TRAVEL | BORDER CROSSING | TURKEY | GREECE

Making Fast Moves From the Bulgarian Border to the Greek Border

This may have been our worst travel day yet

Despite the annoyance of being turned away at the Bulgarian border, we were thankful for the chain of events that unfolded that allowed us to access the Greek border quickly. Our Turkey visas were set to expire the following day, so we didn’t want to spend another night on Turkish soil. We just wanted to get out. We spent a hell of a lot of money doing it, but at least we made it.

Being that it was very early in the morning and the fact that we had been on an overnight bus, we were pretty tired. But I think adrenaline was also running through our veins as we sorted out our new reality.

First, we had to navigate getting back into Turkey because we had already been stamped out when we left and we had to then show them a piece of paper from the Bulgaria customs officer to get back in. Because no buses were coming through, the walk-through customs counter didn’t have an agent at it. So we just stood our suitcases at the counter then went and sat in some chairs to wait.

After a few minutes, a bus pulled up and a bunch of people got off. Of course, this triggered a customs agent to come, so we were able to finally get stamped back into Turkey.

The conductor of the bus was directing the passengers along when I suddenly had the inspiration to ask him if they had space on their bus because we had to go back to Edirne, the first large city inside the Turkey border. We had hoped that from there we could get on a bus that would take us to Greece.

“Yes, no problem.” He told me.

“How much will you charge?” I asked him.

“Oh, no worries we will figure that out. Just take your luggage to the waiting area and wait for us to finish.”

Of course, it didn’t really matter how much they charged, we were stuck between a rock and a hard place and we needed a ride.

Once over in the waiting area I pulled out our bus ticket from the other bus and explained to him what had happened. Consequently, his bus was from the same company and I hoped they would possibly allow us on for free because we hadn’t used the other ticket for the entire journey.

Of course, that was just wishful thinking.

Another problem was that we were at the end of our Turkish Lira since we had planned to head to Bulgaria. Thankfully there were a bunch of stand-alone ATMs on the Turkey side of the border, and I was able to take out some Euro after asking the bus to stop there on the way by. The conductor finally told us that it would be 20 Euros to go to Edirne. It was not a good deal, but it saved us the hassle of trying to figure out a taxi.

It was just a 30-minute ride to Edirne and the bus made a special stop for us to get off at the bus station since the bus was actually headed to Istanbul. In retrospect, I wish we had of gone to Istanbul as well because from there we likely could have gotten a direct bus across the border instead of doing the complicated series of events that we ended up doing.

Of course, at that time we had hoped that we could get a bus into Greece from Edirne.

I walked into the ticketing hall while Chris waited outside with the luggage. There were numerous counters with all sorts of bus names. Because it was so early in the morning, only two men were behind the numerous counters.

“Hello, I need a bus to Greece,” I asked one of them. I knew that it was a long shot that they would understand me because Turkish people really don’t speak much English.

“Kesan, Kesan.” He simply said while pointing to the only other ticket counter that had a man sitting behind it.

In front of the man was a large sign that said Kesan (pronounced Kay-shan). I figured that was the name of the bus company.

“Hello, I need tickets to Greece,” I told him as I approached the counter.

He looked at me, pointed at his ear, then waved his hands in front of his face. At first, I almost thought he was deaf and couldn’t hear me. Then he said “Kesan.”

I had no idea what he was talking about and then wondered if he just didn’t understand the word Greece. Turkey calls Bulgaria ‘Bulgaristan’, so I figured that it had a different name for Greece as well.

“Greece, Greka……” I tried another angle.

He waved his hands in front of his face again. He didn’t understand me.

I approached the other counter where there were now three men gathered, “Do any of you speak English?”

“No English.” That was all I got in return.

I finally decided to type Greece into google translate on my phone.

Would you believe me if I said that the translation was Yunanistan?

Yes, Greece in Turkish is Yunanistan. So strange.

I showed the translation to the man. “Ah Yunanistan.” He confirmed he understood. But then he went off on a tangent that I definitely did not understand. I did hear the word Kesan, though, a few different times.

We were at a standstill. I had no idea what this man was trying to tell me, and he was making no moves to try and be understood further.

Then I suddenly had an inspiration.

When we first arrived in Edirne back at the beginning of December we had stayed with a nice man through Couchsurfing. It was now 7:30 and when we stayed with him he would leave for work at 8:00. So I figured that he would be awake.

‘Good morning Guner. Are you awake?’ I messaged him on Whatsapp. Thank goodness I still had cell service in Turkey. ‘We are in Edirne and I need your help. Can I call you?’

‘Yes, I am awake, give me five minutes.’ I breathed out a sigh of relief. At least I would finally have a translator.

After 5 minutes he messaged me back, ‘okay, I’m ready.’

I phoned him and slowly explained to him what had happened. Then I told him that we are trying to purchase tickets to Greece and that I didn’t understand what the man was trying to tell me. He understood and I handed the phone over to the man sitting behind the counter.

After a minute of them chatting, he handed the phone back. “You have to take the bus to Kesan first, then you have to take another bus to Ipsala. From there you can cross the border.”

I thanked him profusely for the help and tried further to explain to him that we had tried to get into Bulgaria but we were denied. He laughed and said that it sounded complicated.

‘So, so, complicated,’ I couldn’t help but think.

Okay, finally, after about 15 minutes of trying to figure out how to get to Greece, we had a plan. I paid the man for 2 tickets to Kesan. Surprisingly the bus left at 8:00 am and it was now about 7:45. Phew, had I spent any longer trying to decipher what he was telling me, we would have missed the damn bus.

We had just enough Lira for the tickets, well actually we were 1 Lira short, but he waved me away and told me it was good enough.

We made our way outside and waited for our bus to take us Kesan. I looked on the map and noticed that it was over an hour's drive away. We were thankful as it would give us another opportunity to sleep, which is just what we did for the entire trip.

I woke with a jolt as the bus slowed down and checked Google Maps to see where we were. We were just on the outskirts of the city, so I nudged Chris awake. “We are almost there,” I told him.

Seconds later the bus pulled quickly to the side of the highway. “Ipsala!” The conductor yelled out. He indicated that we had to get off the bus and pointed down the highway to a spot where a man was standing on the side of the road just on the other side of an underpass.

He just kept saying “Ipsala bus,” and pointing down the highway indicating that Ipsala was in that general direction.

I didn’t really understand what he was telling us, but Chris seemed to get it as we unloaded our luggage from the back of the minibus.

We made our way down the side of the road to the man that was standing with a tray of bagels or some sort of baked items.

“Ipsala?” We asked him.

“Evet,” yes, in Turkish. Good enough.

Seconds later a small minibus came screaming around the corner. “Ipsala!” the man exclaimed pointing at the bus. We quickly waved it down.

The driver jumped out and ran around the bus to retrieve our luggage and store it for us. There was no room in the back so it had to go just inside the main entrance of the bus.

I think I heard him say “on lira” (ten lira) as we boarded the bus. I just boarded and kept moving to the back. I knew full well we had no lira, but we had Euro, we would sort it out when we got there.

When we arrived to Ipsala the bus pulled to the side of the road then all of the passengers got out. We weren’t anywhere near a bus station, so we remained sitting.

The driver looked at us in the rearview mirror, “Yunanistan?” I said.

We didn’t understand all of what he said but we did hear “Yunanistan and taxi.”

He started driving again and we approached a dirt parking lot full of small buses the same size as the one we were on. He pulled over to the taxi stand and gestured that we had to take a taxi to go to the border.

Things happened so quickly that we simply didn’t have time to look around and try to figure out if there were other options. Had we done so, we may have found an office that would sell us a bus ticket to Greece, but we just did what we were told.

I opened my wallet to pay the bus driver. The smallest bill I had was 5 Euro which equals 100 Lira, much more than the 20 I thought I owed him.

“Euro good.” He said as he held out his hand. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I couldn’t help but think as I handed him the 5 Euro bill.

I turned to the taxi driver, “How much to Yunanistan?”

“Five Euro.” He happily announced. Of course, I didn’t have change but I was surprised to see him quickly pull out Euro bills and provide me with change for my 20.

I guess being this close to the Greek border meant that they were used to Euros.

We loaded up our luggage and headed off to the border. After about 15 minutes we approached the Turkish border offices. He stopped the taxi and pointed to the door where we were to enter. We assumed that this is where we would get stamped out of Turkey, then hoped that we could use the same taxi to be taken to the Greek side.

However, he unloaded our luggage from the trunk indicating that this was not the case.

We had no option but to make our way into the customs office while our taxi drove off. There was only one direction to go in now, we needed to cross to Greece. We would just have to figure out the rest as we went.

To be continued:

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