Bulgaria
Preparing for the flight
This trip was going to be different than last year’s. One of the changes was that in this trip, we would start and end from the same spot. This allowed us to use an actual bike suitcase, rather than getting a used cardboard bike box from a local bike shop and packing the bike in that. The thing is, good bike suitcases are expensive. Luckily, as a member of many bike groups in Jerusalem, one of the people there allowed me to borrow his. I was surprised, but the suitcase was soft. Knowing that airlines to not in anyway take care of suitcases, I thought it was risky to use it. But the owner of the suitcase reassured me that professionals take their bikes (that are more than 10 times as expensive as mine) using such suitcases. So I decided to chance it and hope for the best.
After getting the suitcase, I practised assembling and disassembly. Then the night before the flight, I assembled the bike inside the suitcase and padded it with my clothing.
Traveling to Bulgaria
Our flight was supposed to depart at 09:20. Since my bikig partner likes to get to airports hours upon hours ahead of the scheduled departure time (like my mother), we get on an early train to the airport. Then we had to take the shuttle to terminal 1 and get through check in. There was no line, but when we got to the place to check in our oversize luggage, we found no one working there. I guess the worker decided that we were a captive market, so he could just abandon his spot and nothing would happen. After about 30 minutes of waiting, the worker showed up and took our luggage. From there, the security theater was relatively quick, and we got to our gate with enough hours to spare. After a nice nap in the terminal, we borded that airplane.
Sofia to Radomir to Kyustendil
Since wizz air is a low cost airline, they try to do anything they can to get more money. One of the things they do is, when booking a ticket together, if you don’t pay extra, they make sure that you don’t sit together. But Israelis don’t like that way of working, so after boarding, people were busy swapping seats with others, so that groups could sit together. Another tactic they used was to sit the flight attendants at the exit row. That way, if no one paid extra for those seats, then no one will get an exit row. The final thing I noticed, was that they probably don’t hire the best pilots. When we where landing, the pilot missed the landing the first time, and had to circle around the airport and try to land again.
Although, after all of that, we landed in one piece. Passport control was fast, and our bikes were waiting for us right as we got to the baggage control. From there, there was a direct train to where we will stay on our last day. We made sure that we could store our suitcases there, so we assembled our bikes and stored our suitcases.
After that we got on a local train from Sofia to Radomir. This was in order to avoid biking in Sofia. Normally biking close to a city is annoying since there is a lot of traffic, and the view isn’t that nice.
From there we passed through a few of the famous Bulgarian ghost villages. There is a lot of information online about why there are so many ghost villages, but in short, Bulgarians can travel and work in Western Europe and living in a city is more profitable than living in a small village. So the younger generation left the villages to live in cities in Bulgaria or Western Europe, and they left to villages to be reclaimed by nature.
Although, it was obvious that there used to be a lot of life and wealth in those towns. Even the bus stops were decorated in the past.
After biking for a few hours through rain and mud, we finally reached our destination for the first night. It was in a city called Kyustendil. We got a large house, with 2 king sized beds in separate bedrooms, a full kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom with a jacuzzi. All that was for 20 EUR for the night. Since we arrived at 21:30, after waking up really early, flying to Bulgaria, biking in rain and mud, we did not spend time to tour the town. Rather we went to the local grocery store, made and ate dinner, showered and went to sleep.
Video
Here is 2 hour video of the first day: