pat loughery

Day 7: October 26, 2008

Sunday was the long bus ride from western Turkey, across a ferry, through Bulgaria, into Romania and to Bucharest.

It lasted 22 hours.

Although we’ve learned to stop every 2-2 1/2 hours along the way for rest breaks, bathroom and snack opportunities, we still haven’t gotten into a rhythm for meals. The best thing that happened along the way was that when we stopped a truck stop just south of the Bulgarian border we found a market where I bought fresh apples and pears, tissue paper and more toothpaste. The pears and apples were excellent.

I took Vicodin to relive the pain after the truck stop and wasn’t fully awake as we crossed the border. I remember the first crossing – leaving Turkey – better than the one entering Bulgaria. The Turkish guard was a young man in his twenties, and lightheartedly used his limited English to encourage us all to vote for Barrack Obama instead of John McCain. I’m told by other students that on the second part of this border crossing when leaving Turkey and going into Bulgaria, our border guard was waiting for us to bribe him in order to let us go, but Mihai threatened to call the American consulate on behalf of “a very important American in the bus”. Apparently that trick worked, and we were released to go.

Bulgaria included rough roads, older and industrial-feeling cities, and restless sleep. In my few, brief glimpses of the country it looked to be having a hard time after its release from Soviet oversight.

We entered Romania and traveled several more hours. On our arrival in Bucharest, I was surprised to see the number of casinos on the bottom floor of buildings in the downtown area. Given the penchant for cigarette smoking in this part of the world, I don’t know that my lungs could take a visit into these casinos.

We arrived in Bucharest at 4:30AM, and we would have to be on the bus at 10:15AM to meet the Patriarch of Romania, which I was very much looking forward to doing. But I was in a daze at this point. I was not having fun; we had traveled far more than we were exploring and learning, and at this point I write in my journal that I would be happy when the class is over and I could relax for a few days in Athens before seeing my family. I suspected that in hindsight I would enjoy this part of the trip more than I did at the time.