Through Bulgaria, to Canakkale

We have left Romania at around 10am (a lot thanks to Tudor, who was unable to wake up earlier than 9am). We later came to regret not leaving earlier, since we didn’t see the European shore of the Mediteranean Sea, because it was fairly dark.

Anyway, we finally left Bucharest and around 11:00 am we reached Giurgiu – Ruse, the Romanian – Bulgarian border.

A lot of friends recommended us to cross Bulgaria and stay at night somewhere in Turkey. They were speaking of cars being hijacked and other horrific stories. None of these stories proved true, but I have to say that while roads in Romania aren’t something to be proud of, roads in Bulgaria are worse. It took us around 6 hours to cross the 300km of Bulgaria.

Another thing we missed is directions at crossroads. We had to turn around twice because we didn’t know where to go from a certain crossroad, especially in the cities.

Anyway, the biggest problem of our trip was neither Bulgaria and it’s roads, nor directions: we had to get to the Bulgarian – Turkish border, where we were told we needed a certain paper for the car (my car is not mine, but my company’s), a paper which was supposed to be legalized and confirmed at the Turkish consulate in Romania, something we never did. I just written on a paper that my company gives me the car to use in the trip and that’s it. So you understand my concerns. Of course, mine only, because Tudor had no problem whatsoever…

And, to my surprise, Tudor was right and the problems I have read on the forums were just fiction to us: the people in customs were nice and they were even talking to us about the water temperature in Antalya, on both Bulgarian and Turkish customs. More, the Turkish worker that checked the papers for the car told us that next time we should probably bring a paper for the car writtern in English or Turkish (yeah, the paper was in Romanian :D ).

So, finally, after getting into Turkey, where I had fulfilled my daylong dream of putting my foot in Turkish soil), we started on the road to Canakkale. Since we had almost 2 more days until the start of the JCI World Congress, it made a lot of sense to see that side of Turkey, a beautiful one, as everyone said.

Unfortunately, the fact that we left quite late from Bucharest (Tudor again), the night didn;t let us see what seemed to be a great view: the Turkish European Coast of the Mediteraneean Sea. We finally reached Canakkale at around 9:30, after a 30 minutes crossover by ferryboat of the Dardanele Strait.

We checked in a Hotel we just found there (Anzac), a Hotel that proved to be quite cheap ($60 for 3 persons) and had wireless internet (me pet-peeve).

Next step, of course, check out the cuisine. I ate some lamd sandwich which actually proved ti be quite good, despite looking scary enough. Next, we ate somekind of chicken (frigarui), drank ayran.

Finally, we were so tired that we fell asleep fast in our beds .

I will add pictures to the post later. Next, Troy and the trip to Kusadasi.