to nowhere in particular

no idea where i'm going, but i'll get there Les mer

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to nowhere in particular Reisende
antalya, pt.2
20.–23. jan. 2024, Tyrkia ☁️ 18 °C
before i left, i still had a mission to make a sign to hold up at the airport. found a big paper sheet in a supermarket and wrote "hoş geldiniz mr & mrs frieden" on there with my perma marker. packed my stuff, said goodbye and got onto the airport tram. arrived there and found the international arrival waiting area. after some time, my parents finally emerged from the building. we were all very happy to see each other and slipped into our accustomed roles really quickly. felt like they were never away.

got them on the tram and walked to our hotel. apart from the hectic traffic, they didn't seem very phased. after checking in, we only went out to eat dinner around the corner. the next day, we looked around the old town and visited the duden waterfalls. the day after, we took a bus out to the mountains next to the city and did a nice hike. antalya is a nice city, but there's really not a whole lot to do. we did however go to a hamam, a traditional turkish spa. the people doing the massages and peelings are brutal - it was a near death experience, but afterwards, i felt like a new person.

on the third day, we went back to the airport to rent a car. it took some time, but we got there in the end and set off towards adrasan.Les mer
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adrasan
23.–27. jan. 2024, Tyrkia 🌙 15 °C
after my dad drove the first bit oh way, we stopped to eat in a nice little place near the sea called kemer. then it was my turn to drive. i expected it would be much harder to get back into it after 4 months, but i was right back to normal and had a lot of fun on the empty turkish highway. the scenery along the way was also great. towards evening, we made it to adrasan and checked into our cave apartment.

apart from one day i took for myself, we were out hiking every day, once to a light tower and once up a mountain. even got to use the infinity pool in front of our flat. not bad for january.Les mer
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kaş
27.–29. jan. 2024, Tyrkia ☁️ 9 °C
on the way from adrasan to kaş, we stopped in myra, where st nicolaus is supposed to have lived. apart from the kebab we got, everything there was abhorrently overpriced, so we just took some pictures of the rock tombs and got going again. here, right as my internet stopped working, i realized that i had been scammed by my sim card dealer. until now, i had been the only one of us with data, but we still managed to get to kaş without issue.

there, after a lot of unnecessary trouble, we found an apartment hotel in the hillside of the coast town. the next day, as we were walking along the shore (like fethiye, kaş is part of the lycian way btw, so lots of hikers there), we got the idea to rent a couple of scooters for the day. they were just 200 lira (6€) a day and more than worth it. i got the hang of it pretty quickly and scootered my way through the mountain villages with my dad. when it surprisingly started hailing after sunset, we even picked up two hikers off the road and got them down to the city. tons of fun. i also managed to drag my parents into an abandoned waterpark we stumbled across.

the next day, we headed inland for a little mountain hike. i don't have any good pictures, but the villages in the poorer parts of turkey are such a contrast to the rich coast towns, it's actually insane. the people up there also never see any tourists, so we were welcomed a lot more warmly than in the cities.Les mer
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pamukkale
30. jan. – 1. feb. 2024, Tyrkia ☁️ 8 °C
last stop of our little road trip, pamukkale. probably the biggest tourist attraction in all of turkey. we drove for a couple hours, breathtaking views once again. in pamukkale, we got a hotel and spent the night. after breakfast, we headed to the nekropolis of pamukkale, a huge area of ancient ruins and tombs complete with an amphitheatre and hot spirngs. but the reason all the people come there is the otherworldly landscape just around the corner. no idea how to describe it, so just have a look at the pics.

after two nights, we headed back to antalya, but not before checking out a couple of caves as well as the antalya canyon on the way.Les mer
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antalya, pt. 3
1.–3. feb. 2024, Tyrkia ☀️ 16 °C
my parents didn't like the first hotel we stayed at too much, so we went looking for another one to spend the last two days of our time together. this time, we went to the real hotel area of antalya, right by the beach promenade.

the only thing left to do was a little shopping tour. because my parents would take a bunch of my equipment with them for weight reasons, including my converse chucks, i had to get some new shoes. after some time haggling around at the bazaar, i got some solomon trainers that satisfied both my needs of looking good and not killing me on hikes. also secured a set of much needed fresh underwear as well as a pair of cargos.

my stove, book, gopro, boots, sneakers, ice axe, hammock and lots of other stuff i didn't need too often went into my parents suitcases, the difference in weight of my backpack definitely makes it worth it, though. from now on, i will mostly be out in nature, so the new focus in terms of baggage is weight and hikability.

but, of course, something had to go wrong in the end. i was on the phone with jakob when i noticed i was feeling a bit off. from there, everything started to go downhill. i spent the night awake, trying not to throw up and shit myself at the same time. turns out my parents went through the same thing, the chicken we had had for lunch probably got us all infected with salmonella. for me, that's no big issue, but they had to get on a plane the next day. with all of us completely worn out, the goodbye was a bit chaotic, but still very heartfelt.

with my little vacation now coming to an end, i realized how long my travel would be from here on. it had only been 4 months scince i had last been with them, but it's going to be another 11 now. mixed feelings.Les mer
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antalya, pt. 4
3.–5. feb. 2024, Tyrkia 🌩️ 16 °C
coming back to hostel vague, i got a nice warm welcome from the staff members that still knew me. also made friends with the other guests very quickly, but not before taking the rest of the first day off for fully recovering from the salmonella.

the following two days were super fun. i spent a lot of time socialising with the others in the living room, they were great once again. hayden, one of australians, accompanied me to a kebab place i had now known for ages. the rest is history, the guy was great. finally got a new sim card as well.

after a couple of drinks and a marshmellow campfire in the evening, i had to leave at 11 to catch the night bus to ankara to finally pick up my iran visa there. got everybody's instagram before leaving, then got on the way.Les mer
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night bus to ankara
5.–6. feb. 2024, Tyrkia ☁️ 7 °C
got around 3 hours of sleep, as expected. i arrived in ankara around 7, where it took me almost an hour to figure out how to get metro tickets. ankara is not a tourist city, guess i'll have to get used to this kind of stuff. because the busses were hopelessly (!) overcapacitated, i had to walk another hour until i finally found the iranian embassy. it was under construction, so to enter, you basically had to slip through a hole in the fence to get in.

there, i had to find out that i should've printed the visa application, so i had to run to a copy shop, where i miraculously managed to get it done. back at the embassy, it took another one or two hours until i finally held the visa in my hands. 75$ well spent.

because my experience in ankara hadn't been the best and i had heard from others that there is fuck all to do there, i decided to head straight back to the bus terminal, where i hopped onto another bus, this time straight to capadocia.Les mer
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göreme, pt. 1
6.–8. feb. 2024, Tyrkia 🌙 10 °C
the sun was already setting as the bus drove through capadocia, which would come to be one of my favourite landscapes ever. i got off in the center of göreme, which is really more a village than a city. in summer it's one of the most popular tourist destinations in turkey, so i can't imagine how crowded it'd be.

after finding a supermarket and getting some supplies, i headed to an area where my camp spot apps indicated some good places to set up my tent. it was a sort of plateau with a view over the city and all the sandstone pillars in between the houses, with a huge mesa and snow-capped mt erciyes in the background.

i woke up to a great sunrise and figured this would be the right moment for a little run to test out my new shoes and explore the area. i went for a route that took me through "love valley", which, according to everyone i have spoken to, should definitely be renamed to "dick valley". went for about 10k, but it was more of a trail run and i'm a bit out of shape, so it was enough for my joints. i did get lost once or twice and had to go offroad, found an injured fox and also developed blisters on my feet, but apart from that it was very nice. will do it again in the future.

i knew that the area was famous for it's balloons, but although i watched every sunrise and -set, i never saw any, even the next day, so i packed up in the morning to set up camp somewhere else.

it's the first time i did a proper hike with my whole backpack, which is only now a possibly because my parents took so much weight home with them. felt pretty good though. i wanted to see if the top of the mesa was good for camping, so i headed there. on the way, i went through some amazing landscapes and saw tons of houses inside rock formations.

arrived on the plateau and met the only hiker i saw the entire time, colin from switzerland, who coincidentally stayed at the same hostel that i was going to if the mesa was no good for camping, which turned out to be the case. too windy. i headed down, saw some more amazing valleys and arrived back in göreme to check into the hostel. i could've picked another camp spot, but my powerbank was empty and the sky rather cloudy, so no solar power either. i accidentally gave the other powerbank to my parents to take home with them, so that's on me.Les mer
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göreme, pt. 2
8.–10. feb. 2024, Tyrkia ☁️ 11 °C
unfortunately, because the hostel was basically just a shared hotel (if that makes sense) and had no social area, i never saw colin again. i did however meet nina, one of the volunteers i had stayed with for two weeks in thessaloniki, again. she was as surprised to see me as i was.

my roommate, a guy from the states, told me that there had been no balloons going up because of wind conditions, but they were scheduled to take off the next morning for sunrise, so i set an alarm (which i didn't need because someone decided to check in in the middle of the night) and went back to my old camp spot to see the spectacle. after 30 minutes of waiting, as the sun was coming up, i could finally see some ballons inflating in the distance. i expected around a dozen or two, but i once they were all up, i counted over 50. had some breakfast while they all flew overhead, it was amazing.

funny enough, halfway through, i meet the same american guy again. after about an hour, the balloons landed somewhere in the distance and we went back to bed. that day, i didn't do much else except planning my next moves. i had to be a bit more strategic, because eastern turkey is kind of a no mans land. all the major cities and tourist areas are in the west, so there are almost no hostels past göreme until georgia or iran. luckily, most cities have hotels for under 20€ a night, so while it's more expensive, it's bearable. still, i had at least 10 days to pass until my iranian friend saeed would return to iran from slovenia and be ready to accomodate me.

the next morning, the balloons went up again, and this time i picked another spot to watch them from way closer. after the balloons were gone in the distance, i headed back to hostel to check out and got on the road again. literally. i walked to the next best main road around 5km away and started hitchhiking.

this time, unlike that time in istanbul, it was a blast. got a ride from two teenagers to the next bigger city, then a trucker picked me up. my original plan was to go to kayseri, but when he offered to take me all the way to his destination in gaziantep, i couldn't say no. we drove for hours and hours, slowly, because the truck was wayyy overloaded with quarry stone, toward syria. he even insisted on buying me lunch, great guy. i didn't expect him to let me out like 50km outside of antep, so i had to hitch another ride to the city in the dark. the turkish didn't disappoint though, and within 3 minutes i was in the next car. they set me off right infront of my hotel, where i checked in, ate, and fell asleep.Les mer
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ReisendeToll das du so dran bleibst mit schreiben und wie schön! Weißt du warum der Trecker dich plötzlich rausgelassen hat?
12.02.2024SvarOversette
Reisendeneee der hat auch angeboten, mich noch bis rein zu fahren, falls ich sonst niemanden finde, aber der musste halt in einem vorort entladen
12.02.2024SvarOversette
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gaziantep
10.–12. feb. 2024, Tyrkia 🌙 9 °C
i spent the first half of the day in bed trying to figure out my next steps. also spoke to elias, the other german lad i met in izmir, about meeting up in pakistan. it's certainly quicker than going through russia, and that way i would be in india before the high summer hits.

i then went out to see a bit of the city. antep has over 2 million inhabitants, and yet i haven't really heard much about it before. walking through the city definitely feels a lot different from other places like antalya, that's probably because i am now in kurdish territory. in the two days i was there, i saw a total of 3 other white people and 0 with blonde hair. you can imagine the stares.

i still decided to go to a free museum i had seen on google maps and it turned out to be really good. it was an exhibition about antep's history, mostly about wars. to my surprise, there was a huge cave system in the basement where people hid out during conflicts, very cool to see.

on my way back to the hotel, i saw a place selling pizzas. it looked pretty dodgy and it was pretty expensive for turkish standards, but i ordered one because i hadn't had any in months. good decision. also, for the first time, i saw street vendors selling pigeons out of cages and i was naive enough to think they weren't meant for eating. boy was i wrong.

the next day, i started looking for an exchange office with iranian rial in stock, but none of them had any. i also tried to visit the famous antep castle, but it was closed due to earthquake repairs. i went back to the hotel, packed my stuff and set off towards the highway running through the city. not 20 minutes later, i was on my way again.Les mer
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sanlıurfa
12.–17. feb. 2024, Tyrkia ☁️ 16 °C
the first person to pick me up in antep was a guy who owned his own little software company in a city a couple kilometres down the road, where he was returning now after having donated blood in antep. he invited me to his office for some tea and even had some food delivered for me and fought off every one of my attempts to reimburse him.

an hour later, i was picked up by two younger guys in an old lada barely holding onto life. seatbelts have become a commodity in this part of the world, but the vibes were all the better. we made a stop in a small city not 10km from syria. coming there, we entered proper kurdish territory, and you could clearly tell. all the roads i had seen in turkey were in perfect condition, spotless. here, they thurned into muddy, bumpy never to be finished construction zones. the guys explained that the government doesn't like the kurds, so they just don't build the roads for them like for the rest of turkey. crazy.

when they dropped me off on the street again, i didn't even have time to set down my backpack, before another car just pulled in behind the car i had just gotten out of and waved me in. they were three social workers carpooling back home to (sanlı-)urfa. they dropped me off 15 minutes from my hostel. just in that short time, i was approached by 3 or 4 different guys welcoming me and got tons of smiles from the locals.

but sadly, urfa isn't just peaches and cream. along the road, there were a bunch of half collapsed buildings and "involuntary parking lots", as i call them - rectangular spaces where a building should be, but isn't. all silent reminders of the earthquake a year ago. i did a bit of research later, apparently almost 400 people died just in urfa alone. i also noticed that here, about half the women wear full niqabs.

i found my way to the hostel, where i was greeted by a surprisingly strong soviet atmosphere. the owner made an entry into a huge brown guest book instead of a computer and handed me the keys to my room. with dim lighting, thick walls, a long hallway and super old interior, this place looked more like a prison than a hostel. but who am i to complain. i quickly met the only other guest, an older australian chap.

i took the first day off and reunited with shawn from göreme on the second. we did a bit of sightseeing, and surprisingly, were rewarded with a lot more than we had anticipated. urfa is home to a beautiful public park complex including huge fish ponds, bazaars, mosques, and a big castle. oh, and apparently, the birth cave of abraham (where he supposedly lived for 15 years in complete darkness, only nourished by an antilope giving him milk) (???) and an exhibition where you can lay your eyes upon an alledged beard hear of his. luckily, not even the locals take anything shown there seriously, they all told me they're fully aware that it's a scam.

on the third day, we visited the famous göbelklitepe excavation site an hour from the city. it's thought to be the oldest found human structure in the world by a long shot and although i'm usually not really interested in old stone piles, i have to say it was pretty cool. when we returned to the hostel, there was another guest there, lea from france. we had planned to visit mount nemrut the next day, but the hostel owner told us that the road there would be buried in snow, so we opted for the village of harran instead.

we took a dolmus there and passed by the first attraction of the day on accident. just a huge tank parked by the road. there were police officers with kalaschnikovs right next to it, so i had to suppress the urge to climb on it.

then we went to see the classic turkish mud homes that harran is still home to after thousands of years and climbed around in some castle ruins. also got rocks thrown at me by some little kids. luckily, i decided not to cause an international incident.Les mer
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bingöl
17.–18. feb. 2024, Tyrkia ☁️ 4 °C
everything until here was just warm up, now let the real hitchhiking begin. i had now made the decision to go through pakistan, meaning i wouldn't get a second chance to see georgia and armenia, if i wouldn't go there soon. not wanting to pay for a 60+ euro bus and hungry for more adventure, i hit the road again. getting out of urfa was way trickier than i first thought.

it took me over two hours of walking and waiting until i was finally picked up by a 20 year old guy in a 10 year old car equipped with a 1 year old, deafening speaker system. love to see it. he got me out of the city and onto the right road, where i got a simit for free from a street vendor.

a couple of minutes later, i was in a car with an armenian guy, who was perhaps the jolliest person i met during my whole trip. part of that might also be attributed to the half empty bottle of whiskey he handed me immediately upon getting in the passenger seat. he also had different bags with dates, nuts and so on set up all around him, just living life to the fullest.

in diyarbakir, i was picked up by a rich looking guy (rare occurence), who was super sweet, showed me pictures of his family and of him on trips abroad. he owned a carpet production company and held himself responsible for not only driving me hundreds of kilometres in the right directiom, but also getting me a bunch of food and getting me a hotel room in his city bingöl after night fell. not only that, but he also wanted to return the next day to bring me back to the main road. just insane, i'll have to buy a carpet from him when i get back to germany to thank him.

on the way, i started noticing dozens of fortified military positions all over the ruggid hills flying by the car. every ten minutes, there was an apc parked next to the road and tons of checkpoints along the way. we were even stopped once and the officer asked me a couple of questions before letting us pass.Les mer
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kartsakhi
18.–19. feb. 2024, Tyrkia ☁️ -4 °C
unfortunately (or even fortunately as it turns out), the guy from the day before never came to pick me up. the hotel manager guided me to the main road, where i was unsuccessful for a while. it took about two hours of trial and error until i found the right spot. i was selectively only signing truck drivers to stop, thinking they would be able to take me the furthest.

it worked better than i could have ever expected. a belarussian trucker pulled over for me and told me he could take me to erzurum, my first goal of the day. but then, after a bit of talking in broken english and google translate, it miracioulsly turned out the guy was on his way to deliver pringles to russia, passing through georgia. he agreed to take me all the way to tbilisi.

we spent two days and one night crammed inside the truck cabin. on the way, we had no less than a dozen tea time stops, he cared for me very well. spending a night inside the cabin bunk parked at a truck park in the middle of nowhere next to the border was definitely an experience as well. my impression of alex was a bit tainted by the three hours of yapping i had to endure towards the end of the ride. he wouldn't stop talking about the jews, the flat earth, putins fight against the rothschilds, moon landings, pyramids, white supremacy and so on and on and on, the whole array. i was still no less thankful and he seemed to have enjoyed my company a lot, he even gifted me his pocket knife as a souvenir.

there are about 200 kilometres of road between the border crossing and tbilisi, so i thought i would arrive there in about 3 to 4 hours, but i hadn't calculated with what georgia is like. if it weren't for the people walking through the roadside villages, you'd think they were abandoned since the collapse of the soviet union. the turkish 4 lane highway literally turned into an unpaved dirt road with pot holes so deep you could almost see china through them. after saying goodbye to alex and taking a taxi to the center of tbilisi, i arrived late at night in the famous fabrika hostel just in time before the check in deadline.Les mer
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tbilisi, pt. 1
19.–21. feb. 2024, Georgia ☁️ 4 °C
tbilisi felt like a european culture oasis for me. fabrika is not only a hostel almost the size of the one in venice, it's also a social hangout area for young locals. having left kurdistan just a couple of days ago, tbilisi, and especially the artsy student area the hostel is located in, felt like leipzig all of a sudden. and don't get me started on how amazing the people looked again. it seems that, without me even realizing, turkey had made me fashion deprived.

drained from being on the road for days, i took the day off and only went to the barber to get my mane sheared. in the kitchen, i met two malaysians and a korean while trying to find a way to make my pasta without a stove. after a bit of talking, i decided to join the korean girl, uyiun, the next day for a trip to the caucasus mountains. i also found the best cheese sandwich in the whole wide world.Les mer
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stepantsminda
21.–22. feb. 2024, Georgia ☁️ -4 °C
the next day, i met up with the three people from the day before. the malaysians had a rented car, which we took to a monastery an hour away from tbilisi together. the two guys returned back to the capital, while me and uyiun started hitchhiking deeper into the mountains.

the first car brought us to the ski town gudauri, where i was tempted to stay because of the georgian lift prices. a guy took us five minutes further to a better waiting spot, from where we caught a ride with a super nice chap. he not only drove us all the way to stepantsminda, but also made a stop for us to visit a beautiful mosaic memorial and explained to us the whole history of georgia.

also, we fed about 1000 stray dogs. i don't know if i have mentioned this here already, but i bought a bag of dog treats in turkey and i keep it on me at all times, just in case.

driving into stepantsminda was something else. the mountains surrounding the town have giant prominences, mountains as far as the eye can see. i haven't been to nepal, but uyiun confirmed that you couldn't tell the difference if you had to.

we checked into our hostel for an amazing 15 lari (~5€) and went for a hike up to the holy trinity monastery before dark. the way down was buried in thick snow, so we just decided to take a shortcut and slide down the snow through the forest, which worked surprisingly well. because the day had been so inexpensive, we even treated us to some nice georgian wine along the daily pasta.

the next day, it was already time to leave again. after a bit of starting trouble, we caught a ride with the most daring driver in georgia, and later got into a car with a bunch of guys from tbilisi, who took us all the way to the hostel. 10/10 experience, will definitely revisit.Les mer
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tbilisi, pt. 2
22.–25. feb. 2024, Georgia ☁️ 7 °C
back in tbilisi, i got another grilled cheese sandwich (i think it was 6 in total) and signed off for the day after a shower. the next day, nobody showed up for the free walking tour, so i went out on my own to finally explore tbilisi properly. as i said, it's like a european oasis, but with a bit of soviet spice. there even seems to be a climbing community based behind the statue of the mother of georgia, but i didn't see anyone.

thinking that this would probably be the last chance to go to a rave before iran, i did some research and found two potential venues for the day. i set an alarm for midnight and walked to the first one, bassiani. like in many other ex-soviet countries, face controls are still very much a thing in georgia. i started a convo with an australian guy outside the club and it turned out he and his friend had already been turned away by the bouncers, who now thought i was part of the australians group, now that i had talked to him, so there was no use in trying to get in. we headed to the other club, khidi, instead, where we got through face control without issue. i lost the other two, but had a great time, i was in there until past 7 (almost hit 50k daily steps). there were a couple of tik tok ravers killing the vibe there, but it was still fully worth it.Les mer
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yerevan, pt. 1
25.–27. feb. 2024, Armenia ☀️ 6 °C
i thought about getting a minibus from tbilisi to yerevan, but then i remembered i'm not boring like that. took a metro to the edge of the city and walked for a bit, and after a few tries (lots of people will offer a ride in exchange for money) i was picked up and dropped five minutes later at an intersection, then picked up again and dropped five minutes later when it turned out that my drivers also wanted money. the further away you get from towns though, the better it usually gets.

i was then picked up by a guy working for the ministry of defense, he told me he had been pretty much everywhere, including afghanistan and the likes. he dropped me off 15 minutes later a couple towns further down the road. i walked another half hour until i hit the right road again, during which i had to pass through a graveyard.
i was surprised to learn that georgians not only have the names and dates or little portraits on their grave stones, but instead almost life sized full body shots of the deceased on there.

i was now on the street that led directly to the border, so i selectively chose cars with armenian license plates. it worked, two armenian men let me squeeze into their lada. they were on a supply run through georgia and stopped by every street vendor along the way. we reached the border, crossed without any issues, they bought 10 litres of vodka at the duty free and dropped me off behind the border.

then, i think it's safe to say, i met the most interesting guy probably ever. he was born georgian, lived in armenia now with his belarussian wife, was a theological professor, had lived in the uk, denmark and lithuania and spoke flawless british english as well as almost a dozen other languages. he had travelled the world as a christian missionary and now volunteered at the frontlines in ukraine (like the real frontlines, he had been in bucha). safe to say we had some pretty deep conversation in the four hours we were driving to the capital (very refreshing to have someone you can actually fluently communicate with), and of course we also stayed in touch afterwards.

at the hostel, uyiun was already waiting for me. she had taken the bus here the day we came back from stepantsminda. we did a little sightseeing walk that night and a day trip to lake sevan the next day. took a bus to sevan city and then hiked along the train tracks to a monastery on the shore. also, taxi rides are actually becoming affordable now, we couldn't resist paying 500 dram (1,10€) for the taxi ride back.Les mer
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areni
27.–28. feb. 2024, Armenia ☀️ 2 °C
we already got the zoomies the very next day, so we decided to go to the oldest wine region in the world and see what it has to offer. took a metro (the goofiest i have been on so far, goes like 5kmh, loud and shaky as hell and you have to buy tickets in the form of little plastic coins at a counter. plus it had some graffiti, but when i photographed it, some guy working there immediately came up to me and had me delete all the pictures and videos. same happened to uyiun.

it only took two rides to cover the distance all the way to areni, probably because it's like the only road. we also passed by a region where turkey, armenia, azerbaijan and iran pretty much meet in one point, you could see all the different flags if you looked the right way. like in east turkey, there were a loooot of bunkers and fortified positions, for some reason one of them also seemed to be russian.

we arrived in a little town and were welcomed into the guest house. there was a famous monastery close by, but we decided to dedicate the day to homemade wine. they sell it for about two euros per litre in coke bottles, so it's an absolute steal. and it tastes amazing.

the next morningn, we had a great breakfast made by the guest house owner and then started spent a couple hours walking and hitchhiking to the monastery and back, before we already hit the road to yerevan again.

(sorry for all the pics of ararat, but it just looks way too amazing)Les mer
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yerevan, pt. 2
28. feb. – 1. mar. 2024, Armenia ☀️ 6 °C
this second hostel we tried in yerevan was one of the top three worst hostel experiences. first off, i got no sleep because some russian chap from the 8 man dorm room i was in decided to wake up the entire building by shouting at a guy alledgedly shaking his bed. 3 times. additionally, his russian friend next to me watched tik toks on speaker the entire night and some prick decided to put on the light at 2 in the morning and start a phone call in the middle of the room.

but i mean, i'm used to those things by now. what i'm not used to is my jacket, including cash and credit card missing. after half an hour of looking, some dude gave it to me out of nowhere, but with a lighter instead of money inside. luckily, i found the credit card in some pocket i had never used myself and only about 5 euros of cash was gone, so i decided to take it easy and just be more careful in the future.

i pretty much took another day off. i'm starting to notice that my rest days are getting quite frequent now, and i don't want to be lazy wasting time in hostel beds. maybe i'll find a volunteering job in india or something so i can touch base again and regain my traveling energy.Les mer
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byurakan
1.–3. mar. 2024, Armenia ☀️ 5 °C
said goodbye to uyiun again, checked out and took a minibus (the short distance wouldn't have been worth the hassle of hitchhiking out of the city) to a village up on mount aragats. the bus ride was a bit stressful and crowded, but i won't complain for 90 cents. got a bed at the guest house and went for an evening walk before sun fell. i wanted to reach a big radar dish nearby, but the path there ended on some farm and it got dark already.

the next day, i went on a day hike up to some fortress ruins, which proved to be much more challenging than anticipated. the majority of the 20kms were either off path through brambles and bushes, on private propery, climbing up canyons or walking through knee deep snow. i was pretty crushed when i was walking back, but then a guy working on his roof shouted at me to come and gave me coffee and some sweets. he spoke great german and was working on his own holliday rental, so if you ever need accomodation there in the future, wahan is your guy.

i also have to mention the local supermarket. it was like walking into someones home, where some products were displayed on a couple of shelves. oh, and most people in armenia assume that i'm russian, so i was able to stick to priviet and spasiba instead of armenian.Les mer
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yerevan, pt. 3
3.–12. mar. 2024, Armenia ⛅ 10 °C
after another bus ride, i was now in yerevan for the third time. reason for me staying so long was that a frenchman, gregoire, from an overland whatsapp group reached out and said he would be hitchhiking to iran soon, so we made plans to meet up a couple of days later.

on tuesday, he and his friend ellie from iran met up with me to discuss our plans, and we also had the idea of going to the theater on thursday, the day before our departure. we had a blast at the ballet, it was a great introduction to armenian culture from their perspective. there were tons of people from abroad there, and i talked to a group of german summer school students, one of them was even from my area. after the ballet, we went to a bar and i met a couple of other friends of greg's.

back at the hostel, when i wanted to pack up, i noticed my credit card was missing. i looked for it everywhere, but it was nowhere to be found. finally, i checked my phone to look at the payment history. there were over 20 transactions amounting to more than 260€ during the last 24 hours, none of them mine. i froze the card right as another 45€ payment tried to slip through. it was from a bar in yerevan. i also saw that there had been payments at the hostel, so i woke up the hostel owner.

long story short, the police came, it took them more than 3 hours to get an interpreter and i was up until seven in the morning. although we had all the witness, paper and video evidence we could've ever wished for and knew exactly who took the card, the police didn't do jack shit. i wasn't too upset about my money being gone, my card missing or my plans with gregoire destroyed, those were all my fault. but the fact that the police didn't bother doing anything at all when everything was nicely layed out in front of them left me deeply disappointed. additionally, i got sick from going running in the rain a day before, so that didn't help the situation much either.

i did, however, meet štěpán from czechia in the hostel. we discovered that we were both hitchhiking to nepal and hit it off super quickly. i decided to leave with him on tuesday instead of wasting another opportunity and waiting for nothing.

big shoutout to the owner of hostel jan, who bought me food when my card was gone and let me stay for as long as i needed to for free.

big fuck you to the armenian police.Les mer
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agarak
12.–13. mar. 2024, Armenia ☀️ 12 °C
finally after what felt like an eternity, i left yerevan behind. the road to iran is the same as to areni, so i already knew how to get to the street and where to stand. i met stepan at a metro station after he got his visa done. we got picked up after like 5 minutes by a guy who got us out of the city. after dropping us off, it didn't take two minutes until we were going again. it seems that i really forgot how helpful sings are when you're hitchhiking.

the second guy was awesome. not only did he get us all the way to kapan (less than two hours from the border), but he also stopped in areni to show us around a wine factory, including a wine testing, after which he bought each of us a bottle of our favourite one. he also didn't accept our attempts to pay for our own food at the food court on the way. because alcohol is strictly forbidden in iran, it was now our honorable duty to get rid of the wine before reaching the border. we did a good job, i think.

also, if you ever plan an international road trip with a motorbike, i think the armenian mountain roads would be beautiful. we reached kapan in the afternoon and managed to stop a truck driver heading for iran, squeezed into the cabin somehow and laid eyes on the first iranian mountain beyong the heavily fortified border river just as the sun was setting.

we hiked uphill for an hour, and after a bit of looking around, managed to find a good camping spot near a big dam/mining area. had some dinner along with the rest of the wine and some good music. in the night, we were woken up multiple times by a wolves howling at us from the mountains around us. and sure enough, we woke up not only to a fantastic view, but also some canine tracks around out tents.Les mer
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unknown iranian prison
13.–15. mar. 2024, Iran ☁️ 6 °C
let's hope i don't get in trouble for writing about this.

upon having crossed the border bridge from armenia to iran without problems, we tried to secure a ride to the next biggest city, tabriz. a little lada stopped for us, but we didn't really fit, so we got out again after a couple hundred metres. then, a man in a white car pulled up next to us and asked where we are heading. when er said tabriz, he wanted to have a look at our passports to make sure we're legit. he snatched the passports, got into his car, pulled out a camera and started taking pictures.

not knowing what the fuck he was on about or who the guy even was, we tried to pull them from him, you know, in order not to end up documentless in iran, which he didn't accept. he kept insisting that he needed to inspect them further. at this point, stepan got a bit more physical with the guy, while i pulled out my phone to capture him and his license plate on video.

finally, stepan managed to get our passes back and the guy pissed off after a bit of arguing. unfortunately, stepan then also tried to sneak a picture of the guys license plate. he must've seen him, because ten seconds later, he pulled over next to us again, this time even more aggressive. he wanted to see our phone galleries and told us that he was a cop. we eventually agreed to delete the files and he went off again, only to come back a couple of minutes later.

now, he said that he needed to confiscate out phones for inspection. we still didn't believe that the guy was actually a cop, but agreed to go back and wait for actual police. after an hour, three more men pulled up, but at least this time, one of the cars had a green license plate, aka actual police. we had to wait 5 more hours in the sun (i got a fat sunburn) and answer their questions until they said they'd take us tabriz now.

we were a bit less pissed off, but only until the car pulled into a fortified police compound. we had to undress while they took apart our backpacks and spent the rest of the day handcuffed in the waiting room and shortly also inside a cell. thankfully, as soon as the higher ups left, the vibe got wayy better and the police guys (some of them probably not much older than us) got comfortable with us and started joking around with us the entire time. we even watched a football game on the tv.

shortly before midnight, after about eight more hours of not knowing what the fuck was going on, we got picked up again by other people, including the one sitting next to me with a kalashnikov. they said that they were taking us to a different station, where we'd get some warm dinner and had to answer a couple of questions for them. we started getting more hope again that we'd spent the night in our tents camping in tabriz as planned, not in a cell.

well, turns out we were going to same secret police stasi prison thing. after an hour of driving, they wrapped our electronics in aluminium foil, put jackets over our heads and told us not to move. at this point, we were finally both sure that this is real police, we'd be spending the night in real prison and that we'd gotten ourselves knee deep into some real serious shit.

still blindfolded, we were seperated and then underwent a VERY thourough body visitation and were given some nice blue-striped prison suits to wear. they weighed me, took all kinds of pictures, asked a billion questions. we were now suspects for espionage because we took pictures too close to the border (although we were basically forced to by the prick in the white car not knowing how to properly identify himself as police).

after some time, it must've been 1am at this point, they finally took off my blindfold and i found myself standing barefeet and alone in my cozy new home for the coming days, including three nasty blankets, a water bottle containing some questionable liquid, a security camera and two quorans. and that's pretty much it. however, without trying to sound like a tough guy, i was still feeling pretty good, made myself a little bed from the blankets and slept like a baby.

for maybe two hours. then, they called me out again for more interrogation infront of a one-way mirror. they had found some questionable things in our posession, i.e. stepans drone and my armenian army badge given as a souvenir from a soldier i met on the bus to byurakan. hard to explain, especially scince even the "interpreter" they had gotten didn't speak more than fourth grade english.

the interviewing honestly wasn't the bad part, the endless waiting alone in solitary confinement was. no phone, no book, not even a pen or a picture to look at. i used the time t take on some new hobbies, here are some of my favourite:
- counting to 1500 (takes longer than you'd think)
- walking in circles and taking a hike through the cell for a couple of hours until the guy watching the security cameras loses his shit and yells at you though the intercom
- staring at the blank wall infront of you while humming songs until you start seeing things
- requesting adventurous blindfolded trips to the toilet

but yeah, apart from that, the interrogations and the little warm meals were the highlights. i was chilling though, i was just upset that my family might be getting worried. only on the second day, i realized the load of incriminating horse shit that my image gallery, chat history and notes app must be to other people. luckily, it seems they didn't find everything.

after two nights, endless interviews and document signings and a lot of recitations of nena's 99 luftballons, they finally introduced me to a new character who even allowed me to speak to him without the blindfold. he explained that due to international law, they couldnt keep us detained any longer. we would be escorted to a hotel, where we had to remain while they would keep inspecting our phones and other devices.

after being put back into the cell for five hours, i thought they had bullshitted me again, but finally, i was taken to the interrogation room where my stuff was already waiting for me. a couple more questions later, i even saw stepan again. he was probably a bit more taken than me, but still in good shape. still, they didn't allow us to send messages to our family, how cunty of them. looking through my stuff, i also found two 50$-bills missing, but i wasn't there to argue anymore. we were (somewhat) free again. the atmosphere was a lot less tense than before, hands were shaken and one of the men even gave us two ribbons as a souvenir.

sadly, for obvious reasons, i don't have many pictures to show here, so here's the only picture from iran they didn't delete, along with a little drawing i made of my cell.Les mer
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ReisendeYou are crazy Frieden. That sounds more like a movie than a real story
23.04.2024SvarOversette
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tabriz
15.–18. mar. 2024, Iran ⛅ 17 °C
after a couple minutes of driving, we were allowed to take our blindfolds off to see the city. it was almost midnight when we got to the hotel. the police guys talked to the receptionist, took us to our room, then left me and stepan behind.

we were both massively relieved, laughing the whole time. first came a big fat hug, then a big fat shower, then a big fat sleep. but with our phones still taken, even now, there was no way to contact our families. after all, we didn't know if they had even noticed or if the KSK was about to kick down the hotel door.

the next day, we went to the hotel owner, hamid, to resolve this problem. he was the best thing we could've hoped for and helped us so much over the next couple of days. although we couldn't use anyones instagram or whatsapp because of government monitoring, he took us to an internet café, where we could send no more than one e-mail, so stepan wrote to his mom.

hamid also took us to the black market for money exchange and got us some food (which isn't that easy during daytime in ramadan). turns out he is an absolute boss in tabriz and owns different stores, as well as the hotel there.

while walking through the city, an elderly man enthusiastically waved us into his sewing shop. his name was mister ali, and he collected foreigners signatures and entries in his books. we were number 2000-something. he was the sweetest, most hospitable guy ever and (together with hamid) precisely what we needed now to make up for the not so hospitable days before. someone even made him a google maps page - just look up ali's shop tabriz :)

hamid also took us to see the bazaar along with some other famous places in tabriz, but for obvious reasons i don't have many pictures of those.

although we were now out, life still wasn't all peaches and cream, but at least we had windows and paper + pens to keep us entertained (we almost never went out together, fearing that we might miss the police coming back with our belongings). i'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

after days of waiting, we finally got the message that the police was about to come back. we were placed in a car again and blindfolded, but this time the policemen made clear that there was no trouble. stepan and me sat in an office room for another hour or so filling out the final documents, before finally getting everything except stepans drone back.

the very next day, we wasted no time and took a bus straight to tehran, but not before revisiting mister ali in his shop and getting him to sew on the flag patches for georgia, armenia and iran onto my backpack.Les mer
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tehran, pt. 1
18.–19. mar. 2024, Iran ☁️ 14 °C
driving i to tehran (we paid about 5 euros for a basically empty 9 hour VIP bus with infinite leg space) i got really excited. reaching the azadi tower had been my original travel goal before i extended the trip to kathmandu. the main bus station is right next to the azadi place, so we just had to go check it out.

then, it was time to say goodbye. stepan had been in contact with a lady from the czech embassy who offered him to stay there in safety as well as sending a private driver to pick him up and get him there. now alone, i had to learn that the cash metro ticket offices (foreign credit cards don't work in iran) close at ten, so i had to look for a taxi. i was down to 500.000 rial (~90ct) at this point, so i had to give the taxi driver a single dollar note on top, which he thankfully accepted.

arriving at the hostel felt like finally entering a real safe space for the first time in iran. i quickly bumped into uiyun again, who had been waiting there for me. i also met a young guy from afghanistan as well as a german bikepacking couple and we talked deep into the night.

uiyun, just how we know and love her, already had plans to visit the next city, so we didn't waste any time and explored tehran the whole day. it's a super vibrant city, a lot more liberal than you'd think. you see a lot of women without hijabs, certainly a lot more than in tabriz. people are also mega friendly and everything is insanely cheap. even eating during ramadan isn't a problem, scince travelers are exempt from the fasting. a good chunk of even the locals doesn't seem to follow the fast either.

we also went to the bus terminal, found the last seats on a night bus to kermanshah, and got on our way.Les mer
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