Dani woke us up at Svetla’s around 8 in the morning saying the breakfast is ready. This felt embarrassing. They were too kind with us. George, who helped us yesterday was here too, told us how he has 3 heart attack and a surgery too, but he still smokes, drinks. It was great to see the way he was smiling, and enjoying life. I will have really good memories of Gorno Varshilo, thanks to his joy for life. He spoke simple English, Every 5 minutes he said I’m happy, or I’m very happy, and my friends, also Love. :) He really liked us and we saw this on his face. I remembered those who we welcomed in Budapest, Henry and Jamie, who are in South East Asia now, or Előd and Lehel who have travelled across the entire Europe since. We tried to help them and make their time at Budapest be as good as possible, which made us happy too. We saw something similar on George’s face, that made the farewell better. It’s difficult to accept such love from a stranger, but it was easier as I remembered myself being hosts for other strangers.
We really enjoyed the undulating road on the next 10kms. Later we stopped twice to get some food and when it started to rain. While under cover we finished the remaining pies, and had a photo taken by a local girl. When she saw us firs she ran away, we’re thinking how ugly we might look, but she just ran back for her camera. We also tried to give her a flier of the 360°bringa expedition, but it wasn’t easy due to a massive ditch in the middle of the road. She was on the other side. They were building the sewerage system.
Later it started to rain again, at first we ran under cover. At one of the stops I took time to modify my bike a bit. I had trouble getting off the bike, I only managed to get off it safely when the road was flat. We put a string on the bike stand and now I can open it while sitting. From now on I don’t have to worry about the bike falling cause of my balancing act. I still have to get use to the new invention, I keep forgetting it’s there. The next stop was Pazardzhik, this town was half way to Plovdiv. We stopped at the main square for a coffee/beer. The bikes were extremely popular. Lot of kids jumped on the recumbents to get a photo. We also give them fliers, therefore the second most like on Facebook is from Bulgaria. :) On the way out we stopped to buy some cherries, take photos, and I handled the curious people. It’s great they don’t touch our stuff, the respect out things, hopefully it will stay like this for long time. We had a great tailwind after Pazardzhik, so we arrived to Plovdiv in just over an hour. We followed the GPS in the town that turned out to be quite funny, first a pedestrian overpass, then an underpass. On the way back we chose the normal roads for cars. There’s always something good in the bad, we found a really nice square next to a walking street where we started to cook. Meanwhile a Kurd gentleman noticed us, Ahmet who invited us to his table for a beer/coffee. He really liked our story, although his story was something too: once the Turkish police took all his belongings, has shot at his ribs, cut off his 3 fingers, and so on. Today he lives in Germany for 15 years, has 3 sons and 3 daughters, a politician for 3 years and represents the Kurds in Europe – if we understood well. What’s interesting and may be good for us is that one of his sons lives in Erzurumb, so it’s possible that he can help us when we’re there. Lot of people told us to avoid Kurdistan, the Kurd region as their people live under massive oppression. How lucky we ran into a Kurd politician. He was a really cool guy, he gave his e-mail address, we will contact him for sure, if for nothing but to translate our 10 important sentences about us, who we are what we’re doing there.
After eating and finished talking to Ahmet, we moved north to Trud, to Petya who’s a friend of Magdi. He translated us the 10 sentences to Bulgarian that we still use. So we’re under cover again, and I’m the only person awake. We agreed to talk in the morning as all of us were really tired. Petya possibly knew in the morning what kind of day he’ll have unlike us, who kept stumbling into more and more interesting people, adventures. We also had some trouble to find this house, so it wasn’t a boring day. If we have boring days in the future, we’ll probably make it fun too. :)
As I wrote before we had trouble to find this address. We should learn from this. There was a given address. The GPS doesn’t recognize it, and we don’t have map. We asked in a little shop, who showed the street after talking for a while in Bulgarian.

We were looking for house 32. We found the 26 and 46, but the rest doesn’t have a number on them. We knocked into a few houses but they didn’t know where it was. I was angry, why don’t the know it, don’t they live in this village? If someone came into my street I’d know where he wanted to go even if he talks urdu or was a deaf. Then Zita lost the plot too, a biker came, who told us to follow. We went a km away from there where he put down his bike and invited us in. Ok. He’s very kind – Dani was right – but where’s the address? We had to wait an English speaking guy who was in the shower, when he arrived he just said „I don’t know”. We should be somewhere else and no one knows where that place is. Then I realized it! Shame on you Arpad! The reason people didn’t get what we wanted and didn’t know the address, cause it was written in latin rather than in cyril… We haven’t thought they don’t use latin letters here, we’ve seen so many words written in latin. And I even know the cyril alphabet but I lost my cool before thinking… I feel bad that we thought they are the stupid, but we were. It was a good lesson. We should keep the followings in mind: 1. Never loose your temper. 2. If everyone seems silly around you doesn’t mean they are the silly, but you! At least in that circumstance. The end of the story: While we were waiting for the guy in the shower, Petya sent us a text which made me even angrier, so we left and went back to the previous place to meet Petya’s dad who took us to a totally different location that we wouldn’t find without them. But now we’re here.

PS. It’s unlikely there will be a post every day. It would be great to finish writing the previous stage.

We break the space-time continuum in our posts! First we publish the “yesterday’s” stage, and then at some point we’ll finish writing the Bulgarian border – Sofia stage. Till then here’s this goat’s story:

In Sofia we didn’t wake up early, Zita snoozed the alarm as many times as possible. Our breakfast was the pastries we bought the previous day, and then we started to pack. It was a big job because the tent was hanging on the balcony to dry out. Zita and Dani put some music on to the Youtube which I didn’t mind first, but then a „Let’s find Stacey” sentence almost freaked me out, that this is it, but I counted till 10 and let them have fun, we won’t gain much with those few minutes, plus my argument wouldn’t do much good either. So everyone packed in their own pace. My bags were ready on the corridor first. Dani asked another 15 minutes, but looking at his stuff it was obvious he needs 2 more hours. Unfortunately I mentioned him this, so he decided to pack for 2 hours. Meanwhile I had other things to do too, after Dani and I moved the bikes out I started to adjust Zita’s pedal, she asked me to do for a while. It was a good idea I didn’t do it somewhere on the road, because I had a major problem with the chain as I lacked of the routine and the appropriate tools. I had to extend the chain so I could push the boom forward. After putting the chain back together with Dani’s help and washing off the oil, I noticed something funny on the bike. The chain was twisted… I can’t be this stupid! :( I was fuming, was so angry with myself, I had to restart the whole thing. This time I was quite quick but got oil all over myself. While doing this Milos, our host had arrived, that was the first time we met. As soon as he exited the lift, he bumped into me fixing the bike. He had a real look at the bikes, then started to talk all three of us. Who knows how long it would have lasted if he hadn’t had to go to work by noon. While he had a shower we carried all our things to the ground floor. We took a jumping photo that wasn’t great for the 6th time either, but still was fun. I imagined us form the outside. Three crazy Hungarians spends 2 days in a Slovenian guy’s flat who they only meet for 1 hour, then at the meeting they dance and jump for joy for the camera. Total nuts. However, none of us felt it was awkward, on the contrary it was so natural, and we had a great time. Hopefully we meet next time, somewhere else…
We only did 200m when a Billa (shop) came along, where we had to buy food. While Zita and Dani were shopping, I fixed Zita’s battery charger and now we can use both rather than charging via the Bike2USB. We only need one more USB charger for the camera then we won’t have to worry about where we can charge the flat batteries. Today we had a quite monotone day, and this turned out to be good as we cycled 86kms with an afternoon departure, I think we did well. The previous day I drew a map form the gpsies.com into my notebook, so we knew exactly when we’re going to have the uphills and how steep they will be.

We stopped for lunch in a village center. There was a military plane in the middle of a junction hung up at 5m high. The wind was blowing its wings hard and there were goats tied up to the poles that hold the plane. This seemed absurd and we liked it very much so quickly sat down on the benches under the plane to eat.

We had a nice pace and suddenly we passed the 50km mark, of course this was very heartwarming for me. :) I always knew this group can go if there’s a less exciting landscape, and we don’t stop at every corner. Today was like this. We actually made the day exciting by missing a turn. Dani was on fire and he kept surging ahead, when I missed the turn he was way ahead. I tried to honk or shout but he couldn’t hear me. I told Zita to wait at the crossing we missed and I went after Dani, it took a while to catch him on the downhill and thankfully he also noticed something was fishy. We lost 100m elevation by the mistake, so both of us pushed hard to get back to Zita. These recumbents can go pretty fast if you push enough; we lost about 20 minutes with this. First I was angry with Dani then myself too, but a few hours later I put all behind.

We quickly found the right path which welcomed us with a 150m uphill. In the pass it was cool again as we reached 800m above sea level, not the first time on the day. We found a castle ruin along the way we had a quik look as it was getting dark. We switched the light on than carried on downhill. It reminded me of my childhood videogames, where I had to go around the potholes, but this was so much better, the resolution is perfect, and any mistake can be fatal. We put on some long leggings because we had to carry on due to the lack of water and the nearest village was about 10kms away beyond a 100m uphill. There was a dirt road on the right where we stopped to check the GPS. I planned the route that way but that time of the day it wasn’t suitable. However the tarmac road takes us to the village even if it’s a detour. But it’s worth it because it’s almost completely dark. It was a 3 house farm rather than a village plus there was no water available so we moved on to the next place, to Gorno Varshilo. Due to the darkness we didn’t want to look for a campsite, so we knocked on someone’s door if we could camp in their garden. We tried to explain the owner that the driveway would do too, he just shouted across to his neighbour who spoke little English. He made a call then disappeared. Then he returned and waved to follow him. Finally, we’ll have a garden! We were happy. We went to a yard that seemed great. We were pointing at the ground saying “palanki, palanki (tent)”, but they said no, let’s go in the house. Ok, maybe we have to drink snaps. But no, they told we have to sleep there! Wow, that’s more than great. The sister of the gentleman, Svetla is a Lutheran minister, who owns that house. As a thank you we offered some Unicum, then started to unpack our food, when he waved and said „my house”, pointing at Svetla who’s preparing dinner for us. Few minutes later we got poached eggs with, home made goat cheese, nuts, and salad. We tried to communicate every way possible, then helped to clean up the table and started to make our bed on the floor in the room. Cause it was around midnight that time. And again he said no-no, Svetla was making our beds upstairs, „this is my house”, here you won’t sleep on the floor. Well, thank you, what else we could do?! :) Dani befriended him, and we were really glad for it, because we were really tired plus he was a heavy smoker what we forgave because what he did for us. Here we are under a roof, again. I almost set up my tent in the middle of the village because of the tiredness. Being patient paid off again. Zita and Dani are already asleep, so it’s time for me to rest too. I try to write every day from now, maybe it will be easier, and maybe the end product will be better too. The problem is I have to catch up with the last 5-6 days between the Serb-Bulgarian borders to Sofia. :) This should be our biggest problem. Also we pledged we will wake up early cause it’s not fun riding in the dark.