Welcome to Turkey

It was hard to getting up this morning. First, I hadn't slept well, and second, it was raining outside, which didn't exactly inspire me to start the stage as quickly as possible. So I turned over in bed and promptly fell back asleep.

When I woke up again, it was still raining, but now I had to start thinking about getting up, as I still had several kilometers to go. By the time I was finally ready, I thought the rain had stopped. That's what the weather forecast said, too—that it would stop around ten o'clock. However, it was still drizzling. Hopefully, I set off, thinking the rain would surely stop completely soon.

I left Yambol on a busy main road. And unfortunately, the rain didn't stop; on the contrary, it got heavier again. At least I was able to start the day relatively comfortably without heavy rain; once I'd warmed up, the rain wasn't so bothersome. On the busy road, the rainy weather has another disadvantage, as I noticed today: Every time a large truck came towards me, it felt like someone was spitting on me, from head to toe.

After a few kilometers, I had planned to take a different, smaller road. I briefly considered whether I should just stay on the main road, which would have been much more direct, but in the end I decided to stick with my original plan. The heavily trafficked roads in Bulgaria were of very good quality, but the smaller side roads were sometimes terrible. As a cyclist, you’re faced with a dilemma: do you ride in traffic or on a poor-quality road? However, the small road was only quite bad at the very beginning; after that, it improved. And after about 80 minutes on the road, the rain stopped—very suddenly and without any warning. But the timing was perfect, because the side road, which zigzagged a bit, was just about to lead into the first longer stretch with a headwind. Without the rain, it was a bit more pleasant.

Soon I was back on the main road, and sure enough, there was already a road sign pointing to Istanbul. I was clearly on the right track. The many Turkish trucks coming from the opposite direction confirmed this impression. However, there were also many Bulgarian trucks and others from different countries. I especially noticed the large number of Ukrainian trucks.

The road then went uphill towards the Bulgarian-Turkish border. Suddenly, I noticed many large white sacks along the roadside. After a while, I had the feeling that they must be garbage bags. But so many? There was a huge sack roughly every 50 meters. When these sacks eventually disappeared, I saw why—there were almost mountains of garbage along the roadside, and here it hadn’t even been put into bags yet.

Today, for the first time, I had to be a bit patient at a border. Even though there were only five cars in front of me, I had to wait almost 20 minutes just to leave Bulgaria. They seemed to be quite thorough. When it was my turn, however, everything went quickly. On the Turkish side, I had to show my ID at two checkpoints, and there was also customs in between, but I was simply waved through. In the end, the border crossing was very easy here as well. I only showed my Swiss ID card and kept my passport in my pocket. I was simply curious whether that would work—and it did.

Shortly after crossing the border, I left the main road again and turned onto a small side road. At first, it ran along the border, and less than ten minutes into Turkey, I was greeted by a hailstorm. Fortunately, it only lasted a few minutes, and soon the sun was shining again. The rain pants I had hesitated to put on in the morning wouldn’t have been necessary after all. Just a few meters later, I took them off again. I had to stop anyway, because I had a flat tire. So much for “Welcome to Turkey”…

Since I was still very close to the border, it took no more than five minutes before a border police car pulled up next to me. I told them everything was fine, that I just needed to replace the damaged inner tube, and I declined their offer of help. Before I had even finished replacing the tube—I had planned to repair it later in the hotel—the border police returned. They handed me a bottle of water and three portions of halva. So after all: “Welcome to Turkey!” I had heard a lot about Turkish hospitality and was really looking forward to the country. Now I had already received my first taste of it.

A short while later, I continued on, facing a strong headwind—very strong. I had to concentrate to avoid being blown off the road, as there were frequent powerful gusts. But the destination was not far now. I calculated that despite the flat tire, I would still reach Edirne before 6 p.m. However, things turned out differently: just 14 kilometers before the destination, I got another flat tire. This time, I first had to repair the tube I had previously replaced—I had planned to do that at the hotel, but now I no longer had a spare intact tube.

At least it didn’t rain again after the hailstorm. Although I occasionally felt a few drops, the sky held up and never really opened. After the two flat tires, I had to slow myself down a bit, because out of sheer frustration I just wanted to push hard on the pedals—still against the wind, of course. But despite all my worries and the worst-case scenarios playing out in my head, the tires held all the way to Edirne. I still had to stop once more along the way. Four dogs also seemed eager to “welcome” me to Turkey—so there are stray dogs here as well… One of them was particularly aggressive, and I couldn’t get rid of it until an oncoming driver kept it in check. I kept chasing it away, but every time I turned around to continue riding, it was almost back at my rear wheel.

In the end, I only arrived at my accommodation in Edirne at 6:49 p.m.—and I was still a bit annoyed. I needed some time to calm down. But in the end, everything was fine. I arrived before dusk, felt good, even if a little tired. And: I was in Turkey! It still feels special, but I’ll get used to it. The Turkish I had been learning for over a year already came in very handy today—and that’s a lot of fun.