Misery always makes a story so much better...

Hello again! From Istanbul this time, I have yet again progressed a little further along my way to China. This time, in an attempt to improve my writing skills a bit more, I thought it would be a good idea to add a bit more misery to my stories. Now, giving this some thought before I set off from Bulgaria, I figuered there were two ways to achieve this: first, I could of course try to make my stories sound a bit more miserable, using more pejoratives and portraying everything slightly worse than it actually was. The other option, slightly less within my abilities to control, was simply having more bad luck during my trip. After all, hadn't I been extremely lucky so far? This difficult choice was, however, made on my behalf by the travelgods that look down upon me. Clearly, they also thought I had had a bit too much luck upto that point. And they were going to correct that.
Before I go on, I would like to remind you that if at any time during reading you think "he's not going to survive this part", please remember that I am in fact writing this story myself now.

The story starts in Plovdiv, where I spent a good time with both my friends from university and my host from couchsurfing after I sent you the last update. On the morning of the 8th of July, Alexandar, my friend from university, brought me to the edge of town to start thumbing. The first ride was a good one. Even though I had secretly hoped to find a straight ride to Istanbul, this man was taking me to a town about 100km closer to the border than I was at that point. From there, I would have about 50km more to go. The man dropped me off along the main road to the border, at the edge of the town he was headed for. For a while, no foreign cars or trucks passed and I wondered whether I had missed a junction that led all the ongoing traffic around the town. Soon enough the international traffic was coming though, and I put up my sign for Istanbul.
You might remember my description of the phenomenon of returning immigrants in the summer months from my previous post. For about half an hour, not one car that didn't have a local license plate seemed to have even an inch of space to squeeze in a small and petite hitchhiker, such as myself. I didn't try to flag down the trucks, as I saw on satellite pictures on googlemaps that the border checkpoint was preceeded by kilometer upon kilometer of trucks, standing in line, waiting to cross. I wanted a car that would take me all the way there. You might say that sounds a little overambitious, and perhaps it was, but it was not without reason. I had, while doing my research, also read that since 2005 the border was closed to pedestrians. This meant I would have to be in a car when getting my stamp, and so the nice trick of crossing the border on foot I described earlier wasn't going to work. However, I could of course try to find a lift right before the border, and this is what I then switched my attention to. Changing my sign from Istanbul to Svilengrad, the last major town before the border, resulted in the first local car pulling over. The man took me over the old road, which was according to him a full two kilometers shorter. When I remarked that on the new road you could probably drive faster, he shrugged his shoulders, and I think I just liked the old road better. There was far less traffic, so it was indeed nicer to drive there. Just before arriving in Svilengrad, where the old and new road joined again, he wanted to buy me a melon from the roadside, something that is quite ubiquitous in the eastern parts of Europe. In itself this was of course a nice gesture, but the good man probably did not think of the fact that I would now have to carry 2 kilo's extra everywhere I went if I wouldn't eat the monster right then and there. Still happy with the gift, because unaware of what was to follow, I started hitchhiking where he let me out. This was, unfortunately, right at the highway, with cars being either way too full, or going way too fast to pick me up.
My luck really started changing when I started looking for a better spot. I was standing at one entrance to the city, and I thought there had to be at least one other one further on. If I had had a map of Bulgaria, I would have seen that this was not the case. With the heat greater than I had felt at any time during the journey before, I swear I saw sweat forming on my toe nails, and little rivers coming out of every other pore in my skin. My spirits were temporarily back on their feet again when a man gave me a bottle of frozen fluid that looked like fanta but was at least twice as sweet. I walked next to the highway over a big hill, seeing a sign for Kapitan Andreevo, the small town right at the border, still 15 km away. At some point it seemed a road was joining the highway from the city, but it looked rather unused. I took a break there anyway, but was soon joined by a peculiar fly-like insect. I brushed it off my leg, only to find it on my chest a second later. "That's it," I said, "no insect gets brushed off my leg and then sits on me again. You're going down!" I must have missed the moment where the fly said "we'll see about that!", because that might have slightly prepared me for the battle that was to follow. Hitting it hard, any other insect would have died, but this one just got annoyed. From a distance it must have looked rather comical: some guy jumping around waving his arms and hitting himself next to the highway, before picking up his bag and running away. I can tell you, that was no ordinary bug, and I'm afraid I have to tell the world here that we're being invaded by indestuctible, invincible aliens!
Glad that the freshly identified alien was not following me, I walked on. Coming past some beautiful fields of sunflowers, I stopped to take some pictures. That's when I noticed the dark clouds, growing darker by the minute. Not long thereafter the first thunder rolled through the sky. By then, I was slowly becoming fed up with all those cars that were just driving by. On top of that, rain was now coming down in generous amounts and I was only just in time to take shelter under some trees to put on my raincoat. At some point the plastic bag that I was carrying the melon in decided it had done its job long enough, and the melon fell on the ground. Thinking it would be best to eat it then, I sat down to cut it open. I hadn't notciced that both sides of the melon had cracked, however, and this came and kicked me in the ass when its insides ran out, partly on my pants and bag.
After trying to clean what I could, and some more fruitless attempts at hitchhiking the last kilometers, I finally had enough of all these stupid people and decided to walk the rest of the way to the border. Rain and thunder kept on coming, and lightning even struck at about 200m from me. Knowing that ligtning never strikes twice in the same place I felt completely safe walking on, and the fact that I ran for the viaduct a little further on had nothing to do with this at all.

Finally arriving at the border, after four hours and about 20km of walking in total, I quickly found a car that would take me into Turkey. Remembering the strange restrictions on walking across, I was happy to go with these two men who said they would bring me to the bus station in Edirne, just across the border. I had no such intentions, of course, as I planned to get out of the car as soon as we crossed the border to look for a ride straight to Istanbul. Without too much hassle we passed the Bulgarian customs and passport control. In no-man's land, a huge duty-free mall had been built, and I agreed with the drivers that while they would buy themselves poor on cigarettes, I would go and buy my visa to get into Turkey. I had done this before, and knew the price would be 10 euro's. At least it used to be, as I found out when the visa officer pasted a visa sticker in my passport with "€15,-" written on it. No problem, I thought, grabbing for my wallet.
Have you ever had one of those moments when your heart just skips a beat? This was one of those moments, as I noticed I couldn!t find my wallet. Calming down, I realized it must have fallen from my pocket while I was sitting in the car. The visa officer said he would hold the passport so I could go back to fetch fve extra euro's, and I sprinted back to the car. Of course, the two men were still out buying cigarettes in the huge mall, and the car was locked. There was nothing else to do but wait. The men took a long time though, and I started getting worried when I saw that the visa office where I had left my passport was closing! Running into the mall several times without any results, I suddenly heard some people speaking Dutch next to me. After overcoming some initial reluctance, I decided this was an emergency and I really had to go and ask them if they could help me. When they learned of my situation, and seeing the visa office close too, they didn't think twice and those angels gave me the five euro's I needed. Thanking them a thousand times, I ran to the office. Knocking on the window, out of breath yet relieved that I saw my passport was still there, the man gestured that I should calm down and that he would first deal with finishing his administrative tasks before helping me. That was all fine, until I saw from the corner of my eye that the car with the two men and my backpack still inside was moving towards the passport control! Now, I don't panick quickly or often at all, but at that moment I was on the verge of breaking the window to grab my passport and run. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the man opened the window, took the money and gave me my passport. The man had barely let go of my documents when I sprinted to the car which had by then almost cleared customs. The two men recognized me and scolded me for disappearing. I had nothing else to do but apologize, run to the passport control, get my stamp and run back to the car. After explaining them what happened, they seemed to understand and everything was ok. Once we cleared the border, I told them I wanted to get out, as I had planned to do. From that moment on, someone up there must have thought I had suffered enough, because my luck was about to change for the better.

Telling the two men I wanted to get out resulted in two very surprized looks. "You don't want to join us to Istanbul?" they asked in a mix of languages. "I can go all the way to Istanbul with you?" I replied, just as surprized, in a similar mix of languages. Apparently, the men had only intended to take a bite to eat in Edirne and wanted to invite me along, not leave me at the bus station. I was really happy, and half an hour later I was enjoying a plate of cow's liver, a local specialty which I never imagined to taste so good! The rest of the ride to Istanbul was smooth, even though the driver seemed to interpret the lines on the road as lines which should be under the car, rather than besides it, driving only 100km an hour while the other traffic kept on signalling with their lights when they wanted to pass. Going out of the way for them did not stop him from taking his favorite place in the middle of the two lanes once they had passed. His companion was not in the least concerned with this driving style, as he routinely lighted one cheap cigarette with the one before.
I had managed to contact Salih, a couchsurfer that would be hosting me that night, and explained to him that it would probably be rather late when I would arrive at his flat. This was no problem, luckily, and after the driver had left me at a bus stop at the outskirts of Istanbul, I started making my way to the Asian side of the city, where Salih lived. Once on the bus, a young man approached me. He explained he was part of a site similar to couchsurfing and hospitalityclub and could host me. I knew the site he was talking about, but explained to him I already had a host. He was very kind nonetheless, and gave me his email adress and telephone number in case I needed any help. On the next bus, I met a couple that was very kind to help me, and we were all very surprized to find out that the guy and me were both Dutch, and that we even grew up in the same city, Maastricht! He had moved to Istanbul several years ago and they both knew the city quite well. They were also in couchsurfing, as it turned out, and they helped me a great deal in finding the last minibus towards the place I had to be. On that bus, the next surpise was waiting for me. When I explained where I was going to a curious man, he spontaneously offered me to stay in his summerhouse in Trabzon, a city I will pass later on. Finally, another young man on that bus (mind you, it was already 2 a.m.) brought me to the right address, where it turned out that he and my host were friends! After Salih had shown me my room, I took a shower and went to bed, completely exhausted by such a day of extremes.

I've been in Istanbul for a couple of days now, gathering strength for the next part of my trip to the Caucasus. I stayed a few days longer even, days which I really needed to rest and write this story. Istanbul and the people in it have been really kind to me, as I've enjoyed many people's hospitality while playing backgammon, drinking tea and smoking shisha (the waterpipe). Tomorrow, I'll pack my bags and hit the road again, well rested and ready for a new adventure. Until next time!

P.S.: so far I haven't really gotten to describe the cities I have visited really well. I hope I will be able to write a bit about them somewhere along the way, in a chapter solely about them.