Kırklareli-Babaeski-Lüleburgaz-Çorlu.

Trip dist: 118 kms. Trip time: 7 hrs, 23 min. Tot dist: 7,514 kms.

Conquers the World.

Heh, that map above? Those are the countries I've visited (you can make your own here). Not just the places where I hung out at the airports, mind you, but actually spent some time looking around in. Cool, huh? (And nevermind also, that all things considered, I haven't really done much travelling--the site says I've only seen 10% of the world, in terms of number of countries visited). Though looking at that map...it does seem a little....localized, huh? A bit like an epidemic spreading, maybe?

{shrug}.

The ride today to Çorlu was not particularly exciting (I had said goodbye to Françoise and Peter this morning as they wanted to stay in Kırklareli for a while before heading to Edirne, opposite in direction from me) . Pretty much like Jasper warned me, except that unlike him I actually had the wind in favor all the way to Babaeski, but as the road turned East (I was heading pretty much straight South before) the wind was hitting me on the diagonal, a bit against, and rather strongly. To Babaeski it was easy going 23 kms/hr. Then afterwards as I said there was a lot of winds, and quite a bit of up and down elevation, so it was slower going. Landscape, too, was a bit on the boring side, though I did pass by at least 15 textile factories, which was kind of mind-tickling. {shrug}.

Turkey takes very good care of its infrastructure. Its roads, even the old ones that have been since replaced by the motorway, are wide and smooth and kept in good repair (there are constantly sections being fixed, and the fixed section that I saw was as smooth as oil on steel or water on ice); all the cities/villages I passed by, though poor, had freshly painted houses, lawns mowed. I didn't see this even in Berlin. {shrug}.

Arriving into Çorlu, again, there was LOTS of commerce (see for instance the ads on the buildings), the city center is full of people doing...of all things...buying and selling, with the hustle and bustle and sounds that that produces.

However, there is something I don't get: if there is so much economic activity, as evidenced by an active (a highly active!) market, why does it seem that people here are still so poor?

Something....doesn't quite jive with A. Smith: I need to quickly find me a good book of Turkish history (Gurçan, any suggestions?)....