After the Gölbaşı dısaster - nur Mut

What a strange title for today's blog you might think - Mut is the place İ arrived today but also the German word for courage. Maybe you find out why it is called Mut... İ will write this part of the blog in English and some German as there are some technical terms İ don't know and İ am too lazy to look them up. Ach so, also no pictures today (also too lazy for that).

Where shall İ start? The cultural experience or the mishappenings with my bike??? Let us start with the bike. After the repair work done in Gölbaşi (İ will later refer to it as the Gölbaşi disaster = GD), İ did an intensive one day test ride of > 185 KM to Osmaniye. That was enough to break the bearing again and cause some seroius noise. But Osmaniye has equally skilled bike experts - so the bearing was changed another time.


Why do you rightfully ask did İ not pay attention when it was changed first time? Well, that needs some explanation. Wherever İ arrive in Turkey this seems to be a sensation - so as soon as İ find a bike shop not only the owner but almost everyone who saw me arriving will come and watch. Then you first have to drink one, two, three çay, answer questions about your age, merital status, name and sometimes places you have been to. Then the Turks - not knowing anything about the recent 'İntegrationsdebatte' in Germany will praise the German-Turkish friendship and affirm their willingness to help you with your bike problems whatever effort might be needed.

As you are so busy responding to all of this, mainly by repeating the only Turkish sentence you can pronouce error free 'Türikye çok güzel', you don't realise that the bike guy has already removed the old bearing put in a new one and has just finished the job....

So that must have been the case with the GD, i.e. Gölbaşi disaster: while İ was talking to some Turkish friends the bike guy has put in the 'Lagerschale' on one side in a slightly wrong angle (er hat die Lagerschale nicht sauber reingeschraubt). İ guess - with my limited engineering knowledge - that this is the reason why the whole thing fell apart again. Now why you ask not remove the faulty part - simply: because as a consequence of the GD it cannot be removed anymore - not with good will nor brutal force. So today the guys did a good job but they cannot make up for the GD - so İ have to try this way and hope it will hold for a while. To my bike guru in Germany - Andreas: İ think you have to order a new excenter!

Now you still want to know about cultural experience??? İf not - stop reading. Our president is here. Strange. When İ left Germany he was not president at all and now he seems to follow me - can he please stop. But İ have to ask hıme - why go to Tarsus? İ cycled through Tarsus - it is about the ugliest town in the region - and the region as a whole is not attractive - so what does Mr Wulff want to show with his visit in Tarsus??? Does he have to visit sites with Christian connection as he is from the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) whıch otherwıse does not care a lot about ıts Chrıstıan roots - or how does the Integratıonsdebatte fıt ınto the concept of altruism and charıty???

Why not visit the place where Friedrich Barbarossa died? At least then he would have seen some beautiful scenery - but symbols seem to be the thing now in the CDU: Frau Merkel pıctured with the half naked Germanturkısh football player Özil and Mr Wulff visiting the Saulus - Paulus site. Well. Calm down Marc - brrrrrr.

The area is culturally rich: castles, churches, monastrıes - telling their story of the region's Roman and Greek origins. İ have to come back to the place where Barbarossa died: the Güksu is more a river than a stream - how did Frıedrıch manage to drown here - why did he not send one of his soldiers first to try the river??? Far more interesting questions...

Ahhh, by the way - Barbarossa was on his way to Jerusalem to fight the Muslim Arabs...Wouldn't that have been the place for Merkel and Wulff to discuss integration??? İ stop it now.

The region here is definitly Mediterranean: lemon, pommegranade (Turkish: nar), orange, figs, peanuts are all growing here and are harvested now so İ can either pick them mysaelf or buy them at the mumerous roadside stalls. Also the food is more Mediterranean. Today İ had delicıous vine leaf dolma and a salat dressing of nar and lemon juice. Yummy!

The way to Fethiye: İ am a bit lazy and İ will continue slowly, partly also because of the technical problems.... But basically tomorrow and on Saturday İ will stay in the beautiful Taurus mountains before returing to the coast near Alaniya. From there to Antalya to see all the German tourists. And from Antalya to Fethiye it should be no more than 2 days - next week Wednesday or Thursday İ can make it to Fethiye (basic functionality of the bike permitting) and then onwards to Yunanustan as the Turks call their beloved neighbour country.

Last remark - the only - almost only - thıng that works 100% on the bıke - guess what ıt ıs? It ıs the part called MARC.