The visa expires in 90 days though, and in order to renew it, tourists have to leave Turkey and re-enter the country so they can pay another $20 for a new visa. For many of the expats in Turkey this ritual serves as a thinly-veiled excuse to visit the neighboring countries. In mid-January of 2004, I had been in Turkey for almost three months and it was time to renew my visa. Plus, I was issuing death threats against beggar kids. It was time to get a little distance. It was time for a road trip.
Going somewhere new tends to strip away the built-up layers of civilization, taking us back to the basics of our existence. It forces us to ask questions like, “Should I take 3 shirts or 4?” “Where will I eat dinner?” and “How will I get to my hotel, and will my bed be ready for me when I arrive?”
Excited to be traveling again, I stuffed a change of clothes and a toothbrush into my daypack and went down to the main bus station on the European side of Istanbul, the station from which the buses to Bulgaria departed. Moments before the bus pulled out of the parking lot, I paid $25 for a one-way ticket and climbed aboard.
Bulgaria neighbors Turkey to the west. Its capital Sofia is about 8 hours from Istanbul by car. I had been looking forward to seeing the scenery to the west of Istanbul, but mine would be a night bus, and I wouldn’t be able to see anything other than the blackness of night. So instead of staring out the window I went to sleep, waking up for only 20 groggy minutes to get off the bus and shuffle through passport control at the border.
After driving all through the night the bus pulled into Sofia about 6:00 in the morning. The sky was still dark and the mid-winter air biting cold. The bus station was like a big, freezing, poorly-lit concrete hangar. I wandered around the cavernous waiting hall for a bit, feeling lost and bewildered, wondering what to do next. I hadn’t thought this through very well. I did know where I was staying that night, but other than that all I knew about Sofia was that I would be there for 24 hours until the bus took me back to Istanbul.
I didn’t even know whether to feel safe or not. The bus station was deserted and the streets outside were empty. I didn’t know whether the streets were empty because it was cold out and the nice, friendly, hospitable Bulgarians were still sleeping snug in their beds, or whether the streets were empty because everybody but me knew Sofia was a dangerous place and no one in their right mind would step outside before dawn.
Telling myself the dark and deserted streets were no more dangerous than the dark and deserted bus station, I cinched up the straps on my daypack and started walking, moving south along one of the main boulevards towards the center of town.
…
[This is an excerpt from the chapter “Escape to Bulgaria” in A Tight Wide-open Space.]