Part 2: Europe to Bosporus
Hometown Karlsruhe, Austrian Alps, Slovenian farmland, Croatian hills, Serbian cigarette-stop, Bulgarian superhighways and Turkish Coup-d’Etat
After some contemplation we decided to invest a little bit in a final check-up (oil and air filter and cooling system) of our car (a 1997 Nissan Terrano disguised as a Ford Maverick with questionable chrome trim and color scheme) our kick-off day finally arrived. Almost six months of active planning (visas, insurance, donation collection), a year or two of decision making process (which route will we go and how) and four years of dreaming finally culminated in this day, we are actually going to drive halfway around the world for a charity adventure! After Stefan picked up the car from the garage, we started packing our stuff in the decidedly modest all-terrain vehicle we deemed fit enough to last the whole trip.
Given that we prepared very thoroughly for what was about to come, we both packed stuff for every eventuality we anticipated to find on our way; from bandages and gas canisters to footballs and candy, from international drivers licenses to insurance papers and from gas cooking gear to tin cans of pea soup. We quickly notices that we may have been prepared a bit too well, German(ized) as we are, for the space we were able to afford, but this first challenge was still easy enough to overcome. We took a set of tool (and bought some more throughout the process) and deconstructed the rear bench as to improve the available space. After some cursing (it wasn’t pretty, trust me), WD40 (which in combination with duct tape and tie rips solves every problem in the world, that’s a law of nature) and some German ingenuity we were able to remove every last bit of the bench which then allowed us to actually fit everything we wanted to bring in the small Japanese jeep. High-five!
We started the car and were waved off by the local children, who had gathered to see what those two weird guys were trying to accomplish. The car started beautifully, which, as we have to be honest, was kind of a relief. Although we investigated all our options properly before, we’re not necessarily engineers by any meaning of the word. And driving through the most inhospitable terrain possible with a twenty year old car with around 200K kilometers behind it, doubt and excitement rather than confidence and trust were the emotions of the day. But off we went, into the unknown and on the trip of a lifetime.
After leaving our hometown Karlsruhe we winded up the beautiful green slopes of the Alps. We decided our first stop should be somewhere in the Balkans, if we were to keep up our average quota of about 2000 kilometers a week (the total distance to Ulan Bator would be about 12.000 kilometers on our route). Things went rather swimmingly on German roads, which although not perfect, are miles ahead of everything we would encounter as we went on). Before long we crossed the Austrian border and drove into the Alps, where we had our first encounter with curious people interested in our story and vinyl-enhances vehicle (we put our names and cause on the car making it a legitimate rally car). A bus full of Dutch senior citizens on their way to celebrate a holiday in Croatia. An older woman named Maria notices the Mongol Rally sign on our Nissan and asked in a funny mixture of Dutch and German (we imagined she was a bit in doubt which of the two languages would be most appropriate, given Stefan being German and Jos being Dutch) if we were seriously driving to Mongolia and, when confirmed, wishing us all the luck in the world. We nodded and wished them a great holiday and went off to get some delicious German quality beer in the gas station shop.
When we arrived inside we saw a sign reminding us that we needed some vignettes to be allowed to use the beautiful highways the Austrians and Slovenians had built to enable our trip down south to the Balkans. We decided to buy both as we were at it and meticulously put them on our car. They were the first trophies of what would become a very well decorated front window full with stickers indicating that we were allowed to drive through the various countries. We went off and before long we had to have our first actual stop for gas. In the darkness of the Austrian night we had our first haute cuisine dinner: a can of Unox Frankfurter sausages (oh the happiness!). We decided to drive on until Slovenia and stopped around 2AM, short before the capital Ljubljana. We used our GPS enabled maps which we downloaded for offline use (internet cost can be ridiculous on the road, especially in non-EU countries) and found a nice spot on a field in some farming land. We opened our well-deserved beers and chatted deep into the night, about our first day, what our hopes were for the trip and about the tiny insects that were happy to see us. Given the ambitious aim we had to get to Istanbul in three days, we decided to leave the camp for what it was and just slept in the car. This proved to be not all that comfy but after more than 700 km on the road sleeping proved to be no real problem anyway. The next morning we woke up early by the sounds of passing vehicles, most of which looked curious as if we were the first people ever to sleep in the fields around their community. The fuel cooker Jos borrowed from his parents served us well for the first time and we had ourselves a nice fresh cup of coffee from plastic camping cups. After neatly cleaning our camp site we changed drivers (we decided to do this every day and drive a full day each to give the other some rest) and went off to the next destination: Serbia.
We drove over Croatia and its capital Zagreb, where we noticed the landscape changing subtly bit by bit into a scenic holiday destination. Things went swimmingly and before we knew it we had arrived at the Serbian border. Earlier experience had shown us that crossing into this country could take a substantial amount of time (as it not yet an official member of the EU group of Schengen countries), but we were able to drive through without a hitch. We were able to keep our average speed relatively high, with flat and good quality highways. We ticked off Belgrade and in the evening ended up in our goal for the day, the southern Serbian city of Nis. Here we had to rely on our mobile driving assistant on our smart phones which led us up an small off-road terrain road into the hills, to a tip-top camping site in the middle of some plum trees with a spectacular view down on the small adjacent village: Sicevo (which we only discovered when we opened our tent the next morning).
Setting up the camp for the first time we noticed the delight of the luxuries we had afforded ourselves: a throw-and-go tent and an air-mattress (both of which were set up in about one or two minutes). We opened our next can of food, this time we enjoyed the meat balls in tomato sauce, and took a few magnificent photos of the camp under the stars. We discussed the fact that offline maps proved to be an absolute must-have when looking for silent and beautiful camping sites in the middle of nowhere and decided to go off to sleep in order to start early the next morning. Driving down the hill again we noticed that the road looked much more easy-going on our map than in reality so the magic 4×4 ability of our trusty jeep was really useful for the first time. As the road was about as narrow as a cow and one-and-a-half goats, so we left our second sleeping spot with the first few scratches on the paint, which we proudly considered as our second trophy of the trip.
As soon as we were on the highway again on our way to Turkey, we noticed more and more that there were fewer and fewer local vehicles and an increasing amount of (what seriously felt like thousands) of cars with either German, Dutch or French license plates. We discussed the likelihood of people from these countries all driving to Bulgaria for holidays and soon established that it wasn’t possible that the country would have become the number one holiday destinations for Europeans. Before long we noticed that most of these cars were filled with Turkish families going on holiday in their “Heimat”. Are we in Bulgaria yet, Stefan asked? He knew that the cigarettes in Serbia were very cheap and good quality so we decided to smuggle our first stock in order to get through the trip.
On the road, we encountered the first small issue with our redneck cruise control (which Jos made from a bicycle shifter enabling a set amount of gas going to the engine) started to fall apart. As he fastened the bolt with the wrong tools, the cable released itself from the housing leading to a maximum speed of less than 70km/h, which was well below the average we needed to make it in time to Mongolia. After tightening things with the proper tools from Stefan’s richly filled tool box, we were on our way again. We cheered in happiness a few times because of our self-built cruise control, as that thing turned out to be reeeally helpful, especially when driving 10 or more hours on highways. Luckily it was an easy fix and we continued our way to Bulgaria’s capital Sophia.
Once we crossed the border, we found out that Bulgaria has to offer some really picturesque landscapes. Bright yellow sunflower fields, deep green forests and some beautifully rocky river valleys that enclose the roads through the country, which are, thanks to generous EU subsidies, in pretty good shape (much better than we expected based on our experience with them on earlier trips). The downside of course was, that the toll charges went up a lot too in the last years, but it was well worth it not to encounter goats and potholes the size of footballs on our way.
Next stop Turkish border. Given that a coup-d’état had just taken place, we were a little bit concerned (not nearly as much as our mothers, but still not quite comfortable) about the security situation we would encounter. When we arrived in the late evening we noticed that it was nothing special (considering the horrific news portrays in our newspapers in Europe), but it did feel like the third biblical Exodus on steroids. Literally hundreds and hundreds of vehicles, as far as the eye could see, and again pretty much ALL cars were from Germany, France or the Netherlands. The people picnicking with tea, children running around with “Al Bayrak” (Turkish flags) like their life depended on it and the wonderful Turkish music bouncing loudly from various cars told us one thing in no uncertain terms, the Turks have arrived home. Given the fact that we already saw some well-lit mosques right across the border, there was no more doubt that we had arrived in Turkey now.
The border check was optimized to near-German efficiency after years and years of dealing with these numbers of people (it was already 1AM, and still it was busy beyond belief), and was therefore quite fast. Jos even got in Visa-free this time, a privilege normally only reserved for German passport holders like Stefan. However, we forgot one little detail which in the end costed us about an hour or two extra time with the nice Turkish border control people: Turkish car insurance. Although we insured our car in Germany before we took off, little did we know that other countries require insurance as well on their roads, who would have known? It took us a while to understand exactly what they wanted from us, but luckily German (with subtle Turkish accent) was the most spoken language at the border which made thing a lot easier :-). After we finally got through, it was already deep in the night again so we decided to look for a nice camping spot around the first border town of Edirne, which we found next to one of the city’s rivers on what looked like an unused farming area. Setting up the camp became a routine we would perfect further over time, and we were done in no time at all. We hit our daily target again, next stop Istanbul.
Istanbul
Reaching Istanbul went rapidly using one of Erdogan’s newly paved highways, and soon arrived at the hostel we booked ourselves in advance, in the middle of the beautiful old town near the Bosporus. Arriving in Istanbul is quite a thing, as the city hosts more people than a small country like the Netherlands. About an hour before we arrived in the city center, the first signs of urbanization started to pop up on the horizon. Half an hour before we arrived, traffic had swelled to a swarm of kamikaze drivers all trying to get there first, scratched and bumps on the car be damned. Flats and skyscrapers started to fill the space around us and after first class navigating from Stefan, Jos was able to park the car in a parking lot only about five minutes from our home for the next few days. After checking into Hotel Adora, we decided to walk into the bustling city (after having taken our first, godly shower in three days).
Given the political and security situation we were a bit cautious, not knowing what to expect. Nevertheless we were too curious to let this opportunity go and decided to take a taxi to Taksim Sqare, to the heart of where the coup had taken place just one week ago. We drove up the hill, sharing silence curve after curve, to finally arrive at the center of Turkish-Center-Of-Nationalist-Pride.
Never in our lives did we see so many waving flags, the complete square had turned into a sea of Turkish red and white. It only took about a minute or two to get so inspired that we picked up a flag and joined the spectacle. A podium speaker enthusiastically shouting things we didn’t understand a word of, but we were confident that he would have made Goebbels proud with his performance. The whole thing was continuously accompanied by the sound of dramatic end-of-the-world music adding to the realization that were part of something big, something historic. We saw grown men cry, woman shout Erdogan’s name and children waving with Bengal fireworks like there was no tomorrow, all in honor of the deceased martyrs of Turkish democracy (and big leader Erdogan, naturally). It took us a little bit to recover from this unexpectedly grotesque scene, but after half an hour we couldn’t help to take a few photographs. And a few more. And a few more. Until the moment we realized we needed to get higher up in order to get a good overview of what was happening at the square. Jos spotted a pick-up truck which would provide us with just that, and organized for Stefan to be allowed on it. Stefan took some nice shots and, after coming down, we ended up in a conversation with a random German speaking Turkish Erdogan supporter.
The guy, Umit, had come all the way from Salzburg in Austria to show his support during his holiday and tried to explain us a bit what was going on. He told us why there were people standing in huuuuge lines: Erdogan had organized free food and drinks for everyone, so that his supporters were well taken care of during this festive celebration of democracy. Umit insisted that we should have some free drinks on Erdogan’s expense, which we accepted after several polite rejections. We couldn’t have wished for a better personification of the current Turkish state of mind: proud of his country, his leader and his flag. After asking how long he expected the event to take place, Umit made clear to us in no uncertain terms that he and every other person on the square would stay, defending Turkish democracy day after day and night after night, until their leader Erdogan would tell them things were safe and they could all go home again. We decided not to confront Umit with our potentially deviating views on Turkish press freedom, independent judiciary, freedom of speech for minority standpoints and more of those uncomfortable little realities and just went along with the fun: this was not our fight right now. Enjoying every minute of it and it took us three hours before we decided to take a kamikaze taxi ride back to our hotel. We had put our first foot on Asian soil and it was more spectacular than we had ever hoped to experience.
Hello,
how do you do?