Bulgaria

Sorry Greece. Much as we love you, it’s just too expensive to stick around.

I should explain. Travelling down through Iran, Pakistan and India is only really possible during the cooler months starting in late September or early October. Having set out from the UK in late May, this leaves us plenty of time to travel around Europe. Predictably (with the luxury of hindsight), Europe has been very expensive and was eating up our budget way too quickly. Greece was to be our hideout for the summer, but is too expensive, so -

we’re in Bulgaria.

We’d found a place advertising via www.biker-net.com in a village called Nikolovo. It looked great and an e-mail confirmed that a place was available. It was a 2 day ride - about 340km, and we stopped in Sandiniska (Bulgaria) the first night.

Bulgaria and Greece are both in the EU, so the border was easy. No ‘Green Card’ (= rip off tourists) payments of $140 such as we had to make in Macedonia and the officials were almost human.


Having seen the immediate differnce when crossing from Macedonia to Greece in terms of wealth and industry, entering Bulgaria had us back in an obviously poor country. Old Ladas, Trabants and assorted old bangers. A taxi ride in Sandiniska to get some currency and go to an internet café in town was an education. Driving straight at other cars and pedestrians to get the out of the way semed the norm.

The taxi ride confirmed that this was he country to spend time cheaply though. 40 minutes of driving round to banks and cafes trying to find one open, then waiting for me while I was in the café was only 3 Leva 80 Sistinki - about £1.75. I was so happy to be out of the taxi gave him 5 Leva.

The second half of the ride was just beautiful., and even navigating the tricky route across country with most of the signs in Cyrillic couldn’t detract from it.


Anita waiting for a bus on the way to Nikolovo.

As with a lot of the southern European countries that we’d seen, farming is everywhere. We’d come to understand later that a lot of it was subsistence farming. Every possible patch of ground is used to grow veg of all sorts, including huge fields of tobacco. Tobacco is available for around £9 a kilo. Sheep, goats and cows, sometimes just one or two, are looked after by a shepherd during the day before being led home at night. Horses and mules pulling carts of hay (often with little boys perched on top) are a common sight even in the towns, with many of them Romanies.


A nearby market. Check out the close-up in the image below for why I took the photo!


Health and safety? For sissies.

Our destination was Tree Pig Farm in Nikolovo. It’s a house run by an English guy in the middle of the village. To Find it on a map, it’s roughly half way between Haskovo and Kardzali To anyone coming straight from the UK it could be a bit of a shock. Bulgaria has an enormous legacy of the communist era in its buildings, not only in style, but a lot of them haven’t been used since communist days and are derelict. The verges are overgrown and the roads are full of holes - even main roads. The house is great with a beautiful interior and a garden that has loads of veg and room for a couple of tents. Garry is a seriously good cook and a really laid back interesting guy. The plan is to stay for a few weeks. After that it’s on to Ankara (Turkey) to get visas for Iran and India. The Pakistan visa will have to wait until we’re in Teheran (Iran). We’ll have a month in Turkey to explore which should be fun.


Nikolovo post office is in a room in this derelict building. There are no street names or numbers and post is often given to people in the bar.

Nikolovo is really charming. The people are lovely and have been very helpful and friendly. I was out clearing weeds from the verge outside the house, trying to do it with a machete. The neighbour came across and by gestures I gathered that I needed a scythe. He came back with one and before I could stop him, had cut down the whole length of the verge, leaving me just the clearing up to do. Another instance was when we were out walking around the village and saw a very old couple trying to wheelbarrow in a couple of tons of logs that had been dropped on their kerb. The old boy could hardly walk and was trying to help his wife to fill the wheelbarrow. Well, we couldn’t walk by, could we? We ended up wheeling in all the logs, and were going to carry on walking when they insisted that we come in and sit in their garden. Out came slices of cucumber with salt and Rakia - all home made. Rakia is distilled from the residue when wine making, and most people here grow grapes and make wine and rakia. It has a serious message!


Baba Marika who asked us in for Rakia and cucumber.


A local stork family

There’s a bar in town with a veranda, and we’ve been there a few times to sample the local ale. At 45p a pint it’d be rude not to. Bizzarely, it’s cheaper to buy bottles of beer there than in the cheapest supermarket nearby.


This is the (only) shop and one of 2 bars.

More later..........