Weary Salutations from Sofia.
I'll be brief. I'm tired.
We left Buccharest, and cycled along a dull and uneventful road to the border, which we rather mistakenly crossed that very evening. The crossing was slow, although friendly nonetheless, and we cycled over the ironically named 'friendship' bridge between Bulgaria and Romania (dodgy relationship) over the Danube.
We found an ATM and a way out of town fairly quickly, but this turned in to a motorway type road as the light failed. Luckily for us, a helpful Bulgarian guided us to a campsite and sat with us drinking beer for an hour - he used to be in the commie govt and worked in the UN, now he does business in Germany and the usa. An interesting guy, and very friendly and helpful. later on that evening we met a yankee bloke who was writing for the lonely planet. His methods, along with the lonely planets useless information, left us with serious suspicions about the LP's quality controls. This guy was researching an update to an LP book six month before he should be, as he wanted to get back to the states. Up to date information then....
We set off across the Danubian plain, though why it is called this I have no idea - it is not flat I can assure you. The roads constantly rose and fell, and the second day in Bulgaria saw us complete our hardest, toughest day yet, 120kms or 75 miles of hill after hill after hill. Indeed it seems that Bulgaria has been built on a tilt, as we seemed to go up much more than we ever came down. That day we nearly died, but the gods we gracious, and the last 15kms was all down hill, finally. In Lovic we avoided staying in the hotel that cost 65 ukp, an outragious amount for Bulgarian where a good meal costs little more than 2.50ukp each. We decided it was aimed at foolish business men, and as I'm not one of those, we stayed in the comfortable hotel round the corner for 6ukp each per night.
Heading out of Lovic, and this day we stayed on the main highways, more level roads, less effort. An uneventful day left us with no hotel or campsite, so wildcamping was the order of the day. A misty morning greeted us the following day, as autumn finally makes its mark on Bulgaria.
We headed to the next big town, where we got lost on the exit, and ended up on a motorway. This was a highway of many obsticles, including firstly prostitutes (don't ask what they were doing on the motorway - well, its obvious I suppose) who talked about saxaphones (you figure it out) and wouldn't let us leave for ages, then tunnels with are not the cyclists friends. Pollution and lack of light reduce your chances of coming out alive. Then we encountered a contraflow system. All this we survived, although we didn't wish to be on the motorway, there were no exits and we couldn't find the small blue road we wanted to be on. Upon exiting the final tunnel, we were stopped by the Police, and recieved the first and last fine (I hope ) of the trip for cycling on the motorway. This may sound crazy in England, I'd never cycle on those motorways, but this wasn't so bad. Anyway, we received our 20leva (6ukp) fine, payable on leaving the country, and were directed to the blue road, which was right above us. DOH! We spun along quickly into Sofia, fearful of all the cops we saw along the way, and found an lovely hotel in the middle of town.
Sofia seems a nice town, although I may return to visit when they've finished it. It has Russian Othodox style churches and mosques and lots of shops with cyrillic writing, which we can decipher quite well now. There doesn't seem to be too much to do here, but that is fine, as the cumulative tiredness is catching up with me as we enter the final stretch of stage one, 550kms to Istanbul, approx 8 days.
Food in Bulgaria is excellent so far, a strong turkish and greek influence is in evidence, and we've tried some Tarator soup, Kebab type stuff and Shopska salad. This is the most noticable food since Poland, curiously enough.
Stand by for the final installation of this leg of the trip from Istanbul in a few days. Happy Autumn!
Tom Moreton (tom@fatbeehive.com)