Day 8

We're only in Plovdiv, but we're already in a Turkish mood - at least at moment of writing this post we're being delighted with the folk music of our destination country at the reception of the Hotel City&Spa. Our host is a Turkish entrepreneur living in Bulgaria who gave us a 75% discount in recognition of our expedition. We give him all of our respect. After the days of camping and staying it school dormitories we are starting to get spoiled: this is our second night in a luxury hotel.

This morning we woke up 360 kilometers from here in Calafat luxury. We could take a longer rest than planned, due to an unfortunate event we only ate our breakfast at 9:30 AM. Zsolt's old knee pains came back, so he had to travel to Târgu Jiu in the morning. Mr. Kálmán József however, found a solution to this as well - he made a few phone calls until he got the CFR soccer team's doctor, who happened to be in town because of the later team match being held there, took a look at Zsolt and fixed him in such a way that he could even dance by the time he got back. So, those of you who haven't been fans of CFR or didn't follow soccer until now, it's time to get a subscription into the hard core of the fan base. We thank him and Mr. Kálmán József, for without them we couldn't be listening to the Süküdüm Süküdüm song in Plovdiv.

We set out at around noon to the Bulgarian customs. In half an hour all cars and bikes crossed the border and the Danube without problems, and we could already take a sample of the air of our neighbours. At the first parking we packed the bikes on the cars and started our long road trip through the Bulgarian landscapes. Yesterday evening István arrived with the 16 person Optimus panel van, who will be our driver and guide in what follows. This is a great help, because we couldn't all fit in the cars.

Taking a few chocolate breaks, we flew through Bulgaria in 6 hours. By the time we left the first few villages we started to understand why we didn't bike through these places - abandoned, crumbling houses, depopulated villages. Everywhere around us unknown and strange Cyrillic texts, people not speaking English and a culture that is distant to ours. This is how Bulgaria is, at least the part we crossed. We would have to spend a great deal of time among the Bulgarians to get to know them and their customs, discover their values. But our goal is still Tekirdag, so we rather just quickly crossed through Bulgaria. The mountains, however, are stunningly beautiful. The whole country is full of hills and mountains, the highway going through bridges and tunnels, a stunning sight. True, the asphalt is a bit old and poorly maintained, but they still have thrice our highways.

We've arrived at 9 PM to the city of Plovdiv where our hosts were already waiting for us. By the time we got to our rooms and settled in, the pizza had arrived. Everything is going well, this Turkish style hotel is great, it will get us ready for tomorrow's adventure. Wish us luck at the customs, we hope to get through as easily as today. In the morning we will visit Plovdiv's center, and then head out to Edirne.

This is how our first car day went, and we'll have more of it tomorrow but we can't wait to cycle in Turkey. Everyone says they're fine, more details coming tomorrow - we had neither time nor energy to take care of it today. Pictures coming soon.   J