Sunflowers, Rakia, and the First Tests of My Sanity
 |
| By Eddie Carter |
6 BULGARIA
507
Kilometres – 9 Days
17
August – 26 August 2007
Prelude
I entered
Bulgaria confident, optimistic, and dangerously underqualified. Armed with a
bicycle, a creatively interpreted visa, and the false belief that nodding was
universal, I was ready to navigate a new country using logic, goodwill, and
whatever that alphabet was doing. This would be my warm‑up stretch—nothing
dramatic, just a gentle introduction to being wrong.
17 August – Oltenita, Romania to Silistra,
Bulgaria (85 kilometres)
After a breakfast of fresh tomatoes
and paprika from Peter’s garden — the kind of breakfast that makes you feel
like a wholesome, agrarian goddess even though you haven’t washed your cycling
shirt in a week — we hurried toward the Calarasi border to cross the Danube
into Bulgaria.
I was mildly concerned about my
Romanian visa situation, which stated I could stay for two days and which I had
generously interpreted as “twenty.” I handed over my passport with the
confidence of a woman who absolutely does not have her story straight. The
officials disappeared behind a screen, presumably to debate whether I was a
harmless tourist or an incompetent criminal mastermind. They returned my
passport without comment. I took this as a diplomatic victory.
Bulgaria immediately presented a new
challenge: communication. Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which made
every sign look like a puzzle I hadn’t been trained to solve. Worse, nodding
means “no,” and shaking your head means “yes,” which is frankly unkind to
foreigners. My first encounter with this cultural quirk happened while trying
to find accommodation. The lady shook her head, so I prepared to cycle away —
only for her to produce a key. I accepted the room and the fact that I would
now be second‑guessing every human interaction in Bulgaria.
18 August – Silistra to Balchik (136
kilometres)
Bulgaria covers 110,994 square
kilometres — roughly the size of Malawi, which I consider small, though perhaps
that says more about my sense of scale than geography. Eddie and I headed
toward Balchik on the Black Sea, pedalling through farmlands, cornfields, and
sunflowers that stared at us like cheerful spectators who didn’t have to cycle
136 kilometres in the heat.
Balchik had no campsite, because, of
course, it didn’t, so we cycled another 15 kilometres to Kavarna. The campsite
there was idyllic, and we threw ourselves into the lukewarm Black Sea like two
overheated seals.
19 August – Kavarna
We spent the following day at the
beach and unexpectedly reunited with the Baltic Cycle Group from Bucharest. It
was a fun night of drinking and trying to communicate. They spoke Polish. We
did not. Vodka did the heavy lifting.
I had initially mistaken the Black Sea
for a lake — a detail I kept to myself until I checked a map and realised it
connects to the ocean via the Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the
Dardanelles. At 436,400 square kilometres and over 2000 metres deep, it is decidedly
not a lake. I pretended I had known this all along.
20 August – Kavarna to Kamcija via
Varna (96 kilometres)
We continued toward the Turkish
border, though navigation was complicated by signboards written in Bulgarian. Still, we found a basic campsite in Varna with
a decent beach and, once again, the Baltic Cycles. They were like a cheerful,
vodka‑powered mirage that kept reappearing. The restaurant owner offered us
Rakia, a fruit brandy strong enough to make you forget mosquito bites, your
name, and possibly your nationality.
21 August – Kamcija
The next day was spent at leisure,
chatting with fellow cyclists. Communication improved in direct proportion to
vodka consumption. By evening, we were practically fluent in each other’s
languages.
22 August – Kamcija to Nesebar (104
kilometres)
We settled into a comfortable routine:
pack up, cycle, find a campsite, repeat. In Nesebar, we met a 70-year-old
German man travelling the world by bike and trailer. His bicycle had no pedals.
I didn’t ask questions. At his age, he had earned the right to travel however
he pleased.
The campsite was excellent, and we
stayed two days.
24–25 August – Nesebar to Yuk Camping (96
kilometres)
Thanks to the Baltic Cycle Group’s
recommendation, we found one of the best campsites in the area. We stopped at
Pomorie and Sozopol for swims, which were necessary because the weather was hot
enough to roast a pepper on your pannier rack.
My fellow cyclists moved on, but I
stayed to work on fading my cycling tan, which had reached “zebra” levels of
contrast.
26 August – Yuk Camping to Border (75
kilometres)
Bulgaria’s terrain is diverse:
coastline, mountains, and — in August — heat that could melt your will to live.
The flies were relentless, buzzing around our heads like they were auditioning
for a remake of The Birds.
Shortly before the Turkish border, we
rolled into a small village for refreshments and ended up staying the night.
There were no campsites or guesthouses, so we were directed to the hospital,
which doubled as a guesthouse. I didn’t ask why. At this point in my travels,
nothing surprised me.
left Bulgaria
fluent in exactly two things: misreading Cyrillic and distrusting my own head
movements.
