The duo had been fast asleep when they heard a knock on the sliding-door side and a voice shouting rather loud. Walter realized it must be already late in the morning because when he looked outside, sunlight shimmered through the tree cover. With his head positioned toward the back door, he could not immediately see who knocked at the side entrance. As he moved forward inside the bus and released the sliding door opener, the hair on the back of his neck rose; he felt an intense attention while the sliding door slowly opened.
A small man stood close to the door, enabling him to look inside the camper. Hilde remained under a bed sheet. Walter glided as elegantly as possible from the bus toward his slippers, which were on the ground outside. This caused the man to step back and lower his head. Looking up again, he used his left hand to knock his fist against a wiry breast and said something in Turkish ending with “Mehmed.”
In the meantime, Hilde dressed and stepped out of the bus. Extending her hand to the man immediately changed his demeanor from serious to comfortable, and a bright smile appeared on his toothless mouth. She used her foreign language talent and a little Turkish dictionary to discover that the man, named Mehmed, owned the land they were parked. He was a farmer who also kept a few animals, and his house with his family was not far from where they all stood. He made sure that Walter and Hilde understood that he wanted them to come over for dinner that night, and they promised to be there.
The explorers took the Volkswagen bus on an investigative trip farther down the road to find out whether there might be easy access to water, perhaps even a sandy beach, but it did not turn out that way. Still, many ancient ruins hidden within the vegetation and a beautiful panoramic view of the Mediterranean Sea made the trip worthwhile.
They returned to the parking spot on Mehmed’s land just in time for sunset. To honor the dinner invitation, Hilde and Walter changed into their best clothes. The host came to their vehicle, and all three walked together for about ten minutes until they reached a large clearing with a house and some smaller buildings that looked like sheds or stables. In front of the house, a woman squatted at a small, round stove that produced light smoke. Mehmed introduced the guests to his wife and then guided them into the building.
They entered a large room that appeared to be completely empty except for some futon-like mattresses stacked against the back wall. Most of the center space was covered by various carpets and heavy, colorful materials. The compacted, rolled-clay earthen area in the middle had been left open for a variety of pots, pans, plates, glasses, and cups. Three girls of various ages were busy brushing the floor covers and arranging pots and dishes, as well as adding new items to the enormous collection already in the center of the dinner area. While Mehmed’s wife worked the bread oven outside, placing large oval pieces of baked pita onto an aluminum tray covered with a towel, Mehmed poured boiling water into a teapot and scooped yogurt from a round jar into a clay pitcher. He placed both containers in the center. Then he started to laugh and clapped into his hands, signaling the guests to sit down on some pillows.
To the surprise of the travelers, Mehmed also produced a bottle of Turkish Raki, poured an inch of it into each of two glasses, and handed them to Walter and Hilde. In addition to water and Raki, Mehmed’s wife offered a delicious cup of Ayran, which was made from yogurt. Everybody ate rice pilaf and pita bread. Soon the guests and the family were filled up.
Mehmed poured another Raki and offered black, sweet tea, and then started humming a tune. Walter had come to the dinner party prepared for just such an opportunity. He attached two stereo microphones to his cassette recorder and began taping the sounds around the house, including a myriad of crickets chirping and dogs barking. Mehmed’s initial humming and eventual singing of a couple of folk songs became a delight for everybody present. When the guests bid their emotional farewell to the family, Walter realized that throughout the night, almost all attention had been on Hilde; he had stayed in the background. Mehmed walked them back to their vehicle with a candle in his hand.
The following day, the travelers waved good-bye through the open windows of the camper to the entire Mehmed family. It took a while to reach the main highway again, from where the yellow camper set out toward the next destination: Pamukkale, where hot springs and traver-tines—terraces of carbonate minerals left by flowing water—awaited them for a relaxing bath in the late evening. They slept very well in the cooler climate of the higher altitude inland.
Hilde and Walter looked at the map and planned how to travel through Turkey. Both liked the ocean and hence decided to return to Antalya and travel east along the beautiful and interesting Mediterranean coast, using the scenic route where many historical sites were located. Taking time to enjoy leisurely places, beaches, ancient ruins, mosques, and restaurants, it took them almost a week to reach Side, founded by Greek settlers most likely in the seventh century BC. Alexander the Great had occupied Side without a struggle in 333 BC.
On a spot near the ocean, not far from the city, Walter and Hilde met a couple from Switzerland. Possibly the fact that both couples were using Volkswagens to travel in or merely the beauty of their surroundings led the two couples to talk to each other. A common pattern was to exchange tips and warnings and ask questions about issues that might arise along the way. The coincidence of meeting Hans and Marie from Bern resulted in a rich source of information and an encouragement regarding the method of transportation. The two had been on the road already for more than eighteen months. They had covered the whole continent of Africa, from north to south, and then shipped their vehicle by boat to Asia. Only once, during the Sahara passage in northern Africa, did they have an issue from a never-ending washboard road. They told Walter and Hilde everything from where to change local currency and in what denominations in various countries, to oil change instructions and customs border checks at different borders, as well as what country to avoid and where visitors were welcome. Hans especially cautioned about the border between Persia and Afghanistan. He told them that a young boy employed by the Afghan border authorities had either inherited a sixth sense or had the sniffing talent of a trained dog. He could be very dangerous in case drugs or any other contraband was hidden in the vehicle.
For nearly two weeks, Walter and Hilde progressed, sometimes south on small coastal roads, but continuously east. They met new travelers and many they had seen before. In Kayseri, Hilde and Walter noticed a change in how people dressed and behaved. Women did not appear without scarves and long dresses almost touching the ground, and more men wore wide pants with a lot of space in the front; their demeanor became more serious when the foreigners entered shops in the country. Children seemed very excited to see the strangers. Until this point, the visitors could still park anywhere on a quiet piece of land inside or near a town or on the property of an inn or hotel without disturbance, and nobody approached them.
On the road between Kayseri and Malatya, it became apparent that they had left Europe and were traveling in Asia. Children now stayed frozen still with somber expressions when the bus passed by. Some of them picked up gravel and threw it at the Volkswagen. From there on it became the norm that angry children around villages appeared from nowhere. They would run next to the car for a while, trying to throw something against it. Whoever was driving the camper at the time tried to avoid being hit, sometimes without success. They were approaching Malatya, a city site that had been occupied for thousands of years by Assyrians, Romans, and then Ottomans, and had been the scene of anti-Armenian violence during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Whether one had anything to do with the other or whether the children were Armenian children, Walter and Hilde did not find out.
Continuing east, they remembered Swiss Hans’s advice to park only in fenced and guarded compounds at night when traversing eastern Turkey. The region also changed dramatically into mountainous terrain with wide valleys and high peaks, very little green, occasionally a village-turned-oasis next to the road.
Van Gölü emerged behind a turn of the road. When they caught sight of it for the first time, it generated a feeling of awe. Lake Van, the largest lake in Turkey and a saline and Soda Lake, stretched for seventy miles at its widest point. The watercolor ranged from deep blue to white. Walter and Hilde enjoyed the lake’s company for two more days through the driver’s side window because the road they traveled took them from one end to the other.