Ibrahim
After spending several days in Aqaba I drove back north using the desert
Highway this time. This one of the two main roads wasn't much more than
a wide strip of tarmac through the East Jordan desert. The long boring
drive had numbed my concentration and I didn't notice that my rear tire
was going flat until it really was. I saw that not only did I have a flat
tire, but that the tire was almost destroyed. I found two nails, one I
had noticed some entrepreneurial Turkish villagers put in, which hadn't
damaged the tire and a recent one that had. The extreme heat combined
with the age of the rubber had caused a set of cracks on one side.
Jordan - Southern Jordan landscape in
blistering heat
I was standing in a small city near Amman at the time and as I was unpacking
the gear to try and fix it I was surrounded by a group of bearded Muslims.
One of them spoke perfect German and offered me help. Again, it was impolite
to refuse and we agreed to drink tea and find a tire shop. As motorcycles
are forbidden except for the police in Jordan, we were unsuccessful. We
drove around with my bike in the back of a minibus and arrived at Ibrahims
garage.
Ibrahim had worked as mechanic in Syria once and together we removed
the wheel and decided to put in my spare tube, covered with the torn one
for protection and hope for the best. After a while I tested and with
caution I would be able to reach Syria and find a new tire, I hoped.
I asked Ibrahim what his time and help cost and he left the price to
me after endless cups of tea. I paid him handsomely but politely (which
to me was peanuts compared to what a European mechanic would have asked)
and was invited for dinner at my German speaking translator's. The solution
turned out to hold perfectly until the Eastern European roads that ruined
the rubber completely. Near Vienna, thousands of kilometres further, I
was able to replace the tire for a new Metzeler rear tire and feel relieved.
Sign language
During the trip I often tried to remember the different sign languages
I saw, as these were often my only means of communication. Some
of the more common gestures I knew turned out to mean something
completely at times. The 'no' shaking I often used was replaced
by throwing the backward from the neck while making a hissing
noise in the Arabian countries. The typical Italian sign of a
shaking hand with the fingers put together pointing upward meant
'good' in Turkey and Iran, but 'slowly' in Syria and Jordan. This
was quite confusing at times. A policeman in Jordan gestured at
me like this and it took me a while to understand that I had to
slow down. I was very happy to have had advice on Bulgarian signs.
They say 'yes' while shaking their heads as if meaning 'no', This
almost sent me in the complete opposite direction of where I wanted
to go once. It could have been worse had I not been prepared by
a German warning me about it from his own experience.
Potholes
After I left Syria on a fixed tire driving a bit uncertain and
slow at first, I quickly regained trust in the bike, and took
the route all along the South Turkish coast, and after straight
through to Ankara to pick up some Poste Restante mail. The trip
into boiling hot Ankara made me leave the city at once and drive
north immediately. I spent the night in the garden of a torn down
house at the shores of an artificial lake and drove to Istanbul
the next day.
I wandered around Constantinople for an afternoon and had some
rice pudding in a famous but modernised restaurant where Volkswagen
vans were traded in the old days of India travel. Immediately
I noticed a change in road surface as I entered Bulgaria. Within
a day I was convinced that I had never seen such bad tarmac roads
anywhere on the trip.
The small roads in Syria were bad, Eastern Turkey boasted roads
worn to the last slippery fleece of tarmac and flooded tire tracks
of up to five centimetres deep, but as far as tarmac was concerned,
Bulgaria was the worst. The countless road repairs without warning
didn't make anything better. At one time I was overtaking one
of the small cars filled with a family and as I was doing that,
the two roadsides were separated by a huge crack preventing me
from getting back. It was at least a hundred metres before I could
return to the right side. I was lucky no car or horse carriage
passed at the time.
Before I left from Holland I had taken a one-day skidding course
(on motorbikes with small side wheels attached to them) and I
had learned many useful things. The lessons certainly paid off
in being able to avoid potholes at the last second, not skidding
hard in swerving around a bicycle driver trying to cross the road
right before me and many other almost accidents.
Transylvanian castles
I didn't spend a long time in Bulgaria as I had heard some good
stories about Rumania. As I was driving without a map of the country
I asked around for good places to visit but was often told that
there weren't any. I found this quite sad and was relieved to
find my way to the two gems this country has to offer: Brasov
and Sighisuara. The first is a wonderful old town in a region
full of castles with a regular Dracula atmosphere. I stayed at
a hotel just behind the main square, which reminded me strongly
of Russian barracks. The concrete covered corridors were long,
cold and echoing but the rooms clean and comfortable. For the
first time in weeks I checked my E-mail on the main square and
spent hours talking with some Japanese travellers.
|
Vincent
Schuller
Johnsons Trip
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