Two days in the life of a Turkish Truck Driver. - Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria
This place was Amazing visited Sep 10, 2005
Rides: 2 cars and a truck Countries: +1! (even though all we saw of Bulgaria was its Turkish truck stops) Drive 2 hours, stop for tea in a turkish truck stop (even in Bulgaria). Drive two hours, bribe a border guard or 6 - either with chocolate or euros. Lunch in a turkish truck stop. More tea. Drive two hours, drink more tea - yes, again in a turkish truck stop, even in Bulgaria. There seems to be a whole network of truck stops run by turks and catering exclusively to turks spaced a neat 2 hours apart all along what passes for the highway through Bulgaria. Sleep 7 or so hours (outside a turkish truck stop, after drinking copious quantities of tea), repeat. Leaving Bucharest, we caught buses and a tram and a minibus to the edge of town (which took about 2 hours longer than it should due to trams marked on the map no longer existing...), then stood on the side of a road in what seemed to be a small satellite village. Although it wasn't marked, I think we were standing at the local bus stop, and a few other people came and stood about waiting too, including an elderly woman, who did her best to chat to us. My Romanian was better than it had been a week earlier, but still pretty minimal, so it was fun attempting to communicate. She, and another lady who was also waiting, explained that we should take a bus, or a train. And we explained that we prefer to hitch. And they explained there was a bus, and a train. And we explained we wanted to hitch! Random side of the road conversations can be fun! And the old lady explained how she wanted to be as big as me, and that both she and Kate were two skinny, and that her sister was a big woman, but she herself never managed it. Eventually we were picked up by a young stockbroker in a tiny trendy-yellow car. He was off to play paintball about 20km up the road with a friend in the purple convertible that was following. After an in depth discussion of Romanian economy and all the countries he had travelled to on business and holidays, he dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, where another car pulled up to pick us up almost before we had got out of the first one! The second lift was an ancient battered 4WD with sideways bench seats in the back and four grubby, smoking men in it. It was towing a trailer that had in it, among the junk, a couple of live geese. We were squeezed into the back with two of the guys, and were taken to what we were told was the border, which runs through the town of Giurgiu. It didn't look very open - there were fences across the road, and when we we wandered towards a guard he waved us to left. So we tried the left side of the building. Another guard waved us to keep going. There seemed to be nothing to the left but a street with houses along it, so I turned back to the guard in confusion, and he made a big waving gesture as if to say it wasn't close. After studing the passing traffic of buses and trucks, we determined that the buses with "Istanbul" on the front were indeed going left and disappearing around a far corner. So we followed. Around the corner we could at least see the border station they were going to - a kilometre or two away. We had cut a corner in our efforts to see further, so we made our way back to the road, waving our tumbs at the trucks as we got close, and although we weren't exactly expecting them to see us until we were actually on the road, one stopped before we even got there! The truck was driven by Hasan, a middle aged turkish truck driver, who lived in Istanbul, but he and his colleague in the next truck were delivering a load of timber from Germany to the Iraqi border for the US Army, and planned to spend a night in Istanbul on the way. He spoke about 20 words of German, which was useful. Over the next 2 days he looked after us very well: refusing to let us pay for our meals and letting us sleep in his truck alone (at a turkish truck stop somewhere in Bulgaria), while he took the spare bed in his colleague's truck. We hadn't planned to spend a night with them - we had planned to stop in Veliko Tarnovo, but just as I was thinking "it should be close now, we should tell him we want to get off" I saw a sign for the turn off go past. We'd missed it! It wasn't much of a problem, as we'd been debating whether or not to stop, anyway. Kate wanted to get to Istanbul a few days earlier than planned, and we knew that it would be easy to return to Bulgaria from Istanbul. At least, easier than, say, Estonia. There were a few eye-openers on this trip, such as the state of the average truck stop toilet (actually, that wasn't a surprise at all). The fact that there are cleverly placed truck stops run by turks every two hours along the highway, so that the drivers never have to miss their teabreaks. The fact that they ate lentil soup for breakfast. The number of bribes of german chocolate or 5 euro notes it took Hasan to get his truck easily and relatively quickly through the bulgarian border. The fact that a truck driver existed who wouldn't try something inapropriate on Kate! Hasan was the model of decency. Unfortunately, his mate wasn't so good. At one of the stops, Hasan had suggested that one of us travel with his colleague, but we had refused as we always prefer to stick together, of course. Also, the colleague seemed like a bit of a dunce. We felt really bad when the bulgarian police stopped us late on the first night and Hasan had to give him a 10 euro bribe to not fine us for having more people than seatbelts. After that, Kate travelled with the colleague most of the time. As he spoke a few words of russian (about as many as Kate, really) and no german, it seemed to make sense that she went with him, and I stayed with our friend Hasan. Unfortunately, by midday on the second day, he was getting creepy, and holding her hand and that sort of thing. The usual. Somehow I'm exempt from the usual truck driver attentions, but my presence never seemed to stop them trying for Kate. For these reasons, we were very grateful when Hasan offered his truck for our first night. Unfotunately, unlike most trucks, his only had one bunk, and a very narrow one at that. Kate and I did, however, manage to get some sleep while sharing it. We probably would have been more comfortable in our tent, but safer in the truck! Hasan even gave us his keys and told us to lock the doors. Spending two days with a decent and hospitable turk was a great introduction to Turkey. Although he gave us his phone number, we never did contact him afterwards, which I still feel slightly bad about. I think he might have been hoping that we'd sponsor him to come to Australia or something, though, and I didn't really want to get into that. Still, I'm very grateful to him, and hope he doesn't think badly of us for not getting in touch after he looked after us so well!