Yo! Took the un-airconditioned bus
from Istanbul to Plovdiv, which consisted of driving through at least
a hundred kilometers of dry rolling hills with fields of straw and
east facing sunflowers. Reminded me a bit of eastern Washington,
except for the sunflowers. We were served tea and pastries on the
bus, granted, they were vending machine quality, but still. At the
border to Bulgaria, a thick, imposing pink granite archway with the
Turkish moon and star emblem was followed by a blue cloth banner
saying Welcome to Bulgaria. I had the only blue passport on the bus,
everyone else seemed to be Bulgarian. I’m getting a sense of how
lucky it is that I speak English, because it’s certainly the other
language most people learn. That’s something that you know
already, but I’m just appreciating it a lot.
Much of what we passed through on the
way to Plovdiv, other than a continuation of the landscape we saw in
Turkey, were old concrete buildings with windows smashed out looking
out over large towns. The smaller places we passed through seemed
great- red, wiggly brick roofing (I don’t know what it’s
called…think of the red roofs in pictures of Greece or Italy) on
small wooden houses. Everyone living in those places has a vegetable
and flower garden, as far as I can tell.
I figured out how to read “Plovdiv”
in Bulgarian cyrillic, which I am still quite incapable of reading in
general, but was quite lost after getting off the bus. Well, the few
minutes of being lost were long, since I had to go to the bathroom so
badly. But, a kindly Bulgarian woman came up to me, led me to a
bathroom, led me to the local bus stop, told me how much it cost and
which bus to take, and not to fear, she was “a teacher, not a
gypsy!” Her daughter goes to college in Miami- I find that the
people most helpful to foreigners are those who have children abroad.
