Day 64 (Turkey): Ankara

today’s distance: 0km
total distance: 5005km
riding time: 0h

I slept. Slept like a stone. My body needs rest. Even when I didn’t sleep, I felt tired and it is as if waves of tiredness are washing over me. I am thinking now that I am hesitant to take breaks for that reason. When I do - mostly on the second day of a break - I get extremely tired. On the other hand I should be taking more breaks. I know that - rationally. But biking is just a lot of fun and most of the time I have this urge to keep moving.

The rim is on its way now and will hopefully arrive early next week. In the meantime, Haluk showed me the Ataturk Memorial. Funny places, these memorials.

Tombs … most of them have tombs of course. This one happens to be empty. The real one is below the main hall somewhere, but the reverence will always be a public one in this hall. I somehow can’t do much with such national symbols and find them in some sense comical. I don’t want to arouse any misgivings, but a lot of times wonder whether and why we seem to need such places as an expression of some kind of national identification. Call me post-national or whatever, but it just doesn’t do a whole lot for me. This sentiment has only become stronger the more I travel in places with strong national feelings engrained in people. Add to this that the title of the whole project - Cycling Without Borders - is an expression of a deeply-held personal belief and you get the gist of what I am saying.

Alright, enough pondering for the day … here I am in front of the tomb of Ataturk.

The rest of the day was quiet. We got back to the apartment and I got a better look at my wheel, making sure that the brakes were in good shape still getting to work on phone calls to the University of Miami administration to get the ball rolling on my US visa that I will have to obtain in the process of this trip. I hope to be able to do this without having to fly back to Germany for some reason. Keep your fingers crossed.