Diary, 24th of July, 2009 - From Bucharest to Svilengrad

Another day, another country. Today we drove from Bucharest to Svilengrad, on the Bulgarian/Turkish border. It is here that our easy EU border crossings end.

Our hotel last night in Bucharest has been something of a mixed experience. Sleeping on a real bed in an airconditioned room was so luxurious it felt completely sinful, but on the downside we only got about 5 hours sleep and the provided internet was so slow as to be completely unusable. On the upside, the woeful internet service provided us some bargaining ammunition and we got our parking for free.

Somewhere on the road coming into Romania yesterday, our power inverter failed. Since we've been relying on the inverter to keep our laptop and cameras charged, this is a bit of a problem, so before driving to Bulgaria we figured we'd better try get a replacement in Bucharest.

A man one or two hundred kilometres out of Bucharest had told us of a computer store chain that would "definitely" have power inverters. Armed with the name of the store, we'd looked up the address last night on the painfully slow internet. We figured we had it all sorted out - a quick drive across town, grab an inverter, and hit the road to make it to Svilengrad early in the evening...

The first sign of trouble came when we asked at the front desk of the hotel if the nearest store was where google maps had told us it was. It wasn't. Instead the nearest was 30-40minutes drive. Not too bad. Of course, the roads we wanted to take to get to this store were being ripped up for some major reconstruction - which combined with a river with only a few crossing points meant more like 90minutes, in our non-airconditioned Micra, in 35degree heat and diesel exhaust.

We finally make it to the address of our computer store, but it looked more like an industrial park. We rolled up to the gate and asked the security guard if we were at the right place. He said yes, and motioned that we drive down the back left corner and gave us a ticket. We drove in, parked up and walked into the store.

They didn't sell power inverters, but they did have a computer with internet that they let us use. After a bit of searching around on the net we found a place advertising power inverters in Bucharest, so we asked if we could use the phone and called up to see if they had any in stock, and if we could buy one today. The man on the other side of the phone spoke no english, so one of the people from the computer store kindly spoke with him for us.

We figure that we now had this power inverter business under control. Another half hour drive, pick it up, then off to Bulgaria. We found it to the street of our power inverter selling "business" fairly easily - but we couldn't for the life of us find the actual building. The whole street seemed to only be large run-down apartment buildings. The first 3 or 4 people we asked had no idea either, but luckily, one guy who was just about to leave went in to bat for us.

After finding the building that matched the address, but still no obvious sign of a business, he called up on the mobile. We were assured we were in the right place, so we parked the car and waited. A few minutes later, a sharply dressed young romanian man in highly reflective sunglasses parked beside us in a new Hyundai, walked over and asked if we were looking for Theodor. Figuring this was probably our power inverter seller, we said yes.

The man walked back to his car, removed a couple of DVD players from the boot, placed his handgun on top, and motioned for Peter to follow him into the apartment building to meet Theodor. After handing me his passport and wallet, Peter followed.

After an uncomfortably long wait in the carpark, Peter yelled out from the apartment window. Even though we had called ahead to check that the advertised inverter was in stock, apparently the only models available were the "high quality, professional models". Of course, these inverters were a little more expensive that the $20 model advertised. Unfortunately, we weren't in the strongest bargaining position, so after a quick trip to the ATM, a shiny new 600W inverter was ours, and it was time to get back on the highway and head for Bulgaria.

The last 60km through Romania were much like the rest, with suicidal drivers, slow and smelly trucks, and numerous young men kind enough to give their girlfriends a ride on their motorcycle sans helmet or any protective clothing. On exiting the country we were required to pay a small toll for road tax, and then we were on our way over the bridge to Bulgaria.

Just over the bridge we had our final visa-less border crossing, into Bulgaria at Ruse. After a few cursory checks on the car and the standard "are you carrying any drugs?" questioning, our passports were stamped and we began the long drive toward Turkey, and the Utopian Banking Society conspirators destination: Trabzon.

The contrast between Romania and Bulgaria was stark, with an obvious drop in wealth evident in the buildings and road quality, and with the Cyrillic road signage giving the place a very eastern bloc feel. Within a hundred kilometers or so, Bulgaria threw out it's first challenge - an unsigned detour around roadworks, to another road heading the wrong direction. Luckily, a combination of compass bearings and following some Romanian truck drivers who appeared to know where they were going put us back on track, but the Bulgarian highway system wasn't finished with us yet.

A couple of hours after sunset, and another Bulgarian roadworks detour challenge, this time a bumpy gravel track through a small town. As what we believed was the detour snaked, bumped and weaved its way through the residential streets of the village we became less and less convinced that we were ever going to make it out again, facing the right direction. Just as we were beginning to doubt the wisdom of following the gravel path any further, a solitary Audi bounced its way toward us. We waved them down and asked which way to Sliven. Through much gesturing they explained that after the next left we would see some round signs that will show us the way out.

Not long after returning to the highway, we attempted to get some dinner at a service station that appeared to have a cafe attached, but which on closer inspection seemed to be more of a smoking room, with some junkfood for sale. We decided then that we may as well just push all of the way through to Svilengrad, the bordertown with Turkey.

An hour or so further down the road we came across a line of trucks, stopped, with the drivers out of their cabs talking, smoking and in some cases drinking vodka. We wandered up to see if we could find out what the problem was with a bit of charades and a bit of Russian that was hopefully close enough to Bulgarian for understanding. Unfortunately, all we managed to understand was that we had to wait.

In the end, it turned out that we were waiting for a very long, one way section of roadworks. Eventually the last vehicle travelling through the other direction exited, and we were able to get moving again. Our headlights weren't really up to the job for reading the contours of the heavily potholed dirt detour, so we stayed close to a red stationwagon to read the bumps by watching how high their car bounced.

This generally worked very well, but somehow at a critical point we must have lost sight of the stationwagon momentarily (probably because the Subprime Micra's 50bhp made it hard to keep up) and we hit an enormous step up from the dirt road to the new paved surface. We both looked at each other in horror, but luckily the damage was limited to a large egg on either front tyre, and we drove on into the night and early morning.

Some time around 1 or 2am we made it to Svilengrad, and found a small service station near the road with a restaurant attached and the lights still on. With some charades and pictionary we ended up getting some chicken soup, sandwiches and coke.

With our bellies not quite full but at least not growling, we went back into town to try to find a cheap hotel. Everything either looked far too expensive or was closed, so after an hour or so of blind, sleep deprived driving through town we decided to see if there was anything right next to the border. There wasn't. So we fell back to Plan B - find a spot in a farmer's field not completely exposed to traffic. Once again, we fell asleep to the sound of trucks and dogs.