Hello!
We have covered another distance on our journey and got further to the East again. At the moment we are being found in Urmie in Iran.
Now about what has happened since the last time we blogged.
After finishing the last report we got on the train in Istanbul and moved only to Izmit (70 km) because we thought that it would be better to hitchhike there. Really heavy storm started during the ride by that train and it continued after our arrival to Izmit as well. When we were waiting until it stops raining, we met a guy who wants to teach English so it was not difficult to talk to him. He took us to a restaurant and helped us to find quite cheap hotel.
In the morning we woke up and immediately went to find an appropriate place for hitchhiking. Of course, nobody stopped for us so we walked subsequently through Izmit up to the exit road towards Ankara. On the way we met two Kurds who were selling water to passing buses along the road. They invited us to a cup of tea and told us that it would be easier to go by train because it does not cost too much (20 TL for a person… that is 20 Euro for the way across all Turkey together). At the railway station we found out that the train was just 20 TL (Turkish lira), it was true, but it went only on Mondays and Saturdays. That is why we had to wait 4 days till the train would go. We went out of the city and after long searching we found quite comfortable heap of stones where we slept.
Next morning we bought some supplies of “ekmek” (bread) and “su” (water) and went to the mountains to spent three days till the train´s departure there. For two days we were eating pate, bread and water and lounged in tree shadow.
When we decided to go back to civilization, first we took a bath in a near pond in order not to smell too much. When we were sitting on a beach, some young guy on a motorbike stopped by us and started speaking Turkish English with us… After a while Samet (that was his name) found out that is was worthless so he gave us a fistful of hazelnuts and then we all were sitting there together, watching into the water and eating the nuts. Afterwards he called his friend Hasan who was said to speak great English and agreed with him that we would go for a dinner together. We went with Samet to the city to some restaurant and met Hasan there. We had delicious Turkish meal PIDE. After the dinner Hasan invited us to his apartment to sleep there… He had a student apartment and his roommates were gone so it was free there. Both of these guys attended the same class and studied engineering faculty. We had a splendid night then, drunk some beer, some slivovitz and talked a lot… We spoke even with Hasan´s father on the telephone, he said us „Hello friends“ in Czech because he had once worked with Czechs.
We got up early in the morning (round 2:00 PM) and Hasan and Samet made ready an amazing program for us for the entire day. We had Turkish butter-rolls and tea for breakfast and then the boys guided us throughout Izmit… We climbed to some lookout, visited fun-fair and went on a mole to see fishermen. Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to our friends in the evening because the time of our train´s departure was coming… However, we would like to say hello to Hasan and Samet!!After that we spent 41 hours in a super-slow train that was overtaken even by a bumble bee sometimes… The train´s name was DOGU EKSPRESI and it stopped also there, where no station was situated… Possibly so that we could have seen how the Turks grew stones everywhere.
After the long journey by train we got to the town Tatvan in the southeast of Turkey (it was raining again). We turned into a pick-up there and were carried for some money to the town Van that was situated on another side of a short-distance lake. We arrived to Van yesterday late in the evening and found out that the simplest way how to get over the frontier would be to go by bus. However, the bus was not supposed to go until the morning so we went for some meal and then we wanted to wait in an internet café until the morning. Since the internet café was closed at midnight, we went back to the bus station to wait there. Around 2:00 AM a “captain” of a bus came to us with an offer to take us to Iran. It was not easy at all to arrange with him where we wanted to go. However, there were only 6 individuals in the bus who looked like a family rather than some passengers. At least, we had some space to sleep on. We were riding all night long.
So we are finishing our report for today. We are going to have something to eat somewhere and then we would like to have some tea in a teahouse.
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