Istanbul to Odessa by BOAT
Odessa to Istanbul by BIKE
As I spin the globe and take stock of just how far Point A, Odessa, Ukraine, is from Point B, Istanbul, Turkey, it is hard to suppress a smile and a feeling that can be summed up as such: Hell Yeah.
Beyond the gratitude that I would like to convey to everyone who pumped the positivity in my name along my bicycle journey there is a question that I have been asked many times over and in many different languages that I would like to answer.
WHY? Why do you bike so much? What is the allure of biking so far?
The following is a bit of insight into the madness, or finely calibrated chaos, that makes jumping on a steel pony and pedaling fast and furious off towards the horizon so desirous.
A long distance hiking friend of mine has a superb phrase for the whole affair: a laughable distance.
1700 km across five different countries from Odessa to Istanbul is certainly a laughable distance. But then again, at times Friday night may seem like a laughable distance from Monday morning. Summer vacation a laughable distance away from the mid winter drear and retirement a laughable distance removed from the youthful days of college.
Prior to this trip I could only point out the countries of Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey on a map. Knowing next to nothing about them besides their capital, shape and arbitrary color in which the mapmakers chose to shade them.
But a bicycle changes all that. Daily distances are limited by physical capability but the possibility of where to ride becomes infinite. Encounters and interactions with locals along the way become personal and extremely human. You are forced to relish the in betweens in terms of both time and place. There is a realness and rawness to every experience that truly tingles the emotions.
The travel is certainly felt in the legs, bones and muscles. You sleep like a baby. The heart and mind are constantly engaged. The journey becomes the focus and an intimacy with the land and life is created.
Rather than riding from Odessa to Istanbul, more poignantly put, I was riding through the daily life of Eastern Europe. Here is a bit of that story:
BRASOV, ROMANIA
I bought my bicycle off the rack in Istanbul for 200 bucks. A Turkish made, steel framed beast, it had no idea what kind of work out I was about to put it through. It was decidedly not meant to be ridden across Eastern Europe.
700km and 2 countries in from the start of the journey the wear and tear began to show.
Due to the weight of my backpack strapped to the back of the bicycle and the fact that I traversed the mountains of Transylvania all morning prior, where paved road turned to gravel which turned to dirt, the back tire tread wore thin and gave way to a spectacular blow out.
Late in the afternoon, with the sun setting over Transylvania, it was decision time.
What to do? I did what every one in their right mind does: Stall. I started to walk, well push the bike, in the forwardly direction as I contemplated hitching a ride to the nearest mechanic. Five kilometers on, walked more out of stubbornness in refusing to put the bike on a motorized vehicle than any lack of transportation offers, I arrived at a tire and auto body shop.
Although I consider myself a proficient bike mechanic, bicycle maintenance is definitely not my forte. Besides, finding a local bicycle repair shop and having them wrench on the bike for a while always leads to a memorable experience.
Arriving tired and sweaty, it was time for my nonexistent Romanian to all of a sudden become eloquent and insightful. Washing his hands with a greasy rag as he walked out of the garage I smiled at the mechanic and pointed to my bike.
Being a man of his trade and seeing the disastrous state of my back tire, the repair was easy to communicate. My presence on a bicycle in the middle of Romania however was a bit more complicated to convey. Using a few key words of country capitals and large towns and a combination of Spanish, English and Romania I made it clear that I had biked from Odessa and was heading to Istanbul. You would have thought I had hit him square in the stomach upon his realization of the length of my journey. Rolling his eyes in what I like to think of as admiration but was probably just disbelief, he began to shake his head, smile and laugh.
The bicycle repair now being secondary to the conversation at hand, he jumped up, dropped his tools and became quite animated. Grabbing a pen, he wrote the date 1944 on the back of an envelope and then proceeded to mimic a walking motion. Seeing that I was still with him, he painstakingly mimed that he was talking about his father.
My eyes dilated as I caught the gist of his story. It was my turn to feel a bit weak in the knees.
His father had walked over 700km from Odessa to Brasov, Romania in 1944.
My head started to spin, was he evading Nazi Germany, fleeing an advancing Russian Army or merely emigrating out of an occupied Ukraine.
Odessa to Brasov by bike in 2009. Now that is all good fun.
Odessa to Brasov by foot in 1944. Now that is some serious living history.
Leaving the mechanic behind with a healthy wave and riding on into the sun, I yearned to be able to speak Romanian, I yearned for the opportunity to meet that man’s father, I yearned to know the full story.
I rode on that day into the twilight, comforted by the good fortune of knowing that all of my laughable distances traveled throughout my life have been self created and journeyed by choice but equally saddened by the realization that the laughable distances traveled by most people the world over are borne out of necessity and forced upon them.
RAZGRAD, BULGARIA
First impressions live long in the memory. The town of Razgrad, 65 kilometers south of the Romania border on the northeastern plains of Bulgaria is mine in regards to the country of Bulgaria. Razgrad is what I like to call an “in between town.” Riding from Bucharest, the capital of Romania to Varna, a seaport and summer resort town on the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast some 300 km away, you have to stop somewhere to hang your hat and rest your bicycle. Razgrad it was.
A nondescript, agro-industrial town I could tell as soon as I entered the city proper that I was the only foreigner for miles. This is the draw of in between travel. Living squarely on Bulgarian terms, the rewards of unique cultural experiences are commensurate to the heightened challenges of communication, interaction and understanding.
Sitting down to dinner at an empty, outdoor restaurant, the Bulgarian owner came and joined me. Somehow the bike, helmet and weather worn map gave me away as being the exotic. Struggling to converse in broken English about the where’s, what’s and how’s of who I was the man kept saying “Ne Var” as he contemplated his next English word.
“Ne Var” roughly translates into What Else in Turkish. Finally, mustering the courage to shift conversational gears myself, I asked the man in Turkish if he spoke Turkish. With his eyes lighting up he immediately said yes (Evet) and our conversation took off, this time in Turkish. I told him that I was an American living in Istanbul, learning Turkish. He told me that the meal is on the house, leave everything where it is and come across the street to meet his friends.
Turns out his name is Ayhan and he is a Bulgarian Turk. Born here in Bulgaria but ethnically Turkish. A hold over or thrown back to the Ottoman time’s when the sultanate ruled over the land for nearly half a millennium. He learned Bulgarian as the national language; Russian in school under the yoke of the Communist regime and Turkish was kept close to the heart and true to its historical roots as the family language. To this day, ten percent of Bulgaria’s seven million strong population is still ethnically Turkish.
As we walked across the street sure enough there was another café, empty except for a lone occupied table. We headed straight for it. Switching from Turkish into a combination of Bulgarian and Russian, he introduced me to his three friends (the owners of the café and the ubiquitous barfly) and the questions abounded. With the arrival of another woman, things simultaneously got more complicated and yet simplified. This woman, a Bulgarian in her mid forties had lived in the States and spoke English. I asked where she had lived. She responded “St. Pete.” As it is, St. Petersburg, Florida meet Razgrad, Bulgaria.
There we were sitting around the table, confusing and understanding each other in a cacophony of three distinct language groups: English of Indo- European descent, Turkish of Turkic descent and Russian and Bulgarian of Slavic origin.
My map of Bulgarian stretched out across the table, covering the peanut dish and held down at the corners by half drunken bottles they all began to point out the most beautiful and must see parts of Bulgaria: the coast, the capital, the mountains. Everything they said except Razgrad.
Much to the contrary I try to explain that in fact that this very moment conversing with them here in Razgrad was worth all the tourist destinations in the country. They shook their heads collectively in disbelief.
This place is too boring, too normal they replied.
Genuine, true, everyday and ordinary. That’s what I say and that’s what makes it matter.
The rhythm of the conversation ebbed and flowed for a while longer. As I got up to leave, Ayhan came with me. He took my shoulder and as he guided me out of the restaurant he said in Turkish “Do make sure you see more of Bulgaria but you know what, every night we are here doing the same thing: talking about how there are no jobs, no money, nothing. But you came along, out of nowhere and made things exciting.”
Without question, as I share this normal, everyday Bulgarian experience with you, I am certain that they too are talking about me.
Ayhan had given me his cell phone number and I made a promise to call him when I reached Istanbul.
1700 kilometers ridden in three weeks. Odessa to Istanbul. A laughable distance between point A and point B. But in the end it was not the Mileage but the Mentality that counted and it was the people met along the way that gave life and meaning to the journey.
