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How to escape the gipsies and the marriages in Bulgaria
After a last night in Dimitriovgrad in Serbia, I’m passing by, on about five kilometers, standing trucks and get to the Bulgarian border. In Bulgaria, I immediately feel the poverty. Not that the people are less nice, on the contrary they are perhaps even nicer, but then I feel that I have to be sometimes very discrete and that I should avoid to attract attention to myself and that I have to drive as fast as possible to reach Turkey. In the countryside the people live by selling their cabbages for 35 centimes a piece (about 20-25 Euro Cents). It is also frequent to meet gipsies now. There are travelling from part to part of the country with their carts filled with various objects which they found somewhere or sometimes simply stole. There are many in Montenegro and in Serbia but here, I really see a lot of them. I have nothing against these people but I don’t have any real contact. Everybody knows that they steal, everybody knows that the majority of the gipsies cannot read or write but everybody loves them because they come to wedding to play music! Here they are everywhere and I have to be really careful when I'm camping (if I don't want to travel without a bike). One day a man wanted stop me on the road to Sofia and I had a feeling that I shouldn’t stop. Since I got my 'accident' or 'revelation' I really listen to my heart.
I’m spending two nights in Sofia and enjoying the beautiful city, the people in the streets playing music or chess and... the night life. In Ex-Yugoslavia there is no place to go out at night and people meet each other in their houses. In Plovdic, the second largest city of Bulgaria, I’m waking up one day at 2 p.m. after a vodka session. I decide to stay another night (a quiet one this time, to wake up earlier). |
On the road again with this wind (everyday I think it's getting stronger and stronger) a light rain and now a big fog (that's new). I cannot see after 50 meters and now in my head I’m starting to have an obsession: reach Turkey!!!
In Bulgaria, the people are really nice, especially when I speak in German with them. I realize how they love Germany (during the Second World War they fought together with the Germans. Once an old man stopped me, showed me his Nazi cross and kissed it in front of me. I had to concentrate to not show that I was shocked. But in the small villages sometimes nobody can speak German and with the hand language I always got what I need.
Like in the Balkans, in Bulgaria I don't know how I escaped a wedding. How many times the mother or grand mother showed me the daughter, the girl of the neighbour, the cousin or sometimes I don't even know from where they appeared.... But I stay strong and decide to continue my journey with my bicycle, my favourite fiancée.
From the Bulgaria-Turkey border, I will keep a strong souvenir. There are 3 different check points. The first one, he just wants to see the colour of the passport, easy. The second one, the woman is asking me why I stayed 6 days in Bulgaria! I’m showing her my bicycle and I think 450 kilometers in 6 days it's quite a lot. Then she wants me to open all the bags. After she put her hand in the first one (there's my dirty sleeping bag, even for me it's getting too dirty to sleep inside), she removes her hand quickly and is looking at me with disgust. She’s saying I can go away and I’m thinking now that I'm getting to Turkey at last. But no, there is a third control. They’re asking me for my ticket (... deep breathing... of course I never got any ticket) and are looking at my passport in the x-rays a long time. I don't know for which reason but after that I learned that it is normal there to have 'problems'. When I’m getting to the Turkish border, the custom officer is taking my passport and is stamping in it. I’m asking how long I can stay here without a visa and, looking at me with a big smile, he is saying: 3 months Sir!! What for a change!! Immediately I notice that people are more open here than in Bulgaria. Probably due of the communist times when they lived without any freedom or joy.
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