My First Solo Trip to Turkey at 18: Memories I Still Remember 16 Years Later (Part 1)

The mackerel sandwiches are delicious.
The Turkish breakfast is delicious.
The apple tea is also delicious.
Turkey has a lot of delicious food.
After all, it is one of the world's three great cuisines.

My first solo trip was to Turkey.
I believe it was in 2008, when I was 18.I was a freshman in college.
With an itinerary of about two weeks, I planned to travel around Turkey starting from Istanbul.
I remember buying a round-trip ticket online and bringing a copy of 'Chikyu no Arukikata' (which was only available in book form at the time).

Everything was a first for me.
But looking back on it now, I only remember fragments.
I keenly realize how much memory degrades in 16 years if you don't record it properly.
I really should have taken detailed notes.

Even among all that, what I remember most vividly isthe shopkeepers everywhere offering me apple tea.
In Turkey, there is a custom of serving hot apple tea in small glasses that are tapered like a gourd.
This apple tea is usually the type made by dissolving powder, and it is quite sweet.
They wouldcasually offer it to me at every shop, asking, 'Would you like to have a drink?'
Turkey is known as a pro-Japanese country.
Even so, I could understand it at a souvenir shop where I intended to buy something or a tour agency where I planned to book a local tour, but it was the same even at unrelated general stores.
I didn't have any urgent plans, so I enjoyed being treated to tea in various places.

My interactions at budget hostels are also memorable.
When I exchanged information while chatting with other Japanese travelers,at the time, the route from Turkey through Syria to Egypt was the mainstream path for travelers.
Among the people staying at the same hostel in Istanbul, there were several who were planning to head south along that route.
Three years later, in 2011, a conflict broke out in Syria, making it impossible to enter the country for tourism.

That experience influenced me thereafter.
World situations change.
If you don't go to places you can visit now, there is a possibility you won't be able to go in a few years.
Moreover, I don't know if the period you can't go will be 5, 10, or 30 years, and by the time you do go, the things you wanted to see might have already been destroyed.
If there is something you want to see or a place you want to go, you must make it happen soon.

In Cappadocia, I stayed in a cave hotel carved out of strange rock formations.
The image is closer to a burrow. Even the shelves were built-in, carved directly into the walls.
That was where I first experienced true darkness, with no light leaking in from the outside.
It was pitch black, but quiet, and strangely, I felt a sense of security, as if I were being gently wrapped up.
Perhaps that is what it's like inside a mother's womb.

At that hotel, I met an elderly Japanese couple.
They treated me kindly and told me stories about the many countries they had traveled to together.
Having never dated anyone yet, I admired the way the two of them were growing old together so lovingly.
And, encouraged by them, I signed up for thehot air balloon tour the next morning.
It was expensive for me at the time, but it was a brilliant decision.
Luckily, it snowed that night, and the next morning was perfectly clear without a single cloud!
The sight of colorful balloons floating above the snow-covered rocky mountains was truly beautiful.

But in reality, it was so cold that for most of the second half of the 30-minute balloon ride, I just wanted to get down quickly and go somewhere warm 🤭

To be continued tomorrow

I am currently doing a 1-month writing habit challenge.
Today is the 23rd day.

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