Edirne

I'll finish posting about my vacation this week, but I'd like to take a break to talk about my weekend. Yesterday I took day trip up to Edirne, a city which lies near the Greek and Bulgarian borders. I did this mainly so that I could cross over to Bulgaria, because...I wanted to see beautiful Bulgaria? That's my official story and I'm sticking to it. Contact me privately for more explanation.

I took Metro, one of the largest bus companies in Turkey. I must say, buses here are pretty luxurious. The seats are comfortable and equipped with individual entertainment systems like fancy planes have, with movies and TV shows to choose from. There's a "bus host" who serves drinks (soda and tea) and snacks. It was a very enjoyable 2.5 hour ride up to Edirne.

The city is lovely! It has a much more laid-back atmosphere than Istanbul does. Very pretty mosques, lots of pedestrian-only streets to shop/eat on, and a really nice river running through it.

Unfortunately, I didn't give myself all that much time to sight-see. I had a mission! I hopped on a minibus (the preferred mode of transportation in smaller Turkish cities, it seems) to Kapıkule, at the Bulgarian border. The Greek border is actually much closer to town, but there is no public transportation to get there, probably because of the poor relationship between the two countries. I realize now, looking at maps, that I could have probably walked there.

The border area is much larger than I thought it would be. It's designed for cars, so walking through alone feels very strange and earns you many funny looks from border guards. There's like 7 or 8 checkpoints to stop at, the roles of which were very unclear to me. Some of them would ask prying questions (in Turkish) and I responded with my pre-prepared answers:

-Where are you going?
-To Bulgaria.
-Why?
-I want to see it.
-What are you doing in Turkey?
-Sight-seeing, shopping, seeing friends.
-You're not working?
-No, just a tourist.

The guards all seem to know the truth, and laugh it off and send me on my way. They've seen this act plenty of times and mostly just find it amusing. I tried to be friendly and charming at each step, and I think it worked well. The Bulgarian side doesn't ask many questions, though they were pretty friendly to me. I didn't know a single work in Bulgarian and felt bad that I didn't even learn how to say "hello" or "thank you" beforehand. After a mile or two of walking through border checkpoints (really, it's that long) I found my self in Kapitan Andreevo. It was, uh, smelly. Clearly many cows nearby. My apologies to any Bulgarians who read this- I'm sure the border town is not a shining example of your country.

After a few moments of wandering around, I went right back through border control, to the amusement of the guards who had just seen me. I was nervous about facing the most important of the guards, the one who would actually decide to let me in to Turkey or not. Fortunately, he was a friendly young man who was eager to tell me about his life and show me some funny Youtube videos he was watching on the official passport-scanning computer. Oh, internet lulz: bringing cultures together. He asked me some more prying questions, and I continued with the whole "Turkey is awesome and I want to see more of it!" thing. However, he didn't seem willing to give me a fresh visa, and my Turkish was not good enough to understand why. After about five minutes of being stressed out and confused, he grudgingly minimized his Youtube video and looked up the regulation he was referring to. I think it had something to do with a new rule that Turkey is trying to push through but has not yet done. He decided that whatever it was didn't matter, and so I got my fresh visa sticker and entry stamp. Hooray!

After a long and awkward wait on the side of street outside of border control, I hopped on a minibus back to town for some speed sight-seeing before heading back. I took a nice walk across the pretty Meriç river:

I've become a big fan of liver lately, so I tried the local style of liver preparation, which everyone told me was delicious. It was! It was deep fried, which I wasn't expecting, but still tasted great. I also just realized that one of the best liver restaurants in Istanbul serves Edirne-style liver, and is in my neighborhood. Mmm...

More vacation posts to come! I'll be talking about the big failure of a plan that necessitated this Edirne trip. I'm kind of glad it worked out this way, though, since I don't think I would have had the motivation to check this town out if not for those circumstances.