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sofia
Yeay, alhamdulillah, this one will be the final part of my WEMW travelogue. :)
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| The best part of road trip... stamps on the passport! |
We left Istanbul, still with no idea how the highways in Turkey work (I mean how to pay the toll). Although we had few challenges entering Turkey, alhamdulillah the return journey was okay. Custom officers let us go without any inspections. Well, they already have all data in the systems, why should they stop us at the border... we were leaving anyway.
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| Resting at the R&R, have I told you that most petrol stations provide free WiFi? |
Just, the funny part of entering Bulgaria at this border point (Turkey-Bulgaria) was when we need to get our car disinfected. I was not sure for what reason but after returning home, I found out it was for Food & Mouth Disease (FMD). Hmm, but still... why to the car?
It was not for free though. -_-'
Entering Romania again, via Giurgiu-Rousse Friendship Bridge.
Romania was very beautiful, especially at the countryside. Unfortunately, we always driving through this country when it was approaching night time. Mountains along the way, lakes as well (we could just see reflections of moon on the water). Just, there were not much of highways, so, expect to drive on one lane road for each direction.
Keep patience when there will be lots of lorries in front of the car and you will be scared to cross them. T_T
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| Countryside of Romania. |
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| Sunset in Romania. |
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| Beautiful view! |
We were on the road for the whole night, taking turns to drive. But, somewhere we felt something wrong with the car. T_T
Flat tire.
We know the theory of changing flat tire but... haha we did not want to risk our life doing so in the middle of the night out of nowhere. So, we decided to stop at the next petrol station and requested the worker there to help. He was nice to change for free :)
The bad part was, the extra tire was in the boot... with all our stuffs ON TOP OF IT. Imagine the situation when we need to unload our stuffs to take the extra tire and all equipment needed. I still remember it was very cold!
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| Buda Castle, I think. |
Crossing the border of Romania-Hungary was another funny experience. (I hope I remember correctly haha)
The car queue at the customs was quite long, so the driver (I am not sure was it me or Azila) tried her best to keep awake. Suddenly someone honked at us. It woke everyone up to see there was no more queue there!
Our car was in the middle of the road in front of customs and everyone was asleep!
-_-' heeee
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| The funicular. |
Arrived Budapest early morning, I think just before sunrise. If you are wondering where did we pray along the journey... sometimes we took turn to pray outside at the petrol stations, but when it was really cold we prayed in the car.
We parked the car somewhere close to the funicular and walked around the city. I will not share much about Budapest in this post, as I have been there before... in 2012.
If maybe you want to read more about this classical city, refer these link. :)
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY - PART 1
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| View of Chain Bridge from the funicular. |
We had our lunch at a seafood restaurant in Pest.
Important things to remember when you want to park your car in Europe:
- Make sure it is NOT parking area for residents. For most buildings in Europe, there are flats on the first floor upwards so some people already pay for their own parking spots (just avoid the spots with plate numbers).
- Make sure you pay the parking fee (if it is stated there)
- Make sure your valuable items are stored safely, even it is just the GPS.
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| Our #4000kmroadtrip |
This map marks the end of my road trip travelogue with my amazing friends. Really, if we want to get to know someone, travel together. We will see how we react through thick and thin of the trip.
Yes, I have LOTSSS of weaknesses / bad habits / annoying attitudes that I only realized after travelling with other people.
Consider travelling as a way to get to know ourselves as well. :)
Self-reflection, yea?
HK, Czech
170503
[Roadtrip] Where East Meets West - Part 5
January 14, 2015
Sofia-Istanbul
approximately 560km (6 hours - non stop driving)
ETA - 9pm Wednesday
As I mentioned in previous post, most places in Bulgaria are named with their alphabets which made the journey more difficult. With no coverage of car's GPS for Turkey, what we did was, try to get to Svilengrad (one of the nearest town to the border of Bulgaria and Turkey).
From Svilengrad, we need to continue driving to Kapitan (this is the town for entry into Turkey). I just knew both Bulgaria and Turkey are neighbours with Greece. Excuse my Geography. T_T
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| Glad to see the word Istanbul. :) Image - credit to my friend's Instagram :D |
Still in Bulgaria, if I'm not mistaken, while heading to Svilengrad, we nearly got ourselves into accidents. Twice. T_T It was nobody's fault actually. The weather was very bad. There was a sudden heavy snow, the road was icy (with melt snow) but still covered with fresh snow. Emm, I hope you can imagine.
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| Before the snow storm. Can still see previous cars' marks of tires. |
Walking / driving on fresh snow is not as bad as on old snow (when it becomes ice). People usually fall down when walk on slippery ice while fresh snow gives more grip.
The first incident was when a car in front of us suddenly brake and gave emergency light. So, my friend slowed down and gave emergency light too. While there was another car behind us, it looked like the driver also try to reduce the speed. But the car started to slide to the right and left. Fortunately he managed to stop the car without hitting the back of our car T_T
That was so close.
Another incident was, this time our car slide left and right; nearly fall from the road (the road is higher than sidewalk, at least half a meter) There was a tree too. Alhamdulillah, my friend didn't get panicked and she tried her best to stop the car. The car was not speeding before, but I think maybe because of a small hole on the road that cause the car to be imbalance after that.
That was also so close. Really.
Istighfar.
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| Assalamualaikum Turkey! |
We continued the journey until we arrived at the border! Alhamdulillah, we got closer to Istanbul.
But, the challenge didn't stop yet. T_T
I just read somewhere; the border between Bulgaria and Turkey has the largest road customs in Europe! Entry into Turkey was not as simple as we thought. We needed to pass at least 3 officers - passport control > car control > final booth.
Unfortunately, most of cars who pass through the customs that night was stranded there for almost 2 hours. Including us. They said, our problem was because we use rented car. I don't understand how that can be a problem. We already showed them the car's identity card, car's insurance, prove of car rental.
The memorable thing of what we did there was....
Car X-RAY!
I really cannot brain this. :O
X-ray was okay for us to follow. But, when they told us to remove most of our stuffs from the car, it felt like something heavy dropped on you. It was really cold outside with strong wind, that was really painful. Most of our bags were checked too.
All procedures went well. And they found nothing was wrong.
Hmmmm.
I don't really understand how tolls work in Turkey. They don't have vignette but they have these systems - HGS / OGS. HGS means H?zl? Ge?i? Sistemi (Fast Transit System) - in which you will have electronic toll-payment device on the car screen. We cannot pay the toll cash or by credit card at the toll booth. Difference between HGS and OGS is that for HGS, you can pass the booth with normal highway speed limit, but OGS you need to slow your car.
I hope, we didn't get any traffic fine. As we stopped at almost all petrol stations (RnR) looking for ways to pay for it, but they keep saying we can do so at next 10km. The same sentences was answered when we stop at the next RnR. Suddenly we realised we were already at the toll booth T__T What to do.... we just pass through it as the booths have no gates.
We arrived Istanbul after midnight.
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| Take this picture so that we don't get lost finding way home T_T It helped! There was actually another line between red and green - Kucuk Ayasofia. |
Another problem was when we do not know how to get to the hostel. Roads in Istanbul was so complicated for us, but finally we managed to arrive near Blue Mosque. But still, where can we find the hostel? There was misunderstanding with the hostel owner as we don't really know how to describe our location.
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| The narrow road to the hostel. |
The roads near the hostel were mostly one-way. And Turkish drivers really got on my nerves when they keep honking horns when we drive slowly. When we arrived at the hostel, it was already 3am. Since the area is not flat, we find problem too on how to park the car. We, the drivers strongly feel not good to park on a hilly, narrow road. The hand brake was not that strong. We can't imagine the next morning to see our car 'kissing' another car.
While two of us went to look for the hostel, the drivers decided to park somewhere far-but-not-that-far, on flat road. :) Unfortunately, we didn't know how to get back to the hostel T___T. The roaming rate in Turkey for our Czech phone numbers was really high. And we almost lost contact with each other at the time.
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| Where ever you go while travelling, make sure to bring your hostel/hotel/accomodation card. Even though you don't understand the map, local people can help you :) |
The place where we stay that night was not actually the one we booked online. Some misunderstandings happen but the person we deal with; offer us another place. Alhamdulillah. It was still nice, I think; actually it was better. But, it was big enough for us with 3 bedrooms of 2 beds in each rooms, a big living room and a kitchen. We were afraid if they charged us more. After discussing, alhamdulillah, we don't have to pay extra.
The price is 19 Euro per person per night. I guess, the price was okay as the place is located close to Ayasofea and Blue Mosque :)
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| One of the rooms :) |
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| The common area for all guests :) |
We had a very good sleep after 2 days sleeping in the car. :)
Walk around Istanbul on the next day. Excited. :D
Till then,
Assalamualaikum.
v Khaulah
150109
[Roadtrip] Where East Meets West - Part 4
January 13, 2015
The good thing in Sofia (in Bulgaria, it is spelled as София), was when we arrived there on the last day of 2014. Which means it was public holiday = no charge to park anywhere! At the beginning, we were so reluctant to park our car. So, we decided the two of us stay in the car, while the other two go anywhere to ask about the parking tickets.
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| It was freaking cold! |
Since it was not weekend, most people said we need to pay for it. It was hard too to find shops that sell the parking tickets. Most shops were still closed. Suddenly I saw few policemen (I guess, they were going to have breakfast). I tried to ask them and luckily one of them speak English. :D
He confirmed with us that it was public holiday and we can park anywhere we want (as long as it is parking zone). What I mean with 'anywhere' is that there are at least 2 zones of parking (green and blue) in which each has different price per hour. ;)
1 Euro = 2 Bulgarian lev (BGN)
We managed to park the car quite close to places we would like to go. :) Yeay.
The first place to go is Banya Bashi Mosque! :D
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| Sweet mosque - women side on the first floor. |
Early before (maybe many many many years ago), there were at least 70 mosques in Sofia but Banya Bashi Mosque is the only one that still functioning. It is very old (completed in 1576) and was built in the era of Uthmaniyyah (Ottoman). The opening hours, I guess during prayer times - as it was locked when we first come :) :)
Interesting fact about the mosque is that, it was built by Mimar Sinan.
Who is he?
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| Image - credit |
He is the famous Ottoman architect and civil engineer for Sultans in Turkey. He was responsible to build lots of mosques, bridges, palaces, hospitals and he was compared with Michelangelo who is famous for St. Basilica in Rome (basically famous in the west). Mimar Sinan also built the Blue Mosque of Istanbul!
Banya Ba?? Camii
Camii means mosque while Banya Bashi means many baths. Outside the mosque, we can see an area of natural thermal spas, actually the remnants of original hammam (Turkish Baths). We can see from walls, there is warm water coming out. Nowadays, people will bring large empty bottles to be filled with the warm water. And it is FREEEE! ^_^
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| Turkish Bath - that uncle, he called the monopod as selfie melfie. Whattt? Haha. So, I invited him to take picture together. |
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| The nutrients of water in Turkish Bath :) I can only understand that cations anions :p |
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| The market :) |
If you are travelling to Europe or specifically Central & Eastern Europe, try to bring Euro / USD money instead of Ringgit Malaysia. RM is not recognised here (as far as I know).
It was freaking cold with slippery pavements. I could not feel my fingers anymore, eventhough I wore the gloves! Ahaa, about the attire, make sure to wear clothes that are suitable for the winter. Boots (or maybe waterproof, strong grip sport shoes), gloves, scarfs, and coat (better with hoodies)
After preparing hot drinks from Turkish Bath, we decided to continue the journey to Istanbul. :)
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| See the speed meter. Slow and safe. :) The route was dangerous T_T |
Routes to Istanbul and within Istanbul were the most challenging among all. They challenge our driving skills and patience. Since our GPS didn't cover for Turkey (we knew it already), so, we need to depend on GPS on phone, Google maps, Waze and instinct.
Why instinct?
Because we didn't understand Bulgarian alphabets. T_T It was really hard to guess the signboards.
Some incidents happened.
Alhamdulillah, Allah saved us and guide us all the way :)
Till then,
Assalamualaikum.
v Khaulah,
150109
[Roadtrip] Where East Meets West - Part 3
January 12, 2015
First of all, I can't say how many parts will be for this roadtrip :) Hehe, feel free to read, hopefully this can inspire you to try travelling somewhere by car :) Just like when I shared few experiences with my parents, they even asked me if is it possible to travel by car when they come here. They are interested to apply for international license too! :D
Enough for introduction. Let's proceed! ;)
Bucharest-Sofia
approximately 390km, in 6 hours (non stop driving)
ETA - 7am Wednesday
Route to Sofia with its own challenge when half of it has only one road for each direction. So, we need to carefully cross another car, make sure, no cars from opposite direction. The road was really dark! Seriously, like I mentioned sometime before, we can just depend on our car's light, and of course play around with the high beam. I think, most of time I was using high beam. It was not a straight road, so, need to know how to balance your gear and brake along the hilly roads.
Phewww, I guess, I have improved my driving skills drastically from this road trip. Manual car is not a problem, anymore. Alhamdulillah.
Well, I can relate this one quote by Robert Ricciardelli I read before. It was like;
The road to success is NEVER a straight road, right? There are always loops of challenges, speed bumps of friends, red lights of enemies, caution lights like family, weather changes that can fog your vision - some may complicated your journey, but some may be a booster for you to go further :) Keep determined and have faith!
Since the view was most of times dark, I found it tiring to strain my eyes to keep my focus. Tried to open the playlist and sing along. Eat a lot, chew gums a lot, Drink a lot. But bad moment was when you need to go to the toilet in the middle of forest where petrol stations were not so many. And even, they were conserving lights too T_T
My urinary bladder, himnae! keep strong!
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| Image - credit |
The border of Romania and Bulgaria is Giurgiu (Romania side) and Ruse (Bulgaria side) where here, we need to use a bridge to cross Danube river that form mostly the border between Romania and Bulgaria. Still remember I said in previous part, Danube river in Budapest? Yeah this is its continuation :)
The bridge is called Giurgiu-Rousse Friendship Bridge. The age of the bridge is more than our Independence Day. Hoho. It was opened in 1954. Even though we need to pay (~ 6 Euro) to use the bridge, but it is really NOT in good condition!.There were holes everywhere, cracks along the road.
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| This was taken on our way back. |
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| See the bridge :p |
The customs was nice, they even had a conversation with us while getting our passports checked. Basically, customs will ask you where are you heading to (like the final destination). What are the reasons of your trip? Just answer; holidays :)
Yeah, he was wondering why we chose to travel in this cold weather, why not in summer? We just said that summer is the only opportunity to go home for a long holiday. He just nodded, showing face of understanding. "It must be hard for you. Okay, everything done! May you have good trip to Sofia and managed to catch the new year in Istanbul". Smile :)
But, Sofia is not that close to the border T__T
We need to drive for another 300km! Hahahaha.
Thats mean, Bucharest to the border was only 90km!
Alhamdulillah, there is highway to drive faster and safer (of course, not for whole 300km) :)
I stopped by at many petrol stations to take a 10 minutes nap. :) It helped!
In the middle of the journey, suddenly it was raining/snowing heavily. Fuh, luckily the road was not slippery and I can still maintained with 130km/h. Getting close to Sofia, about 150km, the roads pass through mountains (again), and it was really beautiful to watch lots of wooden houses, covered with snow. And there were I guess, at least 4 tunnels, each about 800 meters :)
Pardon me if I mentioned about the beauty of mountains a lot. T__T I'm so into nature, I can say :)
Pardon me if I mentioned about the beauty of mountains a lot. T__T I'm so into nature, I can say :)
We arrived at Sofia, Bulgaria; about 9am Wednesday. And as planned, we will walk around the city, maybe at least to 2 places of attractions :)
More stories? Want to know something about Sofia?
Till next post, bye!
Assalamualaikum.
v Khaulah,
150108
[Roadtrip] Where East Meets West - Part 2
January 9, 2015
Where were we?
Ahaa, arrived in Budapest. :) Okay, let's continue!
We didn't walk around Budapest this time, as we planned to do so on our way back home. Budapest is a very nice city to travel in; with its preserved heritage too and I love the Chain Bridge that connect the two parts of Budapest - Buda and Pest. Will talk about it soon. :)
After filling the petrol tank, we drove along Danube river while looking at the beautiful morning scenery and started to head into highways; approximately at 9am Tuesday
I took the shift of driving to Bucharest, Romania. Fuh, I was quite nervous as I felt kind of responsible with the lives of other people too. If you are like me, what I did was; keep calm, and recite Allah's names most of the times okay?
Before I forget, the speed limit here, commonly as follows;
Village - 50km/h
City - 90km/h
Highway - 130km/h
Budapest - Bucharest
approximately 830 km, in 9-10 hours (if drive non stop)
Estimated time of arrival (ETA) - 9pm Tuesday.
We stopped at this RnR, aiming to have proper breakfast with cups of hot drinks (coffee, hot chocolate, or tea). There are a petrol station, a restaurant and a cafe there. So, 2 of us stepped into the cafe while the others went first to the toilets. We didn't order yet as we thought we would order together with the rest. Ouch, unfortunately the cafe didn't accept debit cards and she didn't like us to stay in her cafe. Hmphh.
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| That cafe - building on the left |
Aha, we didn't changed money to Hungarian Forint (HUF) that time. Most of time, we paid for the petrol by debit card (we have in Euro currency). And the rest, we didn't need money to buy any food. Why? Because we brought along 2 full bags of food; name it - nasi goreng, kuewtiaw goreng, cucur, cookies, snacks, hot coffee in flask, bottles of mineral water, bars of chocolates, fruits etc. Yeah, before the trip we had last minute discussion to separate the duty - AJK Makanan, AJK Kereta & Petrol, AJK Kelengkapan and most important one, the treasurer (to keep on track all expenses). Our AJK Makanan took care of all food during the journey on road.
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| Somewhere in Romania. I guess, Arad :) |
Roads connecting countries here are not always highways. Sometime, the highways end somewhere and you need to continue driving along the small towns/villages to get into another highways. And this can prolong the duration of driving; there can be people walking ON the road (as their pavements are covered with thick snow), there can be lots of lorries in front of you. There can also be police cars patrolling around - so, you can not exceed the speed limit. Duh.
By the way, when we passed through customs and passport controls at every borders, we got our passports stamped! Weheeee, that's excited to hear, right? But, no stamps or clear border between Czech and Slovakia, maybe because both were used to combine before as Czechoslovakia :)
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| Border of Hungary - Romania |
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| While waiting for passport control. Ignore the dirty screen; the weather was not that good. |
Vignette for Romania = 5 Euro (for a week) - if I'm not mistaken
If you drive a rented car, make sure you have the car's identity card and the contract/paper of renting. Some countries, they ask for this before selling the vignette or letting you pass the passport control.
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| Cards we need to have - International Driving License, Passport, Debit/credit card, Biomatric card (this is only for us as we stayed in Czech more than 90 days - customs wanted to see this as they wonder why are we still in Europe after 90 days :)) |
I can say I love Romania for its beautiful scenery of nature! There are not much of tall buildings and the countryside looks so peaceful to live in. Driving along the hills, with white mountains and hills along the way, sometimes we can see sheep and horses. Sometimes, we can drive along the road with nothing at the both sides - everything covered with snow (I expect maybe those are wheat field) how can not I fall in love with it :)
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| Countryside of Romania. |
We changed drivers nearly half way; my friend is more skillful to drive when it gets darker. As you know, winter has shorter day and longer night. I guess, my melatonin was secreted a lot when it came to night T_T
The road for the rest of the journey to Bucharest was challenging! The route, I can say; similar to the combination of hilly road from Gerik - Jeli and Simpang Pulai to Cameron Highlands. But, as I say Romania is beautiful with its nature; you can expect beautiful views too even at night! With beautiful sky with the shiny moon and stars, you can see reflections of mountains on the river you drove along.
After making sure that we entered another highway (the A1 highway from Pite?ti), I asked excuse to sleep. When I woke up, we already arrived in Bucharest, at 11pm Tuesday! (total of 14 hours) :D
Stopped by the petrol station again, try to continue to places in Bucharest. It was really cold to walk outside, so, we decided to visit anything interesting only by car. When I recheck on Internet about Bucharest, I learnt to know that there was a snow storm before we arrived! And of course we can see most cars were fully covered with white snow.
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| Not a good picture of Bucharest. I'm sorry. |
Basic information on Bucharest;- it is the capital and largest city in Romania, located south of the country. The buildings are quite a mixture of old and modern architecture. It is getting more trendy (maybe like Warsaw, Poland). Was known as "little Paris" before (maybe can be seen in the Arch de Triumph it has in one of the roundabouts :) Ahaa, we need to change our time zone here, by adding up an hour. (12am in Bucharest means 11pm in Czech).
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| Another picture of Bucharest :) |
Till next part!
Weee :D
Weee :D
v Khaulah,
150108
[Roadtrip] Where East Meets West
January 5, 2015
Alhamdulillah :)
Finally, after about a week of travelling by car, we safely arrived home! Yeah, it was a road trip, and literally we were in car most of times. ;) The car itself was like our house; it was the kitchen to prepare food and eat; it was the bedroom to sleep. Not to forget, our favorite pit-stops; the petrol stations T_T
Guess where we went?
It is the place where the east meets the west! :D
You are correct!
Istanbul, Turkey.
It was kind of a sudden plan for the winter break; despite of going by plane with expensive tickets, we tried to look for alternative way to travel. So, here we go; by car.
Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic
Bratislava, Slovakia
Budapest, Hungary
Bucharest, Romania
Sofia, Bulgaria
Istanbul, Turkey.
Overall, the journey was safe and we encountered so many new experiences. Will share about it soon, insyAllah.
Say, [O Muhammad], "Travel through the land and observe how He began creation. Then Allah will produce the final creation. Indeed Allah , over all things, is competent." Al-Ankabut 29;20
Observe and think :)
Assalamualaikum.
v Khaulah,
150105
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