Mehmet a nice man today: Internet kaput!

February 10, 2014

I was really only still at the bottom of the climb where I camped, for in the morning I climbed steeply up for another ten or twelve kilometres. This took me right up into the mountains and I could say that the scenery was really truly spectacular for the first time since the Alps. It was also a warm day with periods of sunshine and the green pine forests, blue skies and stunning mountain scenery had my spirits soaring.

Just over the top of the pass I stopped to take a break at a spring that was near to a building of some sort. I had just finished my first chocolate spread sandwich and was trying to ignore the two dogs that were barking at me when a man pulled up on a tractor outside the building. He came over to me and shook my hand and encouraged me to come with him to the building. It was a circular stone hut-like building and once inside I saw that it was some kind of a cafe/tea-house. The man who had invited me to it was balding and had a black moustache and kind brown eyes. He appeared to be the owner of the cafe and introduced me to his son who brought us tea which we sat and drank in front of the TV which was showing Turkish music videos with surprisingly scantily-clad women. I was able to establish that the man's name was Mehmet but not a whole lot else for although he spoke to me almost continuously it was in a language that I could not understand. Mehmet was also not very good at sign language and I got nothing of what he meant other than when he pointed at the women on the TV and rubbed his fingers together to imitate sexual intercourse. Mehmet's wife, by the way, was outside hard at work sweeping the driveway.

Mehmet and his son. Oh, and his wife who must at all times remain in the background

I thanked Mehmet and continued on my way. A short while later I found a bench and sat to eat the rest of my lunch. A dog was sitting by the bench and seemed to be waiting only for any scraps of food that might be given to him by those who sat and ate at this bench. Given the remote location in the mountains and the ribs poking through the poor dog's skin that didn't appear to be very much. I gave this dog a lot more food than the others.

"Hello I'm hungry, can I have some food?" said Maximillian aka 'Old Purple Ear'

"Why do you call me 'Old Purple Ear'?" said 'Old Purple Ear'

I carried on and a few minutes later a tractor appeared behind me and beeped as it approached. I looked around and saw Mehmet grinning at me. He waved as he drove past and carried on up the hill ahead of me. A little while later I saw him again stopped on a gravel side road. Again he beeped his horn and waved me over to him. He spoke to me and I had no idea what he said, but it was obvious that he wanted me to follow him up this side road, so naturally I did. It led up a steep climb and then around to overlook the town of Tarakli, where he pulled in to a car park outside a big canteen-like hall. A couple of thirty-something-year-old men came out and shook our hands. Neither of them spoke English either and I was beginning to wonder what was going on. Then we all went inside and sat down in this big hall full of tables, which was completely empty other than us and a head-scarfed woman who I could see through a window was in some kind of kitchen area. Of course tea was brought over to us. I did wonder if there was going to be food, but no, it turned out the whole point of this was just to sit and drink more tea. It did seem a little unusual for a man who owned a tea-house to be drinking his tea elsewhere, but maybe he just enjoyed sitting and having a tea with me so much that he had to follow me and lead me to the next one too. It did cross my mind that maybe he was planning on following me all the way to Ankara on that tractor, making me stop and drink tea with him at every opportunity.

After our second tea Mehmet beckoned me to follow him again. Now we went on some very small back roads into Tarakli, presumably towards the next tea-house. I was following his tractor closely but just before the town was a steep climb and he rather rudely sped off ahead. By the time I entered onto the main street he was nowhere to be seen and as I had just passed an Internet cafe, and really needed to get online, I decided to stop. I'd had enough tea anyway.

I was welcomed into the Internet cafe by a middle-aged man and I told him that I needed to print so he sat me at what appeared to be the only computer that was attached to a printer. I sat down with the man peering over my shoulder and opened up the web browser to check my email. He was still looking over my shoulder as I typed in my password which I found a little disconcerting. I began reading my emails, and so did the man. I realised that he was probably waiting for me to open whatever it was that I needed to print. But what I needed to do was fill in an application form for an Uzbekistan visa and then print it. I tried to explain this to him, and he tried to move me to another computer. I opened up google translate and translated why I needed to use the computer attached to the printer into Turkish. The man switched the languages and typed 'What do you want?' which I thought I'd already just covered. I wrote the message even more simply and clearly and he leaned in and opened up a word document for me. Not really what I needed but I thanked him and he left me to it.

Before doing the application form though I needed to send a quick message to my couchsurfing host in Ankara to tell her that I would be arriving earlier than planned. I typed this up and clicked to send, but it wouldn't send, the Internet connection had been lost. I clicked refresh a few times but the connection didn't come back. I got up and walked over to the man, who was dusting some keyboards, and told him the situation. He came over to look at my computer.

"Internet kaput" he announced.

"Yes I know, I just told you that."

"Internet kaput" he repeated, and went back over to carry on dusting the keyboard.

"Are you going to try and fix it?" I was a little bit surprised that he wasn't taking any action to reset the router or do something to resolve the problem, given how important a working Internet connection was to the core of his business.

"Internet kaput" he said again, shrugging his shoulders.

"I don't think its the whole Internet that's kaput, I think its probably just your connection. Maybe if you reset the... no, gone back to dusting again I see, okay then."

"Internet kaput."

"Bye then."

It was only thirty kilometres to the next town of Goynuk and I knew I could be there before dark as long as Mehmet didn't distract me with his tractor again. The cycling continued to be fantastic and Goynuk turned out to be in an implausibly beautiful setting high in the mountains. I went down into the town which was alive with life and managed to locate an Internet cafe. Being late in the afternoon it was filled with schoolboys playing video games but I was glad to find that somebody somewhere had fixed the Internet and I was able to send my message. I also sat and took half an hour to fill in the long application form for the Uzbekistan visa, but then when I went to print it it wouldn't work. There was a message on the screen telling me that I needed to click 'menu' - 'tools' - 'settings' - etc, etc but I looked at the top of my browser and saw that all of these things were in Turkish and I had no idea what was what. I tried clicking something and the whole application form reset to blank. Brilliant!

Today's ride: 58 km (36 miles)
Total: 13,454 km (8,355 miles)

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