Northwestern Bulgaria, late March 2004

Northwestern Bulgaria, end of March 2004:

We passed from Serbia into the extreme northwestern corner of Bulgaria on a Tuesday evening. The frontier town was Bregovo, a small village with a bumpy main road and dirt side roads where cows, horses, goats, and donkeys roamed free. Topped with orange shingles, the houses looked more solid than those in Serbia. Many, many were abandoned. The village also looked almost abandoned. It was strangely devoid of people, even though we saw many animals. Perhaps they were all still in the fields. But darkness was approaching quickly.

We decided to sleep in a copse of trees by the side of the road. We were well-hidden and thought we were all alone, aside from the occasional vehicle or horse and wagon that would pass by. We set up our tent and cooked outside. Just as we were finishing, but before we had finished securing the tent, we heard noise not far away. A car or two had stopped, and we heard people talking, about fifty yards away. We stopped moving. We hardly dared to breathe. After what seemed like ages, we slowly tried to put the last stakes of the tent under the cover of the noise of a passing car. Each one that passed was stopped, and we realized that it was the cops who were checking to be sure that no one was trying to cross the border under cover of night. They stayed there for hours, and we waited for them to leave. We didn’t know how strict they would be if they found us. They were right next to us. We could see them and clearly hear every word they said, even if we couldn’t understand what they were saying. I didn’t sleep well. The sunburn I had gotten from Serbia didn’t help.

We awoke very early the next morning. Our first kilometers were straight uphill – not easy to start out the day. We passed only donkeys alongside the road – chained to the ground – and hardly any vehicles. Reaching the top of the hill was a real reward. We looked over the valley and a small village. The sun was shining, there was a cool breeze – we decided to stop to cook a meal of pasta and steak. It was the first time we had cooked outside in a long, long time. We relaxed with the Romanian guidebook and the map. Life was good.

We rode to Vidin, the border town with Romania, which was only another 20 km. (12 mi.) away. There was a lot of wind. Reaching Vidin was funny. There was a big town that arose out of nowhere, as if rising out of the ashes. There were just fields, fields, and more fields. Then, all of a sudden, a big city comes into view, stretching out in a straight line over 6-7 km. along the river. There were small-scale skyscrapers, even. It’s a strange impression, this big town rising like this in the middle of fields, with herds of cows and sheep grazing calmly in the foreground. It seemed so out of place. No suburbs or anything to prepare you for the transition.

When we reached Bulgarian customs, we realized that we couldn’t bike to Romania – we had to take a ferry. That posed a problem – we had no Bulgarian or Romanian currency! But I had forgotten – we had some dollars and euros on us. We could pay the ferry. There was no line at the border – we had to go looking for the officials. They made us open two bags, then we passed through easily enough. Stephane shared his bottle of Serbian rakija (brandy) with the workers at the customs station.

As we waited for the ferry, we watched as people tried to hide their duty-free purchases in big sacks. Then, on the ferry, the driver tried to charge us double. But we had already checked the prices and refused to pay anymore. He finally got tired of arguing and gave up. The Romanian customs officials were the friendliest by far that we had come across. They spoke English and French, in addition.

The rest of our story continues in Romania….