We All Live Under One Roof

Towards the end of last year I read Horatio Clare’s book We Came By Sea about the ‘small boats crisis’ but from angles not usually portrayed in newspapers and broadcast media, i.e., humanity and generosity. Throughout I kept thinking of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot and more pertinently something a Kurdish kebab shop owner in Austria said to us during the Transcontinental in 2017, “We all live under one roof”. I’ve reposted the original blog post telling the whole story below.

Today I made a letterpress print of this phrase which I’m selling to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. If you’re interested in buying one all the details are over on my Instagram.

Dilman

We lean our bikes against the window of the kebab shop and plonk ourselves at a small table near the door. A young couple sat at the counter chatting and smoking glance over but ignore us. A quartet of older women and a man sat at a table in the corner look over with inquisitiveness mixed with either disdain or pity. I’m too tired to tell. I can’t remember the last time we slept in a bed or had a decent wash. Last night we slept on some benches next to a cycle path in Italy. We’d missed a proper meal due to some faff trying to find a way around a race banned road and a washed away bridge. Eventually last night’s dinner consisted of peanuts and M&M’s and a can of Fanta. Since then we’ve ridden through a chunk of Austria towards Slovakia, some 250 kilometres including a 1600 metre mountain pass. We’ve been riding in unbelievable heat. We must look and smell dreadful.

It’s about 8pm and it’s starting to get dark. We’re in a town called Zeltweg. The plan is to eat and rest for a short while before continuing as far as possible by midnight and then bivvy for a few hours. We order some drinks and scan the menu for whatever takes our fancy – chicken wings with rice and a kebab for Jo, potato salad and chicken wings and rice for me. The owner of the shop looks at us in some bemusement. He says that the wings and rice is a big meal without the other wstuff we’re ordering. We say this is OK.

When the food is ready the owner gestures us towards a table in the opposite corner, “It’s larger, more room for all the food.” We shift to the banquette seating around the corner table and settle into our food in determined silence. Damn, I’m hungry. Did we stop for lunch today? I remember pastries and fruit and yoghurt in the car park of a Lidl just after we crossed the border from Italy. And there were ice creams near the bottom of the mountain pass when we both felt a bit bonky. Was that it?  Ah hang on there was that disappointing sandwich thing next to the lake near Villach. I continue to shovel food into my face. The ladies at the table next to us glance over now and again with what is almost certainly a mix of pity and disgust. They can probably smell us from this distance. Some others enter the shop, sit at the counter and order beers. They chat and occasionally look over at the two filthy cyclists shoving food into their faces.

A middle-aged guy strolls over and asks us where we’ve been. We start to explain about the race, that we’ve ridden from Belgium via Italy since last Friday night, that we’re heading for Slovakia. He looks at us askance, Italy? Slovakia? He relays this information to the others at the bar. There is chatter amongst the locals but little interest other than from the owner. He asks how far we are riding each day, we say around 250km. There is a look of shock and then laughter. He says he couldn’t ride a bike one kilometre. They look at us as if we’re idiots. They could very well be right. We start to think about leaving and riding on.

There’s a flash of lightning outside and a crack of thunder, it starts to hammer down with rain. Maybe we won’t leave just yet. The owner says wait, we can stay as long as we need. The interested local wanders back and forth asking about the race. I say we’re aiming for Bratislava by tomorrow and then on to the High Tatras mountains. The women on the next table leave. I open the race tracker on my phone and show the owner the route of the race, zoom in on our dots at his shop, “This is us”. We see that Jonah (#tcrno5cap81) is out in the storm on the road we came along earlier. Bloody hell I wouldn’t want to be out there. It wasn’t a particularly busy road but cars and lorries tanked along it. I think back but don’t recall seeing any obvious cover until you got to the first of the villages a little way south of where we are now. We see his dot move when I hit refresh. I hope he finds shelter soon, maybe the kebab shop we passed a few kilometres before finding the one we’re in now. His dot seems to have stopped in the previous village. I hope that the kebab shop there is still open for him.

The local is starting to weird us out. We unsuccessfully try to avoid his interest. He tells us the rain won’t stop, we won’t be able to ride again tonight. He says he has a flat he is renovating around the corner, there’s water but no toilet, we’re welcome to use it, he can get the key for us. I notice the owner looking over our way, away from his conversation with those at the bar. He says “Don’t worry, you can stay here for as long as you like” and brings us two bottles of water. I lie back on the bench seat…

The next thing I know is I am being covered with a blanket and Jo is laughing. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep but I sit up and see everyone smirking. Apparently I’ve been snoring for a little while. The rain seems to have eased but not stopped. Jo says the road is still flooded. We discuss what to do. The only sensible option seems to sit it out for a bit longer and hope it stops soon. I have no idea what time it is but it’s getting late. The locals start to drift out of the door. We start chatting to the owner some more, we tell him which countries we have ridden through and where we plan to ride, crossing Europe through ten countries. He tells us he is a Kurd from Lebanon, that he lived in Leicester and worked as a plasterer for a couple of years before moving to Austria. He gestures towards the sky and says, “We all live under one roof,” before repeating we can stay in the shop for as long as we need. We thank him but say we need to leave soon, it is against the rules of the race to accept outside assistance. The last of the locals leave. It’s nearly midnight, the shop should be closing. The rain has eased. We ready ourselves to leave. He hands us further bottles of water so we can fill our bidons. He repeats we don’t need to leave, he can leave us in the shop, we can help ourselves to drinks from the fridge. We can call him when we are ready to leave and he will come back to let us out. I don’t really care if it’s against the rules, I would happily stay but I know that if we did we want to be back on the road by 3am. Slovakia is still a way away. It wouldn’t be fair to call him at that time of the morning, particularly when he’s already stayed open longer than normal because of us. We thank him for his kindness and generosity and finally make our introductions. He says to call him Dilman handing me a menu pointing at his name and phone number, telling us to call him if we need to. I tuck the menu in my pocket and we thank him again.

We ride away from the shop in the damp but at least it has stopped raining. We look for somewhere to bivvy on the road out of town. We scope out a church and the trolley park outside the front of a supermarket opposite. Further on we pass a pizzeria with a covered veranda out front with tables and benches. There’s a wall around it so us and the bikes will be hidden. Perfect. We lean our bikes against a table and start to unclip our bivvy kit. The door to the restaurant opens and a young guy stands there in his pants looking at us wondering what the hell we’re doing. Ah crap.

“Er, we were just going to rest here for a while, is it OK to sleep here for two hours?” I ask, hopefully.
He says, quite resolutely “No.”
Ah crap, again.
“You can’t sleep here…” and tapping his chest with his hand, “it is wrong in the heart, you sleep inside.”

We’ve already declined one offer of unbelievable generosity this evening, it seems churlish to turn down another. Having woken up this poor guy thinking he was being burgled it would be ridiculous to say no thanks and ride off. We say outside is OK as we’ll be leaving again in a couple of hours. We’re too tired to try and explain the race and the rules. I doubt very much he cares, he’s probably just glad he’s opened the door to two idiot cyclists and not someone about to turn his restaurant over. He repeats “No, inside” and shows us the push bar lock on the door. We can shut the door behind us when we leave and it will lock itself. We push our bikes inside and apologise for waking him. He shows us where the toilet is and produces a mattress which he lays in on the floor. He points to some cushions piled up on a chair and says we can make another bed from those. He points to the fridge and the tap and says we can help ourselves to drinks. We thank him and apologise again as he disappears back to bed.

We make ourselves comfortable and I set an alarm for 3.30am.