We knew it was gonna be a long day and it was. When we left Sofia the sun was shining and the temperature was 10 degrees below. As we moved furhter east it disappeard into the fog but the temperature stayed. With a blanket over the knees and beenie and gloves we made our way to the turkish border. The car looked more and more like a block of ice and at one point we stopped to get rid of several kilos of snow/slush/ice that had developed around the car. It is quite exhausting to drive through this deep frozen winter landscape even though it is stunningly beautiful sometimes. The sun and the warmth are like a mirage somewhere on the other side of the turkish mountains.
Bulgaria was still a very positive surprise. We were a bit sceptic after all the warnings we’ve had but the people we met were all nice and friendly. Like our hostess at the hostel in Sofia. She knocked on our door several times just to make sure that the electrical heater was working or to bring us some extra blankets. The morning of our departure she came with hot tea, gave us a big hug and wished us luck for the rest of the journey.
Mariot-M Hostel in Sophia
The border crossing to Turkey gave us a taste of what is waiting for us further down the road. We had to go through 6 checkpoints before we could enter the country. When we came to the 6th and last checkpoint it turned out that we were missing one stamp and we had to turn Sally around in the snow and go back to checkpoint number 4 to get the necessary stamp. Finally we were waved through and we could get going towards Istanbul. On the way the gearbox begun to make itself heard more and more. We’ve noticed this already on the road to Sofia but now the grinding noice was getting louder by the hour. We have to look into this more thoroughly when we get to Istanbul. At the moment we are sitting in a hotel room 100 km outside Istanbul. We had to drive here on small roads since the highway was closed for some reason, we guess of heavy snow, so we finally decided to stop before we were too tired and would make expensive misstakes in the bad weather and new traffic culture.
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