In the town of Donaueschingen in Germany (it took Tom about an hour of cycling before he managed to wrap his tongue round such a difficult name for a town) Tom arrived on the banks of the mighty Danube River. The Danube, so blue, so bright and blue, is the second longest river in Europe (the longest river is the Volga in Russia). The Danube begins in the Black Forest of Germany (the forest famous for its cakes) and runs all the way to the Black Sea. It flows for 1700 miles. Tom was going to ride all the way.
Tom sat down beside the Danube, munching his fourth banana sandwich of the day, and stared at the water sliding by. He felt hypnotised by the wide river. It had been flowing day and night, year after year for thousands and thousands of years. How amazing!
Tom rode alongside the River Danube for weeks. He pedalled downstream through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania and into Bulgaria where the Danube ran out into the Black Sea.
A few days after leaving Bulgaria Tom reached Istanbul. Istanbul is the biggest city in Turkey. It was also the most beautiful city he had been to so far. It has been an important city for thousands of years, and some of its most impressive buildings are very, very old. Tom wrote a postcard to his family back home.
After looking round Istanbul, taking lots of photos, and treating himself to some delicious pide (Turkish pizza), Tom rode down to the shore of the Bosporus. The Bosporus is a narrow strait of water about 700 metres wide. Old men were sitting quietly on little stools holding fishing rods. They didn’t seem to be catching many fish. But they didn’t seem to mind either. They were happy chatting to their friends and feeling the warm sunshine on their faces.
The Bosporus marks the edge of Europe. Looking at the big ships sailing by, Tom was delighted to have made it right across Europe. His first continent was behind him. On the other side of the water lay a brand new continent. Even though Tom knew that Europe was the smallest and the easiest continent he would cross on his journey, he still felt proud. He was happy to have made it this far, but he was eager to keep going. New continents waited for him: new friends, new challenges, new adventures. Brilliant! Tom wheeled his bike onto the little ferry for the short ride across the water.
“Goodbye Europe! Hello rest of the world!” shouted Tom into the breeze out on the deck of the ferry. A seagull whirled away in surprise at his loud voice, even though Turkish seagulls probably cannot understand English.
Riding through Turkey, Tom visited the region of Cappadocia. Two thousand years ago people had begun living in underground cities there. Homes, churches, store rooms: everything had been carved underground out of the rock. People had stored their harvests in caves, and kept their sheep and goats in them at night. Even today some people live in homes carved into the side of cliffs. As well as the interesting houses, Cappadocia also has weird, beautiful rock formations, known as fairy chimneys, that rise up out of the ground.
