First topic message reminder :
A week has almost passed since we made the momentous and epic journey from Turkey to Bulgaria and 40 cardboard boxes still remain to be unpacked and a lot of shifting things around the house to be done, not to mention endless amounts of rubbing down wood and painting. Our journey started at 2.23 am, on Sunday night from Altinkum a tourist destination on the south coast of Turkey. We set off in our car following Phil and Russell in the their van with the contents of our apartment, which included over a 100 boxes and our four lovely dogs.
The journey went well, even the ferry at Canakkale was almost ready to leave, so no waiting about there for us, then the long drive towards the border with Bulgaria. At the border the usual passing over and inspection of passports and Residency Permits were carried out by the Turkish authorities and the inspection of the contents of our apartment which took all of 10 seconds. Then the short drive to the BG frontier, another inspection of the passports took place and then onwards towards the Customs. At this point the Customs Personnel took an interest in the dog Export Papers and proceeded to photocopy everything and then put the official stamp on other documents and also photocopy them as well. After an hour and half had passed we were given the green light with the dogs and we were asked if our boxes contained anything new to which we responded in the negative.
Next thing we know we are in BG and heading towards the first garage to fill up with diesel which is far cheaper than the Turkish equivalent, we also purchased our Vignette at the garage so that everything was legal even down to switching our headlights on whilst travelling. Then onwards towards Elhovo where Russell headed for a car mechanic to fix the water system on his van, half hour later we headed for Yambol, Nova Zagora and onwards to Veliko Tarnovo which meant we went over an awful mountain and zig zagging all over the place.
Veliko came into site and and we went north a short distance towards our village and going over some rather basic roads with holes in it and bits missing so this part of the journey was rather slow. When we got to our village we couldn't find the house, can you believe this after 1200 K's, after 10 minutes of driving around in circles I had to admit to Phil and Russell that we didn't know where the house was. "
What,"
replied Phil, "
no problem,"
I said, and phoned the man we bought the house from to find out how to find it, luckily I got through to him and he told us how to find the house.
So there we are finally at the house at 7.30 in the evening with four dogs and 100 boxes to unload in the dark and all of us feeling completely "
cream crackered."
Half an hour later the boxes were all in the house and me, Phil and Russell are carrying our kingsize bed that we had brought from Turkey up the stairs in our BG house and then having to build it together so Annette and I could get some proper sleep in our newly acquired homestead.
Our many thanks to both Phil and Russell for bringing us to BG and putting up with us!!