The weather was pretty crappy-steady, hard rain, foggy, no visibility, but we chose the upscaled bus company, and received airline-type service. First they served water and yummy Nutella-like cookies, then powdered Turkish coffee, which was surprisingly good, then water again. They allowed us a rest stop, but we were responsible to pay the .50 lev (.26 cents) fee for the Turkish toilet (with no toilet paper to go with). My seat mate (who was not Beth, as bus was booked), insisted on paying my Madame Pee Pee fee (I mentioned this was my first bus ride to Turkey and she took me under her wing). I repayed her generously by sharing my yummy cookies and almonds!
During our route, parts of the road around Plovdiv had washed out so we had to detour. Then we passed three bad car accidents.
As we approached the Turkish border, there had to be a line up of over 300 trucks. Seemed like a 7 hour wait to me!! We dismounted the bus to go through the Romanian passport control, got back on, then dismounted again between the two countries for Duty Free shopping, then dismounted a third time for Turkish passport control. This was a 2-hour ordeal!! The only odd question Turkish passport control asked me was what the M. for my middle name stood for (really?).
So, we knew that Edrine was not an official stop but it was a town just over the border, and the bus stopped (so we thought) at a hotel near the town, where you could get a taxi to downtown Edrine. I had learned this from my TripAdvisor (TA) friend, Annie. She even provided the name of the rest stop and how much the taxi would cost. So imagine our surprise when the bus stopped in the middle of a 4-lane highway in the pouring rain, to let us off. Cars are literary going 80mph and visibility is very low. There are two guard rails we must jump over in the middle of the highway, with our rolling luggage! This was not what I had expected. We made it across the highway alive and entered the hotel area. We were in the restaurant section and no one spoke English. I saw a sign for the Reception on the 2nd floor, so I climbed the stairs but the hotel was completely deserted. No lights on and not a person on sight. Went back down to the bar and asked the Batista, who spoke little English, to call us a cab. He was hesitant to help us, plus we had no Turkish money (lira), and there was no ATM in sight. Just as he was dialing the phone, a taxi was dropping off another passenger and we asked him if he would take us to town. He wouldn't take Bulgarian leva, we had no Euros so settled on $10! Funny, the 5-hr trip from Plotdiv was only $17.00 and this 6km trip to town cost almost the same!
We made it to Turkey, so more on that on the next blog!
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