By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
After a month in Romania, Rodrigo and I agreed to go to Turkey and start the Asian part of our journey. But before, following a frivolous idea of mine, we’ve decided stop in Bulgaria, motivated exclusively by Dracula’s book – he tried to get back home through Varna, a lovely and lively city in the Black Sea coast. The last morning in Varna rose rainy and windy, just like the week before. Rodrigo was glad for our early departure, as the weather forecast in Istanbul promised shiny and warmer days. As for me, I wasn’t reluctant anymore, but still quite sad. It reminded my teenage holidays, when we used to travel to the beach even under the worst weather prediction, and the days defied everyone’s capacity to feel entertained. Adulthood brought me a new perspective of it all, and boredom became a blessing. Rodrigo was counting the leftovers of our Bulgarian money ("lev") and gravely announced that we only had the exact amount to go to the bus station and buy the tickets to Turkey - not even a cent to spare. Decided not to leave any food behind, I even boiled two eggs for the trip - probably another symptom of my nostalgic mood, packing inconvenient meals for our long expedition, just like my mother would do. The couple of blocks between our flat and the bus stop seemed a trekking in the woods: five minutes walking under the rain, our clothes and backpacks were completely soaked, and I was especially concerned to protect the food bag. When the bus arrived, delayed and crowded with wet locals, homesickness stroke me in such a pleasant way that I started chuckling, “this is Brazil!”. This kind of daily tragedy was just like home, thus I was happy. I jumped on the bus in such a pleasant state of mind that I stumbled and left all my money felt, creating a little mess while I was trying to bend down with a heavy backpack to collect the coins from the dirty gutter. My embarrassment was only diminished when a smiley woman, carrying a suitcase full of Bulgarian candies, came to help me with my luggage. I tried to start a conversation, and soon figure out that we simply couldn’t understand a word of each other. But as mimicry and a good sense of humor are universal languages, we spent the next half hour laughing a lot about things I’ll never know. Rodrigo and I dropped off at the main station twenty minutes before the departure time, headed to the vending lady, gave her all the money we had and were about to run to the platform when she said, in the most calmly tone, it was missing 50 cents. Silence came upon the place, as the three of us were staring at each other. Rodrigo was frozen in disbelief; I was drowned in guilty. I’ve lost a coin. Rodrigo stayed at the ticket office explaining the situation while I would try to gain some money. But Varna’s bus station was small, with only a few passengers who didn’t speak enough English to understand me. So there I was, a crazy bus-station beggar under a heavy storm asking people on the street for the very last cent to buy a ticket. At that point I had given up all the long oral explanation and was simply showing a sentence on my mobile screen, poorly translated to Bulgarian by an offline app: “I need ONLY 50 cents, can you give me?” Hope was about to leave me when I saw the candy woman from the bus selling her delicacies near a newsstand. It would be miserable of me to simply ask money for such a humble person, so we traded two boiled eggs for 50 cents. By this time, everyone in the station was interested in the outcome of the situation - the vending woman arguing with the bus driver that he couldn’t leave without us, my luggage blocking the lane and a very polite version of Rodrigo standing immobile in front of the bus. A relief came across the place when I finally appeared, soaked and triumphant, holding a small coin of 50 cents.