Time and Patience

Time …

For such a journey, one needs time and patience. 3.5 hours for exiting and entering Turkey.

That is the exact flight time from Germany to Turkey. It costs nerves.

You just don't make any progress, and a whole day is basically gone. Annoying 😡

Quickly grabbed cigarettes at the Duty-Free 🤪 for our smokers. 20 Euros a carton is reasonable. And a Raki to go 🤪

Then, finally after 7 days, we reached Turkey 😇

We took the well-maintained highway, which we had to pay 650 TL (about 20 Euros) for. While in Greece, the solar panels spoil the view of nature, in Turkey, it’s the electricity pylons.

Then we reached my desired destination. The village of Turgut’s parents, where his father is buried and where Turgut will likely be laid to rest one day. His parents lived here until the 50s, before moving to Istanbul and finally to Frankfurt in the 60s.

It's amazing how life unfolds, bringing a girl from deep East Germany together with a boy from deep Turkey. 🧐

Well…

On the way to the village “Baliklicesme,” we passed by Turgut’s sister’s peach orchard. Kids, I had nearly forgotten what an untreated peach 🍑 actually tastes like. It's peach harvest time, which will then be exported to Russia or elsewhere.

Sucki also got a peach… it was as big as his head 🤪🤪🤪

The village was impressive, and the cemetery had a mystical and magical appeal to me. No graves are renewed there, and the very old graves had dates like 1331, which likely marks a birth year.

They clean the grave and offer water in a bowl on the gravestone.

The father of the deceased is also engraved on the gravestone, and only one person is buried in each grave. Here, burials are done in cloths without a coffin. A coffin was still standing in a corner 👀 different countries, different customs…

In “Biga,” the district town, we went out to eat. The best köfte and the best ayran I’ve had so far in Turkey.

Usually, no tourists come here, so we were stared at while walking through the streets with 3 dogs in a cart. Dogs aren’t generally welcomed here, and recently street dogs can even be killed.

The question was where our journey would go next since it was impossible to stay overnight here. So we had to traverse the country to get back to the coast where we might be able to stay overnight.

At 5:00 PM, we set off for Izmir, where we were supposed to arrive by 8:00 PM.

Let’s wait a bit 🆎

The schedule was almost on track. We arrived in Izmir in darkness and completely disoriented at 9:00 PM. Crowds sitting along the waterfront. Buildings and lights like in Frankfurt.

Clever as we are, we didn’t buy a phone card (…we’ll get one on the way 😳… on a Sunday? 🙂‍↔️ Nope)

So we zigzagged through Izmir searching for a parking spot… without wifi… without an app… no chance. So we parked on a bus parking lot and bribed the guard with cigarettes. Everything is possible here… unfortunately, it was a bit dangerous because there was a park with about 30 stray dogs behind it, and they would have torn our dogs apart. So, a cold beer, a warm ouzo, and off to bed to make an early escape.

In the morning, we first organized a phone card and money.

And while Turgut was driving through Izmir’s traffic chaos, the mom was sitting with a scuffle on the “dividing toilet” in the footwell.

Next relationship milestone reached🤪🤪

Oh yes, the third day unshowered in the same clothes 🤣🤣 on such a trip, one really has to be pain-free and not develop revulsion for oneself or one’s partner 🤪🤪🤪

Evil tongues always claim we only exist styled and in designer clothes 🧐🧐

Today we continue along the coast… destination open