Sofia the Boarders and onto Turkey!

So sat-nav guided us toward Sofia we headed toward the centre and saw the first sign of a cosmopolitan trading town that we had seen for quite sometime maybe even since Italy. In total contrast we also saw perhaps the roughest shanty town of haphazard buildings on the outskirts of this dazzling car trading town….. It was clear we where back on the route which most people travelled to get to the Middle East from Europe and visa versa.
One thing I will always remember from Sofia was a small thing but they had a count down timer on each traffic light. So as we waited for the lights to change you could see the time ebb away, raising the level of excitement as we moved in to the ten second count down. Then with out fail cars all took off on the -1 and stopped again as close to the limit as possible…. We moved slowly in traffic and found the central square a clever trick of Jonny’s is to pull up in full Indiana Jones style to the flashest hotel, to chat up the doormen drop them 10 Euros and to get advice on where to eat whilst also having trusting eyes watch over the wonderful cars which very much look the part.
We hit a large franchise restaurant and had a cheap meal. Then after a bit of group politics we headed back to the hotel and after a coffee some promotional clips of the door men wishing us good luck and onward to the last major town before our Turkish boarder P-something? It felt like a long drive we where tired and dipped into some small towns in the hope that we would find a great spot to stay… but no luck we pushed on to the P-something town and to a grand hotel for a brief stop before our most dramatic day yet.
Up early for a walk around the p-something town It was rough to say the least. Graffiti has been a part of every place we have been it seemed and this was a tough looking place I wandered off the beaten track to see what was behind the scenes many rugged looking buildings manly high rise and not appealing in anyway a large river I followed back towards the hotel car park.. met with the gang in icy winds and we mounted up drove out of town escorted for twenty meters by a most impressive Russian army truck known as a Zil dwarfing our cars as it chugged off the main road and we continued into icy fields and towards unbeknown to us Greece….
We hadn’t planned to duck into Greece it is always nice to be able to add another country to the list of fifteen we started with. However there is the risk that boarders guards and paperwork can take a lot longer than needed. There had been a habit occurring of extended delay and we had no idea till we had practically stopped at the dotted line that we where entering Greece fortunately Greece being a more touristy country the boarder was swift and effective with no fee for insurance…. We breezed through and press on toward The Turkish border through about 30kms of snow filled highway and icy roads.
The border kind of snuck up on us as we pulled up to a small town then to our left was a office Greek half of the check points followed by an official stretch of road to the Turkish half….. This was the first military crossing we had been through we passed army bases for both side assuming that they spend most of their time watching each other then arrived at the Turkish entrance and collected our papers for the border officials…
Love it!