Lunch with Petya

On our rest day in Plovdiv we woke up around 9:30 when Petya was already at work, the rest of the family just woke up too and finally his little 4 year old son befriended us. .
Stanimir couldn’t make to be our guide but we arranged a meeting at lunch with Petya. We sat in a restaurant next to a tiny park and it turned out to be the jackpot. The place was very friendly and cheap and even the toilet was fascinating, we liked the design so much Zita and I agreed to make our future bathroom like this. We had a good time with Petya despite the short time.

He’s an ex-collagegue of Magdi, who I went to College together, and she asked him to translate our 10 key sentences to Bulgarian. He also offered his hospitality straight away, even though he already knew he’ll have a busy week this time around. He told us how glad they moved to the village 3 years ago, because the life is so much better, it feels like they are part of a big family. We also told about our journey and our silliness yesterday. Of course Petya told us he could have given detailed description, but we told it was better this way as we will learn our lesson. We’re happy we met Petya in person too; he turned out to be the cool guy we imagined through his e-mails. It would have been shame if we missed the opportunity to see each other. Thank you very much for the hospitality, you made our stay in Plovdiv brilliant.

You WON – in Plovdiv

After lunch we went to town to do some things then we cycled up to the old town on the top of the hill. We had a look at the ancient theatre then strolled back to the center on a bumpy road thanks to the macadam road. The old town is the best district in Plovdiv for sure, the inner town is nowhere near that. We could spend days here with a guide like Stanimir and a good camera. A lot of people did this way. The nice weather attracted more tourist than before, so we had even more admirers, curious people around which was not bad at all. So far we handle them very well, we have a few words with everyone who comes to us. Sometimes it feels strange having many people taking photos of us. :) But it isn’t a problem, we knew this will happen. In the old town we met a Hungarian family too and Zita gave them a Sportszelet chocolate bar packaging. It was a “winner” paper that could be exchanged for another bar. We got that from a friend in Hungary, but had no time to exchange it so we passed on. :)

Camping Riverside Bugville*

It’s good to be away from the busy towns and be out in the nature, we set our camp up 10kms away from Plovdiv along the river. We invited Dani it our tent as ha couldn’t find a suitable place for his hammock, plus there were way too many bugs, mosquitoes around. While moving the bags out from the back of our tent so all of us could fit in, I left the door open accidentally. This resulted an unwanted guest, a huge spider we’ve never encountered before in the wild. After the surprise we evicted the spider and burst into laughter as we moved Dani in from the bugs and spiders. Finally I could write without struggling, hopefully I will have more time to write from now on. There’s a lot to catch up on. I hope we’ll catch up with the miles tomorrow, we made a 65km loss today according to the plan… The landscape doesn’t look too exciting but we’ll see. I’m not worried about the schedule, we’ll get the invitation letter for the Iran visa when it arrives. Till then we’ll discover Istambul, then play catch up with the lost time.

Breakfast with a group of kids

On the 20th day of the journey we woke up relatively late and by 8:45am we were on the road. Dani woke up hours earlier and was walking around, met some local fishermen as he was waiting for us. We told him to wake us up next time – he wakes up around 5am. We stopped at a shope in the first village where we met a group of kids, who clearly enjoyed our bikes. They escorted us on the way out with loud cheers. I noticed here that I left my military cutlery at the shop. Hopefully the shopkeeper lady found it because she gave us watermelon before we left. I’m sad for the cutlery set as I have nice memories about it.

Lunch with Arman

After breakfast we hit the road. Shortly after we lost Dani. He had some gear problems, so we stopped regularly to wait for him. At one point he appeared with a companion. We met Arman, a French-Turkish lad who was having the same Ortleib bags on his trekking bike as we have. We stopped at the next marketplace along the road and started chatting. Arman was born in South Turkey but grew up in France. He studies to become a geography-history teacher, but he had a gap year when he worked to have enough money to have a 3 month trip back home to Turkey. He told his story in a restaurant at lunch. We was excited to get home and was riding a much faster tempo than us, so we parted ways.

A carriage and a BMW on the same road

The miles gone faster than in the morning. The landscape was nice but not as exciting as on a lower graded road where we could meet more people and see more villages. We passed a happy man on a horse carriage, who we passed 3 times because we stopped to take photos. We waved each other every time and he responded with a smile. I wonder how it feels like to be on a carriage when he sees expensive cars with people with different lifestyle in them passing by. Does he envy them? Who’s happier? One thing for sure, it’s less likely to get to know the driver who locks him in a black box and goes 70-80km/h.At a petrol station we had a break where we fixed Dani’s bike while Zita enjoyed the Kindle.

Camping Church garden**

We finished the day in Podkrepa. When we left the nr. 8 road we spotted a church in the middle of a village. We found it’s yard and got permission after we showed our Bulgarian travel certificate (thank you Magdi and Petya for it). We had a lagre group of kids who we got rid of by the help of some local adults, then we cooked dinner: spaghetti carbonara, with local goat cheese and wine, then we had shower; this was the first time we used our 10l Oertlieb water carrier with the shower head. It was brilliant, Dani even decided to get the 4l version for himself. We spent a bit more than planned, 3683HUF, but that included the lunch and dinner. We could send less if we paid attention at the shopping. It happened a few times that we bought too much goat cheese (300HUF/kg) and had to throw out cause it’s gone out. Or some other cheap food came along we couldn’t resist. Also we carry lot of food for hundreds of kilometers. We figured we should only buy veggies at a grocery store and not in a supermarket. To sum it up, we have to improve our Food Management.
It was interesting when I torn my shorts – as always – and thought about what to do. Should I throw it away and buy a new one that costs time and money, or sew it, but then had the winning thought. Tear it. It looks funny but still the best solution. If this wasn’t a road trip but a normal every day with work, it would not look well. :)

In the next post you’ll know how we got to Turkey.

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.