Hopa #1: New City New Hopa (10/01/2026)

It was at 8 am this morning. Today was still in the middle of the winter season, and a dark, black vibe came from outside. Drizzling and cold.

I was thinking about the last journey yesterday, and sensed a pickle of hurt again.

Don't think too much, man. The past was the past. Just see everything in front of you now. I said it to myself. Loudly.

Yeah, it must be a miracle, looking at what I faced at the border, and what I have now in the hotel. And there is nothing I could do than be grateful, and be amazed by what the world offered me.

I moved. First stop was checking my phone. It was plugged into a charger all night, hoping it would have any effect.

But it did not.

I sighed, thinking the days ahead would be more painful. It feels sad and annoying when you know that you are so dependent on a small object for your whole life.

But you could not deny it.

It was what I had. So, be it. You needed to do everything without your device. And it was a must.

I sighed again.

Today, I would make several moves. First, I looked for a ticket to Ankara before continuing to Konya by train. In that city, I would have a better chance to fix my phone, with help from Indonesian students I had contacted before. Second, finding a place to get a wifi connection since this fancy hotel was so sucky on their Wi-Fi.

Learning from this hotel, sometimes a very luxurious place, like this hotel, lacks some vital parts, and with all the fancy things around you, you would see why this place had no visitors at all.

The street was still half-asleep when I stepped out of the hotel. Hopa in the morning looked like a town that had just woken up from a bad dream. Shops were closed. The air smelled like wet asphalt and salt. My breath came out like smoke.

I followed Hamid’s instructions: walk left for fifteen minutes, and you will find the bus station.

Fifteen minutes sounded short. But when your phone is dead, your mind is heavy, and the world is unfamiliar, fifteen minutes feels like a small pilgrimage.

I walked past old apartment blocks with balconies full of hanging laundry, now dripping from last night’s rain. Cats sat under cars like tiny homeless philosophers. Every few meters, I stopped, not because I was tired, but because I kept wondering if I had taken the wrong turn.

Without Google Maps, every corner becomes suspicious. And yet, somehow, I kept moving.

"Otogar. Bus. Terminal." Those three magic words sprout from my mouth to anyone I meet in the street. It would be followed by them pointing left side of the road while saying something, perhaps a distance, in Turkish.

At the end of one street, the town suddenly opened up, and there it was.

The Black Sea.

Not blue. Not romantic. Just dark, vast, and endless. Waves crashed against the concrete shore like they were angry at the world. The wind carried a salty, bitter smell that went straight into my lungs. I leaned on the cold railing and just stared.

Yesterday, I was standing in front of a border gate being treated like a virus.

Today I was standing in front of an ocean.

Dude, you are really fucked up, yeah.

I laughed. I guess no one would have this story in their life. The wave of life surely gave me a storm last night, and as usual, I just followed the flow.

I walked again.

Hopa itself looked like a town squeezed between two giants: the Black Sea on one side and massive green mountains on the other. The mountains weren’t gentle; they were sharp, heavy, and scarred. You could see mining cuts on their sides, brown wounds in the green skin of nature. Trucks moved slowly up the hills, carrying pieces of the mountain away, one load at a time. The white color with dark grey stayed at the top as their hat, looking down at everything that happened below them.

It felt symbolic.

People here didn’t live between the sea and the mountain. They survived between them.

Eventually, I found a small restaurant near the road. A simple place, plastic chairs, a glass window fogged by warm air inside. But the magic word was written on the door:

Wi-Fi.

"Wi-Fi connection, var mi?" I asked the staff. Just to make sure.

"Evet, evet." He stood up and gave me a barcode.

I gave a sign, like writing, and he looked confused for a second. And then he nods, starts writing the password on paper. He is brilliant!

"Tesekkur ederim!" I waved his paper, looking at some corner where I could do my work.

I ordered a plate of doner and tea. I glanced at my useless phone, hoping it would suddenly feel inspired to live again.

It didn’t.

So I did everything from my laptop, like a refugee from the digital apocalypse.

First, I wrote to my sister. I told them I was safe, but my phone was not. I didn’t tell her about being rejected at the border. Mothers don’t need that kind of story at 8 a.m.

Then I wrote to Tarma.

“Hey, my phone is dead. Like, dead-dead. Please tell my friend in Konya that I might arrive without WhatsApp, without maps, and almost dead.”

I imagined him laughing.

Not enough for that, I called him. He laughed. Wtf.

With Ifan, we three tried to figure out how this guy could survive from this silly condition.

Then I booked a hostel in Konya. Just in case. When your life becomes unstable, you start booking backup lives everywhere.

And then… the emails.

From Sensei and my supervisor from IHE Delft.

I wrote them carefully, politely, professionally, while sitting in a half-empty café in a forgotten corner of Türkiye, with wet shoes and a broken phone.

Academic life is funny like that. You can be emotionally destroyed and still need to write:

“Dear Professor…”

When I finished, I leaned back and looked at my reflection on the dark café window. A guy with messy hair. Red eyes. A half-broken smile. But still standing.

Outside, the Black Sea kept roaring, and inside, my tea had gone cold.

And somehow, against all logic, I felt something new growing inside me.

Not anger. Not fear. A strange, stubborn hope.

24-hour trip without a phone

The next step of my survival story began with a seventeen-hour bus ride from Hopa to Ankara, before jumping into several hours on the train from Ankara to Konya.

I packed all my dirty clothes, my shoes, and a bottle of hot water in my Luffy's Gear 5. After giving a smile to the kind-fine cleaning lady in front of my room, I put my step ahead.

My bus would leave at 3 pm from the otogar, and then another seventeen-hours sitting there.

Seventeen-hours.

That number alone already felt like a punishment from the universe. But after everything that happened at the border, sitting in a bus that was at least "going somewhere" already felt like a present from God.

I chose Ali Osman Ulusoy. Nothing particular, the office looked just cleaner and better than the other one. The bus itself was warm, dimly lit, and smelled like a mix of coffee. People wrapped themselves in their jackets and blankets like shawarma. Some slept, some stared at their phones, some stared at nothing. Yeah, that was me.

I sat by the window. At one point, a girl sat behind me. She looked smart, and I needed something.

"Hey, is there any Wi-Fi in this bus?" I asked. She was not sure.

In five minutes, me, the girl and the driver struggled to connect my laptop to the Wi-Fi available on the bus.

Once it worked, I smiled happily. The driver was not, since now I could see several passengers asking him how to configure their devices for the connection.

“Batumi… but I have a family in Türkiye,” she said.

We talked with broken English, broken Turkish, and a lot of smiling. Simple things. Where are you going? Ankara. Why? Life. She laughed. I laughed. Sometimes that’s all two tired humans need.

Outside my window, the Black Sea followed me like a loyal but gloomy companion. On my right side, waves kept crashing against cliffs and beaches, gray under the cloudy sky. Sometimes the sea disappeared behind hills, then suddenly came back, like it was checking if I was still there.

The bus stopped several times. Gas stations. Small terminals. On the side of the road.

One stop hit me differently. Trabzon.

Twenty-four hours ago, I was here with laughter and dreams of Georgia. Now I stood in the same station, holding my hand like a stranger in my own memory. I laughed sadly.

The bus kept going.

I spent the whole night just sleeping, looking out the window, and checking my laptop. At some point, our bus was stopped by the police, and there was a residence card check. The girl behind me told me to prepare my passport.

Although it was a fast process and they did nothing, my trauma in Batumi still looked like it existed.

At 7:45 in the morning, Ankara finally appeared.

I stepped out of the bus, stretched my back, and looked at the chaotic capital of Türkiye.

Another city. Another chance.

And for the first time since Georgia kicked me out, I felt like maybe… just maybe… I was back in the game.

Let's go!