Day 164: Friday 29 August – Serbria or Bust, by Ken

We set ourselves the target of leaving Turkey, driving through Bulgaria and into Serbia in the day, a distance of approximately 400km. As Jane wasn’t feeling 100% due to a cough and sore throat we also had a fallback of spending the night near Sofia in Bulgaria, a drive of about 300km. In the event we achieved neither.

Our departure from Grand Ömür Camping was delayed temporarily by the camp commandant standing with her arms crossed blocking the gateway. She wasn’t there to wish us safe travels, she wanted 30 lira for the use of the washing machine last night. It did however provide the opportunity to ask if she had bread, my German being good enough for that. She didn’t, but gave comprehensive directions, all in German, to the local bakery – cross the river, past a small house in a park and just past another park. We didn’t see any of those landmarks.

We were soon on the E80 motorway we had travelled on last night. Satnav was silent on toll charges so it appeared the barrier we had excited yesterday evening was the last in Turkey. The motorway skirted round the town of Edirne and we passed signs counting down the distance to the Bulgarian border.

We stopped at a filling station to buy bread at an adjacent market. We had less than 5km to drive to the border when the little traffic that was on the road ground to a halt. A police car was parked across both lanes on our side of the dual carriageway, a policeman was directing traffic through a gap in the median and back the way we had come. We were no exception and we asked the policeman how we could get to Bulgaria. He was very helpful, but in Turkish, and we started to backtrack without a clue as to what he had said.

Traffic Being Turned Back Not Far From Bulgarian Border

I got out the road atlas and could see that by driving into Edirne and heading west from there we could reach the Greek border crossing post of Pazarkule about 10km outside Edirne. From there a road ran parallel to the motorway we had been on for approximately 30km to a border crossing into Bulgaria. A short drive from the border would get us back on the E80 motorway. Jane, being of a cautious disposition, double checked my navigation and agreed it was the way to go.

Edirne Street

Edirne Mosque

Edirne looked a clean and smart town that had cornered the market in Turkish flags, there were hundreds of them strung across the roads. We passed an enormous mosque, probably the last we would see in Turkey, and turned onto a cobbled side road that gave a very rough ride for quite a few kilometres. The trip will be a good test of how well Mabel and Smarty have been built, so far they are standing up very well. We passed through the village of Karaaĝaç and took a country road towards the border. We hadn’t gone very far before we came across a queue of stationary traffic. Men standing by the roadside informed us the queue was a kilometre long. We had no option but to see how things panned out. The time was 10:45.

Mabel and Smarty In The Queue Waiting To Leave Turkey

As it turned out they panned out extremely slowly! We were entertained by people trying to sell us knickknacks. A man who said he was in the army sold me two small Turkish flags for 5 lira which plugged neatly into the air vents on Mabel’s dash. A man and woman pushed a cabinet loaded with bread up and down, a man with two young children sold bottled water and a horse and cart laden with fruit and vegetables made its way up and down the queue.

Turkish Flag Seller

Bakery Stall

Fruit and Veg Cart

Water Seller And Helpers

We sat and we sat moving forward only occasionally. Every so often there were roadside stalls selling food, the ubiquitous çai and soft drinks. All very enterprising. Ahead of us virtually everyone was out of their cars chatting or strolling in the sun. I decided to walk to the head of the queue to see what was going on. It was a lot longer than 1km. All the vehicles ahead were cars, no trucks, no camper vans and all carried non-Turkish plates, mainly German, Netherlands and a scattering of UK. But all the occupants looked and spoke Turkish. The head of the queue was being split into two by a customs officer and the two halves stuttered their way to customs posts. I timed a couple of cars passing through customs and estimated it took 2 minutes on average to get through. I walked back to Mabel counting the cars as I went. We were #120 in the queue. On that basis I thought we should be in Greece at 2:00 pm! Jane decided to have a lie down in the back while I moved Mabel forward from time to time. Sometimes there were long delays in moving caused by drivers wandering away from their cars. A teenage girl in a BMW directly in front of us was forever getting in and out of the car, each time she got out she tied and retied her headscarf.

Retying Her Scarf For 100th Time

A man appeared selling large Turkish flags, he stood in front of Mabel waving one. I pointed to the two on our dashboard, he sneered. I bought a large Turkish flag for 5 lira!

We crawled our way towards the border and by 13:45 we were third in the queue for customs. However, our wait wasn’t over. A station wagon was blocking the way and the occupants were emptying the contents of the load compartment onto the road. Virtually everything was in carrier bags and there were dozens and dozens of them. It was very frustrating and we couldn’t understand why they hadn’t pulled the car off to one side into a parking area. But this was Turkey where drivers stop anywhere they please without a thought for others. Eventually they found whatever they were looking for and started the process of repacking the car. We were amazed at its Tardis like capacity as they shoved everything back in.

Station Wagon Blocking The Road While They Look For Something Among Dozens Of Carrier Bags

We eventually got to the customs post where the female officer was happy with our New Zealand passports but her male colleague got very agitated when he spotted Smarty, demanding to see the paperwork for Mabel and Smarty. I thought the woman could see from our passports we had bought two vehicles into the country, she looked at Jane and said “Jane Perrott?” and on getting a nod from Jane handed our passports back and waved us on. There was absolutely no interest in whether we had paid our motorway toll charges. But we couldn’t go because her colleague had Mabel and Smarty’s paperwork. Yet more time was lost while we waited for him to return.

Just About To Leave Turkey

It was 14:00 when we finally cleared customs and headed into the no-mans land between Turkey and Greece. Hopes that we would then make progress soon evaporated as we were stopped by Greek soldiers at the physical border for a while. 

Waiting To Enter Greece

When we were allowed to proceed we drove through the vehicular equivalent of a shallow sheep dip, presumably filled with disinfectant. Then we joined the queue of vehicles waiting to clear Greek customs. As we crawled towards the customs post Jane observed it was on the edge of a town’s suburbs. The road to the post curved away to the right but straight ahead the only thing between us and Greece was a barrier arm. There was nothing to stop pedestrians ducking under the barrier and walking into Greece.

Sheep Dip As We Enter Greece

Waiting To Clear Greek Customs
(Note all the rubbish chucked out of cars)

Eventually, it was our turn to talk to a customs officer. He glanced at our UK passports, asked where we were heading and waved us through. The time was 15:10, a simple border crossing had taken nearly 4½ hours!

We were soon on a good dual carriageway cruising towards the border between Greece and Bulgaria. 25 minutes after finally entering Greece we joined the queue of vehicles at the border. Greek passport control simply waved us through when they saw our British passports and the Bulgarian counterpart took a perfunctory look and stamped them while holding in his hand. (During a subsequent look at our passports it was very difficult to find any mark on them at all).

In The Queue At The Greece / Bulgaria Border

Next we stopped for a female customs officer. Knowing that drivers have to purchase a vignette for a vehicle using a road in Bulgaria, I asked where I could obtain one. I was told at any filling station. Then she directed us to pull over to one side. There two of the three customs officers standing at the roadside made a quick search of Mabel’s interior and garage before the third, who I took to be the senior of the three, came over and started talking to me. He wasn’t interested in Mabel, he wanted to know how Smarty steered! He said we were free to go, but could we turn hard left as we pulled away so he could see Smarty’s steering in action. As Jane complied with his request I hung out the passenger window looking back. I got a big thumbs up from the customs guy. It was then 17:15 and we were finally in Bulgaria and moving again. We had spent 6½ hours getting from Turkey into Bulgaria!

First Glimpse Of Bulgaria

We soon rejoined the E80 motorway we had left much earlier in the day. We pulled in to the first service station we came to. In the window was a poster displaying the price of vignettes that varied according to vehicle size and vignette duration, it being possible to purchase one valid for just a day. I decided to play safe and get one week vignettes for Mabel and Smarty. I was out of luck, they were out of vignettes but the next station along would have what I needed. They were wrong, it didn’t but that station was sure a Shell station 10km further on would have them in stock.

We continued but left the motorway before reaching the Shell station heading for a camping ground. We joined a two lane road. although we passed two small filling stations we didn’t bother stopping thinking that they were even less likely to stock vignettes.

Satnav had been programmed with the coordinates of Sakar Hills Camping, but they were clearly incorrect because by the time satnav had announced we had reached our destination all we could see were derelict cafes on each side of the road. We had, however, recently passed a sign to a camping ground and thought we should go back and check that out. We had to drive another three kiolmetres before we were able to do a U-turn and drive back to the turn off. We found the camping ground a few kilometres along a country road and, on turning in, we found we had arrived at Sakar Hills Camping.

The owners were Martin and Shirley, an English couple from the Midlands who were now living in Bulgaria. The camping ground was the best maintained of any we had stayed at with beautifully manicured grass surrounding a few hard standings and grass pitches. We were the only visitors and had the pick of the site. Martin recommended one of the hard standings and we heeded his advice.

While I was cooking a variation on last night’s pasta dish Jane got the potted history from Shirley of how she and Martin came to live in Bulgaria and buy a house and a camping ground. One of the key reasons was living in Bulgaria was cheap and it left them with funds to travel and see their son in Australia. Shirley had some very entertaining stories about the locals including one who thinking he was doing them a favour, ploughed the camping ground while they were overseas.

Martin suggested we should try a bottle of the Sakar Hills Merlot that is produced locally. If we liked it then we might like to buy a case which was very competitively priced. The wine was very good and a perfect accompaniment to the pasta.

As usual I collected a few stats to go in our log. Satnav showed we had been on the move just over 1¾ hours (and a lot of that would have been at not much more than a crawl) and stationary for 6¾. In all I estimated we had progressed just 60km towards Serbia, a far cry from the 400 we had hoped to achieve!

As we sat and talked a man came over from a nearby house that had numerous chickens in a large coop. He bade us welcome and gave us half a dozen eggs. We were sorry we didn’t have time to linger in Bulgaria.

This Is Where The Eggs Came From

Today's Trip (82km, but only ~60km of progress)
(Greece is SW of 'A' and we took the short section of E85 just south of the border with Turkey)