Denied At the Bulgarian Border Like a Couple Of Travel Amateurs
A warning to others that travel long-term in this part of the world.
Wow! I don’t even know where to begin. Let’s just say that it has been an exciting couple of days. And actually, it feels more like 3 or 4 days' worth of activities instead of just one seemingly endless day.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
At the beginning of December, I wrote my intro post to Globetrotter's monthly challenge “Surprise — We Are Going To Greece!” In it, I spoke of the fact that instead of heading back up to Bulgaria after Turkey, we were going to go and volunteer on Crete for a month first. However, about 10 days ago we changed our minds about that. We had started to look into the costs of ferries and the journey to get to Crete, and it felt like too much. Too much money and too much time spent on boats.
It would have been 2 overnight trips on ferries and we wouldn’t have paid for cabins because they were too expensive for our budget. So 2 nights sitting up in chairs didn’t really appeal to us. Plus we knew that our money would go much farther in Bulgaria, so we decided to save the expense and head back there instead.
We were leaving from Izmir and when we went to the Otogar (main bus terminal) we were thrilled to be able to purchase tickets all the way to Varna, the city we wanted to go to, for just $30 USD each. It was an overnight bus, so still not ideal, but at least it was basically door-to-door service, which we were happy about.
Our first surprise came when we were loading our luggage and the conductor told us that we had to change buses in Haskovo, the first Bulgarian city that we would reach. DOH! Oh well, it didn’t bother us too much, we were just happy to be on our way.
The bus left at 8:00 pm (20:00) and by 5:00 am we had reached the border. We sleepily stamped out of Turkey, then we all proceeded to the Bulgarian side of the border.
Chris and I were some of the first people in line to go through customs. The agent scanned our passports and asked if we had been to Bulgaria before.
“Yes, we were here last year,” I told him.
He looked at his computer, then looked through the pages of our passport slowly.
“You have already been in Bulgaria for 90 days.” He told me.
“Yes, we were here for 90 days the last time.” I agreed.
“You can not stay for longer than 90 days.” He said.
“Oh! In a year?” I asked.
“No, for 180 days.” He told me.
SIGH!
We had only been out of Bulgaria for 2 months, which meant that we were now at the 5-month mark of the 6-month period.
“Oh! Nobody told us that.” I naively told him. Of course, that was not his problem.
“Please stand to the side.” He told us as he dealt with the rest of the passengers on the bus.
Now, I have written about the Schengen Zone in previous posts, and have also spoken about the fact that we could only be in Turkey for 90 out of 180 days. The Schengen Zone is an area of 27 countries in Europe that allow border-free travel. But Canadians can only be in the entire region for 90 out of 180 days as well.
While in Bulgaria the last time, we were told by numerous people that Bulgaria didn’t follow the same rules as the Schengen Zone because they are not a part of it (despite the fact that they have been trying to join for the past 10+ years). Our host at the hostel we stayed at in Varna told us that many people would reset their Bulgarian 90-day visas by just popping across a border for a few days or a week, then would come back in for another 90 days.
So many people talked about this, and we stupidly just took everyone's word for it and never actually researched it for ourselves. So yeah, that was a HUGE lesson learned, although I feel like we should have been smart enough to know it already.
The customs agent finished with the rest of the bus passengers and then called us back over to the counter. “My comrade will talk to you about this and will count the days. If you aren’t able to go into Bulgaria you will be sent back to Turkey. Please go and get your luggage from the bus and follow this man to another office.”
He then folded our passports together and closed his sliding window. Seeing him hold our passports, and knowing that we wouldn’t get them back until this debacle was dealt with, made me feel a bit forlorn, I will admit.
We did as we were told. One of the guys we had met on the bus spoke English and was keen to know what was going on when I went to retrieve our bags from our seats. At that point, I still sort of thought that we would just get a slap on the wrist and told to not do it again. Or they would shorten the length of our stay to something like a month.
He was clearly aghast that the Canadians were being denied entry.
I shrugged my shoulders and said, “We will see I guess.”
Of course, we never did see him or any of the other bus passengers again.
We made our way to a comfortable seating room and waited for the next man to deal with us. We weren’t really too worried about this. We still had a couple of days left on our Turkish visa, and we knew that the border to Greece was very close. So it wasn’t the end of the world. We were mostly just sad that we wouldn’t be able to reconnect with our friends in Varna as we had planned.
After about 10 minutes a man came out of his office and approached us.
“Where are you going?” He asked us in a very stern tone.
“Well, we were hoping to go to Varna.” I told him.
“It’s impossible.” He said matter of factly. “You are only allowed to be in Bulgaria for 90 days out of 180 days.”
“Yes, the other man told us that. We didn’t know.” Chris told him.
We were very calm and very understanding and didn’t show any sort of displeasure at the situation. We knew that we had done nothing wrong, well, nothing illegal, at least. This was just a misunderstanding.
He nodded his head and returned back into his office.
A few minutes later he came back out with some paperwork that we had to sign. “There is no fine and you are not in trouble for this. You just have to wait a few more weeks and then you can come back. It’s no problem.”
We figured as much.
He explained that we needed to show the paper to the Turkish border guards so that they would stamp us back into the country, then he sent us on our way.
As we walked out he apologized, “I’m really sorry about this, but it’s the law and we must enforce it.”
“Oh no worries, we understand completely,” Chris told him as we made our way out of the building.
There is more of this tale to tell and I promise I will write the rest in a follow-up article. Despite the inconvenience of this scenario, the rest of our transit that day lined up for us in the most miraculous way, which got us to Greece in record time. But we were certainly exhausted and weary travelers when we finally arrived to Thessaloniki about 10 hours after being denied at the Bulgaria border.
On one hand, I initially regretted that we didn’t just go to Crete first because then we would have avoided this whole scenario altogether. But on the other hand, I’m glad that we learned the rules because I have a feeling that this may have bitten us further down the road as we had plans to go in and out of Bulgaria again in the future.
Bulgaria is in a bit of a transition phase right now as it is trying hard to join the European Schengen Zone. In fact, in December, Bulgaria and Romania were again denied entry to the zone, after trying to get in for over 10 years. The reason that Bulgaria was denied is that some claim that they don’t have strict enough border protocol. So it is quite possible that it is because of this that they have really tightened things up.
Either way, I hope this serves as a warning for others that want to travel long-term in this part of the world. It seems that most countries are now adhering to the 90/180 rule whether they are part of the Schengen Zone or not.
And this also goes to show us all that no matter how well-traveled people are, there is always still room for mistakes to happen.
UPDATE! Part one of our journey is now live:
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