[YEAR 7!] Quit our jobs, sold our home, gone riding...

[lightcycle]

We're in the Rhodope Mountain range in Southern Bulgaria and headed down a road that leads into a gorge.

Rounding the corner, the steep walls of the gorge all around us

The dark clouds overhead manage to contain their waterworks until we reach our destination. Our luck is still holding out!

We are staying at the end of the gorge road, in a town called Buynovo. The area around here is very popular with hikers and we see a few of them walking up and down the winding road in and out of town. We've booked an AirBnB here and I pull over in front of a large map of the town to try to find our accommodations. The GPS co-ordinates that I have seem to lead us to the middle of a river and the map is of no help. Buynovo is tiny, so Neda goes off to ask the locals, surely someone must know where our place is.

After 15 minutes she returns. Yes, those are cows just wandering the streets... It's a common thing around here.

She walks up to me excitedly and exclaims, "Hey, I understand Bulgarian!" Apparently, Serbo-Croatian is very close to Bulgarian. It's like that scene in the Matrix when Neo gets information downloaded to his brain and wakes up: "Woah. I know Kung-****."

So I say, "Show me."

 

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We ride back over to the group of people that Neda was just talking to. They were motioning us into a barn. Neda exchanges a few words with them and notifies me, "We can park our bikes in here".

This barn is owned by the AirBnB's owner's neighbour

The locals that Neda found were so helpful. They not only located the AirBnB owner, but when they saw that we were on motorcycles, a neighbour told us we could leave our bikes in his barn. It was like the whole village was helping us. Very cool!

Turns out our place is on the river, not on the main road. We had to hike down a little bit to get to it.

Our Bulgarian hostess prepares dinner for us

It was so very homey and so Eastern-European! The Bulgarian language is very similar to Serbo-Croatian. Neda says even more so than Polish and Czech, but not exactly. Our host had to call her daughter on the phone to translate some of the finer points in English. In fact, our online contact was the daughter. This is a very common practice with AirBnB in foreign countries. The older folks may own the property, but it's their kids (or grandkids) that are more technically savvy and can speak English. They're the ones who advertise and communicate with the tourists.

Although I've taken the lead in planning our route through Eastern Europe, I'm still glad that I'm traveling with the human Universal Translator when the tires hit the pavement.

Our first home-cooked Bulgarian meal. This fish was caught in the river beside the house! Delicious!

So that evening, I'm on Facebook scrolling through my newsfeed. Turns out that a couple of my traveling friends with UK passports also had stories of EU border guards jokingly asking them for their "visas".

Seems like in light of the Brexit vote, there was an internal memo circulating amongst all the border guards in the EU titled, "Hey, wanna ******* with the British tourists?"

Bastards.

 

[lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/337.html

It rained last night. Thankfully, most of the showers stopped when we woke up and we stared outside at the overcast skies, planning out our route for the day.

Everything is so peaceful out here in the countryside

Our lackadaisical pace around Eastern Europe is now butting up against some pre-scheduled dates on the calendar. It would have been nice to stay a day or two here in Buynovo, to enjoy the peace and quiet and nature.

Our hostess bids a farewell to us as we leave her tiny village

 

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The plan for the day is to ride the length of the gorge road and take in the scenery

The Buynovo Gorge is the longest one in Bulgaria. It was carved out of the limestone over several millenia and now boasts several pools, waterfalls and caves. None of which we're going to see because we're riding, riding, riding today!

The road is narrow and the pavement is uneven, but the tall walls of the gorge make for an awesome ride as we follow the twists and turns of the river

At times the road rises and we can peek over the edge at the water below. Until we hit a tunnel carved into the rock. Cool!

 

[lightcycle]

The gorge is so narrow at one point the top of the canyon walls almost touches above the road. The narrowest point is called "Wolf's Leap" because legend has it that wolves jump across the chasm here to attack sheep pens on the other side.

The Buynovo Gorge road is less than 30kms long, but it's a one way road, so we turn back and start heading north.

Stopping on the way back

Enjoying the marvelous scenery

 

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On the road, we see more Disney castle missile silos

Shops and stalls in the little villages that we ride through

Damp roads out of Southern Bulgaria

 

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Plovdiv is Bulgaria's second-largest city and is about three hours north of Buynovo. We are making a pit stop here just to sleep before we head further north.

We are staying in a nice quiet neighbourhood in the suburbs of Plovdiv

The owner of our AirBnB place lets us park in the garden

The next morning, we are all suited up and ready to head out. The owner snaps a pic of us.
It's so nice to be able to get a picture of the two of us together. It's so rare.

 

[lightcycle]

We debated about whether to leave without seeing the city. It's so closeby and the weather is really nice today. So at the last minute we ride into town, stash our riding gear and take a quick walk around town.

Fountain in front of Plovdiv City Hall

Such a funny sounding name to English speakers: Plovdiv. I found out that it's named after Philip the Arab, a Roman Emperor who named the city after himself. Philip + Deva (city) became Plovdiv after several iterations of translations.

Pedestrian street, downtown Plovdiv

And then, we stumble across this...

We don't make a point of only visiting cities and ruins with Roman amphitheaters in them. Honestly! It just turns out that the Roman Empire spread out pretty much everywhere in Europe. And everywhere they went they built an amphitheater. And the most beautiful one they built was in Pula, Croatia.

 

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I think they uncovered this amphitheater after the modern city was built on top of it. They've integrated it well into the city.

You can see in the background: another Disney castle missile silo. I wonder if Walt Disney fashioned his iconic castle after Bulgarian architecture.

Well, that was a nice tour. I'm glad that we got to see the contrast between the big city and the rural areas in Bulgaria

In the picture above, I point out the same sign I've seen all over Russia and other Slavic countries. "Look Neda, Pectopaht!"

"Pectopaht" is actually "Restaurant" in Cyrillic. It amuses Neda to no end whenever I say this, because that's not how she reads it in her head. It's like saying "Kah-now-led-gee" to an English person.... "Do you mean 'knowledge'?"

"Rig-Hit!"

But enough of the language lessons. It's time now to head further north. New country! And towards one of the best riding roads on Earth! Stay tuned!

On the way out, we make a game out of spotting the national vehicle of Bulgaria. They're everywhere!

 

[lightcycle]

I forgot to embed this video in the last post:

 

[unkamonkey]

Neat ride. I never wondered why the pipes the were scraped up on my Harley. Canyon bashing. When I sold it, the guy got a new set of pipes with it.

 

[lightcycle]

Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/338.html

The weather is hot and sunny, and we're leaving Bulgaria and entering a new country today: Romania!

Most of the cross-border traffic takes the main highway to Bucharest, crossing the international bridge at Ruse. But since we're on a bit of a backroads tour of Eastern Europe, we enter by way of a small ferry SW of Romania's capital city.

Catching the ferry at Nikopol, Bulgaria

We're allowed to ride to the front of the ferry. The Danube River is a natural border between Bulgaria and Romania

It's only a short 15-minute trip to get to the other side. Bulgaria and Romania are not officially part of the Schengen Zone yet, so we have to stamp out and back in again at the ferry docks on both sides. I steel myself for more unfunny Brexit jokes and ribbing from the border guards, but the guys here don't seem to be very friendly.

Good.

 

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The Romanians keep their nuclear arsenal just outside of Nikopol. Unlike the Bulgarians, they don't bother to Disney-fy their missiles.

Riding through the Romanian border town of Turnu Măgurele

Turnu Măgurele is not a pretty town, except for its churches. But we've done enough traveling to learn never to judge a country by its border towns. My best friend, who I've known for like half a century, is Romanian so I'm really looking forward to exploring his home country.

Within the hour, we arrive at Caracal, where we're spending the night. The Romanian greeting party is ready for us

Just like in Bulgaria, the accommodations and food are cheap in Romania. Their currency is the Lei (sounds so close to the Bulgarian Lev), and we found out they don't take Euros in this country. So we got Lei-d at the ATM and then walk around town to try to find a grocery store.

 

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The Dormition orthodox church in Caracal

The grocery store in Caracal remains elusive to us, but we do run across a convenience store. Inside, there is a long lineup at the cash register. I notice that most of the people are paying for their goods with food stamps instead of Lev. I feel a bit guilty walking back to our luxury apartment. It's the nicest place we've stayed in since we've arrived in Europe. And we only paid €20/night through the booking service online.

The next day, we hit the road again. Some scenes from our ride through Romania

That church in the top left looks like a Stave church that we saw in Norway! It's actually a type of wooden church typically found in northern Romania, in the Maramureș region. most of the churches in the south look like the one to the right.

Just in case you forgot that there is also another motorcycle & rider at RideDOT.com!

Those are not my oil stains on the ground...

 

[lightcycle]

It's about a three hour ride on fairly boring roads until we hit some interesting scenery. Our slog through the flatlands of Romania come to an end at the base of the Făgăraş Mountains, where we see a sign for a very special castle...

Castle Dracula! Well, not the literary Dracula, it's Vlad III's castle, Poenari.

Bram Stoker's character, Dracula, was based on Vlad Tepes, otherwise known as Vlad the Impaler. Vlad was a nasty, nasty Romanian ruler who was quite fond of impaling people, boiling them alive and cutting them up into little pieces. He was the second son of Vlad Dracul, the surname of which Bram Stoker would base his blood-sucking vampire on.

It's a hot day and there are 1480 steps to climb to get up to the Castle Poenari. When we get to the top, we're greeted by impaled people... Nice.

Castle Poenari wasn't actually built by Vlad the Impaler. He took it over in the 14th century, 100 years after it was built by the Wallachians, medieval Romanian people.

Romanian flag flies high atop the castle walls