Here's another chapter from Nico's travel journal, aka Pieroad, who after three and a half years walking around the world arrives in Türkiye, a gateway between East and West and the first stage of his journey in Europe, slowly returning home. Enjoy the read!

A STEAMING CUP OF ÇAY

In Türkiye, two hundred and seventy thousand tons of tea are consumed each year. The country holds the world record for per capita consumption, surpassing Morocco (ah, Moroccan mint tea) by three times and Iran by double, which is stunning considering that in the two months I spent there, I had drunk up to thirteen teas a day. Reading the data, a Westerner instantly imagines a colossal variety of flavors packaged in a complex culture, somehow justifying this record. The imagination galloping creates dozens of bizarre glasses, unknown sugar varieties, colorful, agglutinated into cubes of every shape and size, armies of floral-patterned saucers worthy of a university botany book, elaborate spoons like those used for absinthe, complex pouring rituals, and ceramic teapots in precious materials that maintain water at the exact right temperature for that specific type of tea.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Turks consume three kilos of tea per person annually, but they always and only drink black tea, çay, invariably served in curved-walled glasses like a girl's hips with a rounded bottom resting on a saucer decorated with red petals. White, refined sugar is offered in cubes, rarely loose, and the spoon has the simple and slender shape we all know.

When I proposed alternative options to the families hosting me - exotic pomegranate powders or dried eucalyptus and menthol leaves to free the throat from winter's grip - the compassionate faces with which they were received made me think of extravagances to be tried once in a lifetime, to please the guest more than out of genuine curiosity. In some cases, they were even politely refused, accusing the novelty of being without praise or blame. Drinking çay is like walking: intuitive, immediate, necessary. Hopping on one foot, turning one's back to walk backward - what's the point? You walk forward, one foot after another, as it has always been done and always will be. A sort of religiosity prevails for çay that accompanies, for example, pasta culture in our country, but differs in the silence with which it is observed and never celebrated, precisely because it is substantial and taken for granted. Tea is çay and çay is black tea.

Türkiye - A JOURNEY

The origin of the leaves is the province of Rize, in the north, squeezed between the Black Sea and the Pontus mountain range, where the coast's humidity precipitates creating the perfect ecosystem for plantations. The direct route to transition from Georgia to Europe passes through the çay region, but if rain is the ideal condition for tea cultivation, it's also the worst for walking, especially in winter. Better to endure a few hundred extra kilometers to save one's feet from mold and morale from three gloomy and depressing months. So, where to pass?

Giorgio was a trustworthy guy, attentive and moving well, caring for details. We had met in Patagonia, on the Argentine side, and found each other two years later in Armenia, at the base camp of Aragats, on the eve of the day we would climb to the summit. Constantly moving, one has little time to evaluate the people one encounters; in four years traveling the world, I had understood that I felt comfortable with those inclined to effort and mountains. He was traveling in the opposite direction, towards Central Asia, in two months he would be an English teacher in a Kyrgyz village overlooking the Pamir peaks. We had talked about borders, Iran, paths, and medieval fortresses and watchtowers; he had carved one on the top of his walking stick, the symbol he had chosen for Georgia. In Çıldır, on the Turkish side, there was a castle, the Devil's Castle, and a lake, Lake Çıldır obviously, which was large but froze in winter and could be walked on. It was a good point to cross, even staying on the road like normal people. To leave Türkiye, Giorgio had passed through there. He recommended the border because the controls had been lax; with Ezio in tow, the stroller in which I transport my material life, this detail was of fundamental importance. It's not every day you see a twin stroller pushed by a bearded guy with four-year-long hair. Naturally, the couple aroused suspicion.

I would find myself at the eastern edge of the Anatolian plateau, which then corresponds to historical Armenia, a land with sad events due to the genocide that is not spoken of. I had been touched by it, partly by the guilty silence that covers it, partly because in books written by Armenians in the diaspora, it is discussed with dreamy and melancholic words that vibrate on the same strings of a heart afflicted by homesickness. There was a trade-off between rain and cold, and since it seemed like an advantageous exchange, I decided to accept.

HISTORICAL ARMENIA - KARS

Kars is a city a thousand years old, at least. Its history could be tested like a Wild West fairytale: and came the Turks, who fought the Russians, who defeated the Ottomans, who repelled the Persians, who killed the Timurids, who chased away the Georgians, who eliminated the Mongols, who defeated the Seljuks, who beat Byzantium, who bent the Armenians. Obviously, the matter is more complicated, but the succession of peoples gives an idea of the traffic that interested Kars since its foundation. The fortress, which still dominates the city, was never an effective defensive bulwark: each invader had managed to conquer it and take possession of the city. For the Armenians, Kars was the capital of the Bagratid kingdom, one of the first that national history remembers. There is still a church built during the time of Kars as capital, the Church of the Twelve Apostles, founded in the year nine hundred and fifty after Christ. It has been modified, obviously, particularly by the Russians (the Russian church is Orthodox, the Armenian one, well, Armenian; we'll get to that) and by the Turks, who converted it into a mosque, an unhappy function judging by the absence of worshippers. When I arrived, in fact, the other mosques in the town were full for the noon prayer.

Bora, the guy hosting me, had proposed we go together. I had been walking in Muslim territory for some time, but I had not yet attended the Friday service, the equivalent of Sunday mass. Within the Islamic world, Türkiye, had been described as the quintessential secular country. On the contrary, from the first days, it was evident that the population was moving in a direction different from constitutional aspirations.

Turkish believers have a way of praying that I had not yet seen: they open their palms and bring their thumbs behind their ear lobes, exerting a slight pressure before dropping their arms along their sides and moving to invocations, as per ritual. I asked Bora if the gesture had something to do with hearing, like "I'm listening" or "Listen to my prayers," but he replied that it had the same significance as clasped hands for Christians: the beginning of prayer, period and stop. To each their own.

Kars preserves little of the Armenian presence, and although, despite the centuries, the trace of a people might aspire to remembrance, the will of Turkish governments to erase its memory has ensured that every imprint was modified or, worse, eliminated entirely. At the city museum, the mention was negligible, and other physical places had been erased. What remained was to take a leap to Ani, the capital of the Bagratid kingdom after Kars.

HISTORICAL ARMENIA - ANI AND VAN

While the latter survived, transformed, through the passage of time, Ani is today an archaeological site in ruins, a shadow of a glorious past that can be glimpsed. Chronicles speak of it as the City of a Thousand Churches, home to exceptional artistic sensitivity, the result of its strategic position at the crossroads between East and West, Caucasus and Mesopotamia. Near the remains of the cathedral, some sacred architecture scholars have traced the elements of the transition between Romanesque and Gothic styles, defining the cradle of the slender and pointed churches that would populate Europe in subsequent centuries.

Bora and I cautiously entered the belly of the dilapidated giant. Unknown letters stood out on the lintel of the side door: the Armenian alphabet, one of the oldest still in use. It was created at the drawing board in the fourth century, with the aim of giving its people an element on which to found national identity. There is another, preceding it: religion. As I mentioned, the Armenian church is Armenian, not Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Evangelical. Armenia in its best times was the first state to recognize Christianity as an official religion, preceding the Edict of Thessalonica by eighty years, with which the Roman Empire was consecrated to the religion of Christ. Religion and alphabet are the elements that have transported the Armenian people through centuries and adversities, cementing their cultural identity in the presence of imposing and far more powerful neighbors.

Ani languishes lonely on a plain beaten by the icy winds of Anatolia, discolored and scorched. Earthquakes and raids devastated it, and now it lies forgotten by the world, too distant from the rest of Türkiye and unreachable from Armenia, whose border remains closed for political reasons. An invisible stream slides at the bottom of the gorge that divides the twin lands. Ani, a step away from contemporary Armenia, is the symbol of a broken nation.

The biting cold of the Kars province is the most severe in Türkiye. The average annual temperature is four degrees, with minimums touching thirty, forty below zero. I would have wanted to stay longer, as always happens when I fall in love with a sad story, but moving on foot requires patience and a certain consistency, especially when distances are large and the country offers a limited, non-extendable, and non-renewable visa. Ezio and I pushed ourselves into the heart of historical Armenia, on the slopes of Ararat where legend claims the Ark of the Covenant landed; and then towards Van, the lost paradise, the city on the blue lake of which today only a few dilapidated churches remain. During World War I, the Turkish army preferred to bomb its own city to flush out the Armenian resistance; only the citadel remained standing, from which cannons roared.

It continued to be very cold, to the point of wondering if staying on the plateau was the best choice. Tent, sleeping bag, and mattress were worn from years of service in all conditions, but I was beginning to feel the fatigue and lack of breaks: in thirty thousand kilometers, I had never returned home to rest. The people I asked for advice were unanimous: I should descend towards Mesopotamia. In Van, I was a guest of Kamuran, a tall and slender Kurdish boy, a medical student. We sat down to discuss the route in front of a steaming çay teapot, one of those double ones that contain water in the lower belly and concentrated tea in the upper one, so that each can choose the intensity of their infusion. Kamuran revealed that in the long term, drinking çay is associated with iron loss in the blood, a doctor's word, but even knowing this, he couldn't give it up. After all, he added, laughing and filling another glass, it's likely to happen, not certain. While pouring more çay, the leaves remained trapped in the small teapot's filter. When we finished, Kamuran opened a second yellow plastic bag, Rize label, similar to the first. This time, however, the leaves were ground so finely that some escaped to the bottom of the glass.

LOSING ALTITUDE WHILE WALKING

I've been traveling for so long, yet when I start writing, the same thing always happens: I elaborate on the first days, and when I realize it, I decide to cut back on the rest of the journey, exactly as when I walk and the days of the visa slip away faster than the kilometers.

Kamuran had convinced me; I would go to Mesopotamia. Said and done? Not quite. From Van, I skirted the lake of the same name through persistent rains and stories of hungry wolves, exaggerated as always, until reaching the junction that would take me towards the plain. Remember the Pontus chain, the one that divides the Anatolian plateau from the coastal strip cultivated with tea? Well, on the opposite slope, where I was, there is a second mountain range, the Taurus Mountains, and to reach Mesopotamia, I would have to cross it. By now, I calculate distances in days; I'm used to it: from the Tatvan junction, to reach Diyarbakır, there are two hundred kilometers, five days. Provisions must last for five lunches and four dinners, the last meal in the city, on the day of arrival. Five breakfasts, five snacks, some extras naturally. Thanks to Ezio, I can always be generous.

As altitude decreased, the nightly condensation diminished accordingly, and the air began to warm up. Despite the now mild atmosphere, çay continued to be served at temperatures worthy of an infernal circle. The streets of the villages I passed through were dotted with çay evı, tea houses, tiny rooms populated by shirt-sleeved gentlemen who spent hours playing dominoes and cursing each other. A curious fact: çay evı serve only drinks, rarely a piece of bread, perhaps a simit, a whole wheat ring; this means bringing food from outside, buying a snack from the bakery next door.

MESOPOTAMIA

I arrived - how beautiful this word is: arrived. If I say I'm here, it seems like I've only been gone for a few hours, like I haven't earned the road, whereas Arrived speaks of a distant past, where time and effort were needed to get where one wanted to go. Arrived, therefore, I arrived in Diyarbakır after ten days of walking through the Anatolian plateau, Lake Van, Taurus Mountains, and Mesopotamian hills, a couple of lower-order provincial cities and a sparse group of inhabited centers, many tea houses, some workshops where I was invited for a snack, and even a couple of mosques where the imam offered to spend the night when I asked to pitch my tent.

I arrived in Diyarbakır, where Sheriff (that's his real name) was, whose jovial hospitality kept me for a few days. He had been on Erasmus a decade earlier in Bari, and from then remembered only one word, with which he used to call me, opening into a smile: "fra!" The first evening, on the fifth day when cooking is not necessary, we went to eat the local specialty, ciğer kebab, lamb liver cooked on the grill, a delicacy. The Turkish kebab is very different from what we have in mind. The flatbread served in Italy, meat sliced from a slightly burnt roll with gas, is almost rare to see. The traditional kebab is meat on a spit, a blade on which spiced minced meat is compacted or a series of chunks - chicken, liver, vegetables - are skewered. Recent inflation has doubled its price, bringing it around 6-10 euros, but habits die hard and lamb is truly flavorful; on the street, the smell of roasted meat is second only to that of freshly baked bread.

The Mesopotamian cities I passed through are incredibly rich in history. The Roman walls of Diyarbakır enclose a vibrant and colorful historic center, Ottoman caravanserais, mosques of Persian inspiration, and even a few Armenian churches that miraculously remain standing. Urfa, instead, preserves Roman catacombs that at night are illuminated by soft spotlights, creating a suggestive aura. Not far from the area where the dead rest, is the cave that protected the life of Abraham. In a story very similar to that of Christ, King Nimrod was prophesied the birth of a child who would challenge his power. He sought and killed anyone who matched the prophecy, but naturally failed to find Abraham. The child lived in the cave for thirteen years, came out, became a shepherd of flocks and men, became a prophet and father of the religions that bear his name - including Islam.

The history of Mesopotamia overflows and is not limited to inhabited centers. Archaeological sites abound, with new ones discovered every few years, and excavations continue in search of new answers and questions. The most famous is undoubtedly Gobekli Tepe, where the first examples of megalithic structures in history were found. It was always thought that agriculture brought humans to undertake a sedentary life; however, the monoliths of Gobekli Tepe seem to tell a different version, in which it appears that a spiritual tension led men to stabilize. The Tigris and Euphrates, witnesses to these adventures, made their appearance while I walked on gentle hills cultivated with olive trees, as if emerging by magic from elementary school books. They saw humanity's transition from nomadic to sedentary life; where was I, in relation to the unidirectional flow of their course?

TOWARDS HOME

Accompanied by scalding çay, I got to know the culinary capital of Türkiye, Gaziantep, and proposed a non-alcoholic toast (unusual for a Venetian) with some Italian guys I met in Adana. I had crossed the Taurus chain for the last time, almost touching the shores of the Mediterranean. Four years earlier, I had left it to board a catamaran and cross the Atlantic, heading to Latin America. I realized - I realize - that this expression comes back many times, four years. How many times have I written it? Many fewer than I've thought it. Approaching Istanbul, at the end of the journey through Türkiye, meant concluding the chapter called Asia and returning to Europe. Returning. I have felt at home on more than one occasion and perhaps I have learned to feel at home wherever I pitch my tent: she is my orange home without an address, small enough to slip anywhere and large enough to sit in. However, Europe remains my homeland, the place from where I departed and where most of my loved ones are: old friends, recent ones, family.

It took another good month to walk from Adana to Istanbul. I returned to the severe cold of the Anatolian plateau, returned to warming my belly with the scalding çay of service stations. It was incredibly difficult to manage to pay for them; seeing me arrive, someone would gesture for me to enter the office room where an enormous thermos kept the tea at near-boiling temperatures. In no time, I found myself with fogged-up glasses and a glass in my hands. A curiosity, in this regard, is that çay is so hot that you need two glasses to be able to hold it without burning yourself! Unfortunately, the concept of waste or parsimonious use, outside of Europe, has not yet taken root.

In early October 2023, I had taken my first steps from Calcutta, India, marking the beginning of the crossing of the Asian continent. Ten thousand kilometers and fourteen months later, I crossed the Bosphorus Channel, setting foot in Europe. I reached the Bulgarian border a week later, pushing an unusually loaded Ezio. My friend, in addition to provisions, clothes, and camping material, was carrying a box with a domino game and a tea set to take home as a memento of the three months spent in Türkiye. Just as mate is a space for conversation and meditation in Patagonia, a steaming çay is the coefficient of social aggregation in Islamic culture, taking the place of a cold beer in the Western world. I have wondered many times what has changed in my way of living; returning home, I will be able to notice it, by difference, observing the life of those who remained. However, no matter how small the detail, I believe that çay will continue to accompany me during the conversations in which I will tell about the Walk Around the World.

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