Fri - Sat 20th - 21st Oct
Near to Kamping Kromidovo (click here for details) there’s a thermal water-fed bath / pool. It is closed now but apparently is open during the summer. I must say though that it looks dilapidated, in keeping with most of the rest of the villages in this corner of the country.
Campsite John was loading crates of empty bottles into his car, which I assumed was to recover the deposit. This is called ‘pfand’ in Deutschland, where they have a deposit on everything, according to a couple from Germany. That was on a campsite with large motor homes and quad bikes on which to get around. They actually said, that the pfand was good “for the poor people, who can take them in and get some money”. It conjured-up a vision of posh motor-homers leaving glass, metal and plastics lying around for the poor.
John was taking the bottles to the nearby thermal spring to wash them in the free hot water, before filling them with homebrew. He told us where it was and what it looked like. It was just down the road, near the empty hot baths. So we went to look, driving across some bumpy waste ground, heading for a concrete construction. There we found a ragged sheet acting as a curtain and a rain shower, tee-d into a big pipe coming from the ground.
The valve on the shower was broken, so we were saved the option of taking one.The waters do flow, constantly and it was quite amazing to feel the heat, which is about 40C, so quite hot.
We drove into the nearby town, Bulgaria’s smallest and one of its highlights. Melnik is an architectural reserve, with some typical, traditional buildings, arranged under small but dramatic standstone outcrops, that have eroded into severely angular forms.
We had lunch there, quite something for us and enjoyed wandering around looking at the interesting building style. This is predominantly associated with constructing upper floors, that extend out beyond the walls supporting them and then requiring copious numbers of timbers to hold them up.
We also went to Rozen Monastery, which is a dependency of the monastery of the Holy Mount of Athos. “Therefore” it contains a copy of one of their ‘wonderworking icons’, in this case, that of the Holy Virgin Mary Portaitissa. There is quite a story about how this icon arrived at the Holy Mount and it is shown on this plaque.
There were no signs of the monks (is there ever) but what a place in which to live. It is very small, with rooms set around the tiny central chapel. We sneaked a forbidden photo inside. I think this would have been to avoid damage from camera flashes. Well now the iPhone at least, appears not to use the flash and instead takes a long exposure shot and somehow processes the inevitable judder, to produce a respectable image.
The following day we stocked up at a huge hypermarket called Kaufland, which sounds suspiciously German and it might be Lidl in disguise. Suspicions were further raised, as inside I think I spotted the Parkside brand but wasn’t sure. It was too far away and I wasn’t allowed to go to the tools aisle. Dawn was allowed to go to her favourite bit though.
Roadsigns are difficult in Bulgaria, once you are away from the main spots. Unlike in Greece, the alphabet is mostly unknown to us and so words can’t be worked out.
Then we drove north and a little west, to a campsite handy for the border crossing into Serbia. This is run by Rachelle, originally from Saskatchewan, who has built a house with husband and two kids, in a lovely position, near a village. This area seems more normal and is under the influence of Sofia and the move out of urban areas that occurred here during the Covid19 pandemic, just as it did almost everywhere else.
The signposts didn’t improve and we were at the mercy of OsmAnd maps, backed-up by Google maps. They are working well together. This is the sign to the next campsite village.
It is bigger than John and Sara’s place but already closed for winter. However by having emailed ahead and promising to speak Queens English, we were invited to stay.
Actually Sara is hosting 150 people for a Halloween event that has been running and developing for several years. We assumed that this was income generating but no, she does it because it’s fun and she even provides food.
This evening she was testing the lights and continuing to place the items in the woodland walk. She has got it perfect but I have picked the must extreme items.
There are nice walkways with spider’s webs and plenty of lights Rachelle worries that she’s gone too goolish but apparently gets good feedback from the children who attend and that spurs her on each year.
After an incredibly quiet night, with no noise for a second night, save a few cockerels crowing to each other, which felt very old-fashioned, we got up far too early and left at 08:00 on the longest day of the trip.
We wanted to cross both borders, into and out of Serbia. This is because there are next to no campsites and also because the route made sense. Border number 1 was quick enough and the passports stamped and car documents checked (and recorded we think). Then we sat on the motorway for several hours of easy cruising. Overdrive engaged, but windows open eventually, we ran across the country at 110 kph and it was effortless because the traffic was so light.
It’s quite a feeling to drive at a constant speed, with no gear changes, for hours. Bliss. Also for tolls, Serbia does what Greece should do and you pickup a ticket at an unmanned booth and don’t stop to pay until you leave the motorway, or in our case, get to the Belgrade ring-road, where the road is then toll free. At that point you pay. Once. Not before, half a dozen times. Once.
After Belgrade we turned towards the Croatia border and wondered how long the crossing would take. The queue of lorries was an early indication. Never again will we look at the pictures of operation stack on the M20 with any sort of criticism.
This queue appeared to be normal and was massive. Hundreds and hundreds are parked on the side of the road, slowly inching their way forward. At the border there was only one checkpoint for them. It is sheer madness. What a complete waste of time, fuel, resources and also what a massive delay that wait adds to the passage of goods.
The car queue was a little better, with the wait a matter of hours not days. Leaving Serbia wasn’t too bad but entering Croatia was madness. Four lines of traffic merged to three. Each car took at least a minute to get through, but that wasn’t each minute available.
We crawled forward and the exasperated Swiss and Germans kept swapping lanes, as if they knew which would move quicker. It never seemed to help. We all had our engines running, dip the clutch, select gear, move a few metres, select neutral, foot off clutch. It was endless.
These border people have no sense of urgency. They don’t care how long you might have been driving or idling. The job gets done when it gets done.
Fortunately it was only about 25C but unfortunately the place is shield insect heaven. If the windows were down, the shield insects flew in and crash landed in the cab. So we held them up outside and got hot.
It took two hours to get into Croatia.
Comments