Turkey leftovers – Day 17

On the ferry back to Cannakale from the tour I’d met Brenda from Melbourne and Simone from Limerick. Both travelling alone and both great fun. Brenda – who seemed to have no safety valve when it came to being candid – said that she was really enjoying the attentions of the men here. Within four hours of landing at Istanbul she’d been wined, dined and laid. That wasn’t happening for her at home where she’d been going through a decade-long ‘dry patch’. Her words! 

Simone was relatively less open  by comparison and had been travelling for months in Siberia and Mongolia before moving on to China. Now she was slowly wending her way home. She had a whacking great camera that she continously snapped away with.

The ferry had run out of beer so I repaired to my favourite bar on the waterfront. The waiter had spotted me coming and guided me to a table inside out of the wind where my ice cold was waiting. Ahhh Efes…not a bad drop. 

Next to me four girls were playing a riotous tile game that looked like a cross between Scrabble and Mah-Jong. I asked what the game was called. ‘Okey!’ they said in unison. ‘Okay?’ I said. ‘ Okey’ they all nodded. ‘Okay!’  I said and returned to my table amid squeals of laughter.

In the morning, still dark, I sat on the edge of the bed for the morning toe inspection. The offending tarsal was still a funny shape. All toes are I suppose but I was comparing it to its brothers. But now I had two bad toes. The little piggy on the left was coloured like Joseph’s famous coat. Ah – aaah – aaaah – aaaah I sang to myself. This one I’d stubbed in the dark the night before in the bathroom on a jutting tile around the shower. The tiler had just left it sticking out instead of cutting it. Okay.. I had eight good ones left. Better that than be a hobbit.

The skin was now scabbing over nicely where I’d badly grazed my knuckles in Chios. Pulling the door shut behind me without looking they’d encountered a razor sharp strip of draught excluder. I didn’t make that mistake again.

This must – I realise – make me seem like a right Captain Clumsy. But in my defence you can’t out-think the local builders here. In my shower there were bare wires taped up.  I didn’t know if they were live but I considered them out of range. Plug sockets were falling out of walls. I could go on. A healthy sense of self preservation was worth paying for with a few scrapes.

At my digs the owner Mustapha beckoned me over for a welcome coffee. I said that I had thought about returning via Iznik but had decided against.  ‘My father lives in Iznik!’ He went on to relate that it was famed for its buried treasure. That after some purge the residents had thrown their gold down wells in the town rather that carry it with them. Several big finds had been made. ‘My father has a well in his garden.’ he said. His father hadn’t been interested so he’d covered it over with a lawn but now and again treasure hunters would show up and say ‘We think you have a well here.’ Which he always denied. Eventually Mustapha convinced him to investigate. They dug a hole in the lawn and uncapped the well. Mustapha went down 15 metres until he hit dirt. Then over the course of several summers dug down a further six metres.’ It was tough work, the well was narrow and I am tall.’ But they found nothing. His father said ‘ I told you so.’ and shook his head laughing. ‘Perhaps if I had dug another six metres?’ said Mustapha. 

On the motorway. Sunny and hung with a Remmington sky. I passed substantial roadside fruit stands right on the eight lane highway. A police car on the opposite carriageway facing the same way as us. Glittering blue of the Dardanelles off to port. The giant suspension bridge a smudge of a line in the far distance.  The country looked like wheat to me. Rolling hills of harvested fields bestrode by electricity pylons. 

I was bored by these ridiculous roads now. Nobody was on them. Sometimes, for periods of 10 minutes or so I was the only traffic in any direction. I thought how much fun it would be on this perfect surface to blat along in a fast car at 200mph.

But more to the point, I resented this motorway heaven. Every time we’d tried to by-pass them and explore locally we’d find the road would run out or be redirected back. Which was why I suppose you had tractors and old men on stink-wheels going in the opposite direction down the hard shoulder. It was the only way they could get to work. 

On the left a massive black and white brieze block of a ship. Barely shaped at the front, was getting along quite well. As we crossed the mega suspension bridge to the European side, the brick appeared under us and now on the right.

Soon the top of the Aegean appeared and I could see the curve that marked its limit and the promise of Greece. 

I topped up the tank to get rid of some Turkish. The kid in the shop tried to sell me five kilos of rice on special offer.

For a while we’d been starting to see big Turkish flags. I knew that meant we were close to the border. And then we reached it. 

A typically massive affair in the Asda supermarket, late Ottoman style. All for show and very expensive. I waited in the queue and fed a stray dog pretzels out the window. He wanted some of my emergency wine gums but I wound up the window.  He made a good job of licking off the bird dirt.

Four windows where the passport was presented each time. At the last the guard said ‘What is your name?’ He was staring at me and holding my passport. I told him. He shrugged and said ‘You go!’

Then there was  another hold up with two armed squaddies. Index fingers straight above trigger guards. Bored. This was not what they had signed up for. Then a curt nod and over the terribly maintained bridge – I guessed that no-one knew who owned it – into Greece. 

As we bowled down the Via Egnatia to Alexandroupoli, a military column of tanks on low-loaders were going the other way. Towards the border.