Sofia to Serbia by Hitchhiking

I'm riding a travel high now.  Its 2 in the afternoon, I've completed a 3 hour city tour of Sofia, got laid last night, and I'm convinced I can hitchhike to Nis, Serbia before the sun goes down.

Serbia is to blame for my hitchhiking addiction.  I did my first hitch there 2 years ago and it quickly became my normal way to get around the country for both short and long distances.  My Serbian friends have hitchhiked distances which scare most average people: Serbia to Latvia, Serbia to Belgium, Serbia to Iran, etc...etc...etc...   I don't know if I will ever cover those distances, but I can damn well try.

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After gazing at Alexander Nevski Cathedral for a while, I went with my Brazilian girls, Thor and a few more tourists for a final Bulgarian banista lunch.  We shared future travel plans and hollow promises to see each other again in some other part of the world.  Possibly we will meet again.  Stranger things do happen.

While the other tourists continued wandering around the city, I made a beeline for Hostel Mostel where my backpack and guitar were waiting at the front desk.  I drilled the receptionist for hitchhiking advice to get to Serbia.  With a skeptical tone in his voice, he outlined the quickest route for me to cross the Bulgarian/Serbian border to Nis:

 Lyulin ==> Dragoman ==> Dimitrovgrad ==> Pirot ==> Bela Palanka ==> Nis
  
I had him write the city names in Cyrillic in case I would need to show them to any non-Roman reading citizens.  I would.

"I recommend you take tram first to Zaharna Fabrika. Then another bus to Lyulin where there is bus very cheap to Dragoman."

"And after Dragoman should I hitchhike?"

"Yes.  There is no bus there."

The price he quoted was very cheap and I wanted to get rid of my Bulgarian Lev anyway. There was only one more bus that day going towards Dragoman.  It was leaving in less than an hour.  I factored in the time I would lose wandering around trying to find unmarked stops while asking directions from people who don't speak English...  The calculations made me break a sweat.  Time to haul ass.

With the sun already low in the sky, I hauled ass the few blocks to the tram stop.  There was sign but it was in Cyrillic so I had to refer to my notes to "translate."  All this thinking added to the incredible sweat I was producing due to the heat that day.  Even if I made the tram, I still had to make 2 transfers to arrive at the bus that would take me to Dragoman.  The transportation service here is as reliable as anywhere else in Eastern Europe; which is say not reliable at all.

Sweat. Sweat.  Where the hell is the tram?  More sweat.

I heard it almost before I saw it.  The contact of steel wheels on steel tracks created a piercing whine as a small orange cluster of metal boxes creeped around the corner.  It moved slowly but the driver seemed unaware of my presence since I was the only one at the stop.  I waved frantically, practically throwing myself in front of the little tram.  The driver came out of his stupor and the orange boxes screeched to a halt.  I showed the guy my Cyrillic notes while yelling 'Zaharna Fabrika, Zaharna Fabrika!"  He nodded and indicated that I should sit next to him, so he could tell me when to get off.

We rolled along at a snail's pace.  I feared missing my next 2 transfers.  I was sweating bullets and the curious looks I received from the other passengers only aggravated my tension.  After a seemingly endless time, the driver waved for me to get off and pointed me towards a bridge that crossed over the road.  Through a series of (polite) hand gestures and jumbled Slovak/Serbian/Polish gibberish I figured out that the next bus was in front of a restaurant on the other side of the bridge.

I went under the bridge and saw several buses in a dirt parking lot parked in no particular order.  Time to start the search process again.  "Dragoman? Dragoman? Dragoman?,"  I repeated parrot-like to each bus I passed.  Finally a driver nodded his head left and right, "Da."

Did I mention that Bulgarians nod their head left and right to indicate the affirmative?

The next transfer was far easier. Instead of a random parking lot, I was dropped off at an actual bus stop located in front of a shopping complex.  The sign was still in Bulgarian and my ability to read Bulgarian had not improved despite staring at Cyrillic signs intensely for the past hour.  I looked around for help.

I am very biased when seeking help from people in a country where I don't speak the language.  I look for younger people, since there's a better chance they've either studied English or been exposed to it, thanks to television, internet and the general globalization of USA culture.  God bless America: Hollywood, Facebook, Microsoft, McDonalds, etc.

As luck would have it, the youngest person at the stop was a cute 20-something university co-ed who was studying in Sofia and heading back home for the week.  Or possibly I just wanted to talk to the girl.  She spoke English better than anyone else and she was able to explain where I had to get off the bus in order to hitchhike to the Serbian border.

When I say her English was better than anyone else on the bus, I mean she understood, "Hello, can you help me?"  When we got to explaining directions she stared blankly and drew a map:

"Here is gas station.  Go there.  Then go to Serbia."

Simple enough.  She drew a gas station, the highway and "Serbia" with a large arrow pointing down the highway.  She also drew two stick figures holding hands, a ring and a question mark.

  ...Am I married, darling?

I was at the gas station.  I bid yet another beautiful Balkan lady goodbye and got off the bus.  My exhaustion was incredible so I walked into the gas station to buy a few million Red Bulls (see, isn't globalization great?)  Time to hitchhike.