Last saturday I got the notion in my head that I'd like to do some walking... Bursa is cool and all but the constant stares and "hello"s one gets in a city get old real fast. After some quick consulting with my rudimentary map I decided that Balikesir would be a decent target: roughly 150km -- not too near and not too far. I had left most of my heavy gear (including walking shoes, socks and warm clothes) back in Istanbul and admittedly had too much useless gear with me (4 books!), but I figured I'd give things a shot and I could always bail if things got hairy. I bought a pair of socks, a loaf of "village" bread which looked like it wouldn't dry out too quickly, a kilo of grapes, some peanuts and
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