The Ban Bus

What a difference a functional GPS makes. The disk was loaded into Mette’s machine and we set it up next to Davor’s. Instantly they began to argue. Turn left, right lane, sharp turn and on they went till finally Davor’s GPS got the idea and there was a moment of synchronicity between machines. It’s quite stress free to drive out of a city like Istanbul with good instructions and before we knew it we were in the country and heading for the border.

My loathing of borders was starting to rise to the fore as the miles rolled on by till we saw the first sign of what lay ahead. We struck the end of a queue of trucks all wanting to pass into the EU. Truck upon truck parked bumper to bumper and the line of them went all the way to the horizon. We looked at the GPS and were over 20 miles away from the crossing. This must take some drivers weeks to cross! There seemed to be a real roadside community as drivers chatted and drank coffee, resigned to the fact that they were to be here a very long time.

One last fuel stop was needed before the crossing as we were warned about credit card fraud in some of the Balkan countries. The toilet at the gas station had some very weird signs in it. ‘No cigarette butts, Please Flush, Turn Off Water, Don’t put your children in the urinal.’ Now I for one am pleased with the advice as I did have an overwhelming desire to grab a kid and stuff them in the pisser but thanks to this sign and its sage advice was able to restrain myself. I imagine the sign was preaching to the lowest common denominator of patron who would walk in and think a quick method of the kiddies having a squirt or something else was to whip them onto the porcelain wall. The part I loved was the cartoon of the little girl in the urinal. She had a big smile on her face so really, how bad could it be?

We passed truck after truck till finally the border was ahead and the games could commence. The first window said “go”, the second was immigration, then customs, then police, then there was the car registration check, then another customs, then we had left Turkey. Ahead lay Bulgaria and all the mystery of, well, I can’t think of anything mysterious in Bulgaria. Even vampires were Romanian.

The whole border crossing was being rebuilt and was in total chaos. A trail of orange cones led us through the rubble towards the Bulgarian frontier. Bulgarian window number one was a few women in a booth that checked the car papers then returned them along with a tiny USB stick.

“What do I do with this?” said Davor.
“You could try stuffing it up your ass,” replied one of the women.
Davor instead plugged it into the car radio but nothing came out so tossed it on the dash board.

Nice, onto window number two.

This young guy was all grins and smiles. No idea what his function was as he went through our passports and papers and felt compelled to tell us all about Quebec and his ex Canadian girlfriend and that she dumped him and he likes North American girls and did Davor like Canada better than Serbia and what was it like in Australia and Norway is nice too he thought and Canadian girls are very nice and…… It was obvious why the Canadian dumped him, he spoke a monologue of unrelenting crap.

One window followed the next and paper after paper was scrutinised and scrutinised again. This is the border to Fortress Europe after all and no one was getting into the Big House without proper papers. Immigration, Police, Quarantine, Vehicle check, another mystery window then Customs.

The young guy waved us aside and came up with a flashlight. “Where are you from, where are you going, open the back.” He had a little poke and prod then asked about the wrapped up photographs.

“Photographs,” I said. That will let the cat out of the bag I thought.
“Photographer, photojournalist?” he said.
Here we go, out the back Fido and empty the car.
“Oh no need to see more I like photography very much,” he beamed and waved us on.
Now that was weird. It was the second time in my life I’ve not been treated like a pariah by customs, the other time being in Lebanon.

We drove on then found another customs check. That makes sense as the last guy would let any Tom, Dick or camera-carrying psychopath in. This guy was the real deal, he had the face on of a petty despot and would probably only laugh if we ran a dog over. He began climbing in the back door and Davor was doing his level best to calm the way. He emerged from our 12 tonnes of loaded equipment wanting to know who and what we were.

“The Ban Bus,” confesses Davor. “We are driving around Europe trying to get a ban on cluster bombs. Our official had that look of should I arrest them for they mentioned the B word or should I wave them on.

“So where is a good hotel to stay around here,” asks Davor. That seemed to break the ice and he gave directions then we were on the way. One more window to go. Each window had a sign that said ‘No money to be paid here’. I imagine that was to inform us that we were not to be conned by corrupt border officials. The final window had the same sign and this is where we were to hand in the USB stick with all of its mystery information.

“You must pay,” said the window’s occupant. “Nine euro, cash, and that includes tax.” Yeah, sure, maybe but we hand over the money regardless and at last we are on our way. Mette sighs, “That was worse than Afghanistan.”

The road out of the border had very tacky ‘Duty Free’ stores and the odd very rugged hooker lining the sides as the road quality collapsed to pot holed goat tracks.

Our wonder run with the Turkish GPS map evaporated exactly on the border and we were back in the realm of a mystery drive. Now it was night and Bulgaria is not renown for its fabulous road signs. Davor’s GPS had no more competition and instructed us to drive in rivers and in a variety of directions. One of the directions was obviously correct as we traversed the four points of the compass, we just didn’t know which it was. The locals came to the rescue and we finally found Sdara Zagora which is a mid sized regional town but all we were interested in was a bed for the night.

The first we came to was the ‘City Hotel’. It looked a bit over our budget but we stopped to ask anyway. The surprise was it was very cheap so we checked in.
“You are from Australia!” said the girl at reception, “I have always wanted to go to Australia,” as she leans forward and gives a nice set of doe eyes.
“This is Daniel, a nice Australian guy, this is my girlfriend, Mette, goodnight.”

The rooms were huge and lavishly decorated in Polish post-Modernism with a massive plasma screen on the wall, not that there was anything on worth watching. One ad I did catch was for power tools and it looked like the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition with scantily clad sweaty babes drilling, sanding and any imagination can work out what was bouncing with the jack hammer. Klass with a capital K.