I was lost in a foreign country...

Sometimes, in order to break the monotony but also out of laziness, because I would not like to admit that I lost my inspiration, I also resort to suggestions of topics. The biggest source of topics is provided by @galenkp, before every weekend, in the community WEEKEND EXPERIENCES, more precisely, in the weekly post with the title: Posting prompts - Weekend-Engagement: WEEK ...

I haven't written many posts using this inspirational aid, because the proposed topics require the writer to have gone through certain experiences or happenings, so it must be a true story and not fiction. I thought the same would happen this week because I couldn't find anything personal among the many recommended topics until I remembered an event I had a few years ago when I really got lost in a foreign country. So...

Yes, I was lost in a foreign country...

It happened in 2019 and I got lost in Bulgaria.

I live in Romania, in the south of Romania, in the capital Bucharest. This southern location favors traveling to the neighboring country Bulgaria, having to travel only 60 km to the nearest border point. This proximity to Bulgaria has led me to make many trips there in the last twenty years, especially to the Black Sea coast. Most of my summer vacations I made in Balchik, a place closer to Romania and a place where Romania has also made a contribution, at least architecturally and in terms of landscaping.

...and in Sozopol, far to the south, just for diversification.

I didn't get lost in these towns, I have been there so often, especially to Balchik, that I know the places very well, I can close my eyes and visualize any route, any place visited.

The problem arose with the need to cross the whole of Bulgaria, a necessary action to get to Greece, obviously also to see the sea! Another sea, the Aegean Sea, and the island of Thassos.

My apogee of marine beauty!

I have to specify one more thing, something that differentiates Romania and Bulgaria and makes it a bit more difficult to find your way around. The alphabet! In Romania, we use the Latin alphabet and the Bulgarians use the Cyrillic alphabet. That's why I had a lot of problems understanding the signs on the roads, especially many years ago. Now, these signs are written in both alphabets, with the increase of tourism and the fact that millions of Romanians travel on Bulgarian roads.

However, the road signs were not the cause of the unfortunate event we experienced. It was a combination of my stupidity and the way the Waze app works.

For those who don't know, Waze is a navigator-type app that guides you to a destination of your choice. It chooses the best routes, looks for the shortest distances, bypasses various obstacles that appear on the road, bypasses congested or blocked portions, and so on.

The real story!

On that trip, I used Waze for the first time. It was quite hard for me to get used to the app, especially as my wife didn't trust it at all and I had conflicting opinions all the way. We managed to cross Bulgaria, there was only one town ahead of us before the Greek border. Before entering the town of Haskovo the app indicated to turn off on a side road. I then failed at the next road junctions to choose the correct route and so we ended up somewhere in the mountains.

I knew that Waze would get us to our destination but there were some problems... My wife freaked out and didn't trust the app at all. The places where we were going were deserted, we didn't meet any village in more than an hour of driving but, the worst, and this I didn't tell my wife, the fuel was running out and we had no internet... I was a bit scared but I was trying not to let my wife see it.

After a while, we reached a dam with a reservoir. There I saw a man in a car before the dam. I asked him for the direction to Makaza and he told me to follow him, and that he would bring me there. I breathed a sigh of relief...

... For a little while, though. Both the car and the driver I was following looked rather strange, and I started to wonder if I was right to follow him. I had no guarantee he'd take me where he said. I suddenly remembered the many stories of the Bulgarian bandits.

At the other end of the dam, I saw some soldiers who were probably the dam guards. We stopped next to them and, strangely, the one who said he would take us to Makaza didn't stop either, he sped on, which reinforced my assumption that he didn't have the best intentions with us.

The army means something else, I was confident it would be fine. Unfortunately, none of the soldiers spoke English, we only understood that we had reached the Turkish border, they were border guards. They still managed to make us understand which direction to go and so we reached a town big enough to have a gas station there.

Next, it was easy, we reached Makaza, the crossing into Greece, then the ferry, and finally, about three hours late, the island of Thassos.

I don't think I've ever been happier when I arrived at a destination!

I had almost forgotten about this adventure in Bulgaria. I still think it could have ended badly.

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