Nothing very much happened to me in Plovdiv. I had a nice and refreshing sleep in the very lovely hostel, and the next morning sauntered off to Yug bus station to catch my bus to Istanbul, which was, for lack of a better word, an unpleasantly eventful ride.
The bus to Istanbul was six hours long but ended up being 8 hours due to delays on the border (apparently the bus didn't have the correct 'visa' and they were fined something around 2000 euros, and we were held up for more than two hours whilst the drivers haggled with the border police), and the bus didn't have toilets. We made a stop at a small Bulgarian bus station, and the driver and conductor got off to have a smoke, whilst some of the others got off as well to smoke and stretch their legs. I went to the toilet, but since I didn't have change, I paid with a 10 lev bill, which was basically 5 euros. The woman at the toilet till only gave me back 4 lev, which was about 3.5 euros short. I argued with her but she didn't speak English, or at least pretended not to. I gave in to the fact that I had probably been scammed, and ran back to my bus to see the doors closing and the bus leaving. The very last thing I wanted was to be stranded in that absolutely horrible place in the middle of nowhere, and I waved frantically and yelled at the top of my lungs, and the driver finally opened the door with a rather nasty smile. I got on, only for someone to come after me saying that there was a problem with the toilet woman and I couldn't leave. I began to panic and made a real scene, and asked if anyone there spoke English. A normal looking guy in his twenties, who was also a passenger, came up to me and said that there was a problem with the toilet woman and that I needed to get off the bus to sort it out. He assured me that the bus wouldn't leave without me. I asked him if he could come with me,and he said of course in a comforting sort of way, and put his arm around me and went down with me. Another Bulgarian man, this time a middle aged Slavic guy, also followed us off the bus. He went up to the toilet woman and angrily took my missing change from her, rebuking her in Bulgarian, and gave it back to me with a smile. The young man hugged me and said that everything was just a mistake. The conductor came to ask me if everything was okay, and when I saw the middle aged Bulgarian man I made sure to thank him. "Take it easy," was all he said, with a smile. I will say this. For every nasty person you meet on the road, there are at least three people who are there to bail you out of the situation; and to paraphrase Chamber of Secrets, help will always be given to those who ask for it. Well, if you ask the right people, that is.
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| We were stuck here for two hours |
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| Mysterious guy sleeping at the back of the bus...everything here goes |
That was the first, incredibly unpleasant incident that occurred. The second one was somewhat more minor but still left a bad taste in my mouth - apparently liquor is far cheaper in Bulgaria, and the drivers and conductors make it a routine to ask the passengers if they can, for lack of a better word again, smuggle liquor for them across the border, since the allotted quota for each person is one bottle. Stranger Danger immediately rang red in my head, and I refused. Thankfully they did not press the issue, but needless to say, I was outraged; and it was on that extremely uncomfortable note that I finally arrived in Istanbul, which will of course get its own entries.
Anyway, here are some last pictures of pleasant, uncomplicated Plovdiv.
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