europe — Looking for Something (travel blog)

January 2018

Bulgaria can be surmised in: we should have known better.

We should have known better. It was clear in the clerk’s eyes but we wanted to get out of Bucharest. Her eyes said: this is not a good idea. Our mouths said: we can do this.

But when the route includes five train changes throughout the night, it is not a matter of what you can do. The things that you cannot control hold all the power.

Everything goes perfectly with the first two trains. At the first transfer outside of Bucharest, we stretch our legs in a town that looks tired. I have packed enough food for the day but Jerred (who was unsatisfied with the supermarket in Bucharest’s central station) is craving something that I know he will not be able to find in this town but he wants to look anyway. He looks. No luck.

The third train is supposed to leave the third station at 1230AM. We board 45 minutes early and wait. And we keep waiting.

And we wait, and we wait, and we wait.

And we worry but what can we do? No mobile data, no wifi, no clue. If we were superheroes we could push the train—or maybe just fly to Istanbul—the city have been trying to get to all week but with no success. We were desperate to leave Bucharest and that desperation made this mad journey seem possible.

At 130AM, the train begins to move.

~

Obviously, we miss our next connection. In the middle of the night, we stumble out into a world consisting of rows of trains lined up on the tracks and we have no plan. Do we enter the station and wait for the next train that matches the route we were given?

No, but we probably should have.

Instead there is a carriage directly before us with “ISTANBUL” written on the side and we watch a scraggly woman from our last train board it confidently. We follow and meet the ticket collector in the hallway. As we’re trying to communicate, curious if this is the same route as the train we were aiming for, the train begins to roll away, quickly picking up speed.

We’re committed—only this isn’t the right train. This is a fancy sleeper train that goes straight to Istanbul (we were supposed to take two more trains to get there) and we don’t have any money.

The employee is nice. I can tell he wants to help us but sometimes, there is only so much that you can do. And we don’t have any money, just useless credit cards. He says we can stay on the train until the last station before Turkey and then we have to get off. We can’t cross the border without a ticket.

~

And that is how we come to a small, grey-walled station in a place called Svilengrad somewhere in Bulgaria in the early and dark hours of the morning, sleeping on metal wire benches. I think I have a sleep hazy dream of a security guard speaking to Jerred at one point.

Come morning, I awake before Jerred and decide to leave him sleeping the station as I go get the lay of the land, my last apple in hand, wondering where we have ended up. The station is sitting the suburbs, faded houses stacked next to each other, a gloomy park, missing persons posters stuck to every available surface, a couple dark corner stores with grumpy looking people inside, a few men walking about who look at me curiously. A brown horse pulling a cart filled with wood. I keep walking until the houses have ended and there is just a long road and fields and a sign that points to the nearby Greek border 2.5 kilometres away.

Apparently we’re nearly in Greece.

I don’t feel in danger… but I also don’t feel entirely safe. When I return to the station and wake Jerred, I tell him that I don’t want to go out alone again. It’s probably fine, I’m certain it’s fine, but I’m a girl in the world so sometimes you have to err on the side of caution.

~

Behind glass, a woman probably in her 40s sits in the train station. We are trying to figure out when we can leave—if we can leave—when the next train will come. She speaks a few words of English. There is something very Cold War era about her. Back and forth, we draw maps and signals on a piece of paper, make arm gestures and try to stitch meaning together from a very limited vocabulary, trying to make sense of what the other party is trying to say. The next train to Istanbul might be this evening, or tomorrow, or maybe Wednesday. We venture to her window three separate times and each conversation seems to produce a different answer.

~

Jerred and I walk out of the station with our packs on our backs determined to… do something.

Right now, the biggest problem is that we don’t have any money. No cash. Nothing. As the lady at the window in the station doesn’t accept card, we can’t buy a ticket out of here and we wouldn’t be able to buy food even if we found somewhere to buy food because no one in this town is going to accept card either.

On our way out the door, a shorter man with a round head and a pitbull-esq dog is walking in. He’s German, speaks English, and says that we’re not actually in Svilengrad right now, that the actual town is about twenty minutes away from here, it’s really not far, and there are definitely cash machines and places to eat. Thank god. We’re so grateful.

A little while down the road, we realize that he dramatically misrepresented the distance to town.

Or maybe he just meant twenty minutes by car.

~

We come to a crossroads—unsure where the town is but aware that a duty-free shop sits near the Greek border (it was listed on the signs) so we decide to head that way and hope that, in the very least, the store has an ATM.

It doesn’t. On the way, a pair of Greek border guards stop to check our passports and find our existence pretty confusing but love that Jerred is from Australia. Everyone is always so fascinated with Australia. The guards tell us to go back the way we came and we don’t listen. They disappear over a hill and around the corner and we continue on, only to discover that our mission was futile anyway.

So back we go. Back the way we came. We joke if the Greek border guards will appear again. Tired, backs heavy with pack, try to hitchhike, no one picks us up.

Again at the crossroads. By this point, we understand that Svilengrad is far, far down the other road. I guess we could walk. I guess that’s possible. But it’s also not. It’s too far, I tell Jerred, We have to hitch.

No one is picking up.

I come to the corner where the roads intersect and throw up my thumb one last time. Immediately, a car stops.

This is the power of belief.

~

The man behind the wheel is named Neko. He’s German, mid 40s, and driving to Sofia. He and I speak a confusing blend of extremely basic German mixed with a few words of English. Wie heißt du? Wie alt bist du? Wo kommst du? In a day of chaos, Neko feels like a godsend. He takes us right into the tiny town until we see an ATM and then we say danke schön and thank you and leap from his tiny dark green car into civilization.

~

Civilization is quiet. It’s Sunday. Most things are closed. Yet now there is cash in our pockets and possibility with it. While wandering the empty streets, we come across a little market where I buy some apples and the freshest almonds I have ever tasted. I didn’t know almonds could taste like that.

Then we find a fast-food stall and go back three times. Once so Jerred can get this weird sandwich with fries inside and ketchup. Twice so he can get another and I can get one too. Thrice so Jerred can get a crepe.

And we’re alive again.

Cash in our pockets. Things are possible again. We take a taxi back to the train station and feel like kings.

~

The problem is that we still don’t know when the next train to Istanbul is. The hostel in Svilengrad was closed (we assume—all we could find was closed doors) so waiting just isn’t practical. Ask when the next train to Sofia is, I say to Jerred as he tries, failing, to get a straight answer out of the (still) grumpy secretary lady.

You want to go backwards??

What else are we going to do? We don’t know when the next train to Istanbul is. It could be ages. We can’t stay here.

Yeah you’re right.

So we buy two tickets to Sofia and go wait near the man with the pitbull from earlier.

~

However, this is not the end of the story.

Four hours later, as the train begins to approach the many lights of Sofia, I remark that even though we are now in a city and not somewhere in the Bulgarian countryside, we still don’t know where we’re going. No wifi. No clue. The classic millennial plight.

Where will we get wifi? Where we will find a hostel? Will we happenstance upon a hostel without wifi to tell us where one is? Will we spend another night at a train station or roaming empty streets?

Sometimes subway stations have wifi, so we make our way to the underground only to discover it doesn’t. Jerred has a stroke of inspiration and approaches an old woman wandering by. Excuse me— Aussie thick accent. She’s a whole foot and a half shorter than him and full of a warm smile and crystal clear English. She doesn’t live in Sofia and therefore can’t help us locate a hostel. We learn that she lives in Varna on the coast (We were thinking of going there! says Jerred) and hosts couchsurfers like us. I wonder if we should ask to go back to Varna with her.

Then a group of cheery people in the 20s or 30s pass by dragging suitcases and the old woman intervenes on our behalf, speaking in Bulgarian. I don’t understand but I get the gist. Can you help this couple? They’re lost. They need somewhere to stay.

~

OK so listen. Sometimes life is fucking weird and I mean that as a compliment. I mean that in the brightest, most shiniest way. Life is a web woven more intimately than you could ever possibly expect. It’s a wild little miracle. It’s hilariously perfect.

It turns out that the group are staying in a hostel not far from here and are checking out tonight. They take us with them, saying that maybe we could take their beds. All I care about is getting wifi.

Then it turns out that this group are all nutritionists and dieticians that make up a global company trying to shift food paradigms or health paradigms or something like that. This is funny because Jerred is in university to become a dietician. By the time we reach the hostel, he has a casual job offer.

~

The woman who has offered Jerred a job is speaking with me about travel. It’s a conversation I’ve had before: someone marginally older than me sees my life, sees the lives of wanderers who spread far but rootless and who come & go like sun on a cloudy day, and sees escapism. Sees running away. Sees that story of hero goes away only to discover everything they ever needed was where they came from so they go back and suddenly, they’re content and happy. That hunger in their belly was just a young, foolish impulse now quieted.

She warns me against always looking for something.

Conversations like these make me roll my eyes.

~

My hunger is not brokenness. I am not running away.

~

Our new and fleeting friends finish packing up their things as we chat about nutrition and travel and life. This hostel is too expensive but I use the wifi to find another one: cheaper and it looks amazing. It is. It’s one of my favourite hostels ever now. The kitchen is long, the lounge room is long, the building is long and wooden and several stories tall. I remember it with fire-warmth. Friendly faces. Free breakfast and free dinner every night.

~

Jerred and I spend two days in Sofia in the snow, visiting vast gilded cathedrals and drinking warm cups from a little tea house near our hostel. And then early morning on Tuesday, we board a bus going to Istanbul directly. And we make it, even though my visa application wrongly says I’m from Australia rather than Canada. At last, we make it. Out of Bulgaria, pulled into Turkey like crawling out of a hole that you can’t seem to get out of. I tell everyone, Bulgaria wanted to keep us for awhile and I have a story to tell. What happened?

I’ll tell you later.

I think: what a relief that things go “wrong.” I’m so grateful for the unexpected twists—the passing gifts—the things that you could never plan anyway. I want to be shaken up. I am so desperate to be surprised—

So desperate for a story to tell.

Distances:

Station to town: 6.1km (1.7 hr)
Station to Greek border shop: 2.9km (35 min)
Greek border shop to town: 6.1km (1.7 hr)
Train to Sofia: 4 hours