The border queue from Greece into Bulgaria was later explained because it is a Schengen crossing. Although Bulgaria is in the EU, it isn’t in the Schengen Zone. This means that there is still a formal border with all the checks that entails.
As the Schengen Visa website puts it:
These countries submitted their wish to become members of this area, which was approved by the European Parliament in June 2011 but this request was rejected by the Council of Ministers in September 2011, as Finland and Germany expressed their worries regarding the lack of these countries to enforce mechanisms for fighting corruption and criminality, as well as regarding the illegal entries of Turkish people from these countries towards the Schengen Area.
It has been quite a change moving into Bulgaria. It’s definitely ‘somewhere different’, particularly as the first campsite, just a few minutes from the main road, is in quite a ‘country’ village.
Some houses are quite dilapidated, some derelict, plus there’s no hard road surfaces and plenty of holes. You really do need to be careful, even on tarmac because there are sudden big potholes and no time to see them.
This village appears to have older folk here, with veg gardens to tend. There are plenty of grape vines in the fields that are cultivated but these are controlled by a few larger producers.
It looks very dry and ‘end of summer’ with the leaves turning and already dropping.
We walked around our village and into the next and got the impression that little has changed since the fall of the Eastern Block. Places like the village square are not maintained. In the previous system, whilst there were of course unacceptable consequences, everyone had a job and I am sure that these public spaces were well maintained. Now it looks as though no-one has responsibility.
Somehow it is attractive though and the campsite is very nice. It’s run by John and Sara from Manchester who have been here for about five years. They have made a small, ‘cool’ site with nice common areas like a camp kitchen and sitting area. The 5G and wifi make for relaxing surfing too!
John has an accent from west of Warrington. I could have guessed it as “Liverpool” but that would be too obvious. So I thought I’d impress him by venturing“Birkenhead?” with no real reason, as to be nearly right would be good and I couldn’t go wrong. He was surprised at the guess but I was nearly correct, as he’s from near Hoylake. I told him he was posher than he makes out!
We talked about many things, including his poorly Bongo 2.5TD. I steered him away from “needs new glowplugs” to searching for an air leak in the fuel circuit. So we might find out one day if that was correct.
It was a surprise to find a car museum in the next village. Randomly there are two aircraft parked too but the main building is behind a posh winery. The boss is a classic car fan and has assembled his own and on-loan vehicles in a beautiful purpose built showroom.
I had a good look around, having paid 12 Leva which is too much (€6) for Bulgaria but not too much for me. It’s on the credit card, so I will take the hit later.
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