17. Smuggling

Never fear, Monica! I am typing on a standard English keyboard again!  Huzzah!

I really liked Istanbul despite all of the pick up lines and smarmy stares. My personal favorite line "Hello beautiful. May I kidnap you?"

**shudder**

On the way out of Turkey, we saw some of the less desirable bits, with dead dogs all over the side of the road and some pretty desolate "towns." The hands-down worst part of this trip thus far was the border crossing. If you have not passed through countries in Europe by car or bus, allow me to explain: first, you get an exit stamp. They run your passport and then they stamp your passport with the date of your exit. Then, you enter no man's land. This area may or may not contain a duty free shop and a toilet. This toilet may or may not be a hole in the ground. But, the hole-in-the-ground-toilet is not my major complaint. I am fully capable of squatting.

After crossing this swatch of parking lot, you are faced with a customs/passport officer from the bordering country of the place you just left. This person is typically cranky when they spy a large Contiki Coach exiting the other country's gate. Then, if you are lucky, you gain entrance into the next country. Sometimes they are cranky when they see a giant Contiki Coach leaving their country.

Where it got sticky for us between Turkey and Bulgaria was with the Turkish guys. After going through all of our passports, running them and giving us exit stamps, they decided that they needed to x-ray the coach. This meant that we had to go to another area of border control and unload everything. Now, I have not detailed to you the process of loading and unloading the coach, but let us just say that it is rather extensive and stressful and people are jerk-faces. Not to mention the fact that we all had exit stamps. As in we are technically no longer in Turkey and technically no longer in their jurisdiction.

So, we unloaded the coach. And by "we", I mean that people unloaded their shit and left a whole bunch of their shit behind, so I threw shit on the ground outside of the coach because everything means everything. People were getting all pissed because I was off-loading cameras, but Ricky, our driver, unloaded the wooden brooms, so I think "everything" means everything.

In any event, they scanned all of our bags and then three bags got pulled. Including mine. So....my proper luggage bag is currently full of souvenirs and I am living out of a duffel bag. They cannot open our bags without us present. Tim went first. We all thought it was hilarious that his bag was pulled, as he is a  police officer in Australia. He knew exactly what they were after. A gun. To be more precise, a BB gun. Funny story: his cousin, who he came on tour with, also bought a BB gun. They packed them differently and his cousin's BB gun was not detected.

Second up was me. At this point, 15 tour mates were loitering in the baggage x-ray room to see what the fuss was about. One of the girls claimed that my bag had been pulled because it was suspiciously small. I have a carry-on while everyone else has a ginormous as-big-as-it-can-legally-be check bag. So, the x-ray guy pointed out a spot when they rescanned it and I said "I know what you're after" and pulled out my aluminum water bottle. In the countries where it is safe to drink the water, I have been refilling my bottle instead of paying an arm and a leg for bottled water. More recently, I have been buying bottled water because the water is not safe to drink, so my aluminum bottle is useless, so I packed it. I opened it for them to show that it was empty and then they started talking to each other in Turkish. I asked for an interpretation and got nothing. At this point, I started to feel a bit stressed and the 15 people looking on was not helping. I looked up at the group of loiterers and said "Not helping. Not your business. This is stressful enough, please leave." Obviously they didn't.  So, they proceeded to scrounge through the rest of my luggage for the fun of it. Good times. I love repacking a bag that I have strategically layered over 10-15 minutes in a matter of seconds while 20 people watch with prying eyes, don't you? FML.

So. Then I left and shooed out the others because Samantha was up. I do not know what happened, but they made her unpack her entire bag and hand over her passport and she left the room crying. Assholes.

2 hours later, we crossed into Bulgaria. It took 15 minutes to get 51 people through passport control. I love Bulgaria. One of the Aussies told me that they pulled our bus because of the high number of Australians. Apparently there is a prevalence of smuggling amongst Australians. If I was smuggling across the Turkish border, I would carry whatever it was on my person, since they did not check any of us...
Sofia was alright. Small, but the hotel was nice and their currency is super weak. Good times.

Mom: Do not read the following paragraph!!!!!!!!!

Next up: Belgrade. I loved Belgrade. They had inexpensive shopping and a lovely fortress and great churches. We went to a floating bar, which was awesome. I would have returned to Belgrade, until it fucked with my friend Jack. Jack, Matt, Olivia and Simeon got into a cab. The cab was attacked. Jack got a face full of glass, then the attacked punched him in the face and tried to drag him out of the window. Thankfully, Olivia had the presence of mind (or blind instinct) to wrap her arms around his waist and hold him in the cab. The cabbie drove off, Jack showed-up in the hotel bleeding like crazy and we had to leave the next morning without him because the hospital would not release him.

We made our way to Budapest. Budapest was AWESOME!!!! Jack's train got in just in time for him to meet-up for the river cruise at night. Yay!

But, Budapest later, since Hungary rocked my socks.

In summary, Eastern Europe: get your shit together. Shengen can be your friend (and mine).