Day 9

Despite some difficulties, we'll have a blog today as well! We report from Turkey that we are fine, the boys and girls are staying in separate dormitories, we have no internet, but thankfully Gergő saved the day by offering us just enough internet off his phone to post this to the blog. So, we are at a great place, at the dormitories of the University of Thrace of Edirne, in the middle of a huge campus.

Before setting out in the morning, we visited the center of the city we stayed in, that of Plovdiv - where, compared to the places we went through to get into the city (slums, decaying flats) we were quite surprised to be walking among Ancient Roman ruins. Orderly streets, well-kept and tastefully renovated houses are common sights of Plovdiv City Center. At around noon got in our cars and started driving to the border. Meanwhile Tamás Szerémy, a reporter of DunaTV who will follow our tour in the upcoming days. He arrived together with his father, and joined our car-caravan at the customs. While on the road, we have found out that he is planning to get married to a Turkish bride, and moving to Istambul, should his work permit it. We can only congratulate him &nbsp. Before the border village of Kapitan Andreevo we got on our bikes and arrived on them to the customs. We thank you for wishing us luck, everything went in perfect order and in around two and a half hours we could feel Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's land beneath our feet. The turkish customs officers liked us so much that they made pictures of us with their cameras and cellphones. After the border some Turkish ladies made selfies with the team. We've become popular, everyone is smiling and staring at us, when they see the bikers. It seems that we've come to the right place!

We cycled on the remaining twenty kilometers (~12 miles) and by 9 o'clock we were already eating our first round of Turkish food at a place called Selimye Kebap. Kebab, of course and naturally it was delicious. We were satiated when we arrived to the courtyard of our dormitories where unfortunately the team had to split in two: the boys and the girls stayed in separate dormitories, a kilometer away from one another. It seems that the Turks take these kinds of things rather seriously... But no matter, tomorrow the team will re-unite because a day of rest and visiting Edirne is ahead of us. We can't wait to discover the bazaar.

Unfortunately we won't be able to send messages because, as mentioned, we've separated and the two parts can't really communicate. We will try and gather them tomorrow. Pictures will be coming soon  . J.