Turkey: heaven of hospitality!

Since leaving Istanbul, we feel like we’re living in a dream of hospitality!

We were surprised by the hospitality starting from the Balkan, but Turkey is offering a next level of generosity! We’ve been offered countless çay or kahve while cycling; every breakfast we tried to buy was offered for free; we tasted delicious Menemen (egg-tomato-pepper dish) and Ayran for free for lunch, and spent 3 amazing nights with hosts who just offered us accommodation, dinner and breakfast when we were just asking for water!

The Turkish food has opened its secrets to us, and our bellies are satisfied. The culinary zenith came when we were staying at the house of family from a Turkish colleague of my father-in-law. We had a fata morgana of a meal (and yes I’m finally putting on weight, yayy!!), talked for hours with the hosts, they helped us to find cheap but good quality goods at the bazar…

These amazing, friendly hosts give us an insight in their life and share their opinions about how things are going in Turkey. Teachers, farmers, a market woman, a dietician, administrative people and a tourist guide: they are all curious to what we think about them in

Belgium! We exchange experiences while making more Turkish friends in these 4 days then I actually did in my whole life.

Turkish people are really spontaneous and interesting in you and your travel…

We have been doubting so much which route to take in Turkey, but are really satisfied with the Sufi Trail we finally chose.

Except from a motorway once, the Sufi trail leads us through small farmers villages, spacious desolated landscapes, endless wheat fields, olive orchards. We pass the beautiful Iznik lake and the Old City of Midas, a hidden temple built in a rock…

The only thing we should pay attention to is the melting asphalt after 2pm and some poisonous snakes (I almost crushed one on a big road)!.

We enjoyed the Turkish countryside enormously. Yesterday night we camped in the garden of a summer house where the whole family comes together and visits the grandmother and father.

Today we entered Emirdag, and suddenly we saw 3 Belgian car licenses plates! A bit later in the city center we heard 50% of the people talking Dutch or French! They told us 70% of the population lives/or has lived in Belgium!

Turkey keeps on surprising us, that’s for sure!