7-29-13. Bergama, Turkey
Never rent a bicycle in Bergama. You may gain an intimate appreciation of the local varieties of attack dog; but you stand to lose fifty lire and all feeling in your tailbone.
It all started innocuously enough. Last night, I stopped for dinner in a small restaurant near my hotel, whose owner happened to speak a little English. While waiting for my meal, I asked him whether he knew of any place from which I might rent a bicycle for a few hours. “You mean a motorbike?” he asked, pointing to a line of parked mopeds. “No, no-” I replied, “a biceclet, a bicycle.” He looked rather bewildered, and said that no such thing could be procured in Bergama. Then, having reflected for a moment, he bellowed for his cook. The man appeared, red-faced, and a rather heated discussion ensued, in which the word “bicycle” was bandied about incredulously. Finally, the owner turned back to me: “this man, he has a bicycle; come back tomorrow morning, and we will have it.”
These terms were not inspiring, and my expectations were low. The cook was immensely overweight; any bicycle of his seemed unlikely to be in good condition. I reflected further that I had yet to see any adult riding a bike in Turkey. Once a boy here hits thirteen or so, he starts zipping around on the family moped. But maybe – I though hopefully – all this just means that the cook’s bicycle will be like new; perhaps he has a world-class cyclist for a brother….
When I arrived at the café this morning, the owner was nowhere to be found, but the cook was waiting outside. He led me down a neighboring alley, where a toothless woman who could only have been his mother grinned proudly beside the saddest bicycle I have ever seen.
It was designed for a boy of about ten three or four decades ago, back (presumably) when the cook himself was willing and able to ride. Both tires were completely flat. The handbrake cables dangled idly from wrenched sockets. One pedal was missing. The seat was broken at its hinge, the chain a tangle of rust. “You ride?” said the cook. I pointed out that this would be difficult in the bike’s present condition. The cook eventually acknowledged this, and we went together to the nearest mechanic.
The boy in the garage, surprised to see two men and the vengeful spirit of a bicycle in an auto repair shop, agreed to fit new tubes and lubricate the chain for fifteen lire. The cook beamed, shook my hand, and left me at the shop. It took the inexpert labor of two mechanics about twenty minutes to get the bike into something like rideable condition. Finally, the shop boy motioned me over and indicated that, so long as I stayed in the lowest gear and judiciously applied the single half-working brake, the bike would be able to both move forward and stop, more or less.
Testing my bike on a cobbled street, I immediately discovered a few further deficiencies. It could indeed move forward, but only at a crawl. Any attempt to go uphill caused the chain to skip wildly and eventually slip off the gears, while any downward slope had to be managed with a single stripped brake. On my first attempt at gliding down a hill, it took me (pressing the brake and dragging both feet) about thirty feet to stop; and when I finally came to a halt, the broken seat immediately flipped up to impale me in the crotch.
The bike’s one useful feature was its ability to warn those in its path that something wicked was coming. Bumping over the cobblestones, every metal fitting rattling, loose brake cables whistling in the wind, chain banging like a gunshot every time it slipped, I tore through Bergama and the hills beyond, suppressing a yelp every minute or so when jabbed by that wretched seat.
My first destination was the single standing arch that marks the site of Pergamum’s Roman theater. Though this was impressive enough, the huts built over the old seats and the garbage burning among the ruins of the stage were not.
So I moved on to a more ambitious goal: the Roman aqueduct. I had seen it from the citadel the day before, winding through olive groves toward a hazy range of hills.
The aqueduct, I reasoned, would be relatively easy to follow on bike. It seemed to be relatively close to the highway, and no obvious obstacles could reasonably be expected to stand between me and the surviving piers. I was wrong on both counts. The side roads were gravel; and, as might have been anticipated, my bike handled gravel even worse than cobblestone. I could glide downhill on these surfaces, but any incline (and it was all incline) required me to walk. In addition, I soon discovered that the concrete sluiceway of the local reservoir stood between me and the tantalizing line of arches, forcing me to go farther and farther north.
Finally, just as I reached a bridge over the sluiceway, with the aqueduct no more than a hundred yards away, I heard the dogs. I could not see them at first, but could tell from their barking that there at least three of them, that they were large, and that they were pissed. After a few moments, they came into sight at the far end of the road, loping toward me with unsettling speed. I did not hesitate. Back up the dusty road I went, bike screeching in protest.
I rode a few other places, pausing only when something important fell off my bike. My last stop was the bus station, where I ensured that an early morning bus to Izmir was available. Then I walked the bike back to the café. The owner was back, grinning, and the chef bounded out at my approach. They had a brief discussion, of which I understood this much: Owner: “how much do you want to charge?” Cook: “15 Lire.” Owner, turning without a beat to me: “that will be 30 lire.”
I paid the price of folly, and waddled back to my hostel.