Overnight Journey from Hell

We arrived at the Bus Station in Veliko on good faith..having been told that there was going to be a bus to Istanbul. We got there, and had a bit of a wait, before buying tickets. We did get to see Wayne Rooney stamping on Carvalho's balls tho ( ouch!)

Anyway...managed to buy some tickets. Pretty expensive! And then we waited for the bus. A little bit of confusion..as to where the bus was going to pull up too. We even got some fries from the Vending Machine! Check out John and the Fastchef!

When the bus pulled up...it looked really really full! However, we managed to get seats together. Again..with the wonders of Dramamine..I dozed off. But the other guys didn't really get much sleep. Apparently because of the trains being stopped, the buses were really really full. At least 10-12 people got on, paying for half price tickets because they had to stand most of the way. And the conductor kept annoying me, by WAKING me up to ask if I wanted alcohol wipes. Seriously! ( bearing in mind..this was an overnight bus)

We got to the border....and we had to wait for about 3 hours! First at the Bulgarian side..and then at the Turkish side. The other guys ( Americans and Brits) had to get visas...and I caused confusion, when I insisted that I didn't need one. It's always a problem at the border crossings

After that we had to wait even longer, with all our bags opened up for the custom checks. Not a lot of grief cos we hadn't bought a million cigarettes, etc. Finally got back onto the bus...and we were in Turkey! It was a 12 hour journey or so...and we were so grumpy at the end of it!

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