It’s all around us

Time to explore and play with the memories, as they’re rising from the depths of my subconsciousness to the surface of the consciousness wanting to catch a breath.

Back to 2015 and months I spent in (once) my favorite country – Turkey. I have visited nearly all the provinces (70 or so out of 81) of the country either by hitchhiking alone/with friends/by bus. Travelling would be either for seeing specific places or for short volunteering projects.
All these insane journeys seem to be hidden deep in the background of my mind dusted by years of personal evolution. It is me, it was me. Is – because those experiences have shaped today’s Lucy, was – because everything is constantly changing and whatever I was interested in in 2015 isn’t the truth I am living in 2025.

Here is the story of exploring this hospitable, inspiring land that has taught me lots about bravery, softness, heartbreak, resilience, wisdom, fear, solitude.

Hitchhiking in Turkey

Oh, so many people told me that it was dangerous to do so as a young foreign woman. So many people told me that I would be killed or kidnapped. When you are 20, it’s easy to be bold, easy to laugh at such remarks and easy to do everything your own way. I wouldn’t travel like this now though, feeling that there is time for this and that, but preferences and aspirations surely change over time.

Why was I hitchhiking instead of taking public transport?

It was (still is I believe) the best way to get to know the people, the land, the customs. Get out of the transactional system and rely on the goodwill of strangers. Rely. Trust. So much in these two words. At the same time being discerning. My intuition had received a big boost of experience over this time in Turkey. In general, hitchhking not only in this country but in general had made me extremely sensitive. Not hypervigilant, but being able to see people’s intentions clearly from the first minute of interactions. Nevermind the huge practice, the intuition system of mine still falters at times, but all in all it had been a great compass hundreds of times and saved my wild and precious life (tribute to Mary Oliver) several times as well.

Disclaimer: hitchhiking is a beautiful way to meet people, hear their stories and enrich your lives, however, practice discernment and better always travel first with the people who are experienced in this way of moving around. As well as, respect the country’s culture and traditions.

Regarding adapting to and respecting the culture, in Turkey I was nearly always travelling wearing long pants and shirts/hoodies, as well as covering my hair with a scarf à la light hidjab, as countrysides can be quite conservative islam-wise, thus, to avoid extra attention, I tried to be as modest as possible. Here is the photo of my outfit for the road and beautiful eerie landscapes of Cappadocia in Central Turkey.

At the time I was working a wee bit online – teaching English and writing articles about travelling for some websites + freelance tasks for copywriting and translation. Travelling via hitchhiking and staying at people’s places was extremely not demanding finances-wise (all in all I would be spending maybe 3-4 euros/day max). I would also come back to Saint-Petersburg for several months in the summer to work as a hostel administrator, which would give me free accommodation and salary in addition.

I have thousands of stories from the time in Turkey (May, June, September, October 2015) but I want to tell these ones particularly in different posts :

The Joan story.
The Kurdistan story.
The Nemrut mountain story.

With a little touch of Rumi in the end.

Let’s start with the events that had left the deepest imprint in my heart.

The Joan story

It was June, I had just celebrated my 20th birthday in Istanbul, the city was full of political unrest – presidential elections were happening – and I was in the middle of my personal emotional unrest with the boyfriend of the time. The day was hot and I was leaving Istanbul to head towards the Bulgarian border to later head to Prague by land to see a friend.
It took me 4 hours of walking out of Istanbul along a busy highway to reach the place where I could hitchhike a vehicle to go towards Edirne – the city at the border with Bulgaria and not far from Greek border. I was in a pretty bad mood, the backpack was heavy, and I felt that I was getting sick physically, though the plan was still to get to some town in Bulgaria where I had arranged a host – at least 8 hours of travelling away if everything went well.

The vehicle that stopped first was a camion that was heading west, not to Edirne but still in the direction where I wanted to go. The driver was in his late twenties. I could speak a bit of Turkish at the time so we could exchange a bit. In one hour he scared me as hell when he took an exit off the highway, saying that he needed to unload the sand/whatever was in the camion at some construction site. I asked him to let me out immediately but he refused saying that it was way too dangerous to leave me off the highway and as soon as he was done with the sand, he would bring me to the bus station so that I could go to Edirne. Reader, you can imagine my extremely scared self in the passenger seat – heading god knows where with god knows who, no town or vilalge nearby, not really being able to jump out of the camion (too high and unsafe when in motion), and just having to trust that everything works out.

Trying to breathe, not to panic and going through multiple escape plans in my head I was staring out the window. Soon, we indeed reached a construction site, indeed the driver unloaded the truck, and then indeed he went all the way back to the highway, then directly to a restaurant on the side of the road, insisted on buying lunch for me and then brought me to a bus station in a nearby village and got a ticket for me to go to Edirne. I tried to object multiple times but he refused to leave me waiting on the highway and refused to let me pay for my lunch or ticket. What a ride from fear to gratitude.

Several hours and I am in Edirne, at the bus station. I didn’t see the town at all as I had to head to the border with Bulgaria, so I stayed at the station and was patiently waiting for a local bus that would bring me and a bunch of locals to the border. Time was nearing 6 pm, tired and sleepy, having put my backpack down and in all my long modest hitchiking tenue I was observing potential fellow travellers. That’s when I saw him. A man in his forties, quite neatly dressed, with a backpack half the size of him, very curly black hair, not looking like a Turk. As we were two people with big backpacks at this station, we nodded at each other, came closer and the conversation started. I wouldn’t say it flowed, as both of us were not speaking Turkish fluently but a mixture of non-verbal communication, Turkish, English had helped make sense of our stories.

His name was Joan (I have no idea how to write it correctly from what I heard), he was from Syria, Aleppo. Reminding to you, reader, that it was 2015, and in the summer the war in Syria was at one of its peaks. He told me that all his family (including his kids) got killed, the same had happened to many friends, his house was destroyed, he had nothing left in Aleppo, he even had no passport. He pointed at his backpack saying that he’d got an inflatable boat in it, in which he was planning to cross to Greece that night (the border between Turkey and Greece is along a river) and was hoping that nobody would shoot him. He said this phrase and laughed. In Greece, he said, he would find more work opportunities than in Turkey. I didn’t ask what was his life like before war as I was being slowly heartbroken by everything he was telling me, as I couldn’t imagine how strong you have to be to willingly continue to live after all of that.

Joan asked me about my story and my travelling. He was amazed that I was travelling alone and going all the way to Prague. We stood for some time in silence, and then he asked me to look after his backpack as he had to go somewhere. Five minutes later he came back and brought a bag full of snacks and fruit that he got at the shop at the station and handed it over to me. “Look, it’s a long way for you, take this, you will need it” – told me the man who had just lost everything in his life. I stood there absolutely speechless, with so much gratitude and love going through me, that I think if it could be converted into electricity it would have been enough to power all the lightbulbs of Istanbul for that evening.

Then the bus came. It was an old rusty bus that would make a lot of noise. All the people fit in, some of them sitting on the floor. We sat nearby and were silent for all the time. The bus would stop close to the Bulgarian border. The natural border with Greece, the river Maritsa was in a kilometer from there. It was already twilight, the sun was setting as we got off the bus. The people headed towards the border and Joan said he will accompany me to the border and then wait somehere till the night falls so that he could head back to the Greek border and cross the river. We were walking towards the customs in silence again – I couldn’t wrap my mind around what this man had experienced, I never will. We stopped close to the customs, smiled, wished each other best of luck and said goodbyes. Joan started walking the other way and suddenly the evening azan (the call to prayer in Islam) had started in the nearby mosque. The deep singing in Arabic, the reddish sunset, me standing with the bag of snacks he got for me at the customs, looking at Joan and waving to him as he turned around once, with tears in my eyes. I will remember this moment forever as it had touched someting very tender in me. Our shared humanity, the kindness no matter the amounts of sufferring we’ve been through, all the benevolence and care we give each other. “We’re all just walking each other home” as Ram Dass said.

I am happy I could be someone he could talk to on that day before such a dangerous entreprise of illegal crossing. I have no idea if he had crossed successfully to Greece that night, as we didn’t exchange any contacts (it wasn’t even possible as both of us didn’t have an address or a permanent phone number), I hope he did. I hope he started a new life, I hope the past didn’t torture him and I hope he is still alive. I took absolutely no photos of the way or of him as my camera was deep in my backpack and anyways I was too much in the moment to even think about capturing the moment. It will safely remain on the middle shelf of my memory bookcase, the one that is right in front of your eyes when you look at it.

That would frequently be the story I remember first when someone asks me to tell them something about my travelling years.

The image below is the photo I took also in 2015. On it there are the last Turkish settlements in the foreground, while in the background are the plains and hills of northern Syria.

Take care.

Travel safely.

Lots of love.