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Around 01.00 the police comes to the Öretmen Evi and want to see our papers. So we are phoned in the room and after a general confusion we get the papers and a man comes up to collect them. Time passes and the phone rings again. Douwe has to go down. It seems that his visa will finish the next day. If he stays any longer he will get problems at the border and will have to pay a 500.000.000 TL fine.
The only way to avoid this is to get an extension for the visa or to leave the country and return.
There is nothing to do in the night, so we sleep again.
In the morning we have breakfast in a pastane with börek, this time it is very fresh! The owner like, every other shop owner or almost everyone else in Central Anatolia has worked in Germany, Belgium or Holland. And he likes to speak about that time.
Douwe has to go first to the Emniyet to speak with the police and then quick to the airport or the closest border. I think that he has to fool the police at the Antalya airport: just go out with a group of tourists to a plane and then return. They will not like it but what can they do about it? I think it is a nice way for Gürkan to get some rest for his leg, to sit the whole day in custom offices and long distance busses! It is also good for Douwe to have a native speaker with him. So they will go together. And we can see them again in ÇAY.
That is the situation as we leave EMİRDAĞ.
With a now very small group of 3 we walk out of town. One hour later we come to a petrol station with a lokanta and stop for a drink. There is no choice, it has to and will be a Pepsi!
As we drink I check my phone and there is a message from Rado. Rado didn't go to Slovakia and wants to join the walk again.
We walk towards Başkonak and see a bridge that looks old. The road has been changed, a turning has been taken out, and the village is now far from the road.
We come to the bridge at GPS 336572 - 4315355. The bridge looks old but at the same time also new. It has some old elements in it but might have been restored, although that seems very unlikely too, to say it short: we have no idea!
The bridge has two spans and in the spans it is nice cool and there is a lot of shadow. We eat and drink, speak and rest here for about 2 hours.
We get a message that Douwe and Gürkan are on their way to Edirne!
We continue the long walk towards KEMERKAYA in square 33-430. As we finally arrive and pass the first house a man comes to us who had seen us this morning at the market in EMİRDAĞ. We walk to the teahouse and have a drink. Soon I'm invited by a man who works in Holland and only visits Turkey in summers. We speak and I drink a few more teas. Then the question is brought up: "where to camp?" The best place seems to be a field where we entered the village. We buy bread and walk back the way we came. There are houses that are not finished yet and between them we make our now very small camp.
We set up the tents while a strong wind blows and have a simple dinner, you might guess it already: tuna fish and cheese on bread! I drink my mushroom soup as everyday. I might have not mentioned it yet, but I had for 25 days mushroom soup and for a few other days tomato soup. Now I don't like mushroom soup so much anymore!
Calculating my figures in the statistics: we passed the middle of the trip!
The toilet is behind the first house we can reach and there is no water. But soon we sleep a good night.
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statistics
from the starting point = 243 km
to the endpoint = 226 km
walked today = 17.0 km
total = 271.5
groupmembers = walking 3 - to the border 2
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Day 16, June 16th , Wednesday: Sunny and warm

KEMERKAYA - BOLVADİN

It is a cold morning, but the sun rises fast. We break off the tents and a man with one leg comes next to us. He seems to own one of the unfinished houses. With his one leg he is able to collect concrete bars in the fields around the houses. His or other's?
We start at 06.45 and have no water, but it is still cool and we can call it even cold if you rest in the shadow. We slowly leave the mountains and the road goes down. After 7 kilometer we find a well next to the road where we our breakfast: tea with bread and tuna fish. As we continue an other well is found near DİŞLİ where we refill our already empty bottles.
As we come in more flat fields, we enter the area with opium bolls. Fields full with them, what makes me feel as if I walk through Afghanistan. A tracker stands next to a field and is the only place with some shade. We rest in next to it and the suspicious farmer comes quickly to see what we are doing. It isn't very interesting and he disappears soon again.
When we close to BOLVADİN we pass a factory. Burak walks ahead and a dog behind a fence starts to bark wildly. Burak passes, I'm next. With the dog still behind the fence there is no problem, but a second dog runs around the fence through the open gate onto the road. It is a Doberman type of beast and looks very aggressive. It comes closer and closer, while I say nice things to him like: 'sweet doggy, doggy, you don't really want to do this....' and 'be a nice doggy!' He comes very close next to me making all kind of unfriendly noises and is showing his teeth. My right hand has the dagger ready. After a few minutes, or were it hours?, the dog looses its interest and start to lick his 'private parts'. I walk away. Anil, the next in row, crossed the street and escapes the dog like that.
It is still a long way in town and Anil jokes that he want to take the dolmuş that passes us every five minutes.
These newly developing towns are very good at making long wide boulevards kilometers long, without any buildings, leading to the center.
We arrive there in the end and the town has many nice old buildings, that means 'nice and old' to me, but probably not to local population. Most buildings are in a very bad state of preservation and maintaining. It seems that they will collapse soon or will be demolished by the council. No attempts are visible to restore any buildings and preserve the character of this old town. Concrete and steal are the magic words in a modern town!
We have lunch in a big restaurant in the town center, it is good food and I eat Beyti Kebab. After lunch we move to the teagarden opposite the restaurant.
We get the news that Douwe and Gürkan are on the way back and will come to this town. They will arrive around 17.00.
Anil goes to look for a shoe repair place, his boots are slowly cracking and he finds one such place. This seems to be owned by a very religious man, who when he hears about me, wants to transform me into a Muslim. He clearly doesn't know me!
Anil is not convinced that he can do that job too. The man tells him about three bad angels sitting on your right shoulder, or was it the left? And 3 good ones on the other shoulder and they fight about good and bad, your conscience. He had more of these stories but I happily don't remember them anymore. Anil comes back with a little book from which he has to read me every night a few pages. He gives it to me and I put in my backpack. It disappeared.
I phone the candidates for ÇAY, the second group that will come on the 17th or 18th after the graduation ceremony. It seems that nobody wants to come and nobody contacted me directly to say that they are not coming, except Üner and Gamze.
The only new person who still wants to come is Sevgi, but she didn't buy any thing yet. Rado is ready to re-enter the group. We postpone the date a few days to Sunday 20 June and will meet them in AFŞAR near the EĞRİDİR GÖLÜ, now still far away. Lets hope this appointment goes better then the one with Sarp and Duygu. Also we tell them not to move from that place until we meet. If we are first we will wait for them. I also tell them not to bring any raincoats and warm clothes.
We sit and drink liters more tea and Anil and I do a photo walk in town and see many buildings and take also many photos. The local kids have fun with us because we are so strange for them.
More tea and at 17.00 Douwe and Gürkan arrive with a bus and have long stories about their adventures.
They first went back to ÇİFTELER to look in the box in the Örğetmen Evi, if the bankcard was in the book. It wasn't. Then they had to travel back to ESKİŞEHİR to take a bus to EDİRNE and from there they had to find transport to İPSALA on the Greek border.
There is always a 'helpful' person on the border, who can arrange things that can be arranged easily by yourself, if you know the system. But this time that man was lucky that Douwe didn't know the system. He earned some good money there. Anyway the issue seems to be solved and we can go further without problems.

There is no campsite to see in the wide surroundings of this town and the boys have been in the bus from ÇAY to here and they didn't see a good spot too. Anil and I go for the Öğretmen Evi again and we find it not too far away. We go inside and settle the price, which is 10.000.000 TL for the others. We return to the teagarden and take the others and the backpacks. We buy bread, fish and cheese.
In front of the Öğretmen Evi is a garden used by teachers and their families to sit and drink tea.
We occupy a table in the middle of them and have our dinner. With our large knives we cut the food and in our smelly clothes we attract much attention of the others. The house serves tea and we sit there until all the other guests have left. We made quite a mess of the place, but the waiter is polite and tells that it doesn't matter.
When we come in our room there is no electricity but in the boys room, Gürkan and Burak's, there is so they come and steal our TV. Anyway I don't want to watch it. We take cold showers and feel better again. With a stork's nest next to our room's window and a white stream of bird shit coming down the wall we fall asleep.

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statistics
from the starting-point = 263 km
to the end-point = 206 km
walked today = 20.0
total = 291.5
group members = 5
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