| The Caucasus - My Journal |
"No," she said, nodding her head.
18th July [Part 1] - Bucharest (Hungary) -> Veliko Tarnovo (Bulgaria)
The train I was boarding for Bulgaria sounded impressive, the Bosporus Express. This mightily named train cut through a large tract of Eastern Europe, leaving Budapest in the early morning, passing through Bucharest, where I was to join it, then continuing via Sofia to Istanbul. However, the train itself was a lot simpler than the name suggested. It was a mere three carriages long and most of the seats were left empty as we pulled out of the station.
As I explored my carriage, I found that most of the travellers were foreigners, with only a handful of locals. My carriage, which has six seats was only occupied by one other guy, an American who had set out with his guitar to promote himself and his musical talents across Europe.
 The American was doing the Bucharest-Istanbul stint in one go. I wanted to make a few stops in Bulgaria on the way, so my destination for today was Veliko Tarnovo, a small but popular town in the north. Actually, as Veliko only has a small station, I was due to get off at Gorna Oriahovitsa, a town about 10km north of Veliko, which is on the main international trainline.
About 20 minutes after leaving Bucharest, the ticket inspector came into cabin. He looked at my ticket, and his face turned into frown, "Oh, this ticket no good!" he exclaimed. On querying him, it turned out that due to problems in Bulgaria, the trains were diverting around Gorna and the closest I could get was Ruse, a small just past the Romania/Bulgaria border. Great. Why did the woman sell me a ticket all the way to Gorna then? I'd paid for a 7 hour journey, but was now going to get off after about 3.5 hours! Of course, as this is Eastern Europe, no alternative transport was being arranged, I just had to sort myself out on arriving at Ruse. Sigh...oh well...that's all part of the fun of travelling!
The border crossing itself went painlessly. The train slowly came to a halt on the Bulgarian side of the border and the guard told me that this was Ruse, and I needed to get off. I threw on my bag and shuffled down the narrow corridor, only to find three other backpackers about to do the same. Their destination was the same as mine and they also needed to get around the train problems, so we decided to club together.
 The Bulgarian border guards checked our passports thoroughly, radioing in all the details and questioning us for a few minutes before reluctantly stamping our passports and allowing us to disembark and take our first steps onto Bulgarian soil.
Less than a second after stepping off the train, we were accosted by taxi drivers with offers for "best fares", wherever we were going. We quickly informed them that we needed to get to Veliko Tarnovo, a good 3 hours away, so a taxi was pretty much out of the question. However, one taxi driver proved very persistent and assuring us that there were no more buses to Veliko today. Of course, you can never believe a taxi driver, so we brushed him off saying we'd do some checking first.
Of course, the last Veliko bound bus had left, about 30 minutes before the train arrived. The taxi driver suddenly reappeared, looking very smug and offering to take us to Veliko for 10 euros each. The offer, although a little high, began to sound tempting, it was better than staying in this quiet border town for the night.
Just before agreeing to his price, we realised that it was only the international trains which were being diverted, so maybe there were some local trains still running. Hurrying to the station, we looked up at the departures board. All I could see was a mix of Russian looking squiggles. Bulgarian is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, which makes for fun reading. I couldn't understand any of the words, let along work out which trains were going where!
Luckily, one of group, a German guy, had had some experience of the Cyrillic alphabet during his studies and confidently informed us that a train was due to leave for Gorna in about an hour. Perfect!
We passed the time at a small cafe nearby. Luckily for us the waitress spoke some English, so we could order some drinks and food, even with just a Bulgarian menu. Placing our order, I had my first encounter of one of Bulgaria's strangest nuances. We asked her if they had iced coffee. "Yes," she said, shaking her head from side to side. "Uhhh...do you have fries?"," No," replied the waitress, nodding her head. This was really confusing! Bulgarians have the rare behaviour of shaking their head to indicate 'Yes', and nodding to indicate 'No'. Very confusing! And very difficult to imitate, you don't realise how ingrained the nod and the shake are, until you try to swap them!
Despite these confusing differences, we ordered the food and drinks without much effort. I was very happy to find that my coffee and beer came to a total price of less than 75p! I can see that it's going to be very easy to bring my budget back into line here!
Back at the train station we found two more backpackers on the platform, who joined us as we hunted for some empty seats in the small, basic train. Many of the locals were staring at us...6 foreigners with huge bags, all babbling in a foreign tongue must make an interesting sight!
The conductor seemed confused that we were getting on the train "Gorna Oriahovitsa?!" he shouted at us. "Da!" we all replied confidently. The conductor shrugged in disbelief and the train set off. We'd bought some beers on the platform, and before too long, a British guy (me), a German guy and girl, an American guy and a Swedish guy and girl were all crammed into small but comfortable cabin, celebrating our arrival into Bulgaria.
 Drinking the cold Bulgarian beer and staring out of the window at the green fields through which the train cut, at a fairly pedestrian pace, I suddenly felt really excited, but also content and at ease. The slightly more foreign environment, the strange signs and unintelligible language and the trials of independent travelling were all charging me with energy and excitement and, quite ironically, this feeling was very comforting! The foreign world growing around me was generating a feeling of familiarity. The feeling of being a backpacker. For the first time on these travels, I felt like I was really travelling again.
About three hours later, the train pulled into Gorna station, just as the sun was disappearing, and our next challenge was to find a way of getting to Veliko, even though all the connecting buses had finished for the night...
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