Aliağa

I got up early this morning to say goodbye and to thank David, who had to leave early for work. Me and Ilkin had some porridge with fruits and a coffee for breakfast in the morning (well, we had to make two rounds of coffee since I spilt the entire thing in the kitchen, lucky David got a free full kitchen cleaning with my stay. :D ). I then slowly packed my stuff together and Ilkin helped me setting up my bicycle infront of the building. I left around 10am towards Aliağa (pronounced aˈlja.ɣ̞a, so no g) with around 57km and only 240m elevation ahead of me, so an easy day of cycling ahead of me and the weather seemed to be fine again, too. It did get a lot cooler though compared to the temperatures in Bodrum when I arrived just two weeks ago. But I was fine with my wind jacket and long pants still). Unfortunately, it wasn't the nicest route at all but I didn't want to take the scenic but much longer route along the coast due to my tensor issues.

It was riding along the main highway for at least 30km all the way out of Izmir to Menemen, where I made a stop for lunch break. The exits of the highway with an extra exiting line on the right of the road turned out to be super dangerous to pass: I had two options, either staying on the line going straight but kind of in the middle of the highway and risking being overtaken by cars on both sides, or staying on the side of the road but than having to cross the exiting line with cars driving super fast. I went with the latter option most of the time.
I stopped for some lunch in Menemen and locked my bike with luggage on somewhere near to what looked like the city center. It was a nice little authentic village that didn't seem touristy at all. However, this time of the year hardly any city (except for Istanbul maybe) is touristy. :D I also tried to find new headphone earplugs, I finally lost one of mine even though I planned on glueing it for weeks.. I couldn't find any so I ended up buying new headphones with suitable earplugs that fit my old headphones. Again the locals were super helpful, the first phone shop I went to didn't have anything like that but sent me to a different store, that guy didn't speak English but soon found someone who did. This guy then contacted another store to bring over some headphones because the current store also didn't have any. :D I loved it, buying headphones turned into such a fun activity. ;)

From Menemen I then continued my trip to Aliağa, where I would stay at Yuksels place for one night who I contacted through Couchsurfing. :)
One thing that kind of became an issue from there on: Days were getting a lot shorter pretty fast, even more because I was travelling north and many times I'd arrive just with or after sunset because I took my time during the day thinking I'd still have a another hour before sunset.. :D
That's also what happened at Yuksel's place, I arrived there at 6pm with the sun already down. He was super nice and welcoming, showed me his appartment and my room, quickly got changed and we went out for dinner to a really nice authentic place in the city center. Yuksel is going there often, the waitress knew him well and was glad to see him. :) We ordered a delicious lentil soup each and lahmacun with fresh greens, salad, lemons, and ayran on the side - I really enjoyed at least one ayran a day, preferrably the selfmade ones. ;)
After dinner, during which he told me a lot about his life in Morocco where he usually lives. His family is also located there and he came back to Turkey for some months for business reasons. He's working as an interior designer to customize cars in Morocco. After dinner we went for a stroll around the city. Once the sun has set it got really cold and even more windy, but we made the most out if walking around the harbour and inner city. :) It seemed like a beautiful quiet little city, you'd again find a lot of statures of Atatürk, the flags of the previous celebration were still hanging on most buildings.
Back at his place we made some tea and were chatting in the living room. Since both his sisters are professional sports and him having a lot of experience in physiotherapy, he offered me to check on my foot again which he did. Also he cracked my back, which was pretty sore from the positioning on the bike and the cold wind during the ride. I felt so much better after that but he told me that I have to take a lot more breaks during my rides which I promised to do. :)

I slept okay that night even though my bicycle was locked outside at the front door. Usually it was possible to lock it somewhere inside but not where he lives, which was fine with me though. I kind of always felt like trusting Turkish people and nothing bad ever happened. :)Read more