None of us really enjoy travel days. Most of them are just the usual
pack everything up, get to the airport, wait, fly to wherever we are going,
find the place that we are staying, and start getting settled in. There is a
lot of stress involved in relying on others and ourselves to navigate a,
sometimes complicated, world transportation system. Today’s travel day was far
from usual.
Following our rather expensive few months in Europe, we were
looking to go somewhere and make up the difference in our budget. The plan was
to head to Southeast Asia after a short visit to Japan. Flights to Japan ran
nearly a thousand dollars out of Istanbul and flew through Ukraine, which has a
bad reputation. However, a short $20 train ride away in Sofia, Bulgaria and the
prices dropped to $400 each. Winner! According to the Internet, the train ride
would be an easy overnight train with sleeper cars. We would board in Istanbul,
fall asleep, and wake up in Sofia. The internet isn’t always right.
As the time of leaving Istanbul came closer, I did further
research into our train travels and learned about the Marmaray project.
Apparently, Turkish trains run on a narrower gauge rail system than the rest of
Europe. In an effort to be more European (partially in their bid to join the
EU) and to connect the train systems more smoothly, Turkey is rebuilding their
train lines from the Bulgarian border, through Istanbul, and ending in
Ankara. With train lines out of
commission, they had to have a workaround.
Our airbnb host happily allowed us a late checkout so we
spent our day relaxing, packing, and cleaning the apartment before heading out
around 6 PM. We took the city bus to Eminönü and walked over to Cirkeci train
station. We bought corn on the cob from a street vender and sat in a park and
enjoyed our last look at the Golden Horn and Sea of Marmara. I even enjoyed a
last cup of Turkish tea served by a man who came around with a tray of glasses
and hot tea. Then we walked around the old city looking for dinner and a way to
spend our last 60 Turkish Lira. We found a great place serving Tavuk Döner
Yarim (chicken sandwiches) for dinner and bought a few things to eat on the
train for breakfast. Then we headed back to the train station to wait.
While we waited, we met some of our fellow travelers and
compared expectations. We also overcame our American values and paid a lira
each to use the bathroom. The woman’s room had both a squat toilet and a
western toilet and was clean and had toilet paper. The kids entertained themselves
trying to pet the many cats that are consistently around everywhere in
Istanbul. Around 9:30, a bus pulled up outside the waiting lounge that would
serve as the first part of our trip.
The bus was perfectly nice. It left right on time at 10 PM
and headed for the border. We left through a part of Istanbul that we hadn’t
seen before so we all enjoyed seeing new things including a 5M Migros grocery
store (The Migros chain labels its stores with the number of M’s based on the
size of the grocery store. An average store might be a MMMigros while a corner
market is only a Migros, so a MMMMMigros must be huge!!). We also solved our
question of why there are wires strung between minarets at many mosques. Seeing
them on the last night before Ramadan, one ran lighted words welcoming people
to the mosque on Ramadan.
After the city lights died away, we all settled in to try to
sleep. My bruised knees from a minor bus accident that Carver and I had been
involved in a couple days earlier made the cramped space particularly hard to
sleep in but I dozed a bit. At an hour into the trip, the bus pulled into a
service station for a bathroom/snack break. We had 20 minutes to stretch our
legs and buy drinks with our remaining lira and there was even a small
playground to play on. After reboarding the bus, the lights were turned out and
we headed on our way.
Around 1:15 AM, we started seeing signs of the Bulgarian border.
The miles leading up to it were lined with semi-trucks parked and waiting on
the side of the highway. Must have been hundreds of them. Our bus took us to
the train station and unloaded us into a waiting room with rows of seats where
it left us with no information. The eurail app that some of the other travelers
used said that the train would be arriving at 2 AM and leaving the station at 4
AM. Around 1:45, a train pulled in and unloaded passengers who went through
passport control. When they were done, we were led into that same room to get
stamped out of Turkey. Then we had our luggage xrayed and were left outside and
told to wait. Fifteen minutes later, the same official told us to hurry up and
led us to the train where we got to take seats and wait some more. As we were
the start of the line, we had our pick of seats. They were basic but reasonably
comfortable.
At 4 AM, the train finally pulled out of the station and
began our trip across Bulgaria. The conductor came through and collected all of
our passports and checked our tickets. Turning over passports was uncomfortable
but it seemed to be the thing to do. At this point, the kids and I went to
sleep while Erich stayed up worrying about our passports. I only know for sure
that I fell asleep because around 5:30, the conductor woke me up flashing money
at me and repeating some question in Bulgarian. I’m not fast to wake up and so
it took me about 5 minutes of groggy back and forth to figure out that he
wasn’t asking me to pay something, he was asking me for change for 10 euros.
Not a pleasant thing to wake up to and so I cut him off and went back to sleep.
Around 7 AM, the sun rose and so did I. The flipside to so
little sleep is being awake to see the beautiful countryside as it passed my
window and the sunrise. Arriving into Sofia Central Station around 10:45, we
found our subway station and made our way to the Royal Thai Consulate. Since an
upcoming destination will be a 50 day stay in Thailand, we need more than the
standard 30 day visa that you get on arrival. The plan was to visit the Thai
Consulate in Bulgaria to get 60 day Visas. Carver had studied the maps well and
got us to the Thai Consulate with little trouble. However, once there, we were
told that we couldn’t get a visa there unless we were Bulgarian residents. This
is not what the Thai govt says, but there was no point in arguing. We hit the
road again, picked up some amazing pizza for lunch, and made our way to the bus
station where we would catch a bus to Bistritsa.
Getting subway tickets had been easy; getting bus tickets
was a challenge. Everything was printed in Cyrillic so we couldn’t read
anything, and nobody spoke English. We got lucky though, found bus tickets, and
waited a short while for our bus.
The bus that arrived was probably the dirtiest, most poorly
kept bus we have ridden, which is saying a lot given some of the countries we
have ridden in. However it got us from point A to point B. We afterwards
learned that the Bulgarian Government chose to implement austerity measures
following the fall of the Soviet Union in order to fix their economy. Though
part of the EU now, they have chosen to retain their own currency and have one
of the lowest costs of living. The people we met seem happy though and we were
pleased with how safe things seemed. And Bulgaria has the second lowest debt to
GDP ratio in the EU so if dirty buses are the worst of it, I can live with
that.
45 minutes later, we arrived at the bus stop near our house.
The mountains surrounding us were amazing and made us look forward to many
happy hikes. A walk down a long dirty road led us to the house that we were renting
for the week. Our host’s friend arrived a short while later to let us in and
show us around. He didn’t speak English but had German as his second language
so I got a bit more practice with my German and we managed to communicate. He
then left us to our own devices and we picked bedrooms and settled in for the
evening and for an early bedtime. We managed to put together a dinner with what
little was in our packs and crashed for the night, glad to be in a new home and
settled for a while at least.
