After leaving Tekirdağ, the wind picked up even more, though it's unclear how that's even possible. Riding became almost entirely impossible. Even though I've used this phrase before, this time it was almost true. Igor, however, said that it gets even stronger in the mountains, and the tents we were using could withstand it. Sounds terrifying.
Unfortunately, most of the scenic beauties were now behind us, and from here all the way to Istanbul we were stuck with a highway, albeit a smooth one. This is where route planning issues surfaced again. It's very hard to arrange things so you can leave and return to the airport without using third-party transport and without doing a massive chunk along major roads. The autobahn is completely off-limits to cyclists, so it’s a good thing we could still reach our final destination via a regular highway (even if it was a major road).
As you know, I dilute my notes and photos with random facts pulled from all over. This is especially relevant here, because there is absolutely nothing to write about the highway.
So here is some more juicy stuff.
In 2008, an Italian woman with the long name of Giuseppina (Or Josephine?) Pasqualino di Marineo hitchhiked across the Middle East dressed as a bride in accordance with her artistic concept. Her goal was to prove that people all over the world are kind and wouldn't harm a traveler. She was murdered in the Turkish city of Gebze. The proof failed.
Or here is a funny picture: Turkish female fans vs Brazilian ones.
And now for more serious news. The Turks, by court order, completely banned access to the website of the planet's main atheist, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, whom I mentioned recently. Dawkins has written several excellent popular science books. On atheism — "The God Delusion", on genes and evolution — "The Blind Watchmaker" and "The Selfish Gene". The books are easy to download on Librusec, which I highly recommend you do.
So far I've only read the first one — it's amazing how everything in it perfectly aligns with my own thoughts. Apparently, it's the exact same effect as in science in general — there is no such thing as "different science". Science, as an approach to understanding the world, is one. That is, there are a million differences in approaches, ideas, and theories, but the foundations are the same. If they are overthrown, as in the case of quantum mechanics replacing Newtonian mechanics, then it's for everyone, until an even better theory is created. True, the book isn't very large, and therefore its critique of religion is somewhat rabid and superficial — examples are pulled from everywhere, but they aren't explained in detail. That makes sense — the author aimed to show the complete absurdity and stupidity of religions, and fitting all arguments on this topic into a single book with detailed proofs is impossible, so it's more of an overview. An even more compressed summary of the exact same thing can be found in Wasserman's article "Dilogy of Atheism".
By the way, the town is called that because there are several towns in Turkey named Ereğli. To distinguish this one, they attached the prefix "Marmara" (Marble) to it, because the sea is nearby. The sea itself got its name from an island in the center where marble is mined. Now they take tourists there. The islands (this one and others) were visible to us a few times along the way, because the width of the sea at its widest point is only 80 km, and the islands are even closer.
As for the town, it's quite small and serves as a vacation spot for Istanbulites, who can get there in under an hour. It's located on a hill, behind which there is a peninsula and a cape. In theory, there was supposed to be a campground there. We, however, only made it to some central square, which featured a statue of Atatürk (presumably) on a horse, and a döner kiosk nearby.
It was getting on toward evening, and we had no strength left. So we decided to grab a bite, stock up on groceries, leave the town, and look for a campground — the hope that there was one right on the cape somehow evaporated after talking to the locals. They assured us that the nearest campground was 13 km away towards Istanbul, and that in the town itself there was nothing like that. For some reason, my comrades treated the locals with paranoia this time, with Sergey being particularly zealous. Maybe it was because kids kept badgering us and asking to ride our bikes, or maybe fatigue was taking its toll — but he was in an exceptionally foul mood, just fiercely grumbling, "They're messing with us."
Who definitely wasn't messing with us was the shop owner — he chatted with me amiably and in good English, gave us a discount, and overall was a great dude, so I even overcame my shyness and asked him to pose.
Afterwards, in the square, they finally made us each a döner, which, by the way, had köfteci inside, meaning those very meatballs I had been promoting in the previous posts, only not following the Tekirdağ recipe, but a local one. Having bolstered our strength and spirits, Igor and I walked a hundred meters from the square, I don't remember for what purpose anymore, but it seems we were looking for a hotel.
There was no hotel as such in sight, but a huge "Pansiyon" sign caught our eye. I tried to translate it — and ended up with "pension". This puzzled me, but not for long — I looked up what it meant in an explanatory dictionary. And here, oh wonders of modern technology — it hit the bullseye: "Pension — a small private hotel". Exactly what we needed. I immediately fervently thanked my iPhone, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, and the WeDict app, and walked inside.
Right there in the lobby, there were tables, armchairs, an LCD TV, and a kitchen behind a counter. Some grannies and a couple of kids were sitting in the armchairs. One of the grannies briskly jumped up, and very clearly and intelligibly, albeit without a single word of English, informed me that yes, we could spend the night here, yes, with our bicycles, yes, 6 people, and it would cost us 20 liras per person, meaning a mere 7 lats — quite reasonable. I immediately said I'd go get the others, and in response she said she'd call the "patron" for further negotiations. Fortunately, you can guess what a patron is from the context without a dictionary. After that, everything went smoothly — the patron instantly dropped the price to 15 liras a night, a measly 5 lats, which suited all of us more than perfectly (after the Doubletree hotel in the US, such a price genuinely staggers me).
Naturally, we agreed, dragged our stuff in, dumped our bikes wherever we could (including right in the lobby), and went to take a look at the town before it got dark. But that will be in the next part.