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Sun, beach, relaxation – and a cave. A couple of days ago Yvonna, Daniel, Deniz from Ankara and me hitch-hiked down south to a nice place called Olympos. We went together in one group and it was amazing that people were picking up 4 people with big bags, at night, even in regular cars. The first day we started at 4pm from Ankara and made it 5 or so lifts later to Antalya by 4am the next morning. We never waited more than an hour for a lift. In Antalya we slept at the beach, went for a walk in town next day and made our way to Olympos, which is “situated” around 60km south. Olympos is usually very crowded with head-wrecker package holiday tourists, but because the season is over and people are afraid to make holidays in the warzone Turkey, everything is pretty quiet and hostels and food places look very empty. Tumbleweeds and all. From 2pm to 5pm though there are around 50 million tourist day-tour-cruise boats arriving to Olympos for a little stop-over, spilling out a hundred white-skinned, silly dressed anti-tourists each, stumbling through the sand, intaking their quick bath+tan, looking under every stone in a distance of 100m from their boat, getting on the nerve of everyone, but bringing the well-needed shower of money. The scene is accompanied with some nice summer hit pop music blaring from the overheated speakers on the boats. The spectacle is getting smaller and smaller every day though, phew.. Oh, got to go. Will write some more about the cave we are living in some other time. Please, friends, don’t be upset if I don’t find the time to reply to you by e-mail individually.. This here is for all of you. 🙂

Don’t have much to tell, but some time before tonight’s Klezmer concert in Ankara’s university concert hall. We spend the last days chilling out in different student flats near the campus with short visits to town – eating, sleeping, hanging around the campus, letting off countless “Kak djela?” (Russian for “How are you?” – our universal catch-phrase since Ecotopia), being really silly, sleeping, eating.. Yvonna from England joined our retard club (Kak Delaaaaaaa?) after Rori left back towards the hazy rains of Eire. Last night we went to a Hamam (Turkish bath). Very nice and refreshing! In the overall rating it’s losing some points though at “How good do homosexual perverts behave inside the bath?”. What the f..?! No respect of free will whatsoever. But they leave you alone if you shout at them for a while. Hehe. — I got my appetite back after another diarrhea attack. Wow, great news, wasn’t it? Concert starts now..

We went to see it live! A beautiful sport.. 😉 Before the final we saw the match Germany – Nederlands. Germany won very, very closely. The poor German girls had a pretty tough time though. The Turkish audience absolutely hated them, every serve was being wisseled and boo-ed at with an enormous volume and good strikes were only honoured by a handful of people clapping (including me). Germany won against Turkey some days before.

Back in Ankara after some lifts by weirdo truck drivers.. I don’t know, I think it’s going to be no more trucks in Turkey. We felt a bit uncomfortable after one guy asking for special favours. 🙁 Anyway, back in town this morning we went to a peace protest. The amount of police (a lot of them with massive machine guns or riot gear), tanks and controls was just unbelievable. They really don’t like the idea of something getting out of control here. The protest zone was completely locked off. When I was picking up a stick for my peace flag in a park a cop ran over and asked me for my passport. I showed him my German ID card, but he wouldn’t accept it and told me I would have a “big problem!” now. After hours being presented to people of ever higher rank and being transported to the police headquarter in a neutral van by people without uniform I was given lovely food and released without any charges. Interesting account with the officials here.. 🙂

Two days ago Daniel and me hitch-hiked from Ankara towards south. The first lift was given by a Police van – cool! They tend to do this here sometimes for foreigners. At night we arrived by truck in Aksaray were we put our tent (thanks again for the lend, Maura! 🙂 near the main street between some houses and shops. After getting up in the morning we were already putting out the thumb again when a shop owner’s family invited us for breakfast – dobre! We went on by slow, slow, superslow truck to the Cappadocia destrict that is famous for its man made caves in (kind of) beehive-shaped rocks. In Uchisar we saw the first beautiful example of this strange housing. After watching a wonderful sunset from an elevated viewpoint we picked our cave for the night. I bought some breakfast for the next morning, dobre pivo and wine, and went up to our shelter in the citadelle of the town, which is completely carved out of a massive rock. It looks a bit like a Swiss cheese. People here don’t seem to mind travellers sleeping in the caves, so we enjoyed the splendid view over towns, canyons, rocks and hills from high up while it was getting dark and at sunrise. Wow, nothing like I’ve ever seen before. Today Daniel went off to the nearby Ortahisar and I will meet him there later. I walked through the cave-riddled canyon to Goereme. Many people still live in these caves and equipped them with satellite dishes and windows. A bizarre picture. We will go back to Ankara tomorrow and to the south coast early next week. Alright, will get more Doener now..

The four of us hitch-hiked to Ankara yesterday in two teams. It took us around eight hours and gave me a nice insight in the kindness of the people here. Everybody was very friendly and helped us whereever they could with food, money and extra lifts. Most probably Alper’s story of coming back robbed, pennyless and without passport from the Ukraine did it’s own magic. 😉 Going to get one of the nice Doeners they have here now..

Now in Turkey with Yaser and Alper! Kak delaaa?? Had to take the ferry from Odessa to Istanbul earlier than planned because our visas ran out. More news later..

The Turkish people have arrived! As usual we met Yaser and Alper from Ecotopia on the street walking by while we were having a beer (this happened twice before in Kosiv and Kiev). We are still in Odessa and today we went to a mad bath place. It was an old, small, very, very hot ecalyptus sauna filled with people hitting each other with oak branches as if there is no tomorrow. They also have a cold basin, 20 showers and a little pub. Pivo, pivo, pivo – in the morning, after the sauna, in the evening. I like it here. 😉 Tomorrow we will explore the catacombs under Odessa.

This morning, after four relaxing days in Kiev, Daniel, a friend from Jokkmokk in Sweden, and me arrived by night sleeper train (very convenient!) in the wonderful coastal town of Odessa. Wow, how nice it is to be here. When you get off the train the first thing you hear is classical music that is played over the platform speakers to welcome you. I like their style.. The streets are full of trees and life that somehow reminds me of past colonial scenes in Hanoi or Cambodia. Hard to explain this warm and relaxed feeling. Something between the end of a great aera and the beginning of something big. Waiting for things to happen.

It seems so long ago already.. Only a handful of people stayed until the very end of the camp. Because of heavy rain and an unsecure feeling in the thinned out rows of tents a lot of people stayed with Babushkas in their houses. So did we. It was amazing to see how good life without running water and other luxury works. According to herself our Babushka does the best food in the village. No doubts about that! I stayed with people from Spain, Poland, Belgium, Belorussia, New Mexico and Germany – what a party we were, delighted she was, our Babushka. After Odessa we plan to go to Krimea and from there to Istanbul and up north to Belgrade and somehow hitchhiking back home to Schwerin. I hope I don’t run out of money or time before.. 😉 Having a great time! Ok, will log off for today. Big thanks to the people that hosted us silly westeners (that know nothing about manners in this country and are so chilled out that it hurts sometimes) so far: Helen & family and Stac in Kiev and Mitje in Odessa.