On the train to Bulgaria we met a very nice couple from Germany and New Zealand with whom we shared the hysterical shoe incident. As the train was leaving the station three Bulgarian women entered our compartment with hundreds of pairs of blue sneakers hidden in multi-colored checkered bags. There was the young woman who carried all the bags, the old woman who guarded the door, and the sophisticated woman, who we think was the brain and financier behind the whole affair.
We didn't know, but there is a secret hide-away space underneath the seats in the 2nd class compartments of the Trans-Balkan Express. If you push the seats forward you get access to an alternative place to store your luggage. Sweating copiously the young woman emptied bag after bag of sneakers into these spaces while the old woman checked the door. When train officials passed by the seats were shoved back into place and small talk between the young, the old, and the sophisticated woman ensued. This went on for a while so we constantly had to get up and down from our seats.
So there we sat on top of all the hidden shoes through the Romanian and the Bulgarian passport controls and when the Romanian customs official shone a flashlight in the eyes of the young woman, asking her firmly if she had anything to declare. Just as we had crossed the Danube and were approaching the Bulgarian border control, the dance started again. Move the seats, remove all the shoes and stuff them into the bags. All of a sudden a group of children appeared along the tracks next to the train. The old woman opened the window and started yelling orders. And out the window flew bag after bag into the arms of the running children. The young woman, the old woman, and the sophisticated woman congratulated themselves on yet another successful smuggling trip across the border, said their good-byes to a baffled Jonas and Guillaume and calmly left the train empty-handed.
In Bulgaria we became linguistically lost. No longer was it only hard to understand the spoken language, but we had to learn how to read Cyrillic characters in order to read shop and street signs and get on the right trains. We left Bulgaria with Cyrillic pride.
We visited Veliko Tarnovo, which was the capital during the Second Bulgarian Empire. In the Old Town we managed to find a hidden church where an old and scary man gave us a private tour of the 13th century frescoes. It was literally a religious experience.
Finally off the Romanian diet we consumed all the vegetables we could get a hold of in cozy, traditional restaurants called mahanas.
After Veliko Tarnovo we went our separate ways for two days. Jonas got his urban fix in Sofia while Guillaume wandered off to a Stalinist industrial nightmare called Septemvri where accommodation just does not exist. After a desperate search he had to leave on the last train, riding a narrow gauge railway up the mountains to Velingrad and Bansko where people were very helpful and aided in the search for accommodation. At midnight he could finally crawl into a bed.
We met up again in Plovdiv where we marveled at the Hans and Gretel architecture and visited the monastery in Bashkovo. |
