Adrianopolis

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Hitched across rolling fields and afternoon fog through Eastern Thrace to Edirne, less than 20 miles from Bulgaria and Greece. My hitchhiking fortunes have vastly improved since my comparative inexperienced days a month ago. Being offered a ride while not hitching is no longer an uncommon experience, and I don't think I hitched for more than 15 minutes before getting picked up. It may have more to do with the drivers in Thrace than anything to do with me.

Edirne was the Ottoman capital prior to the liberation of Istanbul, and home to many mosques and other historical entities.
The old palace, unfortunately, was blown up by the retreating Turks before they surrendered the city to the Bulgarians during the 1st Balkan war (1913). I read somewhere that they did the same to the palace in Bagdad. I guess they had no faith that they would ever recapture the city... thanks, guys. The city was later retaken when the Balkan nations fought each other for more land during the 2nd Balkan war; it was Enver Pasha's face-saving "victory". Interestingly enough, there's no mention of Enver Pasha, and a reference to the fact that Mustafa Kemal Pasha was part of the army. Necessary hero-worship.

Despite said destruction, the city is like an open-air museum, with mosques, covered bazaars, hamams, and old houses everywhere you turn. The ancient portion of the city which resided between the city walls doesn't contain a single mosque although it includes a synagogue, a greek church, armenian inscriptions, and multiple greek-looking structures and at least one area which I believe was a christian cemetary of sorts. The inscription was scratched out so I wasn't able to tell if it was in greek or armenian. Most of the non-muslim population has since moved (voluntarily or involuntarily) elsewhere, and the churches as well as old houses are falling into disrepair. Still, some effort is being made to repair at least a few of them, so some hope remains.

The city walls date back to the Byzantine city of Adrianopolis, although not much is left of them except for one corner tower which served as a clocktower. It was then damaged by an earthquake and (get this) dynamited by way of demolishing the clock-related additions. The caretaker at the grounds was fairly fanatic about his turf and told me stories of how back in the '50s there were orders to demolish the tower because it was "incompatible with muslim architecture", or because it detracted from the view of one of the nearby mosques. The orders were thankfully not executed.

I took a trip to a hamam (turkish bath) to remove some of my layers of accumulated dirt. It had been a while since a large sweaty man told me to take off my clothes, laid me down on a marble floor, scrubbed me down and soaped me up, twisted my arms and legs, grunting and breathing heavily and massaging me. I know, pornographic. And you pay for this too. They really should consider having female attendants. Would make the whole experience infinitely more enjoyable.

The food of choice is (interestingly) fried liver. More often than not a restaurant will specialize in (and only sell) thin strips of cow liver dipped in flour, deep fried and piled on a plate alongside some chilis and onions. It's actually quite good, but nothing like faithful old rice and beans, staple Turkish food.

Edirne was a nice relaxing place; a small town (150,000) with plenty of open spaces and teashops in which to read or mosques to stroll and photograph. It also houses a university so there is a student population (I didn't connect with any). Thracian chicks aren't half bad looking either: much of the population migrated from nowday Greece, Bulgaria or (former) Yugoslavia, so there's a fair bit of blond hair and blue eyes, and there's also a significant gypsy population so there's plenty of dark skin for those who prefer that. The river Merich is right next to town, and it's a short stroll to fields rolling by a silently drifting river... perfect for relaxation and/or reading.

Unfortunately my guidebook (lonelyplanet) was fairly weak on information on Thrace, and the locals seem to equate "worth seeing" with beaches and/or bars, so I was a little short on information about what to see (apart from the city center). Also, the weather isn't what it was a month and a half ago, and I've been finding my clothes inadequate (and my pack heavy) for some time now, so I wanted to head back to Istanbul to pick up more relevant gear. As a face-saving measure I head out to a spot on the Black sea coast called Igneada; it was recommended by one of the dudes I met while in Chanakkale. That was quite beautiful: the road there took me (read: the car I was in) over mountains covered in forests of red, yellow and gray down to the seaside where nightfall brought with it severe mist and invigorating cold... it was quite a change from the rolling landscape that dominates the rest of Thrace.

Hitched back from there to Istanbul, against all hope (and getting picked up after dark by the 2nd car I saw), instantly apalled by the sheer volume of it all and the dark ambition on people's faces. The city goes on forever, and away from the bright lights of bourgeois spots such as Taksim is the undercurrent of the millions uprooted from villages and lifestyles far away and transplanted into dillapidated flats in dark narrow alleys, lured by and selling their lives to the sirens of wealth. It's doubly puzzling to me how (apart from dire economic need) someone could leave the (albeit boring) tranquil life in the country and exchange it for the hectic fear that absorbs all in the big city.

In the meantime I'm plotting my escape...

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