We already saw the beauty of the small Turkish town life, now we will discover the beauty of the backwater Turkish villages. A few days ago we wrote that this was one of our goals, we rushed through Bulgaria to get here. And we weren't mistaken in setting this as our goal, for we confidently claim that despite the heat and the somewhat more difficult route, this was one of our most beautiful days. We are sleeping in the village whose name was the most exotic on our map: Pehlivanköy. We can barely pronounce its name, but it still is wonderful. And the road to here was full of events.
We woke up in our dorms in Edirne, and ate breakfast, as usual, at Selimye Kebap. We have a slight feeling that they've sold us more food in the past two days than what they would normally sell throughout the summer. They were very kind, gave us considerable discounts, and the food they served was delicious - so we went gladly back to them. We set out at around noon towards Pehlivanköy in Turkish summer heat. Fortunately we filled our containers the evening before - with the help of the Selimiye Kebap employees, of course - so we could water ourselves during the whole day. Cycling wasn't easy, adding to the difficulty of the heat were the hills and the dusty, unkempt roads. Wherever we went, there was no one honking maliciously, or shouting at as. They waved and smiled everywhere, and wherever we stopped the people gathered around us and tried to talk to us. We rested in the village centers because we couldn't find any shade next to the Turkish melon fields.
The most important event of the day happened in the village with the strangest name - Cakmak (which means lighter in English), where the whole village assembled to greet us. We stopped at the shop in the cetner, where the Turkish restaurateur waited for us, called for his entire family, but most importantly managed to get the village's English teacher, thus solving all of our communication related difficulties. After that the meeting went fine, we told them who we are and where we're from, why we cycle in such remote places and what we'd like to do here. They were so happy to see us that they even called the village imam to guide us through the small local mosque which had one minaret. We quickly washed our feet, the girls made improvised veils from their towels and raincoats and we visited the mosque. Our imam dressed up in ritual clothes, explained us that they pray five times a day - he sings the prayer to Allah while the villagers turn towards Mecca and pray on their knees. They also assemble every Friday for a kind of mass. At the end he even sung us their holy recantation, which we replied with one of our own. We respected and awed at one another's culture and religion, and despite the language barrier we managed to explain this and that about the Unitarian religion. We had such a great time that we didn't really want to leave Cakmak. When we finally decided that it's time to go, the villagers arrived with five very large watermelons. Refusing them was not a possibility, so we sat down and ate part of the gift, and packed the rest up for the road.
Back to the hot, pebbled road to go up short but tiring climbs. At around 5:30 PM we arrived to Pehlivanköy, where the famous cook Algun was waiting for us with his börek. That is, he would've been waiting for us had he not thought that we were arriving a day later. But as mentioned previously, the Turks take things very seriously - so he called his assistants in and in an hour and a half he made us so many böreks that not even forty of us could eat them all. Meanwhile we moved into the courtyard of the "Cok program liseși" (multi-programed school), where Güzin Iltüzer headmistress was waiting for us. He handed the courtyard over to us, and invited the team out for a tea. Some of us are still sitting here while the others are taking a shower or getting ready to sleep. Tomorrow will be our last cycling day, and we're a little bit sorry that this part will be over, but aren't really sorry for what is ahead of us tomorrow evening - bathing in the Marmara Sea and a hotel once again. So Tekirdag is getting dangerously close. [t.n.: Messages truncated]
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