our hands which they just gave us with the words: 

Please, take a bus! So unexpected, so nice and so kindhearted of them! Thank you so much!

After the bus we caught another two rides and finally we made it to Edirne where we met a nice Turkish guy in our age who wanted to help us. He constantly kept on talking in Turkish to Hannah and even her explanation that she only speaks a little bit of Turkish didn't demotivate him on keeping to talk to us about everything. Well in the end he showed us the bus to the center of the city and from where we could catch a small mini van to the border. So finally by 3pm we arrived at the Turkish-Bulgarian border.

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul

It was a short trip to Turkey. Unfotunately we didn't have the time to discover the diversity and different places in Turkey but that just means there is a reason to come back!