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I am super groggy and bleary-eyed. This bus has been rolling along for some 9 hours, maybe, and for the first time during the ride, there's real sunlight streaming in through the windows. We're on the road from Istanbul, Turkey to Sofia, Bulgaria. It's not quite 8 AM, and it's about 12 degrees C outside. The seven of us have become just four: on the bus are Adam, Aleks, Jakob, and me. We're now officially in Bulgaria, after a brief customs stop at the border and night of oft-broken sleep.
I share Jakob's amazement from last night: we're actually in Bulgaria. It wasn't a certainty that we'd arrive here, since we weren't able to book our way here in advance. The bus will be arriving on schedule in a few hours, but the day before, we were seriously unsure about whether we'd even be able to make it out of Turkey in the first place. We had originally planned to take an overnight Istanbul-Sofia train in a sleeper car, so yesterday, we all -- still as 7 -- made our way to the Istanbul train station (the reddish building pictured) for tickets. When we got there, a makeshift sign on the ticket booth informed us that all international trains were cancelled until October, on account of the recent flooding in Turkey. This was followed by brief frustration and resignation to staying in Istanbul the whole trip -- Istanbul's great, so it wasn't a terrible prospect, admittedly -- until the ticket man informed us that buses to Bulgaria were still running. Since it was the guys who had planned on going while the girls never intended to go, we split up by gender and went separate ways for the time being. Us guys trammed our way to the bus station (Otogar), and bought ourselves each a 50-lira ticket.Then, after we got our tickets and had ourselves a cheap doner lunch, we were missing the girls a bit, so we met up again to hang out for a few more hours, be it near the Grand Bazaar, in Sultanahmet, or down along the river. Dinner was at Hamdi's, a reasonably cheap restaurant with a gorgeous view of the Bosphorous and delicious food. Post-nightfall, we walked into the entrance another historical mosque to wander beneath its towering dome and minarets. We explored for a bit, then parted ways with the girls there in midst of the courtyard. Tres cinematique. We'll see them again in a few days.
For now, goodbye Turkey. Sofia, here we come.
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