The kindness of strangers: after a nasty bike accident in Turkey, a local dropped everything to care for me | Australian lifestyle
I Cycling in the rural turkey – I could not tell you where. My plan on that day was the ride until I reached a village with some place I could stay. I needed people because, unlike other bicycle tourists, I had no tent. I thought not to bring one of them meant that I had more adventure – I may stay in barns, living rooms or school halls. She worked in Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea. It did not succeed in Türkiye.
You need to reach the next city before sunset. You are riding a bicycle down, and perhaps very quickly on the path of gravel. I was wandering in a blind corner when a car came screaming around the bending. Once I saw him, it was in front of me.
The next thing that I remember is to lie in the middle of the road with the cylinder of my deviant bike handle in my leg, blood everywhere.
A week ago, I met Brian, a bicycle tourist who collected more than 40 countries and settled in Türkiye. I had his number because, like countless tourists for bicycles in front of me, I was allowed to stay in the night in his small apartment in Antalya.
After I was discharged from the hospital – a Turkish country hospital in a town, I did not even know the name – I sat abroad in a wheelchair, and I did not know the surgery I received or my injury. I thought about contacting everyone alongside Brian – my partner, my father, my mother, the best friend – but no one can help. The only local number in my phone was Brian.
I don’t remember much about the phone call. I know it was not a simple request to stay a few other nights. I mainly asked Brian to be my career for an unlimited period. I had no travel insurance, and I did not know anyone else in Türkiye and could not walk. What I remember is that the call was easy. There was no negotiations, just welcoming: “Something is something.”
Soon after, a nurse was helping me in a taxi, and the neighboring Brian neighbor was on me on two trips of the stairs such as the bride and put me on the Brian sofa. None of us exchanged a word.
When Brian arrived, he received me as a friend, not a traveler in a basket with a story of sorry and no insurance. Although there is a job, partner, social life, and all the obligations of normal life, the next five Bian has become. I lied on the sofa that reads articles about that Disney Princess will be the worst so far and served the diet of food, helped me shower and talk to me about his life. I was completely relying on him – someone spent only one and a half – but he didn’t complain once or made it embarrassing.
In the end, my family organized a trip home from Antalya. After she left Türkiye, Brian lost contact.
The only thing I had to remember is the review that I left for me on the bicycle and hosting site on Warmshowers:
Nick stayed with me in my small apartment in Antalya for a few nights in September 2014. He needed some help, and I was able to help him. They are like this – in an unknown city, with no friends, and a problem – that warm warms are particularly great. Nick ended up staying four or five other days. He is a wonderful man, open, knowledgeable and experienced after years. You can completely trust it.
I have been wondering for a long time if Brian had remembered me or what happened, so I wrote to him a few weeks ago.
He replied, “Of course, I remember you.” “I always felt the badness I sent you on dirt roads, and this happened because you may not have been used to a tour of the dirt roads … never said anything to make me feel guilty about it. It is just a feeling I have.”
He added: “Certainly I never thought that I did anything special. You should return to Antalya. I live in a palace compared to the place where I was living when I was here.”
