There’s an unknown rule. Well, at least unknown to me and anyone I asked. No train will run from Thessaloniki to Sofia, Bulgaria. I must have questioned five, maybe ten people as I tried to get answers with no luck. They all pointed to the bus station, which was, luckily, next door. We can get a bus that day. I spoke to a few on the train that said they were doing just that and had information the others didn’t. These were the backpack draggers. Battle hardened travelers from Germany and France, all of twenty-five years old. I didn’t want a ride in the dark, though. No, I’m not afraid of the dark. However, I need to be able see what I’m writing about. The wooden benches offered a place for us to plan and I noticed the geometric ceiling as I mulled over the information I got from the others I’d met. It didn’t take long before we found our way to the bus ticketing office.
One thing traveling has taught me. Well, it’s taught me many things but, one big nugget is; get information wherever you can from the sources you can, that aren’t trying to sell you something. Those kiddos (I can call them kids, I have some of my own that age,) have grown up doing this, and this is no time to fit into the old cliché in the States and maybe everywhere else, too. You know the one about not asking for directions. Traveling will kick that cliché right in the seat of whatever pants you’re wearing. Then you’d just be lost, with a sore ass.
Looking up at me from her seat behind the plexiglass, the undisputed champion of countless customer battles. Providing bus riding succor to travelers ignorant of the rules they apply there. Everything about her told me she had her own brand of no-nonsense Grandmother-ing. She looked at me, as she had so many doubtful others. Glasses nesting in the auburn, Aquanet curls on top of her head, the chain from the earpieces swinging in graceful arcs next to her sensible earrings as she wheeled her office chair to the filing cabinet and back. She hands me tickets that are handwritten and tells me the bus will be out front in two hours.
“Leave your bags here.” She points to an alcove near her desk. I have faith they’re protected just as well as they would be in an armored car with her on duty. We walk to lunch at Beyond the Walls. I get the chance to talk with the Executive Chef when he walked out and give him one of my cards, leave a review and merge among the suits walking by back to the station.
The bus doesn’t show, and there are no straight answers to when it will get there or to where we get on. I don’t know if there’s maybe some loss in translation or not. Her sage words come shrink-wrapped by the plexiglass even though I see her neck bulge to push them out at a volume that will make it to me. “No worry. I am here.” She nods and smiles at me as though this is the most concrete thing in the universe.
I haven’t mentioned the cards before, have I? It was an idea I had before we left. I had cards made with a QR code on the back that brings you to the website. I’ve been spreading them about as we travel. One or two in books I happen across or people I talk to. I’m not good at all about asking for help but, one thing I have read over and over. Read a book to the end. What do you find? The acknowledgments section. I’ve seen it in interviews with authors, classes, bogs, podcasts, etc. You get the point. They all say thank you to those that have helped them. That they couldn’t have gotten the book done without support. With that in mind, I asked for help. I sent cards, the ones I now scatter as I go with an enclosed letter of explanation. Asking them to do as I am now on the road. Put these in places, give them to people who you think would enjoy it. People with the right mindset.
So, if you find one. Say hello! Tell me or take a picture of where you found it and send it to me with the location, then pass it along and give it to someone or put it somewhere you think it needs to be. I’ll have a pretty good idea who to thank. I’ll start putting pins in my map and eventually get it put on the website. Lesson learned: things look a little brighter when you’re not alone in trying to accomplish something.
The bus shows up. Bus-Stop Grandmother comes bustling out of her office and herds us chickens onto it, and we are late but we are off. The bus is warm. The windows don’t go down. How do all these people have coats on? The sweat trickles here, there and everywhere. Two Babushkas sit in the chairs opposite us, with the whole kit. Long coats with a kind of housecoat-style dress underneath, sensible shoes, support hose and the scarves around their heads. The chatter of one doesn’t stop. If the other is talking, crossing the border, passport control, it doesn’t matter to her. I don’t know if she ever took much of a breath. She’s still talking when we finally get to Sophia. I walk by but her attention never shifts from the driver getting their bags too slowly, poor fellow. She may still have him trapped, for all I know.
Crossing the border is another walk through another version of no man’s land. Although the guards are minimal. Some may have a gun but no magazine in it. Others carry sticks, some nothing at all. A guard tower stands sentinel nearby, empty. I’m happy about the lack of grenades and automatic weaponry. We walk through a sparse duty-free store and do not need to booze or chocolate in bulk. We are hungry, though. The last bagel at the coffee shop is ours, and we hop back on the bus. I have a pretty good idea how long that bagel sat there. Boots have less chew. We eat it anyway.
The soviet influence is everywhere. Stout concrete buildings huddle together in plain housing blocks. Other single story factory types are husked out shells, windows gone or broken, doors open or gone. They stand empty, like mouths without a tongue. One striking difference is the lack of graffiti. There is some but not as much as I’ve seen in other cities. There’s more splashed, sprayed or brushed across the steel and window glass of the train we’re on.
The open country is carpeted by late season grass. Churches rise above the hills and homes. Their well cared for walls are white plaster, others are stone. Onion domes are dollops of colored cream atop some of their steeples. The ghostly outlines of mountain march east of us as we travel, far beyond those lies the Black Sea but, we won’t be getting close to those shores today. Smaller mounds and hills show us the smaller mountains to the west. The bus rolls on and the sun goes down slow here, not wanting to give up summer for fall just yet.
There is a lot of back-to-back travel coming my way. I need to see a massive amount of country in a way that allows me to absorb whatever I can. I don’t have the time (or the stamina) my characters do but; I want to see it. Need to, in fact. Glimpse what it would be like to travel the same path by modern means. See the trees tangled in vines and the undergrowth. To touch it, smell it, the whole nine yards. Without the struggle and strain, I put them through.
I had a bright idea to buy Eurail passes when I thought up this trip and I went with it. If you don’t know, these give you tickets for almost any train, several boats and some buses throughout Europe. The next part of this continuing story will be the first use of it.
It is not user friendly for the uninitiated.
