Black Sea Day 13: Sinop Arrival

Waking up in Gerze

We woke up on the beach in Gerze, had coffee, and did some people-watching. One topic of conversation that morning was swimmers and buoys. At many beaches that we’ve been to, there are buoys that section off an area of the water for swimming. Systematically bathers ignore this and swim just beyond the buoys or inches to the side.

A bit later, we chatted with the other cyclists whose camp we had crashed. We learned that they actually had spent a week on a fishing boat in the nearby marina before moving to their current site.

All along the Black Sea, there are fishing villages with boats of all sizes. We would later get a more in-depth look at the routine of the fishermen in Kurucaşile. I think Selim would like to try out sailing and traveling by boat. I have shared with him that I had the same ambitions at one point and have learned it doesn’t suit me well. I much prefer having all the space on land to walk around and escape the small quarters of a boat. For this reason, bike travel suits me much better.

We had breakfast plans at 10 AM so we packed up, said goodbye to the French couple, and headed back to Abhi’s house.

Turkish Breakfast

In Tunisia and much of the Arab World, Turkish TV dramas are very popular. And Selim’s mom, Samia watches them. For this reason, Selim had some insight into the aspects of Turkish culture glamorized by these series. One of the things he remarked from the shows is that breakfast is very important and very involved here. This was our first time trying this type of Turkish breakfast.

There was so much to choose from for breakfast including honey, olives, cheeses, Turkish crepes, halwa, tomatoes, french fries, sausages, and more. To drink, we were offered juice or tea. Everyone in the extended family sat down to eat and talk together. I especially enjoyed the fresh, village cheese and the Turkish crepes. Selim immediately made a Malfouf-style sandwich with his crepe to look around and notice, no one else was eating it in that way at all. His Tunisian instincts must have kicked in after a few too many weeks without malfouf.

After breakfast, Zeynep showed me her Aunt’s garden in the backyard which was really lush and all organic. To us, it seems like there is a lot of awareness about organic produce here. Turkish folks seem to highlight when produce is organic which is cool to hear.

Spilling Water

When we were getting ready to go, our hosts gave us some goodies for the road. As we took off with our bikes, they spilled water behind us. This is a custom done for good luck to make sure we have a good journey. When I checked Wikipedia, it says that the water is used to symbolize ease of movement. When Selim was young, him and all of his cousins would prepare a cup of water to throw behind his uncle when he would head back to Austria. This was to wish his uncle a good journey and a safe eventual return to Tunisia. \

The Ride to Sinop

After this ritual, we were off to Sinop. We had heard only that it’s beautiful and also that it’s known for having good mantı, Turkish dumplings.

On the ride, we passed lots of corn fields. Corn is a very popular street food in Turkey. It’s sold in cups as well as on-the-cob.

We rested at a gas station and the attendants shared their watermelon with us.

Camping behind a Moonbounce

We arrived in Sinop and needed a rest. We stopped in the first park we came across just for a bit. But it ended up turning into the whole night. It was a really busy park so we were surprised not to get kicked out. We set up camp behind a moonbounce and charged our phones at a nearby food stand.

If you don’t know what a moonbounce is, it’s another word for an inflatable house. Oftentimes, you pay money to enter and you get to play on it for a set amount of time. This is not an English word you’ll learn in school and it doesn’t come up too often in everyday conversation so Selim had never heard it. I taught him the word in English and realized I wasn’t quite sure why it was called a moonbounce. I suspected it was because you can jump so high, it’s as if you will reach the moon. Turns out, that was incorrect.

It’s called a moonbounce because it was advertised as giving you the feeling of floating like you were on the moon. It came out in the US around the time that one space mission is particular was making a lot of news.

To give you an idea of how much Selim thinks about sleeping surfaces, he had plans to sleep on the moonbounce after the attendants left. It turns out, they deflate it during the night so that didn’t end up panning out.

Mantı

I took a nap for several hours and Selim made pasta for dinner. We saw two mantı restaurants right next to each other, one chock-full with customers and the other completely empty. The popular one had old women sitting at round tables making dumplings by hand. And in the empty one, there were no old women and no round tables. People want a show! And verification that their dumplings are fresh. We had already eaten mantı twice in Izmir. The first time was at a restaurant and the second time we bought it frozen from the grocery store and boiled it at home. It was 70 liras at minimum which seemed exorbitantly expensive to me after weeks of treating ourselves with only 11 lira or max 30 lira sandwiches. We didn’t feel particularly drawn to have it again. But, it’s really good so here’s a recipe to try it at home!

Restroom Fees

I don’t know if it was the cycling or the nonstop social interaction for several days, but I slept most of the day and then went to bed early that night. Selim also slept well. I’m very grateful no one kicked us out though there was a nearby beach which would’ve been much more suitable for camping. At one point during the night, Selim tried to use the restroom at a nearby bathroom. They asked him to pay and somehow he got into a conversation about how he got to Sinop. The men couldn’t believe he had cycled there. He spent at least 15 minutes explaining and showing them video and photo evidence that he really did cycle there. They were so captivated with his story that they didn’t notice many other people using the restroom without paying. Selim wasn’t too happy that he had to play entertainer and pay. 3 TL or not, it was the principle.

In the morning, I would go to use the restroom and no one was working there so I did not have to pay. We started to get a bit obsessed about the system of paying to use the restroom after this and how to avoid this. A few days later, we would both go to use a restroom in a mosque. Again, they asked him for money and not me. My theory is part of the reason I’m able to get away with it is that I look like a headache to ask for money from whereas Selim is “Turkish” so they probably won’t encounter any problems.