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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Stress by the Bosporus

It was a beautiful end of fall day today, and everyone had the same idea: take a drive up the Bosporus.

We went with Gilles and his wife Ayse on our bmw 650's through 10 miles of bumper to bumper traffic alongside the narrow passage of sea between the Med and the Black Sea. There were the usual throng of fisherman on the shore and boats cruising up and down. When we got to Sariyer the traffic eased up and we zoomed through some pine hills to the point where the Bosporus opens to the Black Sea. We ate a delicious late lunch of salad, fish and dessert while the boats moved calmly below us, from our restaurant bluff vantage point.

The sun was setting as we went up the coast a ways before returning to an abandoned fort that used to govern the straight. We took what maybe the last of the pictures of Clara's bike as we hope to ship it home tomorrow. We rode home in the dark, again chock full of traffic, the full moon rising in the northeast, red at first (perhaps due to the pollution) before a big white disc hung over the Asian side as we got back to Gilles.

After some pleasantries we headed back to our home in Kadakoy, again zooming around the toll booth gate a bit more leery this time, as we received a harrowing story of our friends Marko and Clara getting beaten up by the Turkish military and held for 12 hours through an escalating series of calamities starting with a toll not being paid.

A friend of Gilles had a motorcycle accident today and broke some part of his leg. The drivers here are super aggresive and constantly ignore us and/or try and run us off the road.

Clara and I are eager to get going, somewhere, preferably warm although that isn't likely anytime soon. We are definitely stressed a bit and taking it out on each other.

Nothing that some fun in the sun of Iran probably can't cure!
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