Sadly the day had come when it was time to leave Turkey. I knew I could never forget Turkey and all the wonderful people I had met. I know that I will be back. The only thing they could improve is their cheese selection. We were planning to take the bus to Bulgaria. The otogar (bus station) is way far out of the center, so all the busses run services – minibuses – to the otogar. This is only after you’ve bought a ticket with their company, however. Not knowing the right word for Bulgaria in Turkish, we had trudged up and down the hill in Taksim in the blazing sun asking at all of the bus offices. Mostly, we were greeted by blank stares. It was only after visiting about 20 offices, okay, maybe it was only 10, and being very frustrated that we stumbled upon the metro office. Yes, they went to Bulgaristan. Oh, Bulgaristan. Bulgaria is now like Afghanistan or Pakistan – a very far away country in my mind. With only slight difficulty we bought our tickets. They were a bit confused – why would we want two tickets when I could just sit on Kate’s lap? Not that we understood this when they asked. They had to demonstrate. I felt like a very small child. But at the same time it was pretty funny to be picked up and put on the clerk’s lap. I felt like I should tell her what I wanted for Christmas.
“2 tickets” we said.
The next day found us back at the office with our bags – which had multiplied. We fell in love with the pottery and textiles, and this one particular biscuit named Tutku – a pinwheel of chocolate and vanilla filled with nutella. And so we had bought new suitcases. The service that we thought was going to be a mini bus was actually a full sized bus, and there were only four of us on it. Us, and another couple, who also looked like foreigners. We drove and drove to find ourselves at a parking lot full of Turks waiting with a huge amount of luggage, mostly in cheap plasticy plaid suitcases. They were all jostling about trying to make sure they got on the right service. Children were running everywhere, old men were smoking, taxi drivers were yelling taxi taxi taxi, and it was a general commotion. We waited there for an hour, and then it was back on the bus, having added a few people to our number, but not so many. We drove for another half hour and then arrived at the otogar where we waited another hour. I was getting pretty sick of waiting at this point. I just wanted to get moving. When we left this time it was about nine o’clock and the bus was completely full. I had no idea when we finally left Istanbul. I might have been sleeping. The city goes on forever and ever.
It was around midnight when we were awoken. We had reached the border. Everyone got off the bus and stood in line to be stamped out of Turkey. They flipped through Kate’s passport a lot, examining her many visas, especially the visa from Egypt. Then it got to me. The guy look confused. “Down here” I called. The guard probably didn’t understand the words, but he did look down, whereupon the look on his face became even more perplexed. I guessed he had never seen a traveling mouse. Extremely polite, he came out of his booth to take my passport, and then disappeared back into the office to stamp my passport, before reappearing to hand it back to me. We then all reboarded the bus and drove 100 meters to the Bulgarian passport control, where we once again got off the bus to repeat the ritual. This time, Kate lifted me up to the window, so I could meet the face of the shocked border guard. While I hope I am helping to expand their minds, I’m getting a bit sick of the confused look. And so it was back on the bus. And up the road 100 meters and get off the bus again so that the customs officials could check the contents of the bus. And then we were through! Only to stop again 200 meters later. Apparently the driver was hungry and had declared a 30 minute stop.
We found ourselves talking to the foreign couple we had spotted at the beginning and a Turkish guy who spoke very fluent English. The couple was not actually a couple. They were French and studying and doing an internship in Sofia for the year. Their names were Marie and Matthieu. They had come to Istanbul for the weekend. The Turk was going to Bulgaria on business. He said that all the other people on the bus were Bulgarian.
I don’t really remember much of the conversation. It was about two in the morning by this point, and I was really tired. I do remember that Matthieu, who spoke English better than Marie, or at least was less shy, and therefore doing more of the talking, asked us where we were staying in Sofia.
“No idea” I replied. “We don’t have a plan. We’ll just work it out when we get there.”
“We have an extra room in our dorm” said Matthieu. “You can stay with us if you want.”
“Thanks!”
It was then time to reboard the bus where I promptly fell asleep. We arrived at Sofia at around five in the morning, and it was still very dark. Marie and Matthieu were waiting for us, and hailed a taxi to take us to their dorm, in what they called student city.
“Thank you so much for letting us stay with you” I managed to say before falling asleep.
“You are welcome. We’ve never met a traveling mouse before. See you when we all wake up.”
And thus it was that we came to stay in the ex-communist student housing of student city, a bit outside the center of Sofia with two French students we met on the bus.