I have scattered memories of June 4th, 2012, and I have no photos, but I know that we spent it as penniless hitchhikers in Istanbul. Truly penniless, in the case of Kalin and Svetlana, who literally had the equivalent of 20 Euros between them when we crossed the border into Turkey. 

I was amazed at the spend-thriftiness of these two Bulgarians, and made an effort to match my spending with theirs while we were together, even though I had a french bank account with about 1000 Euros in it. 

However, after few meals and bus tickets in Turkey, Kalin and Svetlana were out of money, and they decided it was time to get back home. I thought that I might as well go with them, so sometime during the afternoon of June 4th we began trying to hitchhike out of Istanbul. This proved to be more of an ordeal than any of us could have imagined, and we found ourselves lost in a vortex of sorts. Istanbul is one of the largest cities in the world. Even though we only had to navigate one half of this city, this still meant an enormous amount of urban sprawl.
We'd found a good place to start hitchhiking, by a large french style Pèage, or We had no problem getting a ride. A kind middle aged man in an old van stopped almost immediately when we stuck out our thumbs, but we could only assume that we was going were we needed to go. Communication was an issue. The most we could reliably ask was "FAR?!", which would be understood, and agreed to emphatically. "Far, yes far!" he nodded, with a grin. 

We drove for something like 45 minutes, on a freeway. The driver spoke no English, Bulgarian, Russian, German or French, (The 5 languages Kalin, Svetlana, and I could communicate in) and spent most of the ride nodding and murmuring "Ameerriiicaaaa!" 

Although he seemed to be genuinely kind man, our driver was not actually leaving the urban expanse of Istanbul this particular. Not on this trip. After 45 minutes of travel on a complex web of freeways, we stopped at a totally nondescript point in the peri-urban jungle. 

We could have been anywhere in European Istanbul, I truly have no idea. 

This location, wherever it was, proved to be so disadvantageous to hitchhiking efforts, that Kalin, Svetlana and I actually got on a bus, that, in an hour, transported us back to where we'd begun hitchhiking earlier in the day, towards the city center. We'd been drawn back to the center. We'd effectively experienced a vortex.

I've scarcely ever been so confused in my life.