In which Sid and Doris buy their Turkish visa and see what a customs post looks like without well managed borders.
High paw 🐾, we have cycled to Turkey. To Edirne was only 71 kilometres with 543 metres of ascent. So we have been through England, Netherlands, Germany, Czechia, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey.
This morning we had breakfast in the Hotel Kolhida, served by an English woman. The same ingredients as usual but made into toasted cheese and hamwiches plus fruit, yoghurt and honey. As we were working to restore Doris’s back brakes an Englishman brought us a souvenir Bulgarian flag.Then all our remaining Lev were translated into sesame and nut snacks. So long Bulgaria (and apologies for the #virtualsouvenir rule, the flag may not make it all the way back to the UK).
We exercised Extreme Energy Conservation techniques up the main Route 7. We passed the old Border Area sign which we think was about 10 miles from the border. The Eastern Bloc was a large prison and special papers were needed to be in border zone.
Being Saturday all is fairly quiet and the trucks were patient as we went uphill to the Bulgaria Turkey border. There were a lot of wagons parked up doing the Into Bulgaria Paperwork, but you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
It took us a bit over an hour to get through the border. We would have been quicker if the Turkish visa office had not shut for lunch just as we needed it. We enjoyed our look behind the scenes at customs, looked at a shed full of lorries with their loads out all over the floor and nobody in sight, changed some money in the general store, drank water melon pop and waited for Visa Dude. We were sold some stamps, which themselves were ink-stamped twice each; these we took back to Passport Dude who did sticking and stamping in the passport. Epic.
Out on the Turkish side the queue of trucks was about four kilometres long. A truck near the front of the queue had been there two days. “It’s a Turkish problem” one of the lorry drivers said gloomily. Welcome to Brexit?
Our downloaded route had us turn away from the main road right away. We looked at that road (rough and deserted) and the main road (smooth and nearly empty) and set off up the main road. Sid and Doris ride again. A few k later we saw a sign to Edirne hidden in the grass and took that. A road pretty much to ourselves and giving a great view across the Thracian Plains all the way from Lalapasha to the minarets of the Selimiye Mosque. The picture does not match your eye picking out the towers from over ten miles away.
Along the way we saw an unexpected paddy field, and much other irrigation.
The Edirne Palace Hotel is a great choice. In fact the whole of Edirne is like returning to “civilisation”, with shops selling stuff we recognise and generally a sigh of relief after 9 nights of Bulgaria Profund. With smiley welcome. We are enjoying being in Turkey already, they appreciate nuts though beer is slightly harder to find. We may have found a gun shop, in fact it is the best “before and after” picture since we failed to get you a picture of the condom vending machine next to the cigarette vending machine, as this shop sells guns, knifes and barbeque kits. “Kill it, Jimmy, we need some dinner!”
We did find beer and have it now on our terrace, with Pom Sticks and surrounded as usual by drying cycling kit. We spare you the worst pictures.
We have scrubbed up, very literally (no pics but the Ameenitees Kit in the room included a fabulous skin skritcher which may have made its way into our luggage), and been out to see the Selimiye mosque where we were entirely welcome. Doris was lent a shawl and we put our shoes on the rack. Inside there is everyone from full on Saudi style ‘slit for the eyes women’, to local ladies and gents praying and Turkish sightseers taking family selfies. We too took pics of this 16th century marvel (which have turned out far better than we dared hope).
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The local delicacy is well prepared calves liver, a Sid favourite, but we were so looking forward to tasty mezes after Balkan ingredients and cooking that we thought the liver may not get a look in. It seems Turks eat early. By great good fortune (?) only the Bahri Bey Prize-Winning Liver Shop was still open. Served with fiendish deep fried peppers and Red Hurting Sauce. The liver was excellent. We have a commemorative car air freshener (no comment – Doris) for having had the ensemble and the memory of the mouth soothing yogurt drink. Again as promised we are not including pictures of food but nobody could call the red stuff food, as you will see Sid is reaching quickly for some cooling agent.
And finally and inexplicably, or at least unexplained by us, we found a bride in full meringue costume in the grounds of the mosque. And we found her later in the liver shop. We can only leave you with the pictures while Sid retreats speedily to deal with the consequences of the liver. Sorry about that.
