Spleen

Written on a mountain side, around Uzungol and in a truck going to azerbaidjan.

Spleen. The wait for the iranian visas is too long and we have no information about the process. We don't even know if we'll get them. Ilona feels we are wasting time, she'd like to hurry east without these administrative worries so she would be home faster with the feeling of an accomplished deed. She has more reasons to return than me and therefore more reasons to worry. That is one our big differences and it will follow us during the whole journey.
Ilona hates to waste time and any meter we could go east and stay on spot is a wasted second. Wasted seconds, minutes, hours days.
I don't care about time. But I'd like to see Ankara. The protests in Taksim square. When we passed Istanbul it didn't really feel that important to see this and maybe not worth the (feeble) risk but now that time is slowing down, I'd like to do something of note and play reporter at these protests. As we travel trough Turkey, we experience it from afar. From much closer than you guys in Europe or other parts of the world but still indirectly.
The turkish media shows shy and somehow chaotic protests being handeled by the police.
Nothing unlike a french week end demonstration actually.

People talk about an organised resistance with people carrying gas masks and medical students organising resistance. Most people are with the protesters but some call them socialists.
Some think the demonstration has gone rogue.In the evening, we made it to Ardesen, a small city on the coast. That day we discovered that we don't have anything to eat besides some old bread and a few vegetables. Our water supplies are almost drained and we have something like 3 liras left. That's a little more than 1 euro.
We do have euros but the nearest exchange office seems to be in Rize, 100 km from here.
100km isn't a big deal, especially in Turkey but this region is harder to hitchhike than any other region in Turkey. Nesli has warned us about this. It's said to belong to the Lasz - very distant people.The last two guys who we got a lift from seemed to be high on meth and we just didn't manage to get anyone else. Not even the çocuk-yok weirdos.

That night we slept in a kiwi field. We didn't know they were kiwis, they looked more like little apples not to grow up until november.