June 30, 2009 The day basically started around 4:30am when i woke up with a suffocating feeling from having no air in my room, and scratching swarms of mosquito bites on my body. My friend and his father and i all go Alexandria (Romania), and wait for the Maxi Taxi (large minivan), that will take me to Giurgiu. While waiting with an umbrella in his hand, someone approaches the father and gives him some yogurt and pretzels. Seems to be a tradition here to give food to strangers when someone dies, so we are the lucky ones today. Actually, this slightly tangy yogurt is exactly the thing i needed to settle my stomach, and i enjoy a breakfast of picked-one-hour-earlier-apricots, yogurt, bread, and walnuts in the maxi taxi The mostly flat wheat fields, interspersed with grasslands with a flock of sheep every 10km or so, and flocks of geese a little more often, are punctuated by a huge, and i mean huge stork nest. They use the same nest every year, making it larger and larger, until it is hard to see how they stay attached to the cement poles (with a flat top) or chimneys that they balance them on.
The maxi taxi was 25 minutes late, and we arrive in Giurgiu around 8:10. I putter around trying to ask people about a bus across the border into Ruse, but they all tell me that there is no bus, only taxi. OK, i go to a taxi driver, and am taken aback when he writes on paper “150lei” (50usd). Wow, 50usd can buy quite a long distance bus ride. I go back to where the maxi taxi let me out, and the driver talks to his police friend about it who calls one of his friends who can speak a little English. He tells me it cost 9euro each way for tax across the bridge, so he needs 30euro, leaving “only” 12euro for himself. This is a scam if i ever saw it, but am concerned now. I can go all the way back up to Bucharest, and catch a bus from there to Sofia for cheaper than what i’m being told here (36usd). The thot tho of wasting a whole day, and spending a sleepless nite in Sofia doesnt appeal to me at all, so i offer 40usd. He agrees, and takes me to an exchange office, where they really just exchange – 1 General Grant for 2 Jacksons and 1 Hamilton. After handing him the money (i like to pay at the beginning), i get in on the LEFT side of the car. He tells me he worked 2 years in London, and bot this car there and drove it down here. He assures me he is a good driver, so i don’t need my seatbelt, but i buckle up anyway, and am happy i did as he drives in between the orange construction area cones – crazy in more ways than i thot, as i told him he was crazy when he poked my knee several times and said he’d take me all the way to Sofia for “only” 110euro. Definitely not amusing. We cross the Danube into Bulgaria, and the inspection people joke about a Romanian with an American, and soon we are in Ruse. All in all – 20 minutes.
While kicking myself for wasting God’s money like this, i go from bus company office to office looking for a place with a bus to Sofia. I find the one i saw on the internet for 10am, and while looking blankly around, a man comes up to me and speaks a bit of English. He is nice, and invites me to store my suitcase and big plastic bag in a room by the toilet while i go to the exchange office across from the train station. After i get 30usd exchanged into leva (it is interesting that the money is called “leu”, “lei”, “leva”, and “lira” in Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey respectively) i head back to pay my 22leva for the 4:30 ride to Sofia. The man is there, and after i get my ticket we have a wonderful conversation. He is a Christian, single, and just 3 weeks younger than myself, and the toilet tax collector. This is a system that i despise, as it is a big waste of someone’s life to sit all day and collect a peepee tax. And it is humiliating to the person needing to go to the bathroom to have to shell out several coins to go. I don’t think it is just coincidence that all the rich countries in know in the world don’t require this tax, because their people have more productive things to do. I think God knew that i needed a lift after the ripoff taxi ride, and this man served very well to do just that. I even gave him a Great Controversy book, as he said he likes English. Just with seeing the title for the first chapter he turned to me and said how Satan was once so beautiful, but got proud, and he fell to this world. Sounds like he’s read the book already! May we meet in heaven.
The Bulgarian roads are 2lane, so we slowly make our way along thru the rolling hills of wheat and smiley-faced sunflowers. They look so happy, it just makes me happy looking at them 🙂 At the one rest stop, i wander around a road a bit and save my peepee tax. On the bus is a guy who, when i first saw him, thot that he looked American. He calls out asking me where i’m from, and when i say Tennesee, he says Illinois. He said he spent 6 years in the Peace Corps, was returning to the States, and left 9 crying kids behind. When i said i was a Christian missionary, his conversation stopped. Lunch is more bread, cucumber, a tomato, and a boiled egg. About 90km from Sofia we come up to some mountains, but here the road turns into a nice, 4-lane affair, and we reach Sofia at 2:10.
Upon reaching, i first check the bus companies to see what is available for Istanbul tonite. One place says they leave at 10:30pm, and it costs 40leva (29usd). I go out with all my stuff looking for the Bulgarian Seventh-day Adventist headquarters. I’m so happy when in the bus i saw one of the 4 street names i wrote down from the internet map, so it is a cinch finding the place, taking less than 10 minutes to walk it. I go up to the ADRA office, and the lady there tells me that this is only ADRA, and the SDA headquarters are elsewhere. My heart sinks. But she calls someone who knows English better, and in 30 seconds a lady comes down to where we are, and she is exactly the person i wanted to see! We go to her office, and she apologizes for not replying to my email. She asks some hard questions about the 1858gc, the one surprising me the most being her comment when i said one reason i really like this book was that it starts it with “The Lord has shown me”, and she said “so?”. But then she kind of apologized, and said she was a theology graduate, and was teaching Ellen White’s hermeneutics just the week before! I tried not to cringe as i hear this, as the Led Zepplen music on her desktop blares out. She tells me she is the main translator, and how much it costs, and that the publishing director etc are all in a meeting, that they have several versions of the Great Controversy, including a shortened version already, but after i show what has been done in Ukraine etc., and she looks at the Russian copy for about 5 seconds, she says she will talk with the publishing director, and they will make a decision. Dear Jesus, please may your words get spread here in this country, and may this influential lady get stronger with you thru this book.
Lugging my heavy stuff, i have a heart to see Sofia, but make the pragmatic choice to head quickly back to where i came from. The train station is right next to the bus station, so i go there and check the price to Istanbul – 63leva. For 23leva difference, i will take the bus, thank you. I go back to the bus station, exchange 14usd, and buy my ticket to Istanbul. Nicely enough, there is free wi-fi available, so i contact my friend to see in T’bilisi, and get caught up on some others. After my battery runs out, i look around mostly in vain for an outlet, but do find one near the turnstile for the peepee tax, and plug and play for around 3 hours. That was nice. I even get to type some Japanese, which i cannot do so easily on most other computers.
The Materik company’s bus says “VIP”, and it is no exaggeration. I can’t believe i have lived to see the day when by each seat there is an electrical outlet!! So here i am now, typing this on the bus rolling away from Sofia into the nite, with my battery indicator light glowing a bright green. Incredible. This is better than an airplane 🙂 Well, maybe that is a slight exaggeration. I don’t know how they can keep this service up, as there are only 4 of us on the leather seats which are only 3 across. I did check where i have to go next, as the bus station i get out at in Istanbul (Otogari) is separated 5 Metro stops from the one where i need to catch my next bus to T’bilisi (Aksaray). I just hope that it isn’t at 3am or something like that, as i have to exchange money first to catch a Metro, and they probably don’t run until 5am anyway. But i sure hope i can get a bus quickly to T’bilisi, as it is over 24 hours across Turkey to my destination.
Thank you God for the lift with the toilet man, thank you for the yogurt to keep my stomach calm on all the bouncy roads, thank you for the somewhat good response from the Bulgarian Mission regarding the 1858gc book, and thank you especially for always watching out for me.
P.S. We pick up many more passengers at another city, and are full when rolling into Turkey around midnite.