Charming Çaycuma - a completly different experience

We still can't imagine what happend to us, the last few days were unbelievable!

-by the way, please ignore my grammatic and orthography mistakes- Thanks!

We have been guests in Çaycuma Belediyesi, invited by the distinguished mayor, Bülent Kantarci. 

It happend that our new friend Eyüp from Filyos joined our bikeride to visit Çaycuma and helped us communicating, because:  biz türkce as biliyoruz....

As we arrived Çaycuma it was the first time in Turkey that we could cycle on biketrails, how wonderful! 

But honestly, the locals weren't used to it, that cyclists with so much luggage are passing them. So sometimes we needed to ring for more space. -That was the first time I missed a bell on my bike.-

After we were interviewed and filmed by the local press, we were sitting in a big round with a lot of officials in the mayor office, drinking ılhamur (lindenblossom) çay and talking.

We actualy didn't really knew how we should behave. For us it was such a huge honor and completely new situation. 

The mayor presented us some very precious gifts, so now we are owner of a turkish flag, Çaycuma stamps, caps, delicious dryfruits and a contactadress in Turkmenistan, if we need help. 

WOW! That's so amazing, we have no words in any language we know, to show our great gratitude to the major and Çaycuma.

Teşekkür ederiz! Çok güzel!

We were treated like kings! We could stay for two days in a wonderful room at the social Merkesi hall, we have rarly slept in such noble beds. The mayor even lighted up a christmastree in the dining room for us, such a incredibly welcoming gesture! He even invited us to celebrate the holy evening.

With a bad conscience we had to refuse thankfully, because we wanted to cycle further on.

We whished we had more time to talk with the mayor, but of course he is a very busy and important man and supports a lot of good projects. Aswell it was difficult, because we always needed translations.

Maybe some of you readers remember our answer to your questions about having sponsors, writing a book or making a film about our little crazy adventure. 

We always said, that so many touring cyclists have already discovered the silkroad and that there's no public interest for such a documentation.

 Of course we are a little bit shy and lasy workers, so we decided to share a simple Blog with our family and friends.

But now we broke up with our promise and for a couple  of days we were probably the famost foreigners in Çaycuma.

Thank you so much, we are so lucky to have been here and enjoying this wonderful hospitality. We keep it in good memories.