Bulgarian Hitchhikers
Have car, find company

High above the Kardzhali Dam

Article by: Robert Reid, January 2007

I rented a car in Veliko Tarnovo once, getting the keys from a guy on a corner - no signatures, no photocopied IDs, just grab and go.

I rented one in Veliko Tarnovo once, getting the keys from a guy on a corner - no signatures, no photocopied IDs, just grab and go. It's the perfect way for cheapskates like myself to take off on Bulgaria's rewarding, relatively smooth mountain roads to wine towns, bagpipe schools, Thracian ruins and gingerbread villages (where Ottoman armies were once attacked by farmers with pitchforks).

Adventure doesn't stop with the rental. Lonely Planet makes a habit of warning against hitchhiking in its standard text section in the back of guidebooks; ignore that here. Bulgaria practically begs you to do it - or at least pick people up. It's an everyday means of getting around for people who often lack their own transport. Grandmas pile bags into cars on the side of highways, lone children hold out hands to stop strangers' cars to get to school - the only fear is whether or not the driver will be playing chalga - nauseatingly joyful, relentless, bouncing disco music ('truck driver music,' one Sofian hipster scoffed).

Last year I invited my pal Assen (a great man and a great Bulgarian) to venture through some unheralded mountain roads, see some ruins, and pick up some hitchhikers on the way. The wide Rodopi Mountains loom south of Plovdiv (where Roman ruins outnumber rats in a New York sewer). We travelled along the Ardo River into the eastern Rodopi from the valley city of Smolyan (great museums, lousy food options, and - if you're to believe Smolyan word - some of Bulgaria's best berries!) A couple of hours east, we stopped in the Turkish town of Ardino for a kebab and picked up a Turkish dad and his two teenage sons. Bulgarian-born Turks aren't used to Bulgarians showing much interest in them, but Assen was curious. The sons shrugged their shoulders to his friendly chit-chat (perhaps they didn't know Bulgarian, some Turks here don't), but the dad warmed up to Assen and explained where they were headed and that they had both Turkish and Bulgarian names (which they 'never use'). They offered a little money, but we refused it.

Hitching is an everyday means of getting around for people who often lack their own transport.

We stopped in Kardzhali, an interesting coal-mining city of 70,000 that hadn't made any guidebooks (I put it in the upcoming Eastern Europe guide; excellent museum in town). We heard about ruins in the hills above Kardzhali Dam, just west of town, and drove up to the wee villages of Enchets and Dazhdovnitsa. We never found the ruins, but we stopped to snap photos of sheep on a hillside. The shepherd wisely hid out of site; in Bulgaria it's not a novelty to see a sheep, so try to keep cool. Before heading north, we detoured into Perperikon, 20km east of Kardzhali, where a 7000-year-old Thracian (and later Roman) town sits atop a rocky bluff. A 'forester' in the area noticed us and pointed to dug-out water tanks built by Romans and a stone groove where doors once swung open and closed before a 'Temple of Dionysus'. After we tipped him, he pulled out some 'Roman coins' to show, but we passed on them.

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Heading north towards the Stara Planina mountains, we picked up a young weightlifter with bleached, spiked hair and shaved-off sideburns returning to the highway town of Harmanli after a match. 'I can bench 300 pounds,' he said, when we asked. Then, after crossing the Shipka Pass and sampling buffalo yoghurt at the world's highest buffalo-yoghurt stand, we stopped in Tryavna, where I bought a belt from a pony-tailed craftsman who kept Black Sabbath on while he worked. Leaving town, we picked up some more metal fans. They were heading to Varna, on the Black Sea, to head-bang to Sofia band Agent Evil that night. Khristofo, ever grinning and already a bit drunk, said he once played in a punk rock band. 'We were the only band in Tryavna so we didn't need a name, but we had some ideas.' His? 'Civil Defense.' We left them on the highway outside of Veliko Tarnovo, a historic citadel town where we were stopping. They waved as we drove off. No doubt they got a ride in time to catch Agent Evil's first compression of the distortion pedal.