Take the 20 euro cruise ferry back to Sweden. The lunch buffet on-board is sold by its weight – 2 euro per hg. Expensive for a cyclist. I eat the left overs of a Russian loaf – deliciously sour.

The green in the Stockholm archipelago is so dark – almost black. Nearly threatening, but I rather celebrate it as a force of nature. In Sweden, the force of nature is shown by its colors. In the desert, by the heat and the wind. In the Pamir mountains, through the bitter cold and the barren landscape; paradoxically in the absence of color.

Stay with Lukas in Åbo (Turku).

Stay with Hospitalityclub member Khattiya from Thailand and her inmate Nui in Helsinki satellite town Espoo. Make a fabulous sushi-dinner together!

Leave my friends in Kannusjärvi and head back towards Helsinki past Hamina (Fredrikshamn). I take a quick look at the castle in the city center, and the streets like circles around it, following the path where once a defense wall stood. It is one of the easternmost cities of Sweden during it’s geographical heydays during the 17th century, but it wasn’t kept for long before the Russians took it.

Continue west to Porvoo where Hospitalityclub member Kattja lends me her balcony for the night.

Stay with Sonja and Arnold in a house outside Kannusjärvi, 25 kilometers north of main town Hamina. They’ve lived here for just a few months – it’s Sonja’s grandfather’s house – and there is neither running water nor electricity. Quiet and calm like few other places. Late evening swim in a lake nearby. Wonderful people.

I cycle the last 140 or so kilometers from St Petersburg to Finland. It’s a dead boring road – lots of trucks – but worth it for the feeling of actually having cycled home again. As I close in on the border, I begin to think romantic stuff about Sweden and Finland. Brothers and sisters. I’m soon disappointed.

I hadn’t thought about really how common it had been before, and only realized it when it was so completely absent in Finland. ”Wow! Where have you cycled from?” had been the standing questions through-out my journey – from Turkey to China – but now, it was suddenly gone. Peoples’ curiosity; interest in one another. Not a curiosity specifically about my cycling, but more a handy excuse for starting a conversation. An icebreaker. Finish – as well as Swedish people – prefer to let the ice stay.

I wonder at what might have occupied the border guards’ mind. I was the only one passing by – it was midnight – and there were at least three guards there. None asked me anything. What were they thinking of instead? What made him avoid that perfect chance to meet someone new? Maybe he thought of to buy or not to buy new RAM memory for his desktop computer? Or if he remembered to turn off the stove when he left home that morning? Or how to ask his boss for a raise – although he knows that he’ll never have the courage to actually ask, regardless of how brilliant a way to do so that he can come up with during his daydreaming.

To suddenly remember how socially handicapped people here are made me depressed – not because I’d have to spend another five or so days here, but because I knew how it mirrored the way Swedish people are. It took me less than five minutes in Finland, to remember why I left Sweden in the first place in June last year. And to regret that I didn’t spend at least one final night in Russia. Or to put it as did a Finnish guy near the border, when I asked for a recommendation on a good place to camp at: ”Camping? No, that’s only in Russia!” A Russian would have replied: ”Camping? No, I have an extra bedroom!”
This is the society where the question is always mirrored:
– Hello!
– Hello.
– How are you?
– Fine and you?
– Thanks!
– Thanks.

I think the last time I mailed you was from northern Romania, just after passing the Carpathian Mountains. From there, I continued straight south towards Istanbul. A flat Romania; a somewhat hilly Bulgaria; a mountainous and hot Turkey. The Black Sea coast of Bulgaria was as expected more or less destroyed by tourism between the two major cities Varna and Burgas – I’ve rarely seen such heaps of garbage lining the road, out of which high risen, tennis-pitch-sized billboards rose with advertisements for the latest resort town or some imported vodka. In northern Turkey - the region to which I now intend to travel – the coast is on the contrary said to be quite untouched. I hope that’s true.

Already when passing the Turkish border, the police introduced me to the hospitality that awaited me. A young policeman – probably bored at the surprisingly quiet border post – greets me with a quick lesson in Turkish: ‘Hello is Merhaba; Goodbye is Güle güle. Güle güle!’ And after having camped my first night with the police in Babaeski, I could ascertain myself that looking for a place to camp in Turkey wouldn’t be as hard as in Europe. Even though I never had to wild camp, every evening was a struggle against the time and my energy in finding a safe enough place for the night. Poland was possibly the only country in which I could relax completely – the strangers that I asked for a place to camp more often than not welcomed me with open arms.

Istanbul – twenty million people spread out on an area as large as 100 kilometers from west to east - is not the ultimate place for biking. But staying with friend Burak, we could discover the city by foot together. From the somewhat posh suburb Yesilkoy, the train took half an hour or sometimes double that to reach the centre, and maybe the transports is what I will remember the most from this grand city. Once inside the centre, the distances are once again vast – at least by foot in the 35 degree August heat. And tourist-packed as the cities main attractions where, both I and Burak found the transports and the many characteristic suburbs being the most interesting parts of our tours. To see Istanbul through a citizen’s perspective and to see the mix of people, cultures and religions. More beautiful than the famous Blue Mosque where the old wooden houses – randomly situated in-between the mass of newer concrete houses.

After a second day’s rest in the parks of Izmit – 140 densely urbanized and industrialized kilometers east of Istanbul – I’ll continue northeast tomorrow towards the Black Sea coast. I hope to find a more green, less populated Turkey with space enough for peaceful lunches shadowed by trees and quiet nights camping. From the coast, my road will lead south again through Ankara to Syria.

Another day of hard wind, although this time leading me to beautiful Istanbul. Friend of friend Burak kindly hosts me in suburb Yesilkoy.

I spent five days in Istanbul with Burak – a friend of Italian Anita whom I met in beautiful Benguela, Angola, many years ago. It’s a 20 million people city – 100 kilometers from west to east – so no days is really enough to say you know it, but Burak shows me its diversity, and the daily life rather than the crowded tourist attractions. Of the latter, the Blue Mosque had lost most of its beauty by the invasion of tourists. The guards didn’t even bother about bare knees anymore. Its past religious importance had been traded for it to become a tourist magnet.

What both I and Burak instead found most interesting was the many different suburbs to which we travelled with the 1,40 Lira commuter train. Some of which Burak himself also visited for the first time – yet again proving how huge this city is.

More than once, we also met with Burak’s great friend Babür – a UK-born but since many years Turkey-residing English teacher with roots in East Turkistan. The latter is a region in western China, with claims for independence similar to those of Tibet. There was actually some uprising during the Olympics, although most media might have favored the games. Babur anyway took me and Burak with to a restaurant from the region, where owner Abdulhamit introduced us to its great cuisine. And for people like me who think they eat Italian food when eating pasta, I also learned a lesson when being told that the dish actually origins from East Turkistan.

From noon, a terrible headwind begins. Not only making my progress slow, but when slightly from the side also making it dangerous on the sometimes very narrow shoulder that is left for me to cycle on. I blow like a feather affront hurrying trucks and busses, but with a bit of luck I make it this day, too.

Come evening, I find myself already in the outskirts of urban Istanbul and realize the difficulty to find a quiet place to camp at. Instead I find a commercial campsite by the south-coast, where I’m able to negotiate down the camping fee four times to 5 lira (2,5 euro). I spend the evening cursing these campings – people look at me as if I’m from another planet. Not that I blame them, because it can’t be easy to find anything interesting at a campsite.

The change of mentality between European (and surprisingly cold) Bulgaria and warm, welcoming, Asian Turkey., is displayed already by the border police. The young Turkish policeman greets me and instantly teaches me a few phrases: ‘Hi is Merhaba, Goodbye is Güle güle. Güle güle!’ Here, I’m hosted not only by the family with whom I camp for the night, but also by the country. Tonight, that is the police in Babaeski – again something impossible in strict Europe. I’m invited to camp on the small yard in front of the police station; then given dinner.

I leave Petar at noon. Come evening I camp next to the local hospital and hotel (strangely situated in the same building) in village-town Malko Tarnovo, really close to the Turkish border.

A long, hot day to second-biggest town along the Bulgarian coast – Burgas. The road littered with rubbish and gigantic commercial billboards selling community-style resort houses, beer and cars – all of it rubbish, too. The shadow of humanity.

Reaching Burgas, I’m met by Hospitalityclub host Petar. Great welcome, a free-entrance Folklore Festival in the evening with groups from Poland, Slovenia, Greece and Bulgaria performing, and a days rest before continuing south to Turkey.

Pedal the final fifty kilometers to Varna and my Hospitalityclub host Martin. He doesn’t come home until eight pm though, so I spend the day in the city’s large park; see the adjacent Black Sea for the first time.

I make lunch – pasta with tuna fish – behind a statue. My company is in the form of dried feces and knit condoms. I think about my problem of not stopping in time; taking it easy. Since early morning I knew that I’d meet Martin by 20.00; yet I go fast and reach at noon. Why stress? I guess because of some degree of discomfort – I’m still in Europe, after all.

After having crossed the river with a ten-minute ferry, I pass the last EU border before Turkey. The road is uninspiring, and finding a good place to camp isn’t easy. I finally meet a Turkish-German couple in Stošer, who let me to camp in their backyard. Chicken and chips for dinner.

In Romania, towns were in general always preceded or followed by one or a couple of large factories in the outskirts of town. Grey complexes of concrete – often shuttered, but sometimes still running. Chimneys, cranes, towers, silos, hangars, factory halls. Crushed windows and cracked plastered walls. Partly blown away, rusty corrugated iron roofs.
Sometimes large farms with housing complexes for the workers. From the outside resembling 21st century Gulags (labor camps).
Leftovers from the communism regime?

I leave Manuela in the morning after three restful days. Although having planned to pedal about 70 kilometers, the road turns out to be dead-boring, so I just keep on. Ten kilometers north of Calarasi, an elder couple lets me camp next to their house. Shower, dinner, breakfast and the usual toast of home brew with the man in the house.
Dinner: chicken, tomatoes filled with rice, sweet pepper and bread. Water melon for dessert.

In the evening, the couple watch TV with traditional folk music live from some festival. Dogs bark outside, though the crickets are always the loudest. The traditional music includes some gurgling sounds – singing from the throat. We humans have invented some of the strangest traditions – sometimes regarded as beautiful only based on how difficult they are to master, or how unusual they seem.