emotional | Chaos roaming the world

First thing you see in the morning

Our stay in Sommerach was lovely and filled with great food. Breakfast with fresh buns and good coffee gave us an excuse to hang around, spending some more time with family.

At noon, we had to go though…another 180km to Frankfurt. Just a short ride but an important one. Finishing the trip. Throughout most of the ride, our mood was pretty triumphant. Close to Frankfurt, we decided to take a detour so that we’ll come in on the A5 which would give us a view of the skyline. Shortly before we could actually see it, the mood turned sombre. We started to realize that these are the last kilometers of our trip. We had actually done it. We were still sitting on the same bike which had left Clifton Terrace in Wellington all those months ago.

Frankfurt, eh?

When Frankfurt came into view, I started crying. The mix of emotions was just too much: Happy that we had made it, sad that it was over, proud to have made it, happy to be home, missing Wellington like crazy. Just too freaking much. Also, this way I ended the journey the same way as it began: in tears. I’ve come full circle, haven’t I?

Arriving in the suburb of Okriftel where we would stay with more family, we went on a last little detour to the place where we had bought Rocinante. Unfortunately, no one who has anything to do with bikes was around. So we left again for the last couple of meters to our temporary home.

Arrived at Flo’s family’s place. Frankfurt needs to be added immediately

Just to be stopped again when we turned into the road where Flo’s family lives. An unconscious figure lay on the footpath next to a bicycle. A man and a woman were standing at the accident site, too, but it must have happened only moments before. Flo stopped and while the woman told us that she already called the ambulance, we could still offer our first aid kit as no one else seemed to have one. There was a lot of blood from a wound on her head. One of the helpers had just started cleaning the wounds and her face when she regained conscience and the ambulance arrived. Having witnessed nothing and being already the third persons to help, we cleared the road and left to finally arrive at our destination just down the road.

We’re home now. In one of our homes.

Complete trip with important city dates

: First thing you see in the morning

: Lavender is in bloom at the moment

: Fountain square

: Bye, bye Sommerach!

: This is where we need to go

: About to get to the Europabrücke (Europe bridge)

: Frankfurt, eh?

: Close to our old quarter now

: Rocinante’s ‘birth’ place

: Arrived at Flo’s family’s place. Frankfurt needs to be added immediately

: Complete trip with important city dates

Rain. That thing. The slight annoyance that you forget about after camping in sunshine for a week. Well, this morning, it was raining. It slowed down our daily morning routine and it dampened our mood. Packing a wet tent is also not fun. Enough whining, we got on the road and today, we’d make it to Istanbul. 🙂

stupid toll system, still not working!

The GPS routed us on a giant 6 lane motorway. Flo, scrolling ahead, said there seems to be a ferry which will shorten the trip considerably. However, the next signs told us that Istanbul is only 90km away and that there will be a bridge. That sounds great! Yeah, nah. As with the museum in Troy, people got ahead of themselves. The motorway led right to the sea…but the bridge isn’t finished yet. From this point, Istanbul was still 120km away and we had to circumnavigate all of the Sea of Marmara. To make things worse the toll road ended with a secured gate this time and instead of waving your paywave card, they wanted cash from you. We still have about 30 Turkish lira on the card which we will probably never use up so paying cash now felt like we had to pay twice. Flo was not amused, to say the least.

Time to move on. Rocinate still looks like a demo bike 😉

Didn’t matter, we were still on track for Istanbul. Our first stop was the Touratech Türkiye shop, just for a visit. As with almost all Touratech shops we have been in, it was lovely. The staff is good for a chat, we got free tea and coffee and we looked at what’s new. We didn’t need anything but I didn’t say no to the visor cleaners we were offered…insect goo is one of the constants of our trip.

Istanbul is big. The GPS calculated another 28km from the shop to our hotel. And there is a lot of traffic, especially because we wanted to use one of the two bridges over the Bosporus. Driving from the Asian continent over a bridge onto the European continent was our idea of ending the trip. Of course, we will have a look around the city for a couple of days but afterwards, it’s pretty much straight to Frankfurt. Europe will have to wait for another journey. With those thoughts in mind, the crossing was actually quite emotional. It took us almost 11 months to get here.

The last meters in Asia!

Our one room apartment, once we found it, turned out to be exactly what we’d hoped for. Hotels in Istanbul seem very cheap at the moment and the online offers are very good. We got our room for three nights for 62€ including breakfast. And it’s in the center of the city.

But riding through rain and traffic, skipping lunch and being emotional about this last part of our journey had left us exhausted. We had an early dinner and otherwise enjoyed the comforts of our room.