A Warm Welcome in Turkey
Added on Friday, April 25th, 2008 by Carole Nash Editor
A Warm Welcome in Turkey
The sub frame was repaired by Caner, one of the guys working for Bahadir at the Hein Gericke store.
Suleyman couldn’t detect a gearbox fault and neither could Kubilay, the road tester from 2Teker bike mag. I was also talking to Ozdem, the owner of MotorON mag and Selim, his Moto GP and feature writer, who told me about his views about biking in Turkey.
Driving is a bit of a nightmare in Istanbul – it’s kind of India on speed – and wealth is such that motorists have good cars that are capable of rushing around a city that is 75kms across housing 16 million people. In the heat of the traffic, Turks are a pushy lot. You slip a bad gear at the lights and 400 cars starting horning you a millisecond later.
Out of the cars, the hospitality I have received in Turkey has been special. I haven’t paid a penny for food – not allowed – I am a guest in their country and that means a lot.
Needed to get the bike sorted, it got sorted. Tyres from Continental arrived with the manager himself wanting to meet me and we’re looking at dubbing the next film and translating Parallel World into Turkish. Cool, but I am now back in the road and riding to Cappadocia, an amazing part of central Turkey with houses carved out of rock.
