Run by a sweet, welcoming English woman who makes poached eggs for breakfast.
As opposed to starting this post from the English Guesthouse of Ruse, Bulgaria.
Run by an aggressive, off-putting Bulgarian woman who probably (although this is just an assumption) does not make poached eggs for breakfast.
(but she could make something different and equally good)
Tessa and I reluctantly left our cosy couch in Sofia at eight o'clock yesterday morning.
Tessa is many things, but Tessa is not a morning person. She stayed in bed until seven forty, relishing every possible moment of shut-eye before going to stand on the side of the road for god knows how long.
Tessa is very good at relishing things. Especially when they involve a) napping b) picnics and c) views
She particularly likes napping and picnicking in places with views.
Hitchwiki.com (this is an actual site for hitchhikers) had recommended we take tram 22 out of town and start our hitchhiking adventure from there. Well aware of the perils of being trapped inside a city by spaghetti roads, we trundled onto the tram and clunked out of town.
"Sofia is great," I commented as I crunched breakfast apple and peanuts. "From our time in the Balkans, I think I would tell my friends to visit Ohrid, Bitola and Bulgaria. In general."
We disembarked from the mind-numbingly slow tram and took in our surroundings.
Our surroundings included a bus stop (should hitching go horribly awry like it did in Skopje's death spaghetti) and a definitive dearth of cardboard.
With a sigh of regret, I reached into my backpack and withdrew a sheet of watercolor paper I'd been saving from England.
"Guess we can use this for today."
Most expensive hitchhiking material ever.
Bulgaria is an interesting place to hitch -- probably because hitching is such a common phenomenon in this country.
It could be challenging to find rides in Croatia, but Croatians were generally supportive of our thumbing around the Balkans endeavors and displayed their support through waving, honking and pumping the air. Even though we occasionally had to wait for hours, the wait was (rather) enjoyable because we felt like we had a fan club.
Montenegro? No sweat (+ fan club).
Albania? A Sunday picnic. A walk in the park. Easy as falling off a log (also with fan club).
Macedonia? A bit of a slippery slope, but doable. As long as you don't throw borders or Skopje into the mix.
Bulgaria? Hitchhiking is so common here that our fan club kind of disappeared. Drivers are accustomed to seeing vagabonds on the road, so as Tessa and I held our watercolor sign at the outskirts of Sofia, few drivers even made eye contact with us.
Dammit. This takes a good deal of the fun out of hitching. One of my favorite parts is seeing the odd reactions we get from people zooming past. In Bulgaria we're... normal.
Note to hitchhikers #1:
Beware of weekends.
Weekends are full of people going on weekend trips with families.
Families do not pick up hitchhikers.
Regardless of how adorable/outlandish/ridiculous their sunglasses may be or the voltage of "PICK ME UP, I'M A NICE LADY" you're shooting through their windshields with your hitchhiking superpowers.
Families on weekend trips are immune to superpowers. They're too busy arguing about who has to sit in the middle seat on the return trip.
Tessa and I waited on the side of the road for about an hour before our first car pulled over.
"Tarnovo?" I held my sign
The driver shook his head.
"Oh, okay. Thanks anyway," I moved to back away.
"No!" Tessa interjected. "It's the head thing!"
RIGHT. I chastised myself. Only in the Balkans.
Note to hitchhikers #2:
In Bulgaria, shaking the head from side to side means yes and nodding the head up and down means no.
We impulsively decided to hop in the car. We weren't sure as to where our driver was going, but he seemed like a pleasant enough fellow and after waiting on the side of the road for an hour, most grass looks greener than yours.
He spoke nary a word of English.
This + head-shake reversal + Balkans = biggest communication barrier ever confronted by this vagabond in the entirety of her adventures.
We were dropped off somewhere.
I'm not quite sure where.
"At least we're out of Sofia," I grunted as I lowered my elephant to the asphalt and absorbed our green, mountainous surroundings. "Now we have no choice but to hitch."
This ride took about ten minutes to catch. Our driver was a Bulgarian landscaper who appeared to be in his late twenties. We had stilted conversation for the better part of the hour, during which we were invited to the birthday party of one of his friends.
"Thanks for the invitation -- "
"It's really nice of you!"
"-- but we're going to Bucharest tomorrow, so we need to get close to the border tonight."
"No, don't go to Bucharest!" our driver argued. "There is nothing in Bucharest but gypsies."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing."
I suppose we'll see.
We were dropped off on another roadside halfway to Tarnovo.
"I'm sorry I can't take you the whole way," the Bulgarian lad said before he zoomed off to prepare for birthday fun times.
Then came the white chocolate.
A white car with a defective front bumper drove past.
Slowly.
A van veritably bursting with gypsies U-turned to ask us where we were going.
We just nodded our heads no.
The same white car with the defective front bumper drove past.
Slowly.
A crumbly, bumbly jeep rattled to a stop. I approached the window and saw a grumbly male driver and a hungry-eyed child in the seatless backseat.
I nodded my head no.
The same same white car with defective front bumper drove past.
Slowly.
It stopped.
"What the f*ck is that guy doing?"
This was all rather rattling.
The white car waited ten minutes. Then revved its sad, dying engine a few times and drove off.
"Bet he'll drive by again," Tessa predicted.
The same same same white car with the defective front bumper drove past.
As Tessa had predicted (you'll recall).
It stopped.
The driver rolled down his window.
Tessa and I nodded our heads no.
Quickly.
"This was our first experience turning down rides," I commented as we watched the white car speed off down the road. "I'm glad we know what to look for."
Another ten minutes of waiting.
A truck pulled over.
Tessa sat in the front with a toothless, smiling Russian and I sat in the back with a brooding, smoking Russian.
The teddy bears had the window seat.
The Russians spoke no English, but seemed to enjoy our company. They laughed at our laughter over the teddies and only appeared mildly regretful about picking us up when passing a couple of roadside hookers.
Note to hitchhikers #3:
In Bulgaria, prostitutes do stand on the side of the road. It's good to be aware of this fact so that you don't accidentally end up in a situation with different expectations due to miscommunication.
Oooh, Note to hitchhikers #4:
The Bulgarian word for thank-you is unreasonably long, so Bulgarians just say "mersi."
The Bulgarian word for goodbye is also unreasonably long, so Bulgarians just say, "ciao."
I asked if Bulgarians say "pardon" like in France, but our couchsurfing friend told us that this doesn't apply because Bulgarians are too rude to say pardon.
Our Russians dropped us off at a petrol station near the center of Tarnovo.
"Ciao! Mersi!" we exclaimed as we tossed our backpacks out of the truck.
It was a fifteen-minute trudge to the other side of town
We held up our sign.
It was a fifteen-minute wait until someone stopped to pick us up.
We chatted.
He gave us his business card so that we could add him on facebook later.
(We haven't added him yet because Cyrillic names hurt our brains)
He dropped us off another thirty km down the road.
"Four rides. Eighty more km to go."
We stood in the countryside of Bulgaria, surrounded by silent, golden sunflower fields for about twenty minutes.
These are the moments.
The lack of control made me giddy.
I have absolutely no idea what will happen next. Maybe we won't get a ride and we'll have to wild camp in the sunflowers. Wouldn't that be nice?
A large van screeched to a stop.
The driver took us straight to Ruse, hardly saying a word the entire time (although occasionally casting me disconcerting glances in the rearview mirror).
"Mersi!" we thanked our reserved driver and high-fived on the green grass of Ruse.
"WE DID IT!" I happy-danced all over that grass. "We successfully hitched over three hundred km."
A haggard, helpful looking man approached.
"Where do you want to go?" he reached for my sign.
"We're here! We're where we want to be."
"Where will you sleep tonight?"
"No idea. Guess we'll find out."
The man looked confused.
"Which way to the city center?"
"That way," he pointed. "Fifteen minutes."
He helped me with my elephant and then we moseyed into town.
Well... mosey might be the wrong word.
"Why is hitchhiking so exhausting?" Tessa mused as we stumbled into town.
"It's the waiting. It's the uncertainty. It's the walking. It's the conversation. It's the sun. Lots of things make hitching exhausting."
We popped into a cafe and checked couchsurfing. I'd sent a couple of last-minute requests out to hosts in Ruse, but my inbox was sadly empty of "Accepted" responses.
Guess we're sleeping outside tonight.
I informed Tessa of the situation.
"We could sleep outside or we could get a hostel for eleven euros. A babysitter for our bags so we could actually enjoy the city. What do you think?" Tessa looked up from her phone.
"I think it's outside of my budget, but I also think that we should be able to have a good time. Why don't we go down to the river and see if we like the view. If it looks like a good place to spend the night, we stay there. If it has "ordeal" written on it, we find a hostel."
The river was much more urban than we'd imagined. Trains, dogs, partying Bulgarians and begging gypsies.
"We're staying in a hostel?"
"We're staying in a hostel."
We happened to arrive in Ruse in time for a festival with hot air balloons, music, and a gazillion little people scampering about with faces painted to look like cutely ferocious animals.
We found the hostel. Loved the hostel. Booked the hostel.
We put our bags away, packed a light travel sack and pranced off into town.
We had a picnic by the river.
We don't recommend eating gigantic slices of watermelon without cutlery.
 |
| Bulgaria is confusing. |
It felt beautiful to have our Balkan, English hostel to return to that evening.
We'll hitch to Bucharest today.
Probably. Possibly.
No comments:
Post a Comment