St George, Kapitan Andreevo

http://flic.kr/p/qRYb2T

A Day of Surprises

I'm in Turkey!

Last evening, between my five hour "afternoon nap" and the eight hours of sleep I got at night, I went over the possibilities for today's walk using my GPS app and searching for hotels, motels, hostels - anywhere I could spend the night within 40 kms of Lyubimets. 

After breakfast, I asked the motel owner if there was a hotel in Kapitan Andreevo, which is the last town in Bulgaria before the Turkish border. ‎ "Yes, there is, and my husband is driving there today. Would you like a ride?" (This in German.) I thanked her, but said I preferred to walk. It's only 28 kms, and after all the sleep I got yesterday, I was feeling good.

When I got to the outskirts of Svilengrad, the last major town before the border, I stopped for a coffee and asked the folks at the gas station the same question. My GPS app wasn't showing anything in Kapitan Andreevo, and my online search had turned up nothing. There was a brief consultation, and again I was told there was a hotel at my destination. (I'm sure you see where I'm going with this.)

I passed one hotel about 5 kms from Kapitan Andreevo, but it looked like it has been closed for a few years. At the first gas station in town, I bought a coffee and inquired about a hotel. Turkey or Svilengrad was the response.‎ The latter was 12 kms back the way I'd come, and the first hotel that I knew about in Turkey was about the same distance again. And the sun was rapidly approaching the horizon. I used the free WiFi to do another search, and then approached the men and asked about the hotel I'd passed earlier. As I suspected, that is closed, but after explaining where I'm from and what I'm doing, I got a more helpful answer. The nearest hotel in Turkey is 2 kms away, just across the border. (It was actually 4 kms, but never mind.)

I'd been planning to spend my last night in Bulgaria with my phone's translation app, building up my Turkish vocabulary, but that was clearly not going to happen before I crossed the border. I started to gather my things, and as if to prove me wrong in my somewhat unflattering description of Bulgarian hospitality in my last post, they gave me a bottle of water. This came a few hours after they wouldn't let me pay for my coffee in Svilengrad, and a day after a little old lady selling fruit gave me an orange. And how could I forget the wonderful people of Novi Han!‎ Clearly, not all Bulgarians are indifferent to strangers. (The exceptional staffers I met at the hostels and hotels are "professionals" in the hospitality industry, so they are not rrepresentative of the population as a whole.)

As I walked towards the border, it was with some apprehension. About an hour before I reached Kapitan Andreevo, a Border Police patrol had stopped me at the side of the road and asked to see my passport. They kept me standing there for at least half an hour as they flipped through the pages, recorded the details and made several phone calls. One of the officers had told me, "Tu‎rtsiya, ne" and I could see the line of trucks waiting at the border was at least 6 kms long. Had there been an incident? Was the border closed? When they read my passport details to the person on the receiving end of the phone call, had it been entered into a database that would cause problems when I tried to leave?

Well, since the very first sentence in this update was "I'm in Turkey!" it's obvious that I made it across. I was moving much faster than the line of trucks, but when I got to the border, the non-commercial traffic was nil. Four checkpoints later, I was safely across, and could even see the hotel from the last one.

So now it's time to get some Turkish vocab committed to memory, and get some sleep. (Kaan, the desk clerk at the hotel, told me he's probably the last English-speaking person I'll meet before I reach Istanbul. Thanks again for your help!) Tomorrow I'll be stopping for the day in Edirne, the first city I'll see in Turkey. My GPS app shows multiple hotels‎ in town, and it's only 20 kms away. 

After that, I don't know where I'll be staying. There are small towns about 25 or 30 kms apart along the direct route to Istanbul, but they're VERY small, with no indication of even a gas station in most. I may just hop a bus to Istanbul from Edirne, depending on what I am able to discover tomorrow when I arrive. Or perhaps I should just keep going and trust that things will work out. Walking to Istanbul should take about a week, and it's still too cold for camping out. If I'm unable to negotiate some sort of accommodation the first night after leaving Edirne, I'll be on the next bus to Istanbul.

Horsepower

They offered me a lift, but I was happy to keep walking in the sun. http://flic.kr/p/r8BfYF

Catching up...

After leaving Plovdiv, I had several long days. The distances weren't all that great, but it was well past nightfall when I arrived in Parvomay, Haskovo, and Harmanli.‎ As I mentioned in my "brief update," the walk to Parvomay ‎was not an easy one. After a good stay in Plovdiv where I met several wonderful people, my body was reluctant to get moving again. (I'm not planning to take a break day again until I reach Istanbul.) My arrival was eased somewhat when I discovered the hotel in Parvomay had a heated floor in the bathroom, and a bathtub!

I'd actually arrived on the outskirts of Haskovo shortly before 7:00, and paused for a break at a gas station. While there, I got to talking with one of the attendants, who has a friend who moved to Canada some years back. The city of Haskovo is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and in 2003, the city officially unveiled a 31m tall monument consisting of a chapel in the base of a 14m tall statue of the Virgin and Child. I'd asked Vasil (the gas jockey) about the statue, and he in turn offered me a ride when his shift finished at 8:00. I was tired and sore and had another 4 kms to cover before I arrived at the hotel I'd marked as my destination, so I decided to take him up on his offer. He left me at the base of the monument, which saved me making a detour to visit it in the morning. From there, I used my GPS app to locate a nearby hotel. The first one was closed, but the one around the corner from it was open.‎ The hotel restaurant was closed, but I'd seen a hole-in-the-wall donair place in the neighbourhood. Dinner taken care of, I washed some clothes in the sink and crashed out hard. As in Parvomay, the cost of the room included breakfast, but just like so many of these breakfast deals, it wasn't geared to someone walking 30+ kms in a day.

One of the things which had made the walk to Parvomay challenging was the lack of places to stop along the way. The walks to Haskovo and Harmanli had villages or gas stations about 7 kms apart, which is an ideal distance for me at this stage in my journey. 

My experience so far in Bulgaria has been markedly different from the rest of the Balkans.‎ In Albania, it was next to impossible for me to pay for my coffee, and roadside fruit vendors kept waving me over and giving me fresh produce. In Macedonia, I was welcomed into peoples' homes twice. In Greece, an inquiry about directions turned into a three hour meal and conversation. Everyone I met was curious about where I was from and what I was doing, and everyone understood what I'm doing. (In Italy, people were impressed by the distance I was going to cover. In the Balkans, it was the destination which people focused on.)

I arrived in Harmanli quite late, in part because I'd met people along the way who were interested enough in this strange character to strike up a conversation. The hotel was at the far end of town, and I passed a supermarket on the way there. I was probably their last customer of the day, but I picked up a few supplies for dinner and breakfast. These late starts have not been helping me any, and the complimentary breakfasts have been relatively insubstantial. It's a good thing that I did, since the hotel in Harmanli was pretty basic. That also meant that I was on the road before 9:00 - still much later than my norm in Italy, but an improvement. 

Tuesday started out bright and sunny, for the first time in almost a week of walking. (No rain except for one day in Plovdiv, so I'm not complaining!) Unusually, I woke up feeling very stiff and sore. Even with my trek through the Alps and my last long days in Italy, this has not been a problem, but it took longer than usual for my legs to warm up and settle in to the business of walking. The sun was glorious, but once I left town, the wind out of the north picked up. It was cold, and strong enough to keep me listing to the left against the constant pressure. 

Shortly after noon, I spotted a place that was both out of the wind and in the sun.‎ In the time it took me to unpack my food and settle down for a lunch break, it had clouded over and the wind shifted. It was still the best shelter I'd found for hours, and there was no temptation to linger! I continued on, but the wind kept getting stronger. As I approached the first town I'd seen all day, I decided that if I spotted someplace to stay  along the route through town, I'd make it a half day and continue on to Svilengrad tomorrow. By 2:00, I was speaking with the proprietor of a seven room motel and by 3:00 I was fast asleep. After a five hour nap, I woke up and had dinner, and started typing this update. In spite of the long nap, I don't think I'll have any difficulty getting back to sleep tonight.

Tomorrow it's only 16 kms to Svilengrad, and then 20 kms to the Turkish border on Thursday, and the next stage of my journey.

Brief update: scattered observations from Parvomay

In spite of the wonderfully caffeinated beginning to my day, it was not an easy walk. I just couldn't seem to hit my stride until quite late in the day, when I was already tired. It remained overcast all day, and there was a strong headwind all afternoon. Still, I arrived. Breakfast is included in the price of the room, but it isn't served until 8:00. I'm planning to be packed and ready to go by then, and won't even head back up to my room afterwards. An early start and a slightly shorter walk should help make tomorrow more pleasant, and the traffic should be extremely light on a Sunday morning. There are also more towns between Parvomay and Haskovo than there were today, so more chances to sit and rest out of the wind. The only precipitation in the forecast between now and Friday is 2 mm of snow on Monday, so that's promising. And now it's time I said my prayers and got some well-deserved sleep.